"Just two miles, ma'am, across the fields."
"My journey is closed," I thought to myself. I got out of the
coach, gave a box I had into the ostler's charge, to be kept till I
called for it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going:
the brightening day gleamed on the 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 myself 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."