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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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187 ‘Hold the candle,’ said Mr. Rochester, and I took it: he fetched a basin of water from the washstand: ‘Hold that,’ said he. I obeyed. He took the sponge, dipped it in, and moistened the corpse-like face; he asked for my smelling-bottle, and applied it to the nostrils. Mr. Mason shortly unclosed his eyes; he groaned. Mr. Rochester opened the shirt of the wounded man, whose arm and shoulder were bandaged: he sponged away blood, trickling fast down. ‘Is there immediate danger?’ murmured Mr. Mason. ‘Pooh! No-a mere scratch. Don’t be so overcome, man: bear up! I’ll fetch a surgeon for you now, myself: you’ll be able to be removed by morning, I hope. Jane,’ he continued. ‘Sir?’ ‘I shall have to leave you in this room with this gentleman, for an hour, or perhaps two hours: you will sponge the blood as I do when it returns: if he feels faint, you will put the glass of water on that stand to his lips, and your salts to his nose. You will not speak to him on any pretext-and-Richard, it will be at the peril of your life if you speak to her: open your lips-agitate yourself-and I’ll not answer for the consequences.’ Again the poor man groaned; he looked as if he dared not move; fear, either of death or of something else, appeared almost to paralyse him. Mr. Rochester put the now bloody sponge into my hand, and I proceeded to use it as he had done. He watched me a second, then saying, ‘Remember!- No conversation,’ he left the room. I experienced a strange feeling as the key grated in the lock, and the sound of his retreating step ceased to be heard. Here then I was in the third storey, fastened into one of its mystic cells; night around me; a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes and hands; a murderess hardly separated from me by a single door: yes-that was appalling-the rest I could bear; but I shuddered at the thought of Grace Poole bursting out upon me. I must keep to my post, however. I must watch this ghastly countenancethese blue, still lips forbidden to unclose-these eyes now shut, now opening, now wandering through the room, now fixing on me, and ever glazed with the dulness of horror. I must dip my hand again and again in the basin of blood and water, and wipe away the trickling gore. I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle wane on my employment; the shadows darken on the wrought, antique tapestry round me, and grow black under the hangings of the vast old bed, and quiver strangely over the doors of a great cabinet opposite-whose front, divided into twelve panels, bore, in grim design, the heads of the twelve apostles, each |
