Chapter 40 Blackened ruin

1 Daylight came. I rose and busied myself with arranging my things in order. I heard St John leave his room, open the door, and pass outside.

2 It was still two hours to breakfast time. I spent the time walking about my room, and thinking over what had happened last night. I remembered that inward feeling that I had experienced, with all its indescribable strangeness. I remembered the voice that I had heard. Again I questioned from where it had come, as uselessly as before. It had seemed in me—not in the outside world. I asked myself whether it was a mere nervous fancy—a thing of the imagination. I could not believe this.

3 At breakfast I told Diana and Mary that I was going on a journey, and should be absent at least four days.

4 'Alone, Jane?' they asked.

5 'Yes. It is to see or hear news of a friend about whom I have for some time been anxious.'

6 In their truly sensitive, delicate way, they put no further question, except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was well enough to travel.

7 I left the house at three o'clock, and soon after four I stood at the foot of the signpost waiting for the coach that was to take me to distant Thornfield. In the silence of those lonely hills, I heard it approach from far away. It was the same coach from which I had got down a year ago, at this same place—how lonely and how hopeless! Now, as I entered and was once more on the road to Thornfield, I felt like a homing pigeon returning.

8 It was a journey of thirty-six hours, and towards the end, the scenery with its green hedges and large fields and low hills, so much milder than the district from which I had come, met my eye like the features of a familiar face. The coach stopped at a village inn, and I spoke to a servant who came out.

9 'How far is it to Thornfield Hall from here?' I asked.

10 'Just two miles, ma'am, across the fields.'

11 I got out of the coach, and left my box at the inn. The early morning light shone on the signboard, and I read in gold letters, 'The Rochester Arms'. My heart beat with joy: I was already on my master's lands. It sank again: the thought came to me:

12 'Your master may not be here, and even if he is, you can have nothing to do with him. You had better go no farther. Ask for information from the people at the inn.'

13 The suggestion was reasonable, yet I could not make myself accept it. I feared a reply that would crush me with despair. I wanted to look once more at the Hall. There was the stile before me, the fields, and the path. Almost before I had realised what I was doing, I was on the way. How fast I walked! How I looked ahead to catch the first sight of the well-known woods!

14 At last they rose before me. I hastened on. Another field, a lane, and there were the courtyard walls and the buildings at the back. The house itself was still hidden.

15 'My first view shall be in front,' I decided, 'where I can see my master's window. Perhaps he will be standing at it—he rises early. Perhaps he is even now walking in the garden. Surely, in that case, I should not be so mad as to run to him?'

16 I had passed along the walls of the fruit garden, and turned the corner. There was a gate beyond, between two stone pillars. I advanced my head round one of them cautiously.

17 I looked with fearful joy towards a noble house. I saw a blackened ruin, with the silence of death about it.