"JANE EYRE"
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Illustrations by F. H. Townsend
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CHAPTER I
There was no possibility of taking a
walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless
shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed,
when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had
brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating,
that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.
I was glad of it: I never liked long
walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the
coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes,
and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and
humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to
Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana
were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay
reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about
her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked
perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensed from joining the group;
saying, “She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me
at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could
discover by her own observation, that I was endeavouring in good
earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a
more attractive and sprightly manner—something lighter, franker,
more natural, as it were—she really must exclude me from
privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children.”
“What does Bessie say I have done?” I
asked.
“Jane, I don’t like cavillers or
questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a
child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere;
and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.”
A breakfast-room adjoined the
drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I
soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be
one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat:
gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and,
having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined
in double retirement.
Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my
view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of
glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November
day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I
studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a
pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and
storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly
before a long and lamentable blast.
I returned to my book—Bewick’s History
of British Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for,
generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory
pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank.
They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of “the
solitary rocks and promontories” by them only inhabited; of the
coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity,
the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape—
“Where the Northern Ocean, in vast
whirls,
Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.”
Nor could I pass unnoticed the
suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen,
Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with “the vast sweep of the
Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space,—that
reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the
accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights
above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied
rigours of extreme cold.” Of these death-white realms I formed
an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended
notions that float dim through children’s brains, but strangely
impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected
themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance
to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to
the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and
ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just
sinking.
I cannot tell what sentiment haunted
the quite solitary churchyard, with its inscribed headstone; its
gate, its two trees, its low horizon, girdled by a broken wall,
and its newly-risen crescent, attesting the hour of eventide.
The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea,
I believed to be marine phantoms.
The fiend pinning down the thief’s pack
behind him, I passed over quickly: it was an object of terror.
So was the black horned thing seated
aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a
gallows.
Each picture told a story; mysterious
often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings,
yet ever profoundly interesting: as interesting as the tales
Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings, when she chanced
to be in good humour; and when, having brought her ironing-table
to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit about it, and while
she got up Mrs. Reed’s lace frills, and crimped her nightcap
borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and
adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads; or (as
at a later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and
Henry, Earl of Moreland.
With Bewick on my knee, I was then
happy: happy at least in my way. I feared nothing but
interruption, and that came too soon. The breakfast-room door
opened.
“Boh! Madam Mope!” cried the voice of
John Reed; then he paused: he found the room apparently empty.
“Where the dickens is she!” he
continued. “Lizzy! Georgy! (calling to his sisters) Joan is
not here: tell mama she is run out into the rain—bad animal!”
“It is well I drew the curtain,”
thought I; and I wished fervently he might not discover my
hiding-place: nor would John Reed have found it out himself; he
was not quick either of vision or conception; but Eliza just put
her head in at the door, and said at once—
“She is in the window-seat, to be sure,
Jack.”
And I came out immediately, for I
trembled at the idea of being dragged forth by the said Jack.
“What do you want?” I asked, with
awkward diffidence.
“Say, ‘What do you want, Master Reed?’”
was the answer. “I want you to come here;” and seating himself
in an arm-chair, he intimated by a gesture that I was to
approach and stand before him.
John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen
years old; four years older than I, for I was but ten: large and
stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick
lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large
extremities. He gorged himself habitually at table, which made
him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby
cheeks. He ought now to have been at school; but his mama had
taken him home for a month or two, “on account of his delicate
health.” Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed that he would do very
well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from home;
but the mother’s heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and
inclined rather to the more refined idea that John’s sallowness
was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining after
home.
John had not much affection for his
mother and sisters, and an antipathy to me. He bullied and
punished me; not two or three times in the week, nor once or
twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared him,
and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near.
There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he
inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against either his
menaces or his inflictions; the servants did not like to offend
their young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs. Reed
was blind and deaf on the subject: she never saw him strike or
heard him abuse me, though he did both now and then in her very
presence, more frequently, however, behind her back.
Habitually obedient to John, I came up
to his chair: he spent some three minutes in thrusting out his
tongue at me as far as he could without damaging the roots: I
knew he would soon strike, and while dreading the blow, I mused
on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would presently
deal it. I wonder if he read that notion in my face; for, all
at once, without speaking, he struck suddenly and strongly. I
tottered, and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a step or
two from his chair.
“That is for your impudence in
answering mama awhile since,” said he, “and for your sneaking
way of getting behind curtains, and for the look you had in your
eyes two minutes since, you rat!”
Accustomed to John Reed’s abuse, I
never had an idea of replying to it; my care was how to endure
the blow which would certainly follow the insult.
“What were you doing behind the
curtain?” he asked.
“I was reading.”
“Show the book.”
I returned to the window and fetched it
thence.
“You have no business to take our
books; you are a dependent, mama says; you have no money; your
father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here
with gentlemen’s children like us, and eat the same meals we do,
and wear clothes at our mama’s expense. Now, I’ll teach you to
rummage my bookshelves: for they are mine; all the house
belongs to me, or will do in a few years. Go and stand by the
door, out of the way of the mirror and the windows.”
I did so, not at first aware what was
his intention; but when I saw him lift and poise the book and
stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively started aside with a
cry of alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume was flung, it
hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and
cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was sharp: my terror had
passed its climax; other feelings succeeded.
“Wicked and cruel boy!” I said. “You
are like a murderer—you are like a slave-driver—you are like the
Roman emperors!”
I had read Goldsmith’s History of Rome,
and had formed my opinion of Nero, Caligula, &c. Also I had
drawn parallels in silence, which I never thought thus to have
declared aloud.
“What! what!” he cried. “Did she say
that to me? Did you hear her, Eliza and Georgiana? Won’t I
tell mama? but first—”
He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp
my hair and my shoulder: he had closed with a desperate thing.
I really saw in him a tyrant, a murderer. I felt a drop or two
of blood from my head trickle down my neck, and was sensible of
somewhat pungent suffering: these sensations for the time
predominated over fear, and I received him in frantic sort. I
don’t very well know what I did with my hands, but he called me
“Rat! Rat!” and bellowed out aloud. Aid was near him: Eliza
and Georgiana had run for Mrs. Reed, who was gone upstairs: she
now came upon the scene, followed by Bessie and her maid Abbot.
We were parted: I heard the words—
“Dear! dear! What a fury to fly at
Master John!”
“Did ever anybody see such a picture of
passion!”
Then Mrs. Reed subjoined—
“Take her away to the red-room, and
lock her in there.” Four hands were immediately laid upon me,
and I was borne upstairs.
CHAPTER II
I resisted all the way: a new thing for
me, and a circumstance which greatly strengthened the bad
opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were disposed to entertain of me.
The fact is, I was a trifle beside myself; or rather out
of myself, as the French would say: I was conscious that a
moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange
penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in
my desperation, to go all lengths.
“Hold her arms, Miss Abbot: she’s like
a mad cat.”
“For shame! for shame!” cried the
lady’s-maid. “What shocking conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a
young gentleman, your benefactress’s son! Your young master.”
“Master! How is he my master? Am I a
servant?”
“No; you are less than a servant, for
you do nothing for your keep. There, sit down, and think over
your wickedness.”
They had got me by this time into the
apartment indicated by Mrs. Reed, and had thrust me upon a
stool: my impulse was to rise from it like a spring; their two
pair of hands arrested me instantly.
“If you don’t sit still, you must be
tied down,” said Bessie. “Miss Abbot, lend me your garters; she
would break mine directly.”
Miss Abbot turned to divest a stout leg
of the necessary ligature. This preparation for bonds, and the
additional ignominy it inferred, took a little of the excitement
out of me.
“Don’t take them off,” I cried; “I will
not stir.”
In guarantee whereof, I attached myself
to my seat by my hands.
“Mind you don’t,” said Bessie; and when
she had ascertained that I was really subsiding, she loosened
her hold of me; then she and Miss Abbot stood with folded arms,
looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as incredulous of my
sanity.
“She never did so before,” at last said
Bessie, turning to the Abigail.
“But it was always in her,” was the
reply. “I’ve told Missis often my opinion about the child, and
Missis agreed with me. She’s an underhand little thing: I never
saw a girl of her age with so much cover.”
Bessie answered not; but ere long,
addressing me, she said—“You ought to be aware, Miss, that you
are under obligations to Mrs. Reed: she keeps you: if she were
to turn you off, you would have to go to the poorhouse.”
I had nothing to say to these words:
they were not new to me: my very first recollections of
existence included hints of the same kind. This reproach of my
dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very painful
and crushing, but only half intelligible. Miss Abbot joined in—
“And you ought not to think yourself on
an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed, because Missis
kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They will have a
great deal of money, and you will have none: it is your place to
be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to them.”
“What we tell you is for your good,”
added Bessie, in no harsh voice, “you should try to be useful
and pleasant, then, perhaps, you would have a home here; but if
you become passionate and rude, Missis will send you away, I am
sure.”
“Besides,” said Miss Abbot, “God will
punish her: He might strike her dead in the midst of her
tantrums, and then where would she go? Come, Bessie, we will
leave her: I wouldn’t have her heart for anything. Say your
prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself; for if you don’t
repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the
chimney and fetch you away.”
They went, shutting the door, and
locking it behind them.
The red-room was a square chamber, very
seldom slept in, I might say never, indeed, unless when a chance
influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary to
turn to account all the accommodation it contained: yet it was
one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. A
bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains
of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre;
the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were
half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the
carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered
with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour with a
blush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs
were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out of these deep
surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up
mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy
Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample
cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with
a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale
throne.
