I must keep to my post, however. I must watch this ghastly
countenance—these blue, still lips forbidden to unclose—these
eyes now shut, now opening, now wandering through the room,
now fixing on me, and ever glazed with the dulness of horror. I
must dip my hand again and again in the basin of blood and water,
and wipe away the trickling gore. I must see the light of the
unsnuffed candle wane on my employment; the shadows darken
on the wrought, antique tapestry round me, and grow black under
the hangings of the vast old bed, and quiver strangely over the
doors of a great cabinet opposite—whose front, divided into twelve
panels, bore, in grim design, the heads of the twelve apostles, each
enclosed in its separate panel as in a frame; while above them at
the top rose an ebon crucifix and a dying Christ.
According as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam
hovered here or glanced there, it was now the bearded physician,
Luke, that bent his brow; now St. John’s long hair that waved; and
anon the devilish face of Judas, that grew out of the panel, and
seemed gathering life and threatening a revelation of the arch-
traitor—of Satan himself—in his subordinate’s form.
Amidst all this, I had to listen as well as watch: to listen for the
movements of the wild beast or the fiend in yonder side den. But
since Mr. Rochester’s visit it seemed spellbound: all the night I
heard but three sounds at three long intervals,—a step creak, a
momentary renewal of the snarling, canine noise, and a deep
human groan.
Charlotte Bront. ElecBook Classics
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Jane Eyre 299
Then my own thoughts worried me. What crime was this that
lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be
expelled nor subdued by the owner?—what mystery, that broke
out now in fire and now in blood, at the deadest hours of night?
What creature was it, that, masked in an ordinary woman’s face
and shape, uttered the voice, now of a mocking demon, and anon
of a carrion-seeking bird of prey?
And this man I bent over—this commonplace, quiet stranger—
how had he become involved in the web of horror? and why had
the Fury flown at him? What made him seek this quarter of the
house at an untimely season, when he should have been asleep in
bed? I had heard Mr. Rochester assign him an apartment below—
what brought him here! And why, now, was he so tame under the
violence or treachery done him? Why did he so quietly submit to
the concealment Mr. Rochester enforced? Why did Mr. Rochester
enforce this concealment? His guest had been outraged, his own
life on a former occasion had been hideously plotted against; and
both attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion!
Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the
impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness
of the former: the few words which had passed between them
assured me of this. It was evident that in their former intercourse,
the passive disposition of the one had been habitually influenced
by the active energy of the other: whence then had arisen Mr.
Rochester’s dismay when he heard of Mr. Mason’s arrival? Why
had the mere name of this unresisting individual—whom his word
now sufficed to control like a child—fallen on him, a few hours
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