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anywhere.
I proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little;
presently I beheld a railing, then the house- scarce, by this dim
light, distinguishable from the trees, so dank and green were its
decaying walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood
amidst a space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a
semicircle. There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad
gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame
of the forest. The house presented two pointed gables in its front;
the windows were latticed and narrow: the front door was narrow too,
one step led up to it. The whole looked, as the host of the
Rochester Arms had said, 'quite a desolate spot.' It was as still as a
church on a week-day: the pattering rain on the forest leaves was
the only sound audible in its vicinage.
'Can there be life here?' I asked.
Yes, life of some kind there was; for I heard a movement- that
narrow front-door was unclosing, and some shape was about to issue
from the grange.
It opened slowly: a figure came out into the twilight and stood
on the step; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to
feel whether it rained. Dusk as it was, I had recognised him- it was
my master, Edward Fairfax Rochester, and no other.
I stayed my step, almost my breath, and stood to watch him- to
examine him, myself unseen, and alas! to him invisible. It was a
sudden meeting, and one in which rapture was kept well in check by
pain. I had no difficulty in restraining my voice from exclamation, my
step from hasty advance.
His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever: his
port was still erect, his hair was still raven black; nor were his
features altered or sunk: not in one year's space, by any sorrow,
could his athletic strength be quelled or his vigorous prime blighted.
But in his countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and
brooding- that reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast
or bird, dangerous to approach in his sullen woe. The caged eagle,
whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished, might look as
looked that sightless Samson.
And, reader, do you think I feared him in his blind ferocity?- if
you do, you little know me. A soft hope blent with my sorrow that soon
I should dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and on those lips
so sternly sealed beneath it: but not yet. I would not accost him yet.
He descended the one step, and advanced slowly and gropingly
towards the grass-plat. Where was his daring stride now? Then he
paused, as if he knew not which way to turn. He lifted his hand and
opened his eyelids; gazed blank, and with a straining effort, on the
sky, and toward the amphitheatre of trees: one saw that all to him was
void darkness. He stretched his right hand (the left arm, the
mutilated one, he kept hidden in his bosom); he seemed to wish by
touch to gain an idea of what lay around him: he met but vacancy