"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.




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