Jane Eyre eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 705 pages of information about Jane Eyre.

Jane Eyre eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 705 pages of information about Jane Eyre.

“No, no, sir! think of other subjects, and speak of other things, and in another strain.  Don’t address me as if I were a beauty; I am your plain, Quakerish governess.”

“You are a beauty in my eyes, and a beauty just after the desire of my heart, —­ delicate and aerial.”

“Puny and insignificant, you mean.  You are dreaming, sir, —­ or you are sneering.  For God’s sake don’t be ironical!”

“I will make the world acknowledge you a beauty, too,” he went on, while I really became uneasy at the strain he had adopted, because I felt he was either deluding himself or trying to delude me.  “I will attire my Jane in satin and lace, and she shall have roses in her hair; and I will cover the head I love best with a priceless veil.”

“And then you won’t know me, sir; and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a harlequin’s jacket —­ a jay in borrowed plumes.  I would as soon see you, Mr. Rochester, tricked out in stage-trappings, as myself clad in a court-lady’s robe; and I don’t call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly:  far too dearly to flatter you.  Don’t flatter me.”

He pursued his theme, however, without noticing my deprecation.  “This very day I shall take you in the carriage to Millcote, and you must choose some dresses for yourself.  I told you we shall be married in four weeks.  The wedding is to take place quietly, in the church down below yonder; and then I shall waft you away at once to town.  After a brief stay there, I shall bear my treasure to regions nearer the sun:  to French vineyards and Italian plains; and she shall see whatever is famous in old story and in modern record:  she shall taste, too, of the life of cities; and she shall learn to value herself by just comparison with others.”

“Shall I travel? —­ and with you, sir?”

“You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples:  at Florence, Venice, and Vienna:  all the ground I have wandered over shall be re-trodden by you:  wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph’s foot shall step also.  Ten years since, I flew through Europe half mad; with disgust, hate, and rage as my companions:  now I shall revisit it healed and cleansed, with a very angel as my comforter.”

I laughed at him as he said this.  “I am not an angel,” I asserted; “and I will not be one till I die:  I will be myself.  Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me —­ for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you:  which I do not at all anticipate.”

“What do you anticipate of me?”

“For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now, —­ a very little while; and then you will turn cool; and then you will be capricious; and then you will be stern, and I shall have much ado to please you:  but when you get well used to me, you will perhaps like me again, —­ like me, I say, not love me.  I suppose your love will effervesce in six months, or less.  I have observed in books written by men, that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband’s ardour extends.  Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, I hope never to become quite distasteful to my dear master.”

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Jane Eyre from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.