英文版讀書筆記

　　if even this stranger had smiled and been good-humored to me when i addressed him; if he had put off my offer of assistance gaily and with thanks i should have gone on my way and not felt any vocation to renew inquiries: but the frown the roughness of the traveler set me at my ease: i retained my station when he waved to me to go and announced—

　　‘i cannot think of leaving you sir at so late and hour in this solitary lane till i see you are fit to mount your horse.’

　　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 downhill 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 a 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.

　　i lingered at the gates; i lingered on the lawn; i paced backwards and forwards on the pavement: the shutters of the glass door were closed; i could not see into the interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house—from the gray hollow filled with rayless cells as it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me—a blue sea absolved front taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march her orb seeming to look up as she left the hilltops from behind which she had come far and farther below her and aspired to the zenith midnight dark in its fathomless depth and measureless distance; and for those trembling stars that followed her course they made my heart tremble my veins glow when i viewed them. little things recall us to earth; the clock struck in the hall; that sufficed. i turned from moon and stars opened a side-door and went in.

　　p111

　　two wax candles stood lighted on the table and two on the mantelpiece; basking in the light and heat of a superb fire lay pilot—adele knelt near him. half reclined on a couch appeared mr. rochester his foot supported by a cushion; he was looking at adele and the dog. the fire shone full on his face. i knew my traveler with his broad and jetty eyebrow his square forehead made squarer by the horizontal sweep of his black hair. i recognize3d his decisive nose more remarkable for character than beauty; his full mostrils denoting i thought choler; his grim mouth chin and jaw—yes all three were very grim and no mistake. his shape now pested of cloak i perceived harmonized in squareness with his physiognomy. i suppose it was as good figure in the athletic sense of the term—broad-chested and thin-flanked though neither tall nor graceful.