to return: it was not too late; I
could yet spare him the bitter pang of bereavement. As yet my flight, I
was sure, was undiscovered. I could go back and be his comforter--his
pride; his redeemer from misery, perhaps from ruin. Oh, that fear of his
self-abandonment--far worse than my abandonment--how it goaded me! It
was a barbed arrow-head in my breast; it tore me when I tried to extract
it; it sickened me when remembrance thrust it farther in. Birds began
singing in brake and copse: birds were faithful to their mates; birds
were emblems of love. What was I? In the midst of my pain of heart and
frantic effort of principle, I abhorred myself. I had no solace from
self-approbation: none even from self-respect. I had
injured--wounded--left my master. I was hateful in my own eyes. Still I
could not turn, nor retrace one step. God must have led me on. As to my
own will or conscience, impassioned grief had trampled one and stifled
the other. I was weeping wildly as I walked along my solitary way: fast,
fast I went like one delirious. A weakness, beginning inwardly,
extending to the limbs, seized me, and I fell: I lay on the ground some
minutes, pressing my face to the wet turf. I had some fear--or hope--that
here I should die: but I was soon up; crawling forwards on my hands and
knees, and then again raised to my feet--as eager and as determined as
ever to reach the road.

When I got there, I was forced to sit to rest me under the hedge; and
while I sat, I heard wheels, and saw a coach come on. I stood up and
lifted my hand; it stopped. I asked where it was going: the driver named
a place a long way off, and where I was sure Mr. Rochester had no
connections. I asked for what sum he would take me there; he said thirty
shillings; I answered I had but twenty; well, he would try to make it do.
He further gave me leave to get into the inside, as the vehicle was
empty: I entered, was shut in, and it rolled on its way.

Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never
shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May
you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonised as in
that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the
instrument of evil to what you wholly love.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Two days are passed. It is a summer evening; the coachman has set me
down at a place called Whitcross; he could take me no farther for the sum