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 stopped atmy door: I feared he would knock--no, but a slip of paper waspassed 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, Isee, 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 ofHeaven, when once that will is distinctly known to me. At any rate,it shall be strong enough to search--inquire--to grope an outletfrom 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 thegarden. He took the way over the misty moors in the direction ofWhitcross--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 interval inwalking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which hadgiven my plans their present bent. I recalled that inward sensationI had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakablestrangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questionedwhence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in ME--not in theexternal world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression--adelusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like aninspiration. The wondrous shock of feeling had come like theearthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas's prison;it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosed its bands--ithad 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 fearednor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effortit had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous body.

"Ere many days," I said, as I terminated my musings, "I will knowsomething of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me.Letters have proved of no avail--personal inquiry shall replacethem."

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 they hadbelieved me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed, I hadoften said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, they abstainedfrom comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was wellenough to travel. I looked very pale, she observed. I replied,that nothing ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped soon toalleviate.

It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled withno inquiries--no surmises. Having once explained to them that Icould not now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wiselyacquiesced in the silence with which I pursued them, according to methe 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 I stoodat the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival ofthe coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst thesilence of those solitary roads and desert hills, I heard itapproach from a great distance. It was the same vehicle whence, ayear ago, I had alighted one summer evening on this very spot--howdesolate, and hopeless, and objectless! It stopped as I beckoned.I entered--not now obliged to part with my whole fortune as theprice of its accommodation. Once more on the road to Thornfield, Ifelt 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 till Icalled for it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going:the brightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I read ingilt letters, "The Rochester Arms." My heart leapt up: I wasalready 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 which youhasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you havenothing to do with him: you dare not speak to him or seek hispresence. You have lost your labour--you had better go no farther,"urged the monitor. "Ask information of the people at the inn; theycan give you all you seek: they can solve your doubts at once. Goup to that man, and inquire if Mr. Rochester be at home."

The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to acton it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. Toprolong doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see theHall under the ray of her star. There was the stile before me--thevery fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distractedwith a revengeful fury tracking and scourging me, on the morning Ifled from Thornfield: ere I well knew what course I had resolved totake, I was in the midst of them. How fast I walked! How I ransometimes! How I looked forward to catch the first view of thewell-known woods! With what feelings I welcomed single trees Iknew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill between 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 there werethe courtyard walls--the back offices: the house itself, therookery 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 be somad as to run to him? I cannot tell--I am not certain. And if Idid--what then? God bless him! What then? Who would be hurt by myonce more tasting the life his glance can give me? I rave: perhapsat this moment he is watching the sun rise over the Pyrenees, or onthe 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 twostone pillars crowned by stone balls. From behind one pillar Icould peep round quietly at the full front of the mansion. Iadvanced my head with precaution, desirous to ascertain if anybedroom window-blinds were yet drawn up: battlements, windows, longfront--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 considered Iwas very careful and timid at first, and that gradually I grew verybold and reckless. A peep, and then a long stare; and then adeparture from my niche and a straying out into the meadow; and asudden stop full in front of the great mansion, and a protracted,hardy gaze towards it. "What affectation of diffidence was this atfirst?" they might have demanded; "what stupid regardlessness now?"

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--fancyingshe has stirred: he withdraws: not for worlds would he be seen.All is still: he again advances: he bends above her; a light veilrests on her features: he lifts it, bends lower; now his eyesanticipate the vision of beauty--warm, and blooming, and lovely, inrest. How hurried was their first glance! But how they fix! Howhe starts! How he suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms theform he dared not, a moment since, touch with his finger! How hecalls aloud a name, and drops his burden, and gazes on it wildly!He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he no longer fears towaken by any sound he can utter--by any movement he can make. Hethought his love slept sweetly: he finds she 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 at chamberlattices, fearing life was astir behind them! No need to listen fordoors opening--to fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel-walk!The lawn, the grounds were trodden and waste: the portal yawnedvoid. The front was, as I had once seen it in a dream, but a well-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking, perforated withpaneless windows: no roof, no battlements, no chimneys--all hadcrashed in.

And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of alonesome wild. No wonder that letters addressed to people here hadnever received an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault in achurch aisle. The grim blackness of the stones told by what fatethe Hall had fallen--by conflagration: but how kindled? What storybelonged to this disaster? What loss, besides mortar and marble andwood-work had followed upon it? Had life been wrecked as well asproperty? If so, whose? Dreadful question: there was no one hereto 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 that voidarch, winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements; for, amidstthe 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, "Ishe with Damer de Rochester, sharing the shelter of his narrow marblehouse?"

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 was arespectable-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 hadbeen trying to evade.

"The late!" 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 are astranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happened lastautumn,--Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down justabout harvest-time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantityof valuable property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture couldbe saved. The fire broke out at dead of night, and before theengines 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 offatality 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," hecontinued, edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speakinglow, "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 forsome years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one sawher: 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 saidMr. Edward had brought her from abroad, and some believed she hadbeen his mistress. But a queer thing happened a year since--a veryqueer 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 fellin--"

"But the fire," I suggested.

"I'm coming to that, ma'am--that Mr. Edward fell in love with. Theservants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was: hewas 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 smallthing, they say, almost like a child. I never saw her myself; butI've heard Leah, the house-maid, tell of her. Leah liked her wellenough. Mr. Rochester was about forty, and this governess nottwenty; and you see, when gentlemen of his age fall in love withgirls, they are often like as if they were bewitched. Well, hewould 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 care ofher 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 nowand then took a drop over-much. It is excusable, for she had a hardlife of it: but still it was dangerous; for when Mrs. Poole wasfast asleep after the gin and water, the mad lady, who was ascunning as a witch, would take the keys out of her pocket, letherself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the house, doingany wild mischief that came into her head. They say she had nearlyburnt 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 theroom next her own, and then she got down to a lower storey, and madeher way to the chamber that had been the governess's--(she was likeas if she knew somehow how matters had gone on, and had a spite ather)--and she kindled the bed there; but there was nobody sleepingin it, fortunately. The governess had run away two months before;and for all Mr. Rochester sought her as if she had been the mostprecious thing he had in the world, he never could hear a word ofher; and he grew savage--quite savage on his disappointment: henever was a wild man, but he got dangerous after he lost her. Hewould be alone, too. He sent Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, away toher friends at a distance; but he did it handsomely, for he settledan annuity on her for life: and she deserved it--she was a verygood woman. Miss Adele, a ward he had, was put to school. He brokeoff acquaintance with all the gentry, and shut himself up like ahermit 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, orracing, as some are, and he was not so very handsome; but he had acourage and a will of his own, if ever man had. I knew him from aboy, you see: and for my part, I have often wished that Miss Eyrehad 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 wasburning above and below, and got the servants out of their beds andhelped them down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out ofher cell. And then they called out to him that she was on the roof,where she was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, andshouting out till they could hear her a mile off: I saw her andheard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman, and had long blackhair: we could see it streaming against the flames as she stood. Iwitnessed, and several more witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend throughthe sky-light on to the roof; we heard him call 'Bertha!' We sawhim approach her; and then, ma'am, she yelled and gave a spring, andthe 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 he hadone 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 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'sa 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 away, ma'am: he wouldn't leave the house till every one else was outbefore him. As he came down the great staircase at last, after Mrs.Rochester had flung herself from the battlements, there was a greatcrash--all fell. He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, butsadly hurt: a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect himpartly; but one eye was knocked out, and one hand so crushed thatMr. Carter, the surgeon, had to amputate it directly. The other eyeinflamed: 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 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 me toFerndean before dark this day, I'll pay both you and him twice thehire you usually demand."