CHAPTER XX 264
" Sir ?"
" I shall have to leave you in this room with this gentleman , for an hour , or perhaps two hours : you will sponge the blood as I do when it returns : if he feels faint , you will put the glass of water on that stand to his lips , and your salts to his nose . You will not speak to him on any pretext -- and -- Richard , it will be at the peril of your life if you speak to her : open your lips -- agitate yourself- -and I ' ll not answer for the consequences ."
Again the poor man groaned ; he looked as if he dared not move ; fear , either of death or of something else , appeared almost to paralyse him . Mr . Rochester put the now bloody sponge into my hand , and I proceeded to use it as he had done . He watched me a second , then saying , " Remember ! -- No conversation ," he left the room . I experienced a strange feeling as the key grated in the lock , and the sound of his retreating step ceased to be heard .
Here then I was in the third storey , fastened into one of its mystic cells ; night around me ; a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes and hands ; a murderess hardly separated from me by a single door : yes -- that was appalling -- the rest I could bear ; but I shuddered at the thought of Grace Poole bursting out upon me .
I must keep to my post , however . I must watch this ghastly countenance -- these blue , still lips forbidden to unclose -- these eyes now shut , now opening , now wandering through the room , now fixing on me , and ever glazed with the dulness of horror . I must dip my hand again and again in the basin of blood and water , and wipe away the trickling gore . I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle wane on my employment ; the shadows darken on the wrought , antique tapestry round me , and grow black under the hangings of the vast old bed , and quiver strangely over the doors of a great cabinet opposite -- whose front , divided into twelve panels , bore , in grim design , the heads of the twelve apostles , each enclosed in its separate panel as in a frame ; while above them at the top rose an ebon crucifix and a dying Christ .