CHAPTER XXVI 374
time . I then sat down : I felt weak and tired . I leaned my arms on a table , and my head dropped on them . And now I thought : till now I had only heard , seen , moved -- followed up and down where I was led or dragged -- watched event rush on event , disclosure open beyond disclosure : but NOW , I THOUGHT .
The morning had been a quiet morning enough -- all except the brief scene with the lunatic : the transaction in the church had not been noisy ; there was no explosion of passion , no loud altercation , no dispute , no defiance or challenge , no tears , no sobs : a few words had been spoken , a calmly pronounced objection to the marriage made ; some stern , short questions put by Mr . Rochester ; answers , explanations given , evidence adduced ; an open admission of the truth had been uttered by my master ; then the living proof had been seen ; the intruders were gone , and all was over .
I was in my own room as usual -- just myself , without obvious change : nothing had smitten me , or scathed me , or maimed me . And yet where was the Jane Eyre of yesterday ? -- where was her life ? -- where were her prospects ?
Jane Eyre , who had been an ardent , expectant woman -- almost a bride , was a cold , solitary girl again : her life was pale ; her prospects were desolate . A Christmas frost had come at midsummer ; a white December storm had whirled over June ; ice glazed the ripe apples , drifts crushed the blowing roses ; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud : lanes which last night blushed full of flowers , to-day were pathless with untrodden snow ; and the woods , which twelve hours since waved leafy and flagrant as groves between the tropics , now spread , waste , wild , and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway . My hopes were all dead -- struck with a subtle doom , such as , in one night , fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt . I looked on my cherished wishes , yesterday so blooming and glowing ; they lay stark , chill , livid corpses that could never revive . I looked at my love : that feeling which was my master ' s -- which he had created ; it shivered in my heart , like a suffering child in a cold cradle ; sickness and anguish had seized it ; it could not seek Mr . Rochester ' s arms -- it could not derive warmth from his breast . Oh , never more could it turn to him ; for faith was blighted --