"Now," said he, releasing his under lip from a hard bite, "just hand
me my whip; it lies there under the hedge."
I sought it and found it.
"Thank you; now make haste with the letter to Hay, and return as
fast as you can."
A touch of a spurred heel made his horse first start and rear, and
then bound away; the dog rushed in his traces; all three vanished,
"Like heath that, in the wilderness,
The wild wind whirls away."
I took up my muff and walked on. The incident had occurred and was
gone for me: it WAS an incident of no moment, no romance, no
interest in a sense; yet it marked with change one single hour of a
monotonous life. My help had been needed and claimed; I had given
it: I was pleased to have done something; trivial, transitory
though the deed was, it was yet an active thing, and I was weary of
an existence all passive. The new face, too, was like a new picture
introduced to the gallery of memory; and it was dissimilar to all
the others hanging there: firstly, because it was masculine; and,
secondly, because it was dark, strong, and stern. I had it still
before me when I entered Hay, and slipped the letter into the post-
office; I saw it as I walked fast down-hill all the way home. When
I came to the stile, I stopped a minute, looked round and listened,
with an idea that a horse's hoofs might ring on the causeway again,
and that a rider in a cloak, and a Gytrash-like Newfoundland dog,
might be again apparent: I saw only the hedge and a pollard willow
before me, rising up still and straight to meet the moonbeams; I
heard only the faintest waft of wind roaming fitful among the trees
round Thornfield, a mile distant; and when I glanced down in the
direction of the murmur, my eye, traversing the hall-front, caught a
light kindling in a window: it reminded me that I was late, and I
hurried on.
I did not like re-entering Thornfield. To pass its threshold was to
return to stagnation; to cross the silent hall, to ascend the
darksome staircase, to seek my own lonely little room, and then to
meet tranquil Mrs. Fairfax, and spend the long winter evening with
her, and her only, was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened
by my walk,--to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters of
an uniform and too still existence; of an existence whose very
privileges of security and ease I was becoming incapable of
appreciating. What good it would have done me at that time to have
been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling life, and to
have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm
amidst which I now repined! Yes, just as much good as it would do a
man tired of sitting still in a "too easy chair" to take a long
walk: and just as natural was the wish to stir, under my
circumstances, as it would be under his.