In the midst of my pain of heart and frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself.
I had no solace from self-approbation: none even from self-respect.
I had injured—wounded—left my master.
I was hateful in my own eyes.
Still I could not turn, nor retrace one step.
God must have led me on.
As to my own will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one and stifled the other.
I was weeping wildly as I walked along my solitary way: fast, fast I went like one delirious.
A weakness, beginning inwardly, extending to the limbs, seized me, and I fell: I lay on the ground some minutes, pressing my face to the wet turf.
I had some fear—or hope—that here I should die: but I was soon up; crawling forwards on my hands and knees, and then again raised to my feet—as eager and as determined as ever to reach the road.
When I got there, I was forced to sit to rest me under the hedge; and while I sat, I heard wheels, and saw a coach come on.
I stood up and lifted my hand; it stopped.
I asked where it was going: the driver named a place a long way off, and where I was sure Mr. Rochester had no connections.
I asked for what sum he would take me there; he said thirty shillings; I answered I had but twenty; well, he would try to make it do.
He further gave me leave to get into the inside, as the vehicle was empty: I entered, was shut in, and it rolled on its way.
Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt!
May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine.
May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love. CHAPTER XXVIII
Two days are passed.
It is a summer evening; the coachman has set me down at a place called Whitcross; he could take me no farther for the sum I had given, and I was not possessed of another shilling in the world.
The coach is a mile off by this time; I am alone.
At this moment I discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of the pocket of the coach, where I had placed it for safety; there it remains, there it must remain; and now, I am absolutely destitute.
Whitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet; it is but a stone pillar set up where four roads meet: whitewashed, I suppose, to be more obvious at a distance and in darkness.
Four arms spring from its summit: the nearest town to which these point is, according to the inscription, distant ten miles; the farthest, above twenty.
From the well-known names of these towns I learn in what county I have lighted; a north-midland shire, dusk with moorland, ridged with mountain: this I see.
There are great moors behind and on each hand of me; there are waves of mountains far beyond that deep valley at my feet.
The population here must be thin, and I see no passengers on these roads: they stretch out east, west, north, and south—white, broad, lonely; they are all cut in the moor, and the heather grows deep and wild to their very verge.
Yet a chance traveller might pass by; and I wish no eye to see me now: strangers would wonder what I am doing, lingering here at the sign-post, evidently objectless and lost.
I might be questioned: I could give no answer but what would sound incredible and excite suspicion.
Not a tie holds me to human society at this moment—not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are—none that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me.
I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and ask repose.
I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it.
High banks of moor were about me; the crag protected my head: the sky was over that.
Some time passed before I felt tranquil even here: I had a vague dread that wild cattle might be near, or that some sportsman or poacher might discover me.
If a gust of wind swept the waste, I looked up, fearing it was the rush of a bull; if a plover whistled, I imagined it a man.
Finding my apprehensions unfounded, however, and calmed by the deep silence that reigned as evening declined at nightfall, I took confidence.
As yet I had not thought; I had only listened, watched, dreaded; now I regained the faculty of reflection.
What was I to do?
Where to go?
Oh, intolerable questions, when I could do nothing and go nowhere!—when a long way must yet be measured by my weary, trembling limbs before I could reach human habitation—when cold charity must be entreated before I could get a lodging: reluctant sympathy importuned, almost certain repulse incurred, before my tale could be listened to, or one of my wants relieved!
I touched the heath: it was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the summer day.
I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled just above the chasm ridge.
The dew fell, but with propitious softness; no breeze whispered.
Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness.
To-night, at least, I would be her guest, as I was her child: my mother would lodge me without money and without price.
I had one morsel of bread yet: the remnant of a roll I had bought in a town we passed through at noon with a stray penny—my last coin.
I saw ripe bilberries gleaming here and there, like jet beads in the heath: I gathered a handful and ate them with the bread.
My hunger, sharp before, was, if not satisfied, appeased by this hermit’s meal.
I said my evening prayers at its conclusion, and then chose my couch. I said my evening prayers
Beside the crag the heath was very deep: when I lay down my feet were buried in it; rising high on each side, it left only a narrow space for the night-air to invade.