This room was chill, because it seldom
had a fire; it was silent, because remote from the nursery and
kitchen; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom entered.
The house-maid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe from the
mirrors and the furniture a week’s quiet dust: and Mrs. Reed
herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of
a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored
divers parchments, her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her
deceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the
red-room—the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its
grandeur.
Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it
was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in state;
hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker’s men; and, since
that day, a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from
frequent intrusion.
My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter
Miss Abbot had left me riveted, was a low ottoman near the
marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before me; to my right hand
there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken
reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the
muffled windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the
vacant majesty of the bed and room. I was not quite sure
whether they had locked the door; and when I dared move, I got
up and went to see. Alas! yes: no jail was ever more secure.
Returning, I had to cross before the looking-glass; my
fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed.
All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in
reality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with
a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of
fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real
spirit: I thought it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy,
half imp, Bessie’s evening stories represented as coming out of
lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing before the eyes of
belated travellers. I returned to my stool.
Superstition was with me at that
moment; but it was not yet her hour for complete victory: my
blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave was still
bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a rapid rush of
retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present.
All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all
his sisters’ proud indifference, all his mother’s aversion, all
the servants’ partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a
dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always suffering,
always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why
could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any
one’s favour? Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was
respected. Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid
spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally
indulged. Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed
to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase
indemnity for every fault. John no one thwarted, much less
punished; though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the
little pea-chicks, set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the
hothouse vines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the
choicest plants in the conservatory: he called his mother “old
girl,” too; sometimes reviled her for her dark skin, similar to
his own; bluntly disregarded her wishes; not unfrequently tore
and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still “her own
darling.” I dared commit no fault: I strove to fulfil every
duty; and I was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and
sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to night.
My head still ached and bled with the
blow and fall I had received: no one had reproved John for
wantonly striking me; and because I had turned against him to
avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded with general
opprobrium.
“Unjust!—unjust!” said my reason,
forced by the agonising stimulus into precocious though
transitory power: and Resolve, equally wrought up, instigated
some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable
oppression—as running away, or, if that could not be effected,
never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.
What a consternation of soul was mine
that dreary afternoon! How all my brain was in tumult, and all
my heart in insurrection! Yet in what darkness, what dense
ignorance, was the mental battle fought! I could not answer the
ceaseless inward question—why I thus suffered; now, at
the distance of—I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.
I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I
was like nobody there; I had nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed
or her children, or her chosen vassalage. If they did not love
me, in fact, as little did I love them. They were not bound to
regard with affection a thing that could not sympathise with one
amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in
temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a useless thing,
incapable of serving their interest, or adding to their
pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation
at their treatment, of contempt of their judgment. I know that
had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome,
romping child—though equally dependent and friendless—Mrs. Reed
would have endured my presence more complacently; her children
would have entertained for me more of the cordiality of
fellow-feeling; the servants would have been less prone to make
me the scapegoat of the nursery.
Daylight began to forsake the red-room;
it was past four o’clock, and the beclouded afternoon was
tending to drear twilight. I heard the rain still beating
continuously on the staircase window, and the wind howling in
the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees cold as a stone,
and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of humiliation,
self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my
decaying ire. All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so;
what thought had I been but just conceiving of starving myself
to death? That certainly was a crime: and was I fit to die? Or
was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting
bourne? In such vault I had been told did Mr. Reed lie buried;
and led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with
gathering dread. I could not remember him; but I knew that he
was my own uncle—my mother’s brother—that he had taken me when a
parentless infant to his house; and that in his last moments he
had required a promise of Mrs. Reed that she would rear and
maintain me as one of her own children. Mrs. Reed probably
considered she had kept this promise; and so she had, I dare
say, as well as her nature would permit her; but how could she
really like an interloper not of her race, and unconnected with
her, after her husband’s death, by any tie? It must have been
most irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to
stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child she could not
love, and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on
her own family group.
A singular notion dawned upon me. I
doubted not—never doubted—that if Mr. Reed had been alive he
would have treated me kindly; and now, as I sat looking at the
white bed and overshadowed walls—occasionally also turning a
fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaning mirror—I began to
recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by
the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to
punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr.
Reed’s spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his sister’s child,
might quit its abode—whether in the church vault or in the
unknown world of the departed—and rise before me in this
chamber. I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest any
sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to
comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending
over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I
felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I
endeavoured to stifle it—I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my
hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly
round the dark room; at this moment a light gleamed on the
wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating
some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight was still, and this
stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered
over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this streak of
light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by
some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for
horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the
swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from
another world. My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound
filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; something
seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke
down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate
effort. Steps came running along the outer passage; the key
turned, Bessie and Abbot entered.
“Miss Eyre, are you ill?” said Bessie.
“What a dreadful noise! it went quite
through me!” exclaimed Abbot.
“Take me out! Let me go into the
nursery!” was my cry.
“What for? Are you hurt? Have you
seen something?” again demanded Bessie.
“Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a
ghost would come.” I had now got hold of Bessie’s hand, and she
did not snatch it from me.
“She has screamed out on purpose,”
declared Abbot, in some disgust. “And what a scream! If she
had been in great pain one would have excused it, but she only
wanted to bring us all here: I know her naughty tricks.”
“What is all this?” demanded another
voice peremptorily; and Mrs. Reed came along the corridor, her
cap flying wide, her gown rustling stormily. “Abbot and Bessie,
I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre should be left in the
red-room till I came to her myself.”
“Miss Jane screamed so loud, ma’am,”
pleaded Bessie.
“Let her go,” was the only answer.
“Loose Bessie’s hand, child: you cannot succeed in getting out
by these means, be assured. I abhor artifice, particularly in
children; it is my duty to show you that tricks will not answer:
you will now stay here an hour longer, and it is only on
condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall
liberate you then.”
“O aunt! have pity! Forgive me! I
cannot endure it—let me be punished some other way! I shall be
killed if—”
“Silence! This violence is all most
repulsive:” and so, no doubt, she felt it. I was a precocious
actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked on me as a compound of
virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous duplicity.
Bessie and Abbot having retreated, Mrs.
Reed, impatient of my now frantic anguish and wild sobs,
abruptly thrust me back and locked me in, without farther
parley. I heard her sweeping away; and soon after she was gone,
I suppose I had a species of fit: unconsciousness closed the
scene.
CHAPTER III
The next thing I remember is, waking up
with a feeling as if I had had a frightful nightmare, and seeing
before me a terrible red glare, crossed with thick black bars.
I heard voices, too, speaking with a hollow sound, and as if
muffled by a rush of wind or water: agitation, uncertainty, and
an all-predominating sense of terror confused my faculties. Ere
long, I became aware that some one was handling me; lifting me
up and supporting me in a sitting posture, and that more
tenderly than I had ever been raised or upheld before. I rested
my head against a pillow or an arm, and felt easy.
In five minutes more the cloud of
bewilderment dissolved: I knew quite well that I was in my own
bed, and that the red glare was the nursery fire. It was night:
a candle burnt on the table; Bessie stood at the bed-foot with a
basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near my
pillow, leaning over me.
I felt an inexpressible relief, a
soothing conviction of protection and security, when I knew that
there was a stranger in the room, an individual not belonging to
Gateshead, and not related to Mrs. Reed. Turning from Bessie
(though her presence was far less obnoxious to me than that of
Abbot, for instance, would have been), I scrutinised the face of
the gentleman: I knew him; it was Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary,
sometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when the servants were ailing:
for herself and the children she employed a physician.
“Well, who am I?” he asked.
I pronounced his name, offering him at
the same time my hand: he took it, smiling and saying, “We shall
do very well by-and-by.” Then he laid me down, and addressing
Bessie, charged her to be very careful that I was not disturbed
during the night. Having given some further directions, and
intimates that he should call again the next day, he departed;
to my grief: I felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat in
the chair near my pillow; and as he closed the door after him,
all the room darkened and my heart again sank: inexpressible
sadness weighed it down.
“Do you feel as if you should sleep,
Miss?” asked Bessie, rather softly.
Scarcely dared I answer her; for I
feared the next sentence might be rough. “I will try.”
“Would you like to drink, or could you
eat anything?”
“No, thank you, Bessie.”
“Then I think I shall go to bed, for it
is past twelve o’clock; but you may call me if you want anything
in the night.”
Wonderful civility this! It emboldened
me to ask a question.
“Bessie, what is the matter with me?
Am I ill?”
“You fell sick, I suppose, in the
red-room with crying; you’ll be better soon, no doubt.”
Bessie went into the housemaid’s
apartment, which was near. I heard her say—
“Sarah, come and sleep with me in the
nursery; I daren’t for my life be alone with that poor child
to-night: she might die; it’s such a strange thing she should
have that fit: I wonder if she saw anything. Missis was rather
too hard.”
Sarah came back with her; they both
went to bed; they were whispering together for half-an-hour
before they fell asleep. I caught scraps of their conversation,
from which I was able only too distinctly to infer the main
subject discussed.
“Something passed her, all dressed in
white, and vanished”—“A great black dog behind him”—“Three loud
raps on the chamber door”—“A light in the churchyard just over
his grave,” &c. &c.
At last both slept: the fire and the
candle went out. For me, the watches of that long night passed
in ghastly wakefulness; strained by dread: such dread as
children only can feel.
No severe or prolonged bodily illness
followed this incident of the red-room; it only gave my nerves a
shock of which I feel the reverberation to this day. Yes, Mrs.
Reed, to you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering, but I
ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did: while
rending my heart-strings, you thought you were only uprooting my
bad propensities.
