be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current – as I am now.
‘I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world under this frost. I like Thornfield, its antiquity, its retirement, its old crow-trees and thorn-trees, its gray fa?ade, and lines of dark windows reflecting that metal welkin:8 and yet how long have I abhorred the very thought of it, shunned it like a great plague-house? How I do still abhor—’
He ground his teeth and was silent: he arrested his step and struck his boot against the hard ground. Some hated thought seemed to have him in its grip, and to hold him so tightly that he could not advance. –
We were ascending the avenue when he thus paused; the hall was before us. Lifting his eye to its battlements, he cast over them a glare such as I never saw before or since. Pain, shame, ire – impatience, disgust, detestation – seemed momentarily to hold a quivering conflict in the large pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrow. Wild was the wrestle which should be paramount; but another feeling rose and triumphed: something hard and cynical; self-willed and resolute: it settled his passion and petrified his countenance: he went on –
‘During the moment I was silent, Miss Eyre, I was arranging a point with my destiny. She stood there, by that beech-trunk – a hag like one of those who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres.9 “You like Thornfield?” she said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the air a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the house-front, between the upper and lower row of windows, “Like it if you can! Like it if you dare!”
‘“I will like it,” said I; “I dare like it;” and’ (he subjoined moodily) ‘I will keep my word: I will break obstacles to happiness, to goodness – yes, goodness. I wish to be a better man than I have been, than I am; as Job’s leviathan broke the spear, the dart, and the habergeon,10 hindrances which others count as iron and brass I will esteem but straw and rotten wood.’
Adèle here ran before him with her shuttlecock. ‘Away!’ he cried harshly; ‘keep at a distance, child; or go in to Sophie!’ Continuing then to pursue his walk in silence, I ventured to recall him to the point whence he had abruptly diverged –
‘Did you leave the balcony, sir,’ I asked, ‘when Mdlle Varens entered?’
I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question: but, on the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he turned his eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow. ‘Oh, I had forgotten Céline! Well, to resume. When I saw my charmer thus come in accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake of jealousy, rising on undulating coils11 from the moonlit balcony, glided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two minutes to my heart’s core. Strange!’ he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the point. ‘Strange that I should choose you for the confidante of all this, young lady; passing strange12 that you should listen to me quietly, as if it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera-mistresses to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you! But the last singularity explains the first, as I intimated once before: you, with your gravity, considerateness, and caution were made to be the recipient of secrets. Besides, I know what sort of a mind I have placed in communication with my own: I know it is one not liable to take infection: it is a peculiar mind: it is a unique one. Happily I do not mean to harm it: but, if I did, it would not take harm from me. The more you and I converse, the better; for while I cannot blight you, you may refresh me.’ After this digression he proceeded –
‘I remained in the balcony. “They will come to her boudoir, no doubt,” thought I: “let me prepare an ambush.” So, putting my hand in through the open window, I drew the curtain over it, leaving only an opening through which I could take observations; then I closed the casement, all but a chink just wide enough to furnish an outlet to lovers’ whispered vows: then I