第250页
《简·爱(英文版)》章节:第250页,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
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 I had given, and I was not possessed of another shilling in
the world. The coach is a mile off by this time; I am alone. At this
moment I discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of the pocket of
the coach, where I had placed it for safety; there it remains, there
it must remain; and now, I am absolutely destitute.
Whitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet; it is but a stone pillar
set up where four roads meet: whitewashed, I suppose, to be more
obvious at a distance and in darkness. Four arms spring from its
summit: the nearest town to which these point is, according to the
inscription, distant ten miles; the farthest, above twenty. From the
well-known names of these towns I learn in what county I have lighted;
a north-midland shire, dusk with moorland, ridged with mountain:
this I see. There are great moors behind and on each hand of me; there
are waves of mountains far beyond that deep valley at my feet. The
population here must be thin, and I see no passengers on these
roads: they stretch out east, west, north, and south-white, broad,
lonely; they are all cut in the moor, and the heather grows deep and
wild to their very verge. Yet a chance traveller might pass by; and
I wish no eye to see me now: strangers would wonder what I am doing,
lingering here at the sign-post, evidently objectless and lost. I
might be questioned: I could give no answer but what would sound
incredible and excite suspicion. Not a tie holds me to human society
at this moment- not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures
are- none that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me.
I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her
breast and ask repose.
I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw
deeply furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark
growth; I turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened
granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it. High banks of
moor were about me; the crag protected my head: the sky was over that.
Some time passed before I felt tranquil even here: I had a vague
dread that wild cattle might be near, or that some sportsman or
poacher might discover me. If a gust of wind swept the waste, I looked
up, fearing it was the rush of a bull; if a plover whistled, I
imagined it a man. Finding my apprehensions unfounded, however, and
calmed by the deep silence that reigned as evening declined at
nightfall, I took confidence. As yet I had not thought; I had only
listened, watched, dreaded; now I regained the faculty of reflection.
What was I to do? Where to go? Oh, intolerable questions, when I
could do nothing and go nowhere!- when a long way must yet be measured
by my weary, trembling limbs before I could reach human habitation-