第237页
《简·爱(英文版)》章节:第237页,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices
sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check
them, and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had, and
what giant propensities! How fearful were the curses those
propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an
infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading
agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate
and unchaste.
'My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four
years my father died too. I was rich enough now- yet poor to hideous
indigence: a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was
associated with mine, and called by the law and by society a part of
me. And I could not rid myself of it by any legal proceedings: for the
doctors now discovered that my wife was mad- her excesses had
prematurely developed the germs of insanity. Jane, you don't like my
narrative; you look almost sick- shall I defer the rest to another
day?'
'No, sir, finish it now; I pity you- I do earnestly pity you.'
'Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of
tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of
those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous,
selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes,
crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them. But
that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your whole
face is full at this moment- with which your eyes are now almost
overflowing- with which your heart is heaving- with which your hand is
trembling in mine. Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of
love: its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion. I
accept it, Jane; let the daughter have free advent- my arms wait to
receive her.'
'Now, sir, proceed; what did you do when you found she was mad?'
'Jane, I approached the verge of despair; a remnant of self-respect
was all that intervened between me and the gulf. In the eyes of the
world, I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour; but I resolved to
be clean in my own sight- and to the last I repudiated the
contamination of her crimes, and wrenched myself from connection
with her mental defects. Still, society associated my name and
person with hers; I yet saw her and heard her daily: something of
her breath (faugh!) mixed with the air I breathed; and besides, I
remembered I had once been her husband- that recollection was then,
and is now, inexpressibly odious to me; moreover, I knew that while
she lived I could never be the husband of another and better wife;
and, though five years my senior (her family and her father had lied
to me even in the particular of her age), she was likely to live as
long as I, being as robust in frame as she was infirm in mind. Thus,
at the age of twenty-six, I was hopeless.