"A crippled man, twenty years older than you, whom you will have to wait on?"
"Yes, sir."
"Truly, Jane?"
"Most truly, sir."
"Oh! my darling! G.o.d bless you and reward you!"
"Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life--if ever I thought a good thought--if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer--if ever I wished a righteous wish,--I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth."
"Because you delight in sacrifice."
"Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value--to press my lips to what I love--to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice."
"And to bear with my infirmities, Jane: to overlook my deficiencies."
"Which are none, sir, to me. I love you better now, when I can really be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud independence, when you disdained every part but that of the giver and protector."
"Hitherto I have hated to be helped--to be led: henceforth, I feel I shall hate it no more. I did not like to put my hand into a hireling"s, but it is pleasant to feel it circled by Jane"s little fingers. I preferred utter loneliness to the constant attendance of servants; but Jane"s soft ministry will be a perpetual joy. Jane suits me: do I suit her?"
"To the finest fibre of my nature, sir."
"The case being so, we have nothing in the world to wait for: we must be married instantly."
He looked and spoke with eagerness: his old impetuosity was rising.
"We must become one flesh without any delay, Jane: there is but the licence to get--then we marry."
"Mr. Rochester, I have just discovered the sun is far declined from its meridian, and Pilot is actually gone home to his dinner. Let me look at your watch."
"Fasten it into your girdle, Janet, and keep it henceforward: I have no use for it."
"It is nearly four o"clock in the afternoon, sir. Don"t you feel hungry?"
"The third day from this must be our wedding-day, Jane. Never mind fine clothes and jewels, now: all that is not worth a fillip."
"The sun has dried up all the rain-drops, sir. The breeze is still: it is quite hot."
"Do you know, Jane, I have your little pearl necklace at this moment fastened round my bronze scrag under my cravat? I have worn it since the day I lost my only treasure, as a memento of her."
"We will go home through the wood: that will be the shadiest way."
He pursued his own thoughts without heeding me.
"Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart swells with grat.i.tude to the beneficent G.o.d of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but far more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower--breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent s.n.a.t.c.hed it from me. I, in my stiff- necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation: instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pa.s.s through the valley of the shadow of death. _His_ chastis.e.m.e.nts are mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its weakness? Of late, Jane--only--only of late--I began to see and acknowledge the hand of G.o.d in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief prayers they were, but very sincere.
"Some days since: nay, I can number them--four; it was last Monday night, a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced frenzy--sorrow, sullenness. I had long had the impression that since I could nowhere find you, you must be dead. Late that night--perhaps it might be between eleven and twelve o"clock--ere I retired to my dreary rest, I supplicated G.o.d, that, if it seemed good to Him, I might soon be taken from this life, and admitted to that world to come, where there was still hope of rejoining Jane.
"I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open: it soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no stars and only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a moon. I longed for thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I asked of G.o.d, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged--that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart"s wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words--"Jane!
Jane! Jane!""
"Did you speak these words aloud?"
"I did, Jane. If any listener had heard me, he would have thought me mad: I p.r.o.nounced them with such frantic energy."
"And it was last Monday night, somewhere near midnight?"
"Yes; but the time is of no consequence: what followed is the strange point. You will think me superst.i.tious,--some superst.i.tion I have in my blood, and always had: nevertheless, this is true--true at least it is that I heard what I now relate.
"As I exclaimed "Jane! Jane! Jane!" a voice--I cannot tell whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was--replied, "I am coming: wait for me;" and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the words--"Where are you?"
"I"ll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words opened to my mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to express. Ferndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where sound falls dull, and dies unreverberating. "Where are you?" seemed spoken amongst mountains; for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words. Cooler and fresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my brow: I could have deemed that in some wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting. In spirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt were, at that hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane: perhaps your soul wandered from its cell to comfort mine; for those were your accents--as certain as I live--they were yours!"
Reader, it was on Monday night--near midnight--that I too had received the mysterious summons: those were the very words by which I replied to it. I listened to Mr. Rochester"s narrative, but made no disclosure in return. The coincidence struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be communicated or discussed. If I told anything, my tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of my hearer: and that mind, yet from its sufferings too p.r.o.ne to gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural. I kept these things then, and pondered them in my heart.
"You cannot now wonder," continued my master, "that when you rose upon me so unexpectedly last night, I had difficulty in believing you any other than a mere voice and vision, something that would melt to silence and annihilation, as the midnight whisper and mountain echo had melted before. Now, I thank G.o.d! I know it to be otherwise. Yes, I thank G.o.d!"
He put me off his knee, rose, and reverently lifting his hat from his brow, and bending his sightless eyes to the earth, he stood in mute devotion. Only the last words of the worship were audible.
"I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, he has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto!"
Then he stretched his hand out to be led. I took that dear hand, held it a moment to my lips, then let it pa.s.s round my shoulder: being so much lower of stature than he, I served both for his prop and guide. We entered the wood, and wended homeward.
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII--CONCLUSION
Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present. When we got back from church, I went into the kitchen of the manor-house, where Mary was cooking the dinner and John cleaning the knives, and I said--
"Mary, I have been married to Mr. Rochester this morning." The housekeeper and her husband were both of that decent phlegmatic order of people, to whom one may at any time safely communicate a remarkable piece of news without incurring the danger of having one"s ears pierced by some shrill e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, and subsequently stunned by a torrent of wordy wonderment. Mary did look up, and she did stare at me: the ladle with which she was basting a pair of chickens roasting at the fire, did for some three minutes hang suspended in air; and for the same s.p.a.ce of time John"s knives also had rest from the polishing process: but Mary, bending again over the roast, said only--
"Have you, Miss? Well, for sure!"
A short time after she pursued--"I seed you go out with the master, but I didn"t know you were gone to church to be wed;" and she basted away.
John, when I turned to him, was grinning from ear to ear.
"I telled Mary how it would be," he said: "I knew what Mr. Edward" (John was an old servant, and had known his master when he was the cadet of the house, therefore, he often gave him his Christian name)--"I knew what Mr.
Edward would do; and I was certain he would not wait long neither: and he"s done right, for aught I know. I wish you joy, Miss!" and he politely pulled his forelock.
"Thank you, John. Mr. Rochester told me to give you and Mary this." I put into his hand a five-pound note. Without waiting to hear more, I left the kitchen. In pa.s.sing the door of that sanctum some time after, I caught the words--
"She"ll happen do better for him nor ony o"t" grand ladies." And again, "If she ben"t one o" th" handsomest, she"s noan faal and varry good-natured; and i" his een she"s fair beautiful, onybody may see that."
I wrote to Moor House and to Cambridge immediately, to say what I had done: fully explaining also why I had thus acted. Diana and Mary approved the step unreservedly. Diana announced that she would just give me time to get over the honeymoon, and then she would come and see me.