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I said this almost involuntarily, and, with as little sanction of
free will, my tears gushed out. I did not cry so as to be heard,
however; I avoided sobbing. The thought of Mrs. O'Gall and
Bitternutt Lodge struck cold to my heart; and colder the thought of
all the brine and foam, destined, as it seemed, to rush between me and
the master at whose side I now walked, and coldest the remembrance
of the wider ocean- wealth, caste, custom intervened between me and
what I naturally and inevitably loved.
'It is a long way,' I again said.
'It is, to be sure; and when you get to Bitternutt Lodge,
Connaught, Ireland, I shall never see you again, Jane: that's
morally certain. I never go over to Ireland, not having myself much of
a fancy for the country. We have been good friends, Jane; have we
not?'
'Yes, sir.'
'And when friends are on the eve of separation, they like to
spend the little time that remains to them close to each other.
Come! we'll talk over the voyage and the parting quietly half an
hour or so, while the stars enter into their shining life up in heaven
yonder: here is the chestnut tree: here is the bench at its old roots.
Come, we will sit there in peace to-night, though we should never more
be destined to sit there together.' He seated me and himself.
'It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my
little friend on such weary travels: but if I can't do better, how
is it to be helped? Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?'
I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still.
'Because,' he said, 'I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard
to you- especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a
string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably
knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of
your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel and two hundred
miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of
communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should
take to bleeding inwardly. As for you,- you'd forget me.'
'That I never should, sir: you know-' Impossible to proceed.
'Jane, do you hear that nightingale singing in the wood? Listen!'
In listening, I sobbed convulsively; for I could repress what I
endured no longer; I was obliged to yield, and I was shaken from
head to foot with acute distress. When I did speak, it was only to
express an impetuous wish that I had never been born, or never come to
Thornfield.
'Because you are sorry to leave it?'
The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me,
was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway, and asserting a
right to predominate, to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last:
yes,- and to speak.
'I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield:- I love it,
because I have lived in it a full and delightful life,- momentarily at