简.爱 英文版 Jane Eyre
夏洛蒂.勃朗特 Charlotte Bronte
CHAPTER XXXVI
The daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour ortwo with arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and wardrobe,in the order wherein I should wish to leave them during a briefabsence. Meantime, I heard St. John quit his room. He stoppedat my door: I feared he would knock -- no, but a slip of paperwas passed under the door. I took it up. It bore these words -
"You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a littlelonger, you would have laid your hand on the Christian's cross andthe angel's crown. I shall expect your clear decision when I returnthis day fortnight. Meantime, watch and pray that you enter notinto temptation: the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh,I see, is weak. I shall pray for you hourly. -- Yours, ST. JOHN. "
"My spirit, " I answered mentally, "is willing to do what is right;and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the willof Heaven, when once that will is distinctly known to me. At anyrate, it shall be strong enough to search -- inquire -- to grope anoutlet from this cloud of doubt, and find the open day of certainty. "
It was the first of June; yet the morning was overcast and chilly:rain beat fast on my casement. I heard the front-door open, andSt. John pass out. Looking through the window, I saw him traversethe garden. He took the way over the misty moors in the directionof Whitcross -- there he would meet the coach.
"In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin, "thought I: "I too have a coach to meet at Whitcross. I too havesome to see and ask after in England, before I depart for ever. "
It wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time. I filled the intervalin walking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation whichhad given my plans their present bent. I recalled that inwardsensation I had experienced: for I could recall it, with all itsunspeakable strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; againI questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed inME -- not in the external world. I asked was it a mere nervousimpression -- a delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it wasmore like an inspiration. The wondrous shock of feeling had comelike the earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas'sprison; it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosedits bands -- it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprangtrembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on mystartled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, whichneither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the successof one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of thecumbrous body.
"Ere many days, " I said, as I terminated my musings, "I will knowsomething of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me. Lettershave proved of no avail -- personal inquiry shall replace them. "
At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going ajourney, and should be absent at least four days.
"Alone, Jane?" they asked.
"Yes; it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had forsome time been uneasy. "
They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that theyhad believed me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed,I had often said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, theyabstained from comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sureI was well enough to travel. I looked very pale, she observed. Ireplied, that nothing ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I hopedsoon to alleviate.
It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled withno inquiries -- no surmises. Having once explained to them thatI could not now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wiselyacquiesced in the silence with which I pursued them, according tome the privilege of free action I should under similar circumstanceshave accorded them.
I left Moor House at three o'clock p. m. , and soon after four Istood at the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrivalof the coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidstthe silence of those solitary roads and desert hills, I heard itapproach from a great distance. It was the same vehicle whence,a year ago, I had alighted one summer evening on this very spot-- how desolate, and hopeless, and objectless! It stopped asI beckoned. I entered -- not now obliged to part with my wholefortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more on the roadto Thornfield, I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.
It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out fromWhitcross on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeedingThursday morning the coach stopped to water the horses at a waysideinn, situated in the midst of scenery whose green hedges and largefields and low pastoral hills (how mild of feature and verdant ofhue compared with the stern North-Midland moors of Morton!) met myeye like the lineaments of a once familiar face. Yes, I knew thecharacter of this landscape: I was sure we were near my bourne.
"How far is Thornfield Hall from here?" I asked of the ostler.
"Just two miles, ma'am, across the fields. "
"My journey is closed, " I thought to myself. I got out of thecoach, gave a box I had into the ostler's charge, to be kept tillI called for it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and wasgoing: the brightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and Iread in gilt letters, "The Rochester Arms. " My heart leapt up: Iwas already on my master's very lands. It fell again: the thoughtstruck it:-
"Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aughtyou know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards whichyou hasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and youhave nothing to do with him: you dare not speak to him or seekhis presence. You have lost your labour -- you had better go nofarther, " urged the monitor. "Ask information of the people at theinn; they can give you all you seek: they can solve your doubts atonce. Go up to that man, and inquire if Mr. Rochester be at home. "
The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself toact on it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair.To prolong doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more seethe Hall under the ray of her star. There was the stile beforeme -- the very fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf,distracted with a revengeful fury tracking and scourging me, onthe morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I well knew what courseI had resolved to take, I was in the midst of them. How fast Iwalked! How I ran sometimes! How I looked forward to catch thefirst view of the well-known woods! With what feelings I welcomedsingle trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hillbetween them!
At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawingbroke the morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me: on Ihastened. Another field crossed -- a lane threaded -- and therewere the courtyard walls -- the back offices: the house itself,the rookery still hid. "My first view of it shall be in front, " Idetermined, "where its bold battlements will strike the eye nobly atonce, and where I can single out my master's very window: perhapshe will be standing at it -- he rises early: perhaps he is nowwalking in the orchard, or on the pavement in front. Could I butsee him! -- but a moment! Surely, in that case, I should not beso mad as to run to him? I cannot tell -- I am not certain. Andif I did -- what then? God bless him! What then? Who would behurt by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me? Irave: perhaps at this moment he is watching the sun rise over thePyrenees, or on the tideless sea of the south. "
I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard -- turnedits angle: there was a gate just there, opening into the meadow,between two stone pillars crowned by stone balls. From behind onepillar I could peep round quietly at the full front of the mansion.I advanced my head with precaution, desirous to ascertain if anybedroom window-blinds were yet drawn up: battlements, windows,long front -- all from this sheltered station were at my command.
