第249页
《简·爱(英文版)》章节:第249页,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
taken out to pass through a fair scene to the scaffold, thinks not
of the flowers that smile on his road, but of the block and
axe-edge; of the disseverment of bone and vein; of the grave gaping at
the end: and I thought of drear flight and homeless wandering- and oh!
with agony I thought of what I left. I could not help it. I thought of
him now- in his room- watching the sunrise; hoping I should soon
come to say I would stay with him and be his. I longed to be his; I
panted to return: it was not too late; I could yet spare him the
bitter pang of bereavement. As yet my flight, I was sure, was
undiscovered. I could go back and be his comforter- his pride; his
redeemer from misery, perhaps from ruin. Oh, that fear of his
self-abandonment- far worse than my abandonment- how it goaded me!
It was a barbed arrow-head in my breast; it tore me when I tried to
extract it; it sickened me when remembrance thrust it farther in.
Birds began singing in brake and copse: birds were faithful to their
mates; birds were emblems of love. What was I? In the midst of my pain
of heart and frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself. I had
no solace from self-approbation: none even from self-respect. I had
injured- wounded- left my master. I was hateful in my own eyes.
Still I could not turn, nor retrace one step. God must have led me on.
As to my own will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one
and stifled the other. I was weeping wildly as I walked along my
solitary way: fast, fast I went like one delirious. A weakness,
beginning inwardly, extending to the limbs, seized me, and I fell: I
lay on the ground some minutes, pressing my face to the wet turf. I
had some fear- or hope- that here I should die: but I was soon up;
crawling forwards on my hands and knees, and then again raised to my
feet- as eager and as determined as ever to reach the road.
When I got there, I was forced to sit to rest me under the hedge;
and while I sat, I heard wheels, and saw a coach come on. I stood up
and lifted my hand; it stopped. I asked where it was going: the driver
named a place a long way off, and where I was sure Mr. Rochester had
no connections. I asked for what sum he would take me there; he said
thirty shillings; I answered I had but twenty; well, he would try to
make it do. He further gave me leave to get into the inside, as the
vehicle was empty: I entered, was shut in, and it rolled on its way.
Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes
never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from
mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so
agonised as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me,
dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.
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CHAPTER XXVIII
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