two with arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and wardrobe,

in the order wherein I should wish to leave them during a brief

absence. Meantime, I heard St. John quit his room. He stopped at my

door: I feared he would knock- no, but a slip of paper was passed

under the door. I took it up. It bore these words-

'You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a little

longer, you would have laid your hand on the Christian's cross and the

angel's crown. I shall expect your clear decision when I return this

day fortnight. Meantime, watch and pray that you enter not into

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 will

of Heaven, when once that will is distinctly known to me. At any rate,

it shall be strong enough to search- inquire- to grope an outlet

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,

and St. John pass out. Looking through the window, I saw him

traverse the garden. He took the way over the misty moors in the

direction of 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 have some

to see and ask after in England, before I depart for ever.'

It wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time. I filled the interval in

walking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which had

given my plans their present bent. I recalled that inward sensation

I had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable

strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned

whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in me- not in the

external world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression- a

delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an

inspiration. The wondrous shock of feeling had come like the

earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas's prison;

it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosed its bands- it

had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang trembling,

listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my startled ear,

and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which neither feared

nor shook but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it

had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous body.

'Ere many days,' I said, as I terminated my musings, 'I will know

something of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me. Letters

have proved of no avail- personal inquiry shall replace them.'

At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a

journey, 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 for

some time been uneasy.'

They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they

had believed me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed, I

had often said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, they

abstained from comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was

well enough to travel. I looked very pale, she observed. I replied,

that nothing ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped soon to

alleviate.

It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled

with no inquiries- no surmises. Having once explained to them that I

could not now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely

acquiesced in the silence with which I pursued them, according to me

the privilege of free action I should under similar circumstances have

accorded them.

I left Moor House at three o'clock P.M., and soon after four I

stood at the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival

of the coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst the

silence of those solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it

approach from a great distance. It was the same vehiclewhence, a year

ago, I had alighted one summer evening on this very spot- how

desolate, and hopeless, and objectless! It stopped as I beckoned. I

entered- not now obliged to part with my whole fortune as the price of

its accommodation. Once more on the road to Thornfield, I felt like

the messenger-pigeon flying home.

It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from

Whitcross on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding Thursday

morning the coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn,

situated in the midst of scenery whose green hedges and large fields

and low pastoral hills (how mild of feature and verdant of hue

compared with the stern North-Midland moors of Morton!) met my eye

like the lineaments of a once familiar face. Yes, I knew the character

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 the

coach, gave a box I had into the ostler's charge, to be kept till I

called for it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going:

the brightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I read in gilt

letters, 'The Rochester Arms.' My heart leapt up: I was already on

my master's very lands. It fell again: the thought struck it:-

'Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught

you know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you

hasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you have

nothing to do with him: you dare not speak to him or seek his

presence. You have lost your labour- you had better go no farther,'

urged the monitor. 'Ask information of the people at the inn; they can

give you all you seek: they can solve your doubts at once. Go up to

that man, and inquire if Mr. Rochester be at home.'

The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force self to

act 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 see the

Hall under the ray of her star. There was the stile before me- the

very fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted

with a revengeful fury tracking and scourging me, on the morning I

fled from Thornfield: ere I well knew what course I had resolved to

take, I was in the midst of them. How fast I walked! How I ran

sometimes? How I looked forward to catch the first view of the

well-known woods! With what feelings I welcomed single trees I knew,

and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill between them!

At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing

broke the morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me: on I

hastened. Another field crossed- a lane threaded- and there were the

courtyard walls- the back offices: the house itself, the rookery still

hid. 'My first view of it shall be in front,' I determined, 'where its

bold battlements will strike the eye nobly at once, and where I can

single out my master's very window: perhaps he will be standing at it-

he rises early: perhaps he is now walking in the orchard, or on the

pavement in front. Could I but see him!- but a moment? Surely, in that

case, I should not be so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell- I am not

certain. And if I did- what then? God bless him! What then? Who

would be hurt by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me?

I rave: perhaps at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the

Pyrenees, or on the tideless sea of the south.'

I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard- turned its

angle: there was a gate just there, opening into the meadow, between

two stone pillars crowned by stone balls. From behind one pillar I

could peep round quietly at the full front of the mansion. I

advanced my head with precaution, desirous to ascertain if any bedroom

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 this

survey. I wonder what they thought. They must have considered I was

very careful and timid at first, and that gradually I grew very bold

and reckless. A peep, and then a long stare; and then a departure from

my niche and a straying out into the meadow; and a sudden stop full in

front of the great mansion, and a protracted, hardy gaze towards it.

'What affectation of diffidence was this at first?' they might have

demanded; 'what stupid regardlessness now?'

Hear an illustration, reader.

A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to

catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals

softly over the grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses- fancying

she has stirred: he withdraws; not for worlds would he be seen. All is

still: he again advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on

her features: he lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the

vision of beauty- warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How hurried

was their first glance! But how they fix! How he starts! How he

suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not, a

moment since, touch with his finger! How he calls aloud a name, and

drops his burden, and gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries,

and gazes, because he no longer fears to waken by any sound he can

utter- by any movement he can make. He thought his love slept sweetly:

he finds she is stone dead.

I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a

blackened ruin.

No need to cower behind a gate-post, indeed!- to peep up at chamber

lattices, fearing life was astir behind them! No need to listen for

doors opening- to fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel-walk!