The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took thissurvey. I wonder what they thought. They must have consideredI was very careful and timid at first, and that gradually I grewvery bold and reckless. A peep, and then a long stare; and thena departure from my niche and a straying out into the meadow; anda sudden stop full in front of the great mansion, and a protracted,hardy gaze towards it. "What affectation of diffidence was thisat first?" they might have demanded; "what stupid regardlessnessnow?"
Hear an illustration, reader.
A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes tocatch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He stealssoftly over the grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses --fancying she has stirred: he withdraws: not for worlds would hebe seen. All is still: he again advances: he bends above her;a light veil rests on her features: he lifts it, bends lower; nowhis eyes anticipate the vision of beauty -- warm, and blooming,and lovely, in rest. How hurried was their first glance! But howthey fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and vehemently claspsin both arms the form he dared not, a moment since, touch withhis finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden, andgazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, becausehe no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter -- by anymovement he can make. He thought his love slept sweetly: he findsshe is stone dead.
I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw ablackened ruin.
No need to cower behind a gate-post, indeed! -- to peep up atchamber lattices, fearing life was astir behind them! No need tolisten for doors opening -- to fancy steps on the pavement or thegravel-walk! The lawn, the grounds were trodden and waste: theportal yawned void. The front was, as I had once seen it in adream, but a well-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking,perforated with paneless windows: no roof, no battlements, nochimneys -- all had crashed in.
And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude ofa lonesome wild. No wonder that letters addressed to people herehad never received an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vaultin a church aisle. The grim blackness of the stones told by whatfate the Hall had fallen -- by conflagration: but how kindled?What story belonged to this disaster? What loss, besides mortar andmarble and wood-work had followed upon it? Had life been wreckedas well as property? If so, whose? Dreadful question: there wasno one here to answer it -- not even dumb sign, mute token.
In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastatedinterior, I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of lateoccurrence. Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through thatvoid arch, winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements; for,amidst the drenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation:grass and weed grew here and there between the stones and fallenrafters. And oh! where meantime was the hapless owner of thiswreck? In what land? Under what auspices? My eye involuntarilywandered to the grey church tower near the gates, and I asked,"Is he with Damer de Rochester, sharing the shelter of his narrowmarble house?"
Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowherebut at the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned. The host himselfbrought my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut thedoor and sit down: I had some questions to ask him. But when hecomplied, I scarcely knew how to begin; such horror had I of thepossible answers. And yet the spectacle of desolation I had justleft prepared me in a measure for a tale of misery. The host wasa respectable-looking, middle-aged man.
"You know Thornfield Hall, of course?" I managed to say at last.
"Yes, ma'am; I lived there once. "
"Did you?" Not in my time, I thought: you are a stranger to me.
"I was the late Mr. Rochester's butler, " he added.
The late! I seem to have received, with full force, the blow Ihad been trying to evade.
"The late!" I gasped. "Is he dead?"
"I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward's father, " he explained.I breathed again: my blood resumed its flow. Fully assured bythese words that Mr. Edward -- MY Mr. Rochester (God bless him,wherever he was!) -- was at least alive: was, in short, "the presentgentleman. " Gladdening words! It seemed I could hear all that wasto come -- whatever the disclosures might be -- with comparativetranquillity. Since he was not in the grave, I could bear, Ithought, to learn that he was at the Antipodes.
"Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?" I asked, knowing,of course, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferringthe direct question as to where he really was.
"No, ma'am -- oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you area stranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happenedlast autumn, -- Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt downjust about harvest-time. A dreadful calamity! such an immensequantity of valuable property destroyed: hardly any of the furniturecould be saved. The fire broke out at dead of night, and beforethe engines arrived from Millcote, the building was one mass offlame. It was a terrible spectacle: I witnessed it myself. "
"At dead of night!" I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hourof fatality at Thornfield. "Was it known how it originated?" Idemanded.
"They guessed, ma'am: they guessed. Indeed, I should say it wasascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware, " he continued,edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking low, "thatthere was a lady -- a -- a lunatic, kept in the house?"
"I have heard something of it. "
"She was kept in very close confinement, ma'am: people even forsome years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No onesaw her: they only knew by rumour that such a person was at theHall; and who or what she was it was difficult to conjecture. Theysaid Mr. Edward had brought her from abroad, and some believed shehad been his mistress. But a queer thing happened a year since --a very queer thing. "
I feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him tothe main fact.
"And this lady?"
"This lady, ma'am, " he answered, "turned out to be Mr. Rochester'swife! The discovery was brought about in the strangest way. Therewas a young lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell in -- "
"But the fire, " I suggested.
