I had fotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also to let down my window-blind. The sequence was, that when the moon, which was full and bright (for the night was fine), came in her course to that spa the sky opposite my casement, and looked in at me through the unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me. Awaking in the dead of night, I opened my eyes on her disk—silver- white and crystal clear. It was beautiful, but too solemn; I half rose, and stretched my arm to draw the curtain.
Good God! What a cry!
The night—its siles rest, was rent in twain by a savage, a sharp, a shrilly sound that ran from end to end of Thornfield Hall.
My pulse stopped: my heart stood still; my stretched arm aralysed. The cry died, and was not renewed. Indeed, whatever being uttered that fearful shriek could not soo it: not the widest-winged dor on the Andes could, twi succession, send out such a yell from the cloud shrouding his eyrie. The thing delivering such utterance must rest ere it could repeat the effort.
It came out of the third storey; for it passed overhead. And overhead—yes, in the room just above my chamber-ceiling—I now heard a struggle: a deadly o seemed from the noise; and a half-smothered voice shouted—
“Help! help! help!” three times rapidly.
“Will no one e?” it cried; and then, while the staggering and stampi on wildly, I distinguished through plank and plaster:—
“Rochester! Rochester! fod’s sake, e!”
A chamber-door opened: some one ran, or rushed, along the gallery. Aep stamped on the fl above and something fell; and there was silence.
I had put on some clothes, though horror shook all my limbs; I issued from my apartment. The sleepers were all aroused: ejaculations, terrified murmurs sounded in every room; door after door unclosed; one looked out and another looked out; the gallery filled. Gentlemen and ladies alike had quitted their beds; and “Oh! what is it?”—“Who is hurt?”—“What has happened?”—“Fetch a light!”—“Is it fire?”—“Are there robbers?”—“Where shall we run?” was demanded fusedly on all hands. But for the moonlight they would have been in plete darkness. They ran to and fro; they crowded together: some sobbed, some stumbled: the fusion was iricable.
“Where the devil is Rochester?” cried el Dent. “I ot find him in his bed.”
“Here! here!” was shouted iurn. “Be posed, all of you: I’m ing.”
And the door at the end of the gallery opened, and Mr. Rochester advanced with a dle: he had just desded from the upper storey. One of the ladies ran to him directly; she seized his arm: it was Miss Ingram.
“What awful event has taken place?” said she. “Speak! let us know the worst at once!”
“But don’t pull me down or strangle me,” he replied: for the Misses Eshton were ging about him now; and the two dowagers, in vast white ers, were bearing down on him like ships in full sail.
“All’s right!—all’s right!” he cried. “It’s a mere rehearsal of Much Ado about Nothing. Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous.”
And dangerous he looked: his black eyes darted sparks. Calming himself by an effort, he added—
“A servant has had the nightmare; that is all. She’s aable, nervous person: she strued her dream into an apparition, or something of that sort, no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright. Now, then, I must see you all bato your rooms; for, till the house is settled, she ot be looked after. Gentlemen, have the goodo set the ladies the
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