Next day, by noon, I was up and
dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl by the nursery hearth. I
felt physically weak and broken down: but my worse ailment was
an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which kept
drawing from me silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one salt
drop from my cheek than another followed. Yet, I thought, I
ought to have been happy, for none of the Reeds were there, they
were all gone out in the carriage with their mama. Abbot, too,
was sewing in another room, and Bessie, as she moved hither and
thither, putting away toys and arranging drawers, addressed to
me every now and then a word of unwonted kindness. This state
of things should have been to me a paradise of peace, accustomed
as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless fagging;
but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such a state that no
calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably.
Bessie had been down into the kitchen,
and she brought up with her a tart on a certain brightly painted
china plate, whose bird of paradise, nestling in a wreath of
convolvuli and rosebuds, had been wont to stir in me a most
enthusiastic sense of admiration; and which plate I had often
petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand in order to examine
it more closely, but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of
such a privilege. This precious vessel was now placed on my
knee, and I was cordially invited to eat the circlet of delicate
pastry upon it. Vain favour! coming, like most other favours
long deferred and often wished for, too late! I could not eat
the tart; and the plumage of the bird, the tints of the flowers,
seemed strangely faded: I put both plate and tart away. Bessie
asked if I would have a book: the word book acted as a
transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver’s Travels
from the library. This book I had again and again perused with
delight. I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered
in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy
tales: for as to the elves, having sought them in vain among
foxglove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the
ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at length made up my
mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of England to
some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker, and
the population more scant; whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag
being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth’s surface, I
doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see
with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the
diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of the one
realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the
monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other. Yet,
when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand—when I
turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures
the charm I had, till now, never failed to find—all was eerie
and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies
malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer
in most dread and dangerous regions. I closed the book, which I
dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table, beside the
untasted tart.
Bessie had now finished dusting and
tidying the room, and having washed her hands, she opened a
certain little drawer, full of splendid shreds of silk and
satin, and began making a new bonnet for Georgiana’s doll.
Meantime she sang: her song was—
“In the days when we went gipsying,
A long time ago.”
I had often heard the song before, and
always with lively delight; for Bessie had a sweet voice,—at
least, I thought so. But now, though her voice was still sweet,
I found in its melody an indescribable sadness. Sometimes,
preoccupied with her work, she sang the refrain very low, very
lingeringly; “A long time ago” came out like the saddest cadence
of a funeral hymn. She passed into another ballad, this time a
really doleful one.
“My feet they are sore, and my
limbs they are weary;
Long is the way, and the mountains are wild;
Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary
Over the path of the poor orphan child.
Why did they send me so far and so
lonely,
Up where the moors spread and grey rocks are piled?
Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only
Watch o’er the steps of a poor orphan child.
Yet distant and soft the night
breeze is blowing,
Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild,
God, in His mercy, protection is showing,
Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child.
Ev’n should I fall o’er the broken
bridge passing,
Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled,
Still will my Father, with promise and blessing,
Take to His bosom the poor orphan child.
There is a thought that for
strength should avail me,
Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled;
Heaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me;
God is a friend to the poor orphan child.”
“Come, Miss Jane, don’t cry,” said
Bessie as she finished. She might as well have said to the
fire, “don’t burn!” but how could she divine the morbid
suffering to which I was a prey? In the course of the morning
Mr. Lloyd came again.
“What, already up!” said he, as he
entered the nursery. “Well, nurse, how is she?”
Bessie answered that I was doing very
well.
“Then she ought to look more cheerful.
Come here, Miss Jane: your name is Jane, is it not?”
“Yes, sir, Jane Eyre.”
“Well, you have been crying, Miss Jane
Eyre; can you tell me what about? Have you any pain?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh! I daresay she is crying because
she could not go out with Missis in the carriage,” interposed
Bessie.
“Surely not! why, she is too old for
such pettishness.”
I thought so too; and my self-esteem
being wounded by the false charge, I answered promptly, “I never
cried for such a thing in my life: I hate going out in the
carriage. I cry because I am miserable.”
“Oh fie, Miss!” said Bessie.
The good apothecary appeared a little
puzzled. I was standing before him; he fixed his eyes on me
very steadily: his eyes were small and grey; not very bright,
but I dare say I should think them shrewd now: he had a
hard-featured yet good-natured looking face. Having considered
me at leisure, he said—
“What made you ill yesterday?”
“She had a fall,” said Bessie, again
putting in her word.
“Fall! why, that is like a baby again!
Can’t she manage to walk at her age? She must be eight or nine
years old.”
“I was knocked down,” was the blunt
explanation, jerked out of me by another pang of mortified
pride; “but that did not make me ill,” I added; while Mr. Lloyd
helped himself to a pinch of snuff.
As he was returning the box to his
waistcoat pocket, a loud bell rang for the servants’ dinner; he
knew what it was. “That’s for you, nurse,” said he; “you can go
down; I’ll give Miss Jane a lecture till you come back.”
Bessie would rather have stayed, but
she was obliged to go, because punctuality at meals was rigidly
enforced at Gateshead Hall.
“The fall did not make you ill; what
did, then?” pursued Mr. Lloyd when Bessie was gone.
“I was shut up in a room where there is
a ghost till after dark.”
I saw Mr. Lloyd smile and frown at the
same time.
“Ghost! What, you are a baby after
all! You are afraid of ghosts?”
“Of Mr. Reed’s ghost I am: he died in
that room, and was laid out there. Neither Bessie nor any one
else will go into it at night, if they can help it; and it was
cruel to shut me up alone without a candle,—so cruel that I
think I shall never forget it.”
“Nonsense! And is it that makes you so
miserable? Are you afraid now in daylight?”
“No: but night will come again before
long: and besides,—I am unhappy,—very unhappy, for other
things.”
“What other things? Can you tell me
some of them?”
How much I wished to reply fully to
this question! How difficult it was to frame any answer!
Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and
if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not
how to express the result of the process in words. Fearful,
however, of losing this first and only opportunity of relieving
my grief by imparting it, I, after a disturbed pause, contrived
to frame a meagre, though, as far as it went, true response.
“For one thing, I have no father or
mother, brothers or sisters.”
“You have a kind aunt and cousins.”
Again I paused; then bunglingly
enounced—
“But John Reed knocked me down, and my
aunt shut me up in the red-room.”
Mr. Lloyd a second time produced his
snuff-box.
“Don’t you think Gateshead Hall a very
beautiful house?” asked he. “Are you not very thankful to have
such a fine place to live at?”
“It is not my house, sir; and Abbot
says I have less right to be here than a servant.”
“Pooh! you can’t be silly enough to
wish to leave such a splendid place?”
“If I had anywhere else to go, I should
be glad to leave it; but I can never get away from Gateshead
till I am a woman.”
“Perhaps you may—who knows? Have you
any relations besides Mrs. Reed?”
“I think not, sir.”
“None belonging to your father?”
“I don’t know. I asked Aunt Reed once,
and she said possibly I might have some poor, low relations
called Eyre, but she knew nothing about them.”
“If you had such, would you like to go
to them?”
I reflected. Poverty looks grim to
grown people; still more so to children: they have not much idea
of industrious, working, respectable poverty; they think of the
word only as connected with ragged clothes, scanty food,
fireless grates, rude manners, and debasing vices: poverty for
me was synonymous with degradation.
“No; I should not like to belong to
poor people,” was my reply.
“Not even if they were kind to you?”
I shook my head: I could not see how
poor people had the means of being kind; and then to learn to
speak like them, to adopt their manners, to be uneducated, to
grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes nursing their
children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of the
village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough to purchase
liberty at the price of caste.
“But are your relatives so very poor?
Are they working people?”
“I cannot tell; Aunt Reed says if I
have any, they must be a beggarly set: I should not like to go a
begging.”
“Would you like to go to school?”
Again I reflected: I scarcely knew what
school was: Bessie sometimes spoke of it as a place where young
ladies sat in the stocks, wore backboards, and were expected to
be exceedingly genteel and precise: John Reed hated his school,
and abused his master; but John Reed’s tastes were no rule for
mine, and if Bessie’s accounts of school-discipline (gathered
from the young ladies of a family where she had lived before
coming to Gateshead) were somewhat appalling, her details of
certain accomplishments attained by these same young ladies
were, I thought, equally attractive. She boasted of beautiful
paintings of landscapes and flowers by them executed; of songs
they could sing and pieces they could play, of purses they could
net, of French books they could translate; till my spirit was
moved to emulation as I listened. Besides, school would be a
complete change: it implied a long journey, an entire separation
from Gateshead, an entrance into a new life.
“I should indeed like to go to school,”
was the audible conclusion of my musings.
“Well, well! who knows what may
happen?” said Mr. Lloyd, as he got up. “The child ought to have
change of air and scene,” he added, speaking to himself; “nerves
not in a good state.”
Bessie now returned; at the same moment
the carriage was heard rolling up the gravel-walk.
“Is that your mistress, nurse?” asked
Mr. Lloyd. “I should like to speak to her before I go.”
Bessie invited him to walk into the
breakfast-room, and led the way out. In the interview which
followed between him and Mrs. Reed, I presume, from
after-occurrences, that the apothecary ventured to recommend my
being sent to school; and the recommendation was no doubt
readily enough adopted; for as Abbot said, in discussing the
subject with Bessie when both sat sewing in the nursery one
night, after I was in bed, and, as they thought, asleep, “Missis
was, she dared say, glad enough to get rid of such a tiresome,
ill-conditioned child, who always looked as if she were watching
everybody, and scheming plots underhand.” Abbot, I think, gave
me credit for being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes.
