"And these dreams 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 by 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
was shaken; the child rolled from my knee, I lost my balance, fell,
and woke."