第256页
《简·爱(英文版)》章节:第256页,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hands and I devoured
it ravenously.
As the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary
bridle-path, which I had been pursuing an hour or more.
'My strength is quite failing me,' I said in a soliloquy. 'I feel I
cannot go much farther. Shall I be an outcast again this night?
While the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched
ground? I fear I cannot do otherwise: for who will receive me? But
it will be very dreadful, with this feeling of hunger, faintness,
chill, and this sense of desolation- this total prostration of hope.
In all likelihood, though, I should die before morning. And why cannot
I reconcile myself to the prospect of death? Why do I struggle to
retain a valueless life? Because I know, or believe, Mr. Rochester
is living: and then, to die of want and cold is a fate to which nature
cannot submit passively. Oh, Providence! sustain me a little longer!
Aid!- direct me!'
My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape. I saw I
had strayed far from the village: it was quite out of sight. The
very cultivation surrounding it had disappeared. I had, by
cross-ways and by-paths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland;
and now, only a few fields, almost as wild and unproductive as the
heath from which they were scarcely reclaimed, lay between me and
the dusky hill.
'Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a
frequented road,' I reflected. 'And far better that crows and
ravens- if any ravens there be in these regions- should pick my
flesh from my bones, than that they should be prisoned in a
workhouse coffin and moulder in a pauper's grave.'
To the hill, then, I turned. I reached it. It remained now only
to find a hollow where I could lie down, and feel at least hidden,
if not secure. But all the surface of the waste looked level. It
showed no variation but of tint: green, where rush and moss overgrew
the marshes; black, where the dry soil bore only heath. Dark as it was
getting, I could still see these changes, though but as mere
alternations of light and shade; for colour had faded with the
daylight.
My eye still roved over the sullen swell and along the moor-edge,
vanishing amidst the wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far in
among the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up. 'That is an ignis
fatuus,' was my first thought; and I expected it would soon vanish. It
burnt on, however, quite steadily, neither receding nor advancing. 'Is
it, then, a bonfire just kindled?' I questioned. I watched to see
whether it would spread: but no; as it did not diminish, so it did not
enlarge. 'It may be a candle in a house,' I then conjectured; 'but
if so, I can never reach it. It is much too far away: and were it
within a yard of me, what would it avail? I should but knock at the
door to have it shut in my face.'
And I sank down where I stood, and hid my face against the