Quotation from: Jane Eyre

Written by: Charlotte Bronte


I skirted fields, and hedges, and lanes till after sunrise. I
believe it was a lovely summer morning: I know my shoes, which I
had put on when I left the house, were soon wet with dew. But I
looked neither to rising sun, nor smiling sky, nor wakening nature.
He who is 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.

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