Jane Eyre

"Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax!"  I whispered, as I glided past her
door.  "Farewell, my darling Adele!"  I said, as I glanced towards
the nursery.  No thought could be admitted of entering to embrace
her.  I had to deceive a fine ear:  for aught I knew it might now
be listening.

I would have got past Mr. Rochester's chamber without a pause; but
my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot
was forced to stop also.  No sleep was there:  the inmate was
walking restlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed
while I listened.  There was a heaven -- a temporary heaven --
in this room for me, if I chose:  I had but to go in and to say -

"Mr. Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till
death," and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips.  I thought
of this.

That kind master, who could not sleep now, was waiting with
impatience for day.  He would send for me in the morning; I should
be gone.  He would have me sought for:  vainly.  He would feel
himself forsaken; his love rejected:  he would suffer; perhaps
grow desperate.  I thought of this too.  My hand moved towards the
lock:  I caught it back, and glided on.

Drearily I wound my way downstairs:  I knew what I had to do, and
I did it mechanically.  I sought the key of the side-door in the
kitchen; I sought, too, a phial of oil and a feather; I oiled the
key and the lock.  I got some water, I got some bread:  for perhaps
I should have to walk far; and my strength, sorely shaken of late,
must not break down.  All this I did without one sound.  I opened
the door, passed out, shut it softly.  Dim dawn glimmered in the
yard.  The great gates were closed and locked; but a wicket in
one of them was only latched.  Through that I departed:  it, too,
I shut; and now I was out of Thornfield.

A mile off, beyond the fields, lay a road which stretched in the
contrary direction to Millcote; a road I had never travelled, but
often noticed, and wondered where it led:  thither I bent my steps.
No reflection was to be allowed now:  not one glance was to be
cast back; not even one forward.  Not one thought was to be given
either to the past or the future.  The first was a page so heavenly
sweet -- so deadly sad -- that to read one line of it would dissolve
my courage and break down my energy.  The last was an awful blank:
something like the world when the deluge was gone by.

I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise.  I
believe it was a lovely summer morning:  I know my shoes, which I
had put on when I left the house, were soon wet with dew.  But I
looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature.
He who is taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold,
thinks not of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block
and axe-edge; of the disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave
gaping at the end:  and I thought of drear flight and homeless
wandering -- and oh!  with agony I thought of what I left.  I could
not help it.  I thought of him now -- in his room -- watching the
sunrise; hoping I should soon come to say I would stay with him
and be his.  I longed to be his; I panted to return:  it was not
too late; I could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement.  As
yet my flight, I was sure, was undiscovered.  I could go back and
be his comforter -- his pride; his redeemer from misery, perhaps
from ruin.  Oh, that fear of his self-abandonment -- far worse than
my abandonment -- how it goaded me!  It was a barbed arrow-head
in my breast; it tore me when I tried to extract it; it sickened
me when remembrance thrust it farther in.  Birds began singing in
brake and copse:  birds were faithful to their mates; birds were
emblems of love.  What was I? In the midst of my pain of heart and
frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself.  I had no solace
from self- approbation:  none even from self-respect.  I had injured
-- wounded -- left my master.  I was hateful in my own eyes.  Still
I could not turn, nor retrace one step.  God must have led me on.
As to my own will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one
and stifled the other.  I was weeping wildly as I walked along my
solitary way:  fast, fast I went like one delirious.  A weakness,
beginning inwardly, extending to the limbs, seized me, and I fell:
I lay on the ground some minutes, pressing my face to the wet turf.
I had some fear -- or hope -- that here I should die:  but I was
soon up; crawling forwards on my hands and knees, and then again
raised to my feet -- as eager and as determined as ever to reach
the road.

When I got there, I was forced to sit to rest me under the hedge;
and while I sat, I heard wheels, and saw a coach come on.  I stood
up and lifted my hand; it stopped.  I asked where it was going:
the driver named a place a long way off, and where I was sure Mr.
Rochester had no connections.  I asked for what sum he would take
me there; he said thirty shillings; I answered I had but twenty;
well, he would try to make it do.  He further gave me leave to get
into the inside, as the vehicle was empty:  I entered, was shut
in, and it rolled on its way.

Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt!  May your eyes
never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from
mine.  May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and
so agonised as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like
me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.



CHAPTER XXVIII