第161页
stand to his lips, and your salts to his nose. You will not speak to
him on any pretext- and- Richard, it will be at the peril of your life
if you speak to her: open your lips- agitate yourself- and I'll not
answer for the consequences.'
Again the poor man groaned; he looked as if he dared not move;
fear, either of death or of something else, appeared almost to
paralyse him. Mr. Rochester put the now bloody sponge into my hand,
and I proceeded to use it as he had done. He watched me a second, then
saying, 'Remember!- No conversation,' he left the room. I
experienced a strange feeling as the key grated in the lock, and the
sound of his retreating step ceased to be heard.
Here then I was in the third storey, fastened into one of its
mystic cells; night around me; a pale and bloody spectacle under my
eyes and hands; a murderess hardly separated from me by a single door:
yes- that was appalling- the rest I could bear; but I shuddered at the
thought of Grace Poole bursting out upon me.
I must keep to my post, however. I must watch this ghastly
countenance- these blue, still lips forbidden to unclose- these eyes
now shut, now opening, now wandering through the room, now fixing on
me, and ever glazed with the dulness of horror. I must dip my hand
again and again in the basin of blood and water, and wipe away the
trickling gore. I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle wane on
my employment; the shadows darken on the wrought, antique tapestry
round me, and grow black under the hangings of the vast old bed, and
quiver strangely over the doors of a great cabinet opposite- whose
front, divided into twelve panels, bore, in grim design, the heads
of the twelve apostles, each enclosed in its separate panel as in a
frame; while above them at the top rose an ebon crucifix and a dying
Christ.
According as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered
here or glanced there, it was now the bearded physician, Luke, that
bent his brow; now St. John's long hair that waved; and anon the
devilish face of Judas, that grew out of the panel, and seemed
gathering life and threatening a revelation of the arch-traitor- of
Satan himself- in his subordinate's form.
Amidst all this, I had to listen as well as watch: to listen for
the movements of the wild beast or the fiend in yonder side den. But
since Mr. Rochester's visit it seemed spellbound: all the night I
heard but three sounds at three long intervals,- a step creak, a
momentary renewal of the snarling, canine noise, and a deep human
groan.
Then my own thoughts worried me. What crime was this, that lived
incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled
nor subdued by the owner?- what mystery, that broke out now in fire
and now in blood, at the deadest hours of night? What creature was it,
that, masked in an ordinary woman's face and shape, uttered the voice,
now of a mocking demon, and anon of a carrion-seeking bird of prey?