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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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373 sign of the inn, and I read in gilt letters, ‘The Rochester Arms.’ My heart leapt up: I was already on my master’s very lands. It fell again: the thought struck it:‘Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you hasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you have nothing to do with him: you dare not speak to him or seek his presence. You have lost your labour-you had better go no farther,’ urged the monitor. ‘Ask information of the people at the inn; they can give you all you seek: they can solve your doubts at once. Go up to that man, and inquire if Mr. Rochester be at home.’ The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force self to act on it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To prolong doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see the Hall under the ray of her star. There was the stile before me-the very fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted with a revengeful fury tracking and scourging me, on the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I well knew what course I had resolved to take, I was in the midst of them. How fast I walked! How I ran sometimes? How I looked forward to catch the first view of the well-known woods! With what feelings I welcomed single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill between them! At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing broke the morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me: on I hastened. Another field crossed-a lane threaded-and there were the courtyard walls-the back offices: the house itself, the rookery still hid. ‘My first view of it shall be in front,’ I determined, ‘where its bold battlements will strike the eye nobly at once, and where I can single out my master’s very window: perhaps he will be standing at it-he rises early: perhaps he is now walking in the orchard, or on the pavement in front. Could I but see him!- but a moment? Surely, in that case, I should not be so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell-I am not certain. And if I did-what then? God bless him! What then? Who would be hurt by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me? I rave: perhaps at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the Pyrenees, or on the 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 two stone pillars crowned by stone balls. From behind one pillar I could peep round quietly at the full front of the mansion. I advanced my head with precaution, desirous to ascertain if any bedroom window-blinds were yet drawn up: battlements, |