On that same occasion I learned, for
the first time, from Miss Abbot’s communications to Bessie, that
my father had been a poor clergyman; that my mother had married
him against the wishes of her friends, who considered the match
beneath her; that my grandfather Reed was so irritated at her
disobedience, he cut her off without a shilling; that after my
mother and father had been married a year, the latter caught the
typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large
manufacturing town where his curacy was situated, and where that
disease was then prevalent: that my mother took the infection
from him, and both died within a month of each other.
Bessie, when she heard this narrative,
sighed and said, “Poor Miss Jane is to be pitied, too, Abbot.”
“Yes,” responded Abbot; “if she were a
nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but
one really cannot care for such a little toad as that.”
“Not a great deal, to be sure,” agreed
Bessie: “at any rate, a beauty like Miss Georgiana would be more
moving in the same condition.”
“Yes, I doat on Miss Georgiana!” cried
the fervent Abbot. “Little darling!—with her long curls and her
blue eyes, and such a sweet colour as she has; just as if she
were painted!—Bessie, I could fancy a Welsh rabbit for supper.”
“So could I—with a roast onion. Come,
we’ll go down.” They went.
CHAPTER IV
From my discourse with Mr. Lloyd, and
from the above reported conference between Bessie and Abbot, I
gathered enough of hope to suffice as a motive for wishing to
get well: a change seemed near,—I desired and waited it in
silence. It tarried, however: days and weeks passed: I had
regained my normal state of health, but no new allusion was made
to the subject over which I brooded. Mrs. Reed surveyed me at
times with a severe eye, but seldom addressed me: since my
illness, she had drawn a more marked line of separation than
ever between me and her own children; appointing me a small
closet to sleep in by myself, condemning me to take my meals
alone, and pass all my time in the nursery, while my cousins
were constantly in the drawing-room. Not a hint, however, did
she drop about sending me to school: still I felt an instinctive
certainty that she would not long endure me under the same roof
with her; for her glance, now more than ever, when turned on me,
expressed an insuperable and rooted aversion.
Eliza and Georgiana, evidently acting
according to orders, spoke to me as little as possible: John
thrust his tongue in his cheek whenever he saw me, and once
attempted chastisement; but as I instantly turned against him,
roused by the same sentiment of deep ire and desperate revolt
which had stirred my corruption before, he thought it better to
desist, and ran from me tittering execrations, and vowing I had
burst his nose. I had indeed levelled at that prominent feature
as hard a blow as my knuckles could inflict; and when I saw that
either that or my look daunted him, I had the greatest
inclination to follow up my advantage to purpose; but he was
already with his mama. I heard him in a blubbering tone
commence the tale of how “that nasty Jane Eyre” had flown at him
like a mad cat: he was stopped rather harshly—
“Don’t talk to me about her, John: I
told you not to go near her; she is not worthy of notice; I do
not choose that either you or your sisters should associate with
her.”
Here, leaning over the banister, I
cried out suddenly, and without at all deliberating on my words—
“They are not fit to associate with
me.”
Mrs. Reed was rather a stout woman;
but, on hearing this strange and audacious declaration, she ran
nimbly up the stair, swept me like a whirlwind into the nursery,
and crushing me down on the edge of my crib, dared me in an
emphatic voice to rise from that place, or utter one syllable
during the remainder of the day.
“What would Uncle Reed say to you, if
he were alive?” was my scarcely voluntary demand. I say
scarcely voluntary, for it seemed as if my tongue pronounced
words without my will consenting to their utterance: something
spoke out of me over which I had no control.
“What?” said Mrs. Reed under her
breath: her usually cold composed grey eye became troubled with
a look like fear; she took her hand from my arm, and gazed at me
as if she really did not know whether I were child or fiend. I
was now in for it.
“My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and can
see all you do and think; and so can papa and mama: they know
how you shut me up all day long, and how you wish me dead.”
Mrs. Reed soon rallied her spirits: she
shook me most soundly, she boxed both my ears, and then left me
without a word. Bessie supplied the hiatus by a homily of an
hour’s length, in which she proved beyond a doubt that I was the
most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a roof. I
half believed her; for I felt indeed only bad feelings surging
in my breast.
November, December, and half of January
passed away. Christmas and the New Year had been celebrated at
Gateshead with the usual festive cheer; presents had been
interchanged, dinners and evening parties given. From every
enjoyment I was, of course, excluded: my share of the gaiety
consisted in witnessing the daily apparelling of Eliza and
Georgiana, and seeing them descend to the drawing-room, dressed
out in thin muslin frocks and scarlet sashes, with hair
elaborately ringletted; and afterwards, in listening to the
sound of the piano or the harp played below, to the passing to
and fro of the butler and footman, to the jingling of glass and
china as refreshments were handed, to the broken hum of
conversation as the drawing-room door opened and closed. When
tired of this occupation, I would retire from the stairhead to
the solitary and silent nursery: there, though somewhat sad, I
was not miserable. To speak truth, I had not the least wish to
go into company, for in company I was very rarely noticed; and
if Bessie had but been kind and companionable, I should have
deemed it a treat to spend the evenings quietly with her,
instead of passing them under the formidable eye of Mrs. Reed,
in a room full of ladies and gentlemen. But Bessie, as soon as
she had dressed her young ladies, used to take herself off to
the lively regions of the kitchen and housekeeper’s room,
generally bearing the candle along with her. I then sat with my
doll on my knee till the fire got low, glancing round
occasionally to make sure that nothing worse than myself haunted
the shadowy room; and when the embers sank to a dull red, I
undressed hastily, tugging at knots and strings as I best might,
and sought shelter from cold and darkness in my crib. To this
crib I always took my doll; human beings must love something,
and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived
to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven
image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to
remember with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy,
half fancying it alive and capable of sensation. I could not
sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown; and when it lay
there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it to
be happy likewise.
Long did the hours seem while I waited
the departure of the company, and listened for the sound of
Bessie’s step on the stairs: sometimes she would come up in the
interval to seek her thimble or her scissors, or perhaps to
bring me something by way of supper—a bun or a cheese-cake—then
she would sit on the bed while I ate it, and when I had
finished, she would tuck the clothes round me, and twice she
kissed me, and said, “Good night, Miss Jane.” When thus gentle,
Bessie seemed to me the best, prettiest, kindest being in the
world; and I wished most intensely that she would always be so
pleasant and amiable, and never push me about, or scold, or task
me unreasonably, as she was too often wont to do. Bessie Lee
must, I think, have been a girl of good natural capacity, for
she was smart in all she did, and had a remarkable knack of
narrative; so, at least, I judge from the impression made on me
by her nursery tales. She was pretty too, if my recollections
of her face and person are correct. I remember her as a slim
young woman, with black hair, dark eyes, very nice features, and
good, clear complexion; but she had a capricious and hasty
temper, and indifferent ideas of principle or justice: still,
such as she was, I preferred her to any one else at Gateshead
Hall.
It was the fifteenth of January, about
nine o’clock in the morning: Bessie was gone down to breakfast;
my cousins had not yet been summoned to their mama; Eliza was
putting on her bonnet and warm garden-coat to go and feed her
poultry, an occupation of which she was fond: and not less so of
selling the eggs to the housekeeper and hoarding up the money
she thus obtained. She had a turn for traffic, and a marked
propensity for saving; shown not only in the vending of eggs and
chickens, but also in driving hard bargains with the gardener
about flower-roots, seeds, and slips of plants; that functionary
having orders from Mrs. Reed to buy of his young lady all the
products of her parterre she wished to sell: and Eliza would
have sold the hair off her head if she could have made a
handsome profit thereby. As to her money, she first secreted it
in odd corners, wrapped in a rag or an old curl-paper; but some
of these hoards having been discovered by the housemaid, Eliza,
fearful of one day losing her valued treasure, consented to
intrust it to her mother, at a usurious rate of interest—fifty
or sixty per cent.; which interest she exacted every quarter,
keeping her accounts in a little book with anxious accuracy.
Georgiana sat on a high stool, dressing
her hair at the glass, and interweaving her curls with
artificial flowers and faded feathers, of which she had found a
store in a drawer in the attic. I was making my bed, having
received strict orders from Bessie to get it arranged before she
returned (for Bessie now frequently employed me as a sort of
under-nurserymaid, to tidy the room, dust the chairs, &c.).
Having spread the quilt and folded my night-dress, I went to the
window-seat to put in order some picture-books and doll’s house
furniture scattered there; an abrupt command from Georgiana to
let her playthings alone (for the tiny chairs and mirrors, the
fairy plates and cups, were her property) stopped my
proceedings; and then, for lack of other occupation, I fell to
breathing on the frost-flowers with which the window was
fretted, and thus clearing a space in the glass through which I
might look out on the grounds, where all was still and petrified
under the influence of a hard frost.
From this window were visible the
porter’s lodge and the carriage-road, and just as I had
dissolved so much of the silver-white foliage veiling the panes
as left room to look out, I saw the gates thrown open and a
carriage roll through. I watched it ascending the drive with
indifference; carriages often came to Gateshead, but none ever
brought visitors in whom I was interested; it stopped in front
of the house, the door-bell rang loudly, the new-comer was
admitted. All this being nothing to me, my vacant attention
soon found livelier attraction in the spectacle of a little
hungry robin, which came and chirruped on the twigs of the
leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the casement.
The remains of my breakfast of bread and milk stood on the
table, and having crumbled a morsel of roll, I was tugging at
the sash to put out the crumbs on the window-sill, when Bessie
came running upstairs into the nursery.