The lawn, the grounds were trodden and waste: the portal yawned

void. The front was, as I had once seen it in a dream, but a

shell-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking, perforated with

paneless windows: no roof, no battlements, no chimneys- all had

crashed in.

And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of a

lonesome wild. No wonder that letters addressed to people here had

never received an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault in a

church aisle. The grim blackness of the stones told by what fate the

Hall had fallen- by conflagration: but how kindled? What story

belonged to this disaster? What loss, besides mortar and marble and

woodwork had followed upon it? Had life been wrecked as well as

property? If so, whose? Dreadful question: there was no one here to

answer it- not even dumb sign, mute token.

In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated

interior, I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late

occurrence. Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through that void

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 fallen

rafters. And oh! where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck?

In what land? Under what auspices? My eye involuntarily wandered to

the grey church tower near the gates, and I asked, 'Is he with Damer

de Rochester, sharing the shelter of his narrow marble house?'

Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere

but at the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned. The host himself

brought my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the

door and sit down: I had some questions to ask him. But when he

complied, I scarcely knew how to begin; such horror had I of the

possible answers. And yet the spectacle of desolation I had just

left prepared me in a measure for a tale of misery. The host was a

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 I

had 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 by these words that Mr. Edward- my Mr. Rochester (God bless

him, wherever he was!)- was at least alive: was, in short, 'the

present gentleman.' Gladdening words! It seemed I could hear all

that was to come- whatever the disclosures might be- with

comparative tranquillity. Since he was not in the grave, I could bear,

I thought, 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 deferring the

direct question as to where he really was.

'No, ma'am- oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you are a

stranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happened last

autumn,- Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about

harvest-time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity of

valuable property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture could be

saved. The fire broke out at dead of night, and before the engines

arrived from Millcote, the building was one mass of flame. It was a

terrible spectacle: I witnessed it myself.'

'At dead of night!' I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour of

fatality at Thornfield. 'Was it known how it originated?' I demanded.

'They guessed, ma'am: they guessed. Indeed, I should say it was

ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware,' he

continued, edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking

low, 'that there 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 for

some years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one saw

her: they only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall;

and who or what she was it was difficult to conjecture. They said

Mr. Edward had brought her from abroad, and some believed she had 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 to

the main fact.

'And this lady?'

'This lady, ma'am,' he answered, 'turned out to be Mr.

Rochester's wife! The discovery was brought about in the strangest

way. There was 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- servants will,

you know, ma'am- and he set store on her past everything: for all,

nobody but him thought her so very handsome. She was a little small

thing, they say, almost like a child. I never saw her myself; but I've

heard Leah, the housemaid, tell of her. Leah liked her well enough.

Mr. Rochester was about forty, and this governess not twenty; and

you see, when gentlemen of his age fall in 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 about

the fire. Was it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had

any hand in it?'

'You've hit it, ma'am: it's quite certain that it was her, and

nobody but her, that set it going. She had a woman to take care of her

called Mrs. Poole- an able woman in her line, and very trustworthy,

but for one fault- a fault common to a deal of them nurses and

matrons- she kept a private bottle of gin by her, and now and then

took a drop over-much. It is excusable, for she had 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, who was 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 had nearly burnt her husband

in his bed once: but I don't know about that. However, on this

night, she set fire first to the hangings of 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, and had a spite at her)- and she

kindled the bed there; but there was nobody sleeping in it,

fortunately. The governess had run away two months before; and for all

Mr. Rochester sought her as if she had been the most precious thing he

had in the world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew

savage- quite savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man,

but he got dangerous after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He

sent Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance;

but he did it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life:

and she deserved it- she was a very good woman. Miss Adele, a ward

he had, was put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the

gentry, 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-stones

of the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost

about 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, keener

gentleman 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 he had a

courage and a will of his own, if ever man had. I knew him from a boy,

you see: and for my part, I have often wished that Miss Eyre had

been sunk in the sea before she came to Thornfield Hall.'

'Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?'

'Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was

burning above and below, and got the servants out of their beds and

helped them down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out of her

cell. And then they called out to him that she was on the roof,

where she was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and

shouting out till they could hear her a mile off: I saw her and

heard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman, and had long black

hair: we could see it streaming against the flames as she stood. I

witnessed, and several more witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend through

the skylight on to the roof; we heard him call "Bertha!" We saw him

approach her; and then, ma'am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the

next minute she lay smashed on the pavement.'

'Dead?'

'Dead! Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were

scattered.'

'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: there

are 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 have

seen it? Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his

first marriage secret, and wanting to take another wife while he had

one living: but I pity him, for my part.'

'You said he was alive?' I exclaimed.

'Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better be dead.'

'Why? How?' My blood was again running cold. 'Where is he?' I

demanded. '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, is

Mr. Edward.'

I had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned

strength to 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 else was out

before him. As he came down the great staircase at last, after Mrs.

Rochester had flung herself from the battlements, there was a great

crash- all fell. He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, but

sadly hurt: a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him

partly; but one eye was knocked out, and one hand so crushed that

Mr. Carter, the surgeon, had to amputate it directly. The other eye

inflamed: he lost the sight of that also. He is now 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 miles

off: quite a desolate spot.'

'Who is with him?'

'Old John and his wife: he would have none else. He is quite broken

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 me

to Ferndean before dark this day, I'll pay both you and him twice

the hire you usually demand.'