第200页
《简·爱(英文版)》章节:第200页,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
'And then you won't know me, sir; and I shall not be your Jane Eyre
any longer, but an ape in a harlequin's jacket- a jay in borrowed
plumes. I would as soon see you, Mr. Rochester, tricked out in
stage-trappings, as myself clad in a court-lady's robe; and I don't
call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too
dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me.'
He pursued his theme, however, without noticing my deprecation.
'This very day I shall take you in the carriage to Millcote, and you
must choose some dresses for yourself. I told you we shall be
married in four weeks. The wedding is to take place quietly, in the
church down below yonder; and then I shall waft you away at once to
town. After a brief stay there, I shall bear my treasure to regions
nearer the sun: to French vineyards and Italian plains; and she
shall see whatever is famous in old story and in modern record: she
shall taste, too, of the life of cities; and she shall learn to
value herself by just comparison with others.'
'Shall I travel?- and with you, sir?'
'You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples: at Florence, Venice,
and Vienna: all the ground I have wandered over shall be re-trodden by
you: wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph's foot shall step also.
Ten years since, I flew through Europe half mad; with disgust, hate,
and rage as my companions: now I shall revisit it healed and
cleaned, with a very angel as my comforter.'
I laughed at him as he said this. 'I am not an angel,' I
asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr.
Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me-
for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which
I do not at all anticipate.'
'What do you anticipate of me?'
'For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now,- a very
little while; and then you will turn cool; and then you will be
capricious; and then you will be stern, and I shall have much ado to
please you: but when you get well used to me, you will perhaps like me
again,- like me, I say, not love me. I suppose your love will
effervesce in six months, or less. I have observed in books written by
men, that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband's
ardour extends. Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, I hope
never to become quite distasteful to my dear master.'
'Distasteful! and like you again! I think I shall like you again,
and yet again: and I will make you confess I do not only like, but
love you- with truth, fervour, constancy.'
'Yet are you not capricious, sir?'
'To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil
when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts- when they open
to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility,
coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent
tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but