"I'm coming to that, ma'am -- that Mr. Edward fell in love with.The servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was:he was after her continually. They used to watch him -- servantswill, you know, ma'am -- and he set store on her past everything:for all, nobody but him thought her so very handsome. She wasa little small thing, they say, almost like a child. I never sawher myself; but I've heard Leah, the house-maid, tell of her. Leahliked her well enough. Mr. Rochester was about forty, and thisgoverness not twenty; and you see, when gentlemen of his age fallin love with girls, they are often like as if they were bewitched.Well, he would marry her. "
"You shall tell me this part of the story another time, " I said;"but now I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all aboutthe fire. Was it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, hadany hand in it?"
"You've hit it, ma'am: it's quite certain that it was her, andnobody but her, that set it going. She had a woman to take careof her called Mrs. Poole -- an able woman in her line, and verytrustworthy, but for one fault -- a fault common to a deal of themnurses and matrons -- she KEPT A PRIVATE BOTTLE OF GIN BY HER,and now and then took a drop over-much. It is excusable, for shehad a hard life of it: but still it was dangerous; for when Mrs.Poole was fast asleep after the gin and water, the mad lady, whowas as cunning as a witch, would take the keys out of her pocket,let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the house,doing any wild mischief that came into her head. They say she hadnearly burnt her husband in his bed once: but I don't know aboutthat. However, on this night, she set fire first to the hangingsof the room next her own, and then she got down to a lower storey,and made her way to the chamber that had been the governess's --(she was like as if she knew somehow how matters had gone on, andhad a spite at her) -- and she kindled the bed there; but therewas nobody sleeping in it, fortunately. The governess had run awaytwo months before; and for all Mr. Rochester sought her as if shehad been the most precious thing he had in the world, he nevercould hear a word of her; and he grew savage -- quite savage onhis disappointment: he never was a wild man, but he got dangerousafter he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent Mrs. Fairfax,the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but he did ithandsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and shedeserved it -- she was a very good woman. Miss Adele, a ward hehad, was put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all thegentry, and shut himself up like a hermit at the Hall. "
"What! did he not leave England?"
"Leave England? Bless you, no! He would not cross the door-stonesof the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghostabout the grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses-- which it is my opinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keenergentleman than he was before that midge of a governess crossed him,you never saw, ma'am. He was not a man given to wine, or cards,or racing, as some are, and he was not so very handsome; but hehad a courage and a will of his own, if ever man had. I knew himfrom a boy, you see: and for my part, I have often wished thatMiss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she came to ThornfieldHall. "
"Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?"
"Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all wasburning above and below, and got the servants out of their bedsand helped them down himself, and went back to get his mad wife outof her cell. And then they called out to him that she was on theroof, where she was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements,and shouting out till they could hear her a mile off: I saw herand heard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman, and had longblack hair: we could see it streaming against the flames as shestood. I witnessed, and several more witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascendthrough the sky-light on to the roof; we heard him call 'Bertha!'We saw him approach her; and then, ma'am, she yelled and gave aspring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement. "
"Dead?"
"Dead! Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood werescattered. "
"Good God!"
"You may well say so, ma'am: it was frightful!"
He shuddered.
"And afterwards?" I urged.
"Well, ma'am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground: thereare only some bits of walls standing now. "
"Were any other lives lost?"
"No -- perhaps it would have been better if there had. "
"What do you mean?"
"Poor Mr. Edward!" he ejaculated, "I little thought ever to haveseen it! Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping hisfirst marriage secret, and wanting to take another wife while hehad one living: but I pity him, for my part. "
something of it. "the south. "wherever he was!) -- was at least alive: was, .
"You said he was alive?" I exclaimed.
"Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better he dead. "
"Why? How?" My blood was again running cold. "Where is he?" Idemanded. "Is he in England?"
"Ay -- ay -- he's in England; he can't get out of England, I fancy-- he's a fixture now. "
What agony was this! And the man seemed resolved to protract it.
"He is stone-blind, " he said at last. "Yes, he is stone-blind, isMr. Edward. "
I had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned strengthto ask what had caused this calamity.
"It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness,in a way, ma'am: he wouldn't leave the house till every one elsewas out before him. As he came down the great staircase at last,after Mrs. Rochester had flung herself from the battlements, therewas a great crash -- all fell. He was taken out from under theruins, alive, but sadly hurt: a beam had fallen in such a way asto protect him partly; but one eye was knocked out, and one hand socrushed that Mr. Carter, the surgeon, had to amputate it directly.The other eye inflamed: he lost the sight of that also. He isnow helpless, indeed -- blind and a cripple. "
"Where is he? Where does he now live?"
"At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty milesoff: quite a desolate spot. "
"Who is with him?"
"Old John and his wife: he would have none else. He is quitebroken down, they say. "
"Have you any sort of conveyance?"
"We have a chaise, ma'am, a very handsome chaise. "
"Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive meto Ferndean before dark this day, I'll pay both you and him twicethe hire you usually demand. "