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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com Digital Library-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte


225

miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of
communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should
take to bleeding inwardly. As for you,- you’d forget me.’ ‘That I
never should, sir: you know-’ Impossible to proceed.

‘Jane, do you hear that nightingale singing in the wood? Listen!’ In
listening, I sobbed convulsively; for I could repress what I endured
no longer; I was obliged to yield, and I was shaken from head to
foot with acute distress. When I did speak, it was only to express
an impetuous wish that I had never been born, or never come to
Thornfield.

‘Because you are sorry to leave it?’ The vehemence of emotion,
stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and
struggling for full sway, and asserting a right to predominate, to
overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last: yes,- and to speak.

‘I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield:- I love it, because I
have lived in it a full and delightful life,- momentarily at least. I
have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not
been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse
of communion with what is bright and energetic and high. I have
talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight in,-
with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known
you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to
feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity
of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.’
‘Where do you see the necessity?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Where? You, sir, have placed it before me.’ ‘In what shape?’
‘In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman,- your
bride.’ ‘My bride! What bride? I have no bride!’ ‘But you will
have.’ ‘Yes;- I will!’- I will!’ He set his teeth.

‘Then I must go:- you have said it yourself.’ ‘No: you must stay! I
swear it-and the oath shall be kept.’ ‘I tell you I must go!’ I
retorted, roused to something like passion. ‘Do you think I can stay
to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?- a
machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of
bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed
from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and
little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!- I have as
much soul as you,- and full as much heart! And if God had gifted
me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as
hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not
talking to you now through the medium of custom,
conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;- it is my spirit that
addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave,
and we stood at God’s feet, equal,- as we are!’ ‘As we are!’ repeated
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