“You wish to marry her, don’t you?” she asked.
The question seemed to madden him. Suddenly he threw aside the almost unnatural restraint with which he had spoken and acted since his entrance into the room. He rose to his feet. He stood before her couch with clenched hands, with features working spasmodically as the words poured from his lips.
“Listen,” he said. “I have no money. I have lived partly upon the woman who adopted me, and partly by nefarious means. Science is great, it is fascinating, it is the joy of my life, but one must live. I have tasted luxury. I cannot live as a workingman. The woman who adopted me is all the time at my elbow, telling me that I must marry Lois because of her money. The child is willing. I have been willing.”
“To marry her for her money—for her money only!” Pauline exclaimed, with scorn trembling in her tone.
“Absolutely for her money only!” Saton answered. “Now you know how poor a thing I am. Yet I tell you that all men have a bad spot in them. I tell you that I am dependent upon that woman for every penny I spend, and for the clothes I wear. When I tell her that I will not marry Lois Champneyes, she will very likely throw me into the street. What is there left for me to do? I have tried everything, and failed. I have no strength, I have a cursed taste for the easy ways of life. Yet this has come to me. I will not marry Lois Champneyes. I will break with this woman, notwithstanding all I owe to her, and I will go away and work once more, wherever I can earn enough to keep me. And I will tell you why. I haven’t a good quality that I know of. I am as selfish as a man can be. I am a murderer at heart, an actor most of the time, but in one thing I am honest. I love you, Pauline Marrabel! I can’t help it. It is the curse of my life, if you will, but it is the joy of it. Rochester knows it, and he hates me. I know that Rochester loves you, and I hate him. Listen. There is a man who believes in me—a great man. I’ll go to him. I’ll work, I’ll study, I’ll write. I’ll live the thoughts I want to live. I’ll shape my life along the firm straight lines. I’ll make a better thing of myself, if you’ll wait. Mind, I don’t ask you to touch me now. If you offered me your hands, I wouldn’t take them. I’m not fit. But there is just this one thing in me. I know myself and I know you. Give me the chance to climb!”
Time seemed to stand still while she looked at him. Yes, he had been honest! She saw him stripped of all the glamour of his unusual learning. She saw him as he was—small, false, a poor creature, who having failed on the mountains, had been content to crawl through the marshes. He seemed in those few moments to be stripped bare to her. He was not even a gentleman. He wore his manners as he wore his clothes. He belonged to her world no more than the servant who had announced him. She clenched her fingers. It was ignoble that her heart should be beating, that the breath should come sobbing through her parted lips. He was a creature to be despised!
She raised her head and told him so, fighting all the while with something greater and stronger which seemed to be tearing at her heart strings.
“If that is what you came here to say,” she said, “please go.”
He rose at once. She saw the anxious light with which his eyes had been filled, fade away. He turned almost humbly toward the door.
“You are quite right,” he said. “I should not have come. I do not often have impulses. It is a mistake to listen to them. Yet I came because it was the one honest desire which I have had since I looked down into the water and turned away.”