“Miss Jane, take off your pinafore;
what are you doing there? Have you washed your hands and face
this morning?” I gave another tug before I answered, for I
wanted the bird to be secure of its bread: the sash yielded; I
scattered the crumbs, some on the stone sill, some on the
cherry-tree bough, then, closing the window, I replied—
“No, Bessie; I have only just finished
dusting.”
“Troublesome, careless child! and what
are you doing now? You look quite red, as if you had been about
some mischief: what were you opening the window for?”
I was spared the trouble of answering,
for Bessie seemed in too great a hurry to listen to
explanations; she hauled me to the washstand, inflicted a
merciless, but happily brief scrub on my face and hands with
soap, water, and a coarse towel; disciplined my head with a
bristly brush, denuded me of my pinafore, and then hurrying me
to the top of the stairs, bid me go down directly, as I was
wanted in the breakfast-room.
I would have asked who wanted me: I
would have demanded if Mrs. Reed was there; but Bessie was
already gone, and had closed the nursery-door upon me. I slowly
descended. For nearly three months, I had never been called to
Mrs. Reed’s presence; restricted so long to the nursery, the
breakfast, dining, and drawing-rooms were become for me awful
regions, on which it dismayed me to intrude.
I now stood in the empty hall; before
me was the breakfast-room door, and I stopped, intimidated and
trembling. What a miserable little poltroon had fear,
engendered of unjust punishment, made of me in those days! I
feared to return to the nursery, and feared to go forward to the
parlour; ten minutes I stood in agitated hesitation; the
vehement ringing of the breakfast-room bell decided me; I
must enter.
“Who could want me?” I asked inwardly,
as with both hands I turned the stiff door-handle, which, for a
second or two, resisted my efforts. “What should I see besides
Aunt Reed in the apartment?—a man or a woman?” The handle
turned, the door unclosed, and passing through and curtseying
low, I looked up at—a black pillar!—such, at least, appeared to
me, at first sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape
standing erect on the rug: the grim face at the top was like a
carved mask, placed above the shaft by way of capital.
Mrs. Reed occupied her usual seat by
the fireside; she made a signal to me to approach; I did so, and
she introduced me to the stony stranger with the words: “This is
the little girl respecting whom I applied to you.”
He, for it was a man, turned his
head slowly towards where I stood, and having examined me with
the two inquisitive-looking grey eyes which twinkled under a
pair of bushy brows, said solemnly, and in a bass voice, “Her
size is small: what is her age?”
“Ten years.”
“So much?” was the doubtful answer; and
he prolonged his scrutiny for some minutes. Presently he
addressed me—“Your name, little girl?”
“Jane Eyre, sir.”
In uttering these words I looked up: he
seemed to me a tall gentleman; but then I was very little; his
features were large, and they and all the lines of his frame
were equally harsh and prim.
“Well, Jane Eyre, and are you a good
child?”
Impossible to reply to this in the
affirmative: my little world held a contrary opinion: I was
silent. Mrs. Reed answered for me by an expressive shake of the
head, adding soon, “Perhaps the less said on that subject the
better, Mr. Brocklehurst.”
“Sorry indeed to hear it! she and I
must have some talk;” and bending from the perpendicular, he
installed his person in the arm-chair opposite Mrs. Reed’s.
“Come here,” he said.
I stepped across the rug; he placed me
square and straight before him. What a face he had, now that it
was almost on a level with mine! what a great nose! and what a
mouth! and what large prominent teeth!
“No sight so sad as that of a naughty
child,” he began, “especially a naughty little girl. Do you
know where the wicked go after death?”
“They go to hell,” was my ready and
orthodox answer.
“And what is hell? Can you tell me
that?”
“A pit full of fire.”
“And should you like to fall into that
pit, and to be burning there for ever?”
“No, sir.”
“What must you do to avoid it?”
I deliberated a moment; my answer, when
it did come, was objectionable: “I must keep in good health, and
not die.”
“How can you keep in good health?
Children younger than you die daily. I buried a little child of
five years old only a day or two since,—a good little child,
whose soul is now in heaven. It is to be feared the same could
not be said of you were you to be called hence.”
Not being in a condition to remove his
doubt, I only cast my eyes down on the two large feet planted on
the rug, and sighed, wishing myself far enough away.
“I hope that sigh is from the heart,
and that you repent of ever having been the occasion of
discomfort to your excellent benefactress.”
“Benefactress! benefactress!” said I
inwardly: “they all call Mrs. Reed my benefactress; if so, a
benefactress is a disagreeable thing.”
“Do you say your prayers night and
morning?” continued my interrogator.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you read your Bible?”
“Sometimes.”
“With pleasure? Are you fond of it?”
“I like Revelations, and the book of
Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel, and a little bit of Exodus, and
some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job and Jonah.”
“And the Psalms? I hope you like
them?”
“No, sir.”
“No? oh, shocking! I have a little
boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms by heart: and when
you ask him which he would rather have, a gingerbread-nut to eat
or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: ‘Oh! the verse of a
Psalm! angels sing Psalms;’ says he, ‘I wish to be a little
angel here below;’ he then gets two nuts in recompense for his
infant piety.”
“Psalms are not interesting,” I
remarked.
“That proves you have a wicked heart;
and you must pray to God to change it: to give you a new and
clean one: to take away your heart of stone and give you a heart
of flesh.”
I was about to propound a question,
touching the manner in which that operation of changing my heart
was to be performed, when Mrs. Reed interposed, telling me to
sit down; she then proceeded to carry on the conversation
herself.
“Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe I
intimated in the letter which I wrote to you three weeks ago,
that this little girl has not quite the character and
disposition I could wish: should you admit her into Lowood
school, I should be glad if the superintendent and teachers were
requested to keep a strict eye on her, and, above all, to guard
against her worst fault, a tendency to deceit. I mention this
in your hearing, Jane, that you may not attempt to impose on Mr.
Brocklehurst.”
Well might I dread, well might I
dislike Mrs. Reed; for it was her nature to wound me cruelly;
never was I happy in her presence; however carefully I obeyed,
however strenuously I strove to please her, my efforts were
still repulsed and repaid by such sentences as the above. Now,
uttered before a stranger, the accusation cut me to the heart; I
dimly perceived that she was already obliterating hope from the
new phase of existence which she destined me to enter; I felt,
though I could not have expressed the feeling, that she was
sowing aversion and unkindness along my future path; I saw
myself transformed under Mr. Brocklehurst’s eye into an artful,
noxious child, and what could I do to remedy the injury?
“Nothing, indeed,” thought I, as I
struggled to repress a sob, and hastily wiped away some tears,
the impotent evidences of my anguish.
“Deceit is, indeed, a sad fault in a
child,” said Mr. Brocklehurst; “it is akin to falsehood, and all
liars will have their portion in the lake burning with fire and
brimstone; she shall, however, be watched, Mrs. Reed. I will
speak to Miss Temple and the teachers.”
“I should wish her to be brought up in
a manner suiting her prospects,” continued my benefactress; “to
be made useful, to be kept humble: as for the vacations, she
will, with your permission, spend them always at Lowood.”
“Your decisions are perfectly
judicious, madam,” returned Mr. Brocklehurst. “Humility is a
Christian grace, and one peculiarly appropriate to the pupils of
Lowood; I, therefore, direct that especial care shall be
bestowed on its cultivation amongst them. I have studied how
best to mortify in them the worldly sentiment of pride; and,
only the other day, I had a pleasing proof of my success. My
second daughter, Augusta, went with her mama to visit the
school, and on her return she exclaimed: ‘Oh, dear papa, how
quiet and plain all the girls at Lowood look, with their hair
combed behind their ears, and their long pinafores, and those
little holland pockets outside their frocks—they are almost like
poor people’s children! and,’ said she, ‘they looked at my dress
and mama’s, as if they had never seen a silk gown before.’”
“This is the state of things I quite
approve,” returned Mrs. Reed; “had I sought all England over, I
could scarcely have found a system more exactly fitting a child
like Jane Eyre. Consistency, my dear Mr. Brocklehurst; I
advocate consistency in all things.”
“Consistency, madam, is the first of
Christian duties; and it has been observed in every arrangement
connected with the establishment of Lowood: plain fare, simple
attire, unsophisticated accommodations, hardy and active habits;
such is the order of the day in the house and its inhabitants.”
“Quite right, sir. I may then depend
upon this child being received as a pupil at Lowood, and there
being trained in conformity to her position and prospects?”
“Madam, you may: she shall be placed in
that nursery of chosen plants, and I trust she will show herself
grateful for the inestimable privilege of her election.”
“I will send her, then, as soon as
possible, Mr. Brocklehurst; for, I assure you, I feel anxious to
be relieved of a responsibility that was becoming too irksome.”
“No doubt, no doubt, madam; and now I
wish you good morning. I shall return to Brocklehurst Hall in
the course of a week or two: my good friend, the Archdeacon,
will not permit me to leave him sooner. I shall send Miss
Temple notice that she is to expect a new girl, so that there
will be no difficulty about receiving her. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Brocklehurst; remember
me to Mrs. and Miss Brocklehurst, and to Augusta and Theodore,
and Master Broughton Brocklehurst.”
“I will, madam. Little girl, here is a
book entitled the ‘Child’s Guide,’ read it with prayer,
especially that part containing ‘An account of the awfully
sudden death of Martha G---, a naughty child addicted to
falsehood and deceit.’”
With these words Mr. Brocklehurst put
into my hand a thin pamphlet sewn in a cover, and having rung
for his carriage, he departed.
Mrs. Reed and I were left alone: some
minutes passed in silence; she was sewing, I was watching her.
Mrs. Reed might be at that time some six or seven and thirty;
she was a woman of robust frame, square-shouldered and
strong-limbed, not tall, and, though stout, not obese: she had a
somewhat large face, the under jaw being much developed and very
solid; her brow was low, her chin large and prominent, mouth and
nose sufficiently regular; under her light eyebrows glimmered an
eye devoid of ruth; her skin was dark and opaque, her hair
nearly flaxen; her constitution was sound as a bell—illness
never came near her; she was an exact, clever manager; her
household and tenantry were thoroughly under her control; her
children only at times defied her authority and laughed it to
scorn; she dressed well, and had a presence and port calculated
to set off handsome attire.
Sitting on a low stool, a few yards
from her arm-chair, I examined her figure; I perused her
features. In my hand I held the tract containing the sudden
death of the Liar, to which narrative my attention had been
pointed as to an appropriate warning. What had just passed;
what Mrs. Reed had said concerning me to Mr. Brocklehurst; the
whole tenor of their conversation, was recent, raw, and stinging
in my mind; I had felt every word as acutely as I had heard it
plainly, and a passion of resentment fomented now within me.
Mrs. Reed looked up from her work; her
eye settled on mine, her fingers at the same time suspended
their nimble movements.
“Go out of the room; return to the
nursery,” was her mandate. My look or something else must have
struck her as offensive, for she spoke with extreme though
suppressed irritation. I got up, I went to the door; I came
back again; I walked to the window, across the room, then close
up to her.
Speak I must: I had been trodden
on severely, and must turn: but how? What strength had I
to dart retaliation at my antagonist? I gathered my energies
and launched them in this blunt sentence—
“I am not deceitful: if I were, I
should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I
dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed;
and this book about the liar, you may give to your girl,
Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and not I.”
Mrs. Reed’s hands still lay on her work
inactive: her eye of ice continued to dwell freezingly on mine.
“What more have you to say?” she asked,
rather in the tone in which a person might address an opponent
of adult age than such as is ordinarily used to a child.
That eye of hers, that voice stirred
every antipathy I had. Shaking from head to foot, thrilled with
ungovernable excitement, I continued—
“I am glad you are no relation of mine:
I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will
never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me
how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very
thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with
miserable cruelty.”
“How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?”
“How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I?
Because it is the truth. You think I have no feelings,
and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I
cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall remember how you
thrust me back—roughly and violently thrust me back—into the
red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day; though I was
in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress,
‘Have mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed!’ And that punishment you
made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me—knocked me down
for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions, this
exact tale. People think you a good woman, but you are bad,
hard-hearted. You are deceitful!”
Ere I had finished this reply, my soul
began to expand, to exult, with the strangest sense of freedom,
of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as if an invisible bond had
burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty.
Not without cause was this sentiment: Mrs. Reed looked
frightened; her work had slipped from her knee; she was lifting
up her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and even twisting her
face as if she would cry.
“Jane, you are under a mistake: what is
the matter with you? Why do you tremble so violently? Would
you like to drink some water?”
“No, Mrs. Reed.”
“Is there anything else you wish for,
Jane? I assure you, I desire to be your friend.”
“Not you. You told Mr. Brocklehurst I
had a bad character, a deceitful disposition; and I’ll let
everybody at Lowood know what you are, and what you have done.”
“Jane, you don’t understand these
things: children must be corrected for their faults.”
“Deceit is not my fault!” I cried out
in a savage, high voice.
“But you are passionate, Jane, that you
must allow: and now return to the nursery—there’s a dear—and lie
down a little.”
“I am not your dear; I cannot lie down:
send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here.”
“I will indeed send her to school
soon,” murmured Mrs. Reed sotto voce; and gathering up
her work, she abruptly quitted the apartment.
I was left there alone—winner of the
field. It was the hardest battle I had fought, and the first
victory I had gained: I stood awhile on the rug, where Mr.
Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed my conqueror’s solitude.
First, I smiled to myself and felt elate; but this fierce
pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the accelerated throb of
my pulses. A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as I had
done; cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I
had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the pang of
remorse and the chill of reaction. A ridge of lighted heath,
alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my
mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed: the same ridge, black
and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as
meetly my subsequent condition, when half-an-hour’s silence and
reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the
dreariness of my hated and hating position.
Something of vengeance I had tasted for
the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm
and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a
sensation as if I had been poisoned. Willingly would I now have
gone and asked Mrs. Reed’s pardon; but I knew, partly from
experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make
her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every
turbulent impulse of my nature.
I would fain exercise some better
faculty than that of fierce speaking; fain find nourishment for
some less fiendish feeling than that of sombre indignation. I
took a book—some Arabian tales; I sat down and endeavoured to
read. I could make no sense of the subject; my own thoughts
swam always between me and the page I had usually found
fascinating. I opened the glass-door in the breakfast-room: the
shrubbery was quite still: the black frost reigned, unbroken by
sun or breeze, through the grounds. I covered my head and arms
with the skirt of my frock, and went out to walk in a part of
the plantation which was quite sequestrated; but I found no
pleasure in the silent trees, the falling fir-cones, the
congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past winds
in heaps, and now stiffened together. I leaned against a gate,
and looked into an empty field where no sheep were feeding,
where the short grass was nipped and blanched. It was a very
grey day; a most opaque sky, “onding on snaw,” canopied all;
thence flakes felt it intervals, which settled on the hard path
and on the hoary lea without melting. I stood, a wretched child
enough, whispering to myself over and over again, “What shall I
do?—what shall I do?”
All at once I heard a clear voice call,
“Miss Jane! where are you? Come to lunch!”
It was Bessie, I knew well enough; but
I did not stir; her light step came tripping down the path.
“You naughty little thing!” she said.
“Why don’t you come when you are called?”
Bessie’s presence, compared with the
thoughts over which I had been brooding, seemed cheerful; even
though, as usual, she was somewhat cross. The fact is, after my
conflict with and victory over Mrs. Reed, I was not disposed to
care much for the nursemaid’s transitory anger; and I was
disposed to bask in her youthful lightness of heart. I just put
my two arms round her and said, “Come, Bessie! don’t scold.”
The action was more frank and fearless
than any I was habituated to indulge in: somehow it pleased her.
“You are a strange child, Miss Jane,”
she said, as she looked down at me; “a little roving, solitary
thing: and you are going to school, I suppose?”
I nodded.
“And won’t you be sorry to leave poor
Bessie?”
“What does Bessie care for me? She is
always scolding me.”
“Because you’re such a queer,
frightened, shy little thing. You should be bolder.”
“What! to get more knocks?”
“Nonsense! But you are rather put
upon, that’s certain. My mother said, when she came to see me
last week, that she would not like a little one of her own to be
in your place.—Now, come in, and I’ve some good news for you.”
“I don’t think you have, Bessie.”
“Child! what do you mean? What
sorrowful eyes you fix on me! Well, but Missis and the young
ladies and Master John are going out to tea this afternoon, and
you shall have tea with me. I’ll ask cook to bake you a little
cake, and then you shall help me to look over your drawers; for
I am soon to pack your trunk. Missis intends you to leave
Gateshead in a day or two, and you shall choose what toys you
like to take with you.”
“Bessie, you must promise not to scold
me any more till I go.”
“Well, I will; but mind you are a very
good girl, and don’t be afraid of me. Don’t start when I chance
to speak rather sharply; it’s so provoking.”
“I don’t think I shall ever be afraid
of you again, Bessie, because I have got used to you, and I
shall soon have another set of people to dread.”
“If you dread them they’ll dislike
you.”
“As you do, Bessie?”
“I don’t dislike you, Miss; I believe I
am fonder of you than of all the others.”
“You don’t show it.”
“You little sharp thing! you’ve got
quite a new way of talking. What makes you so venturesome and
hardy?”
“Why, I shall soon be away from you,
and besides”—I was going to say something about what had passed
between me and Mrs. Reed, but on second thoughts I considered it
better to remain silent on that head.
“And so you’re glad to leave me?”
“Not at all, Bessie; indeed, just now
I’m rather sorry.”
“Just now! and rather! How coolly my
little lady says it! I dare say now if I were to ask you for a
kiss you wouldn’t give it me: you’d say you’d rather
not.”
“I’ll kiss you and welcome: bend your
head down.” Bessie stooped; we mutually embraced, and I
followed her into the house quite comforted. That afternoon
lapsed in peace and harmony; and in the evening Bessie told me
some of her most enchanting stories, and sang me some of her
sweetest songs. Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.
CHAPTER V
Five o’clock had hardly struck on the
morning of the 19th of January, when Bessie brought a candle
into my closet and found me already up and nearly dressed. I
had risen half-an-hour before her entrance, and had washed my
face, and put on my clothes by the light of a half-moon just
setting, whose rays streamed through the narrow window near my
crib. I was to leave Gateshead that day by a coach which passed
the lodge gates at six a.m. Bessie was the only person yet
risen; she had lit a fire in the nursery, where she now
proceeded to make my breakfast. Few children can eat when
excited with the thoughts of a journey; nor could I. Bessie,
having pressed me in vain to take a few spoonfuls of the boiled
milk and bread she had prepared for me, wrapped up some biscuits
in a paper and put them into my bag; then she helped me on with
my pelisse and bonnet, and wrapping herself in a shawl, she and
I left the nursery. As we passed Mrs. Reed’s bedroom, she said,
“Will you go in and bid Missis good-bye?”
“No, Bessie: she came to my crib last
night when you were gone down to supper, and said I need not
disturb her in the morning, or my cousins either; and she told
me to remember that she had always been my best friend, and to
speak of her and be grateful to her accordingly.”
“What did you say, Miss?”
“Nothing: I covered my face with the
bedclothes, and turned from her to the wall.”
“That was wrong, Miss Jane.”
“It was quite right, Bessie. Your
Missis has not been my friend: she has been my foe.”
“O Miss Jane! don’t say so!”
“Good-bye to Gateshead!” cried I, as we
passed through the hall and went out at the front door.
The moon was set, and it was very dark;
Bessie carried a lantern, whose light glanced on wet steps and
gravel road sodden by a recent thaw. Raw and chill was the
winter morning: my teeth chattered as I hastened down the
drive. There was a light in the porter’s lodge: when we reached
it, we found the porter’s wife just kindling her fire: my trunk,
which had been carried down the evening before, stood corded at
the door. It wanted but a few minutes of six, and shortly after
that hour had struck, the distant roll of wheels announced the
coming coach; I went to the door and watched its lamps approach
rapidly through the gloom.
“Is she going by herself?” asked the
porter’s wife.
“Yes.”
“And how far is it?”
“Fifty miles.”
“What a long way! I wonder Mrs. Reed
is not afraid to trust her so far alone.”
The coach drew up; there it was at the
gates with its four horses and its top laden with passengers:
the guard and coachman loudly urged haste; my trunk was hoisted
up; I was taken from Bessie’s neck, to which I clung with
kisses.
“Be sure and take good care of her,”
cried she to the guard, as he lifted me into the inside.
“Ay, ay!” was the answer: the door was
slapped to, a voice exclaimed “All right,” and on we drove.
Thus was I severed from Bessie and Gateshead; thus whirled away
to unknown, and, as I then deemed, remote and mysterious
regions.
I remember but little of the journey; I
only know that the day seemed to me of a preternatural length,
and that we appeared to travel over hundreds of miles of road.
We passed through several towns, and in one, a very large one,
the coach stopped; the horses were taken out, and the passengers
alighted to dine. I was carried into an inn, where the guard
wanted me to have some dinner; but, as I had no appetite, he
left me in an immense room with a fireplace at each end, a
chandelier pendent from the ceiling, and a little red gallery
high up against the wall filled with musical instruments. Here
I walked about for a long time, feeling very strange, and
mortally apprehensive of some one coming in and kidnapping me;
for I believed in kidnappers, their exploits having frequently
figured in Bessie’s fireside chronicles. At last the guard
returned; once more I was stowed away in the coach, my protector
mounted his own seat, sounded his hollow horn, and away we
rattled over the “stony street” of L-.
The afternoon came on wet and somewhat
misty: as it waned into dusk, I began to feel that we were
getting very far indeed from Gateshead: we ceased to pass
through towns; the country changed; great grey hills heaved up
round the horizon: as twilight deepened, we descended a valley,
dark with wood, and long after night had overclouded the
prospect, I heard a wild wind rushing amongst trees.
Lulled by the sound, I at last dropped
asleep; I had not long slumbered when the sudden cessation of
motion awoke me; the coach-door was open, and a person like a
servant was standing at it: I saw her face and dress by the
light of the lamps.
“Is there a little girl called Jane
Eyre here?” she asked. I answered “Yes,” and was then lifted
out; my trunk was handed down, and the coach instantly drove
away.
I was stiff with long sitting, and
bewildered with the noise and motion of the coach: Gathering my
faculties, I looked about me. Rain, wind, and darkness filled
the air; nevertheless, I dimly discerned a wall before me and a
door open in it; through this door I passed with my new guide:
she shut and locked it behind her. There was now visible a
house or houses—for the building spread far—with many windows,
and lights burning in some; we went up a broad pebbly path,
splashing wet, and were admitted at a door; then the servant led
me through a passage into a room with a fire, where she left me
alone.
I stood and warmed my numbed fingers
over the blaze, then I looked round; there was no candle, but
the uncertain light from the hearth showed, by intervals,
papered walls, carpet, curtains, shining mahogany furniture: it
was a parlour, not so spacious or splendid as the drawing-room
at Gateshead, but comfortable enough. I was puzzling to make
out the subject of a picture on the wall, when the door opened,
and an individual carrying a light entered; another followed
close behind.
The first was a tall lady with dark
hair, dark eyes, and a pale and large forehead; her figure was
partly enveloped in a shawl, her countenance was grave, her
bearing erect.
“The child is very young to be sent
alone,” said she, putting her candle down on the table. She
considered me attentively for a minute or two, then further
added—
“She had better be put to bed soon; she
looks tired: are you tired?” she asked, placing her hand on my
shoulder.
“A little, ma’am.”
“And hungry too, no doubt: let her have
some supper before she goes to bed, Miss Miller. Is this the
first time you have left your parents to come to school, my
little girl?”
I explained to her that I had no
parents. She inquired how long they had been dead: then how old
I was, what was my name, whether I could read, write, and sew a
little: then she touched my cheek gently with her forefinger,
and saying, “She hoped I should be a good child,” dismissed me
along with Miss Miller.
The lady I had left might be about
twenty-nine; the one who went with me appeared some years
younger: the first impressed me by her voice, look, and air.
Miss Miller was more ordinary; ruddy in complexion, though of a
careworn countenance; hurried in gait and action, like one who
had always a multiplicity of tasks on hand: she looked, indeed,
what I afterwards found she really was, an under-teacher. Led
by her, I passed from compartment to compartment, from passage
to passage, of a large and irregular building; till, emerging
from the total and somewhat dreary silence pervading that
portion of the house we had traversed, we came upon the hum of
many voices, and presently entered a wide, long room, with great
deal tables, two at each end, on each of which burnt a pair of
candles, and seated all round on benches, a congregation of
girls of every age, from nine or ten to twenty. Seen by the dim
light of the dips, their number to me appeared countless, though
not in reality exceeding eighty; they were uniformly dressed in
brown stuff frocks of quaint fashion, and long holland
pinafores. It was the hour of study; they were engaged in
conning over their to-morrow’s task, and the hum I had heard was
the combined result of their whispered repetitions.
Miss Miller signed to me to sit on a
bench near the door, then walking up to the top of the long room
she cried out—
“Monitors, collect the lesson-books and
put them away!”
Four tall girls arose from different
tables, and going round, gathered the books and removed them.
Miss Miller again gave the word of command—
“Monitors, fetch the supper-trays!”
The tall girls went out and returned
presently, each bearing a tray, with portions of something, I
knew not what, arranged thereon, and a pitcher of water and mug
in the middle of each tray. The portions were handed round;
those who liked took a draught of the water, the mug being
common to all. When it came to my turn, I drank, for I was
thirsty, but did not touch the food, excitement and fatigue
rendering me incapable of eating: I now saw, however, that it
was a thin oaten cake shared into fragments.
The meal over, prayers were read by
Miss Miller, and the classes filed off, two and two, upstairs.
Overpowered by this time with weariness, I scarcely noticed what
sort of a place the bedroom was, except that, like the
schoolroom, I saw it was very long. To-night I was to be Miss
Miller’s bed-fellow; she helped me to undress: when laid down I
glanced at the long rows of beds, each of which was quickly
filled with two occupants; in ten minutes the single light was
extinguished, and amidst silence and complete darkness I fell
asleep.
The night passed rapidly. I was too
tired even to dream; I only once awoke to hear the wind rave in
furious gusts, and the rain fall in torrents, and to be sensible
that Miss Miller had taken her place by my side. When I again
unclosed my eyes, a loud bell was ringing; the girls were up and
dressing; day had not yet begun to dawn, and a rushlight or two
burned in the room. I too rose reluctantly; it was bitter cold,
and I dressed as well as I could for shivering, and washed when
there was a basin at liberty, which did not occur soon, as there
was but one basin to six girls, on the stands down the middle of
the room. Again the bell rang: all formed in file, two and two,
and in that order descended the stairs and entered the cold and
dimly lit schoolroom: here prayers were read by Miss Miller;
afterwards she called out—
“Form classes!”
A great tumult succeeded for some
minutes, during which Miss Miller repeatedly exclaimed,
“Silence!” and “Order!” When it subsided, I saw them all drawn
up in four semicircles, before four chairs, placed at the four
tables; all held books in their hands, and a great book, like a
Bible, lay on each table, before the vacant seat. A pause of
some seconds succeeded, filled up by the low, vague hum of
numbers; Miss Miller walked from class to class, hushing this
indefinite sound.
A distant bell tinkled: immediately
three ladies entered the room, each walked to a table and took
her seat. Miss Miller assumed the fourth vacant chair, which
was that nearest the door, and around which the smallest of the
children were assembled: to this inferior class I was called,
and placed at the bottom of it.
Business now began, the day’s Collect
was repeated, then certain texts of Scripture were said, and to
these succeeded a protracted reading of chapters in the Bible,
which lasted an hour. By the time that exercise was terminated,
day had fully dawned. The indefatigable bell now sounded for
the fourth time: the classes were marshalled and marched into
another room to breakfast: how glad I was to behold a prospect
of getting something to eat! I was now nearly sick from
inanition, having taken so little the day before.
The refectory was a great, low-ceiled,
gloomy room; on two long tables smoked basins of something hot,
which, however, to my dismay, sent forth an odour far from
inviting. I saw a universal manifestation of discontent when
the fumes of the repast met the nostrils of those destined to
swallow it; from the van of the procession, the tall girls of
the first class, rose the whispered words—
“Disgusting! The porridge is burnt
again!”
“Silence!” ejaculated a voice; not that
of Miss Miller, but one of the upper teachers, a little and dark
personage, smartly dressed, but of somewhat morose aspect, who
installed herself at the top of one table, while a more buxom
lady presided at the other. I looked in vain for her I had
first seen the night before; she was not visible: Miss Miller
occupied the foot of the table where I sat, and a strange,
foreign-looking, elderly lady, the French teacher, as I
afterwards found, took the corresponding seat at the other
board. A long grace was said and a hymn sung; then a servant
brought in some tea for the teachers, and the meal began.
Ravenous, and now very faint, I
devoured a spoonful or two of my portion without thinking of its
taste; but the first edge of hunger blunted, I perceived I had
got in hand a nauseous mess; burnt porridge is almost as bad as
rotten potatoes; famine itself soon sickens over it. The spoons
were moved slowly: I saw each girl taste her food and try to
swallow it; but in most cases the effort was soon relinquished.
Breakfast was over, and none had breakfasted. Thanks being
returned for what we had not got, and a second hymn chanted, the
refectory was evacuated for the schoolroom. I was one of the
last to go out, and in passing the tables, I saw one teacher
take a basin of the porridge and taste it; she looked at the
others; all their countenances expressed displeasure, and one of
them, the stout one, whispered—
“Abominable stuff! How shameful!”
A quarter of an hour passed before
lessons again began, during which the schoolroom was in a
glorious tumult; for that space of time it seemed to be
permitted to talk loud and more freely, and they used their
privilege. The whole conversation ran on the breakfast, which
one and all abused roundly. Poor things! it was the sole
consolation they had. Miss Miller was now the only teacher in
the room: a group of great girls standing about her spoke with
serious and sullen gestures. I heard the name of Mr.
Brocklehurst pronounced by some lips; at which Miss Miller shook
her head disapprovingly; but she made no great effort to check
the general wrath; doubtless she shared in it.
A clock in the schoolroom struck nine;
Miss Miller left her circle, and standing in the middle of the
room, cried—
“Silence! To your seats!”
Discipline prevailed: in five minutes
the confused throng was resolved into order, and comparative
silence quelled the Babel clamour of tongues. The upper
teachers now punctually resumed their posts: but still, all
seemed to wait. Ranged on benches down the sides of the room,
the eighty girls sat motionless and erect; a quaint assemblage
they appeared, all with plain locks combed from their faces, not
a curl visible; in brown dresses, made high and surrounded by a
narrow tucker about the throat, with little pockets of holland
(shaped something like a Highlander’s purse) tied in front of
their frocks, and destined to serve the purpose of a work-bag:
all, too, wearing woollen stockings and country-made shoes,
fastened with brass buckles. Above twenty of those clad in this
costume were full-grown girls, or rather young women; it suited
them ill, and gave an air of oddity even to the prettiest.
I was still looking at them, and also
at intervals examining the teachers—none of whom precisely
pleased me; for the stout one was a little coarse, the dark one
not a little fierce, the foreigner harsh and grotesque, and Miss
Miller, poor thing! looked purple, weather-beaten, and
over-worked—when, as my eye wandered from face to face, the
whole school rose simultaneously, as if moved by a common
spring.
What was the matter? I had heard no
order given: I was puzzled. Ere I had gathered my wits, the
classes were again seated: but as all eyes were now turned to
one point, mine followed the general direction, and encountered
the personage who had received me last night. She stood at the
bottom of the long room, on the hearth; for there was a fire at
each end; she surveyed the two rows of girls silently and
gravely. Miss Miller approaching, seemed to ask her a question,
and having received her answer, went back to her place, and said
aloud—
“Monitor of the first class, fetch the
globes!”
While the direction was being executed,
the lady consulted moved slowly up the room. I suppose I have a
considerable organ of veneration, for I retain yet the sense of
admiring awe with which my eyes traced her steps. Seen now, in
broad daylight, she looked tall, fair, and shapely; brown eyes
with a benignant light in their irids, and a fine pencilling of
long lashes round, relieved the whiteness of her large front; on
each of her temples her hair, of a very dark brown, was
clustered in round curls, according to the fashion of those
times, when neither smooth bands nor long ringlets were in
vogue; her dress, also in the mode of the day, was of purple
cloth, relieved by a sort of Spanish trimming of black velvet; a
gold watch (watches were not so common then as now) shone at her
girdle. Let the reader add, to complete the picture, refined
features; a complexion, if pale, clear; and a stately air and
carriage, and he will have, at least, as clearly as words can
give it, a correct idea of the exterior of Miss Temple—Maria
Temple, as I afterwards saw the name written in a prayer-book
intrusted to me to carry to church.
The superintendent of Lowood (for such
was this lady) having taken her seat before a pair of globes
placed on one of the tables, summoned the first class round her,
and commenced giving a lesson on geography; the lower classes
were called by the teachers: repetitions in history, grammar,
&c., went on for an hour; writing and arithmetic succeeded, and
music lessons were given by Miss Temple to some of the elder
girls. The duration of each lesson was measured by the clock,
which at last struck twelve. The superintendent rose—
“I have a word to address to the
pupils,” said she.
The tumult of cessation from lessons
was already breaking forth, but it sank at her voice. She went
on—
“You had this morning a breakfast which
you could not eat; you must be hungry:—I have ordered that a
lunch of bread and cheese shall be served to all.”
The teachers looked at her with a sort
of surprise.
“It is to be done on my
responsibility,” she added, in an explanatory tone to them, and
immediately afterwards left the room.
The bread and cheese was presently
brought in and distributed, to the high delight and refreshment
of the whole school. The order was now given “To the garden!”
Each put on a coarse straw bonnet, with strings of coloured
calico, and a cloak of grey frieze. I was similarly equipped,
and, following the stream, I made my way into the open air.
The garden was a wide inclosure,
surrounded with walls so high as to exclude every glimpse of
prospect; a covered verandah ran down one side, and broad walks
bordered a middle space divided into scores of little beds:
these beds were assigned as gardens for the pupils to cultivate,
and each bed had an owner. When full of flowers they would
doubtless look pretty; but now, at the latter end of January,
all was wintry blight and brown decay. I shuddered as I stood
and looked round me: it was an inclement day for outdoor
exercise; not positively rainy, but darkened by a drizzling
yellow fog; all under foot was still soaking wet with the floods
of yesterday. The stronger among the girls ran about and
engaged in active games, but sundry pale and thin ones herded
together for shelter and warmth in the verandah; and amongst
these, as the dense mist penetrated to their shivering frames, I
heard frequently the sound of a hollow cough.
As yet I had spoken to no one, nor did
anybody seem to take notice of me; I stood lonely enough: but to
that feeling of isolation I was accustomed; it did not oppress
me much. I leant against a pillar of the verandah, drew my grey
mantle close about me, and, trying to forget the cold which
nipped me without, and the unsatisfied hunger which gnawed me
within, delivered myself up to the employment of watching and
thinking. My reflections were too undefined and fragmentary to
merit record: I hardly yet knew where I was; Gateshead and my
past life seemed floated away to an immeasurable distance; the
present was vague and strange, and of the future I could form no
conjecture. I looked round the convent-like garden, and then up
at the house—a large building, half of which seemed grey and
old, the other half quite new. The new part, containing the
schoolroom and dormitory, was lit by mullioned and latticed
windows, which gave it a church-like aspect; a stone tablet over
the door bore this inscription:—
“Lowood Institution.—This portion was
rebuilt A.D. ---, by Naomi Brocklehurst, of Brocklehurst Hall,
in this county.” “Let your light so shine before men, that they
may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in
heaven.”—St. Matt. v. 16.
I read these words over and over again:
I felt that an explanation belonged to them, and was unable
fully to penetrate their import. I was still pondering the
signification of “Institution,” and endeavouring to make out a
connection between the first words and the verse of Scripture,
when the sound of a cough close behind me made me turn my head.
I saw a girl sitting on a stone bench near; she was bent over a
book, on the perusal of which she seemed intent: from where I
stood I could see the title—it was “Rasselas;” a name that
struck me as strange, and consequently attractive. In turning a
leaf she happened to look up, and I said to her directly—
“Is your book interesting?” I had
already formed the intention of asking her to lend it to me some
day.
“I like it,” she answered, after a
pause of a second or two, during which she examined me.
“What is it about?” I continued. I
hardly know where I found the hardihood thus to open a
conversation with a stranger; the step was contrary to my nature
and habits: but I think her occupation touched a chord of
sympathy somewhere; for I too liked reading, though of a
frivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend
the serious or substantial.
“You may look at it,” replied the girl,
offering me the book.
I did so; a brief examination convinced
me that the contents were less taking than the title: “Rasselas”
looked dull to my trifling taste; I saw nothing about fairies,
nothing about genii; no bright variety seemed spread over the
closely-printed pages. I returned it to her; she received it
quietly, and without saying anything she was about to relapse
into her former studious mood: again I ventured to disturb her—
“Can you tell me what the writing on
that stone over the door means? What is Lowood Institution?”
“This house where you are come to
live.”
“And why do they call it Institution?
Is it in any way different from other schools?”
“It is partly a charity-school: you and
I, and all the rest of us, are charity-children. I suppose you
are an orphan: are not either your father or your mother dead?”
“Both died before I can remember.”
“Well, all the girls here have lost
either one or both parents, and this is called an institution
for educating orphans.”
“Do we pay no money? Do they keep us
for nothing?”
“We pay, or our friends pay, fifteen
pounds a year for each.”
“Then why do they call us
charity-children?”
“Because fifteen pounds is not enough
for board and teaching, and the deficiency is supplied by
subscription.”
“Who subscribes?”
“Different benevolent-minded ladies and
gentlemen in this neