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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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249 weigh on your spirits now, Jane, when I am close to you? Little nervous subject! Forget visionary woe, and think only of real happiness! You say you love me, Janet: yes-I will not forget that; and you cannot deny it. Those words did not die inarticulate on your lips. I heard them clear and soft: a thought too solemn perhaps, but sweet as music- “I think it is a glorious thing to have the hope of living with you, Edward, because I love you.” Do you love me, Jane?- repeat it.’ ‘I do, sir-I do, with my whole heart.’ ‘Well,’ he said, after some minutes’ silence, ‘it is strange; but that sentence has penetrated my breast painfully. Why? I think because you said it with such an earnest, religious energy, and because your upward gaze at me now is the very sublime of faith, truth, and devotion: it is too much as if some spirit were near me. Look wicked, Jane: as you know well how to look: coin one of your wild, shy, provoking smiles, tell me you hate me-tease me, vex me; do anything but move me: I would rather be incensed than saddened.’ ‘I will tease you and vex you to your heart’s content, when I have finished my tale: but hear me to the end.’ ‘I thought, Jane, you had told me all. I thought I had found the source of your melancholy in a dream.’ I shook my head. ‘What! is there more? But I will not believe it to be anything important. I warn you of incredulity beforehand. Go on.’ The disquietude of his air, the somewhat apprehensive impatience of his manner, surprised me: but I proceeded. ‘I dreamt another dream, sir: that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin, the retreat of bats and owls. I thought that of all the stately front nothing remained but a shell-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking. I wandered, on a moonlight night, through the grass-grown enclosure within: here I stumbled over a marble hearth, and there over a fallen fragment of cornice. Wrapped up in a shawl, I still carried the unknown little child: I might not lay it down anywhere, however tired were my arms-however much its weight impeded my progress, I must retain it. I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the road; I was sure it was you; and you were departing for many years and for a distant country. I climbed the thin wall with frantic perilous haste, eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top: the stones rolled from under my feet, the ivy branches I grasped gave way, the child clung round my neck in terror, and almost strangled me; at last I gained the summit. I saw you like a speck on a white track, lessening every moment. The blast blew so strong I could not stand. I sat down on the narrow ledge; I hushed the scared infant in my lap: you turned an angle of the road: I bent forward to take a last look; the wall crumbled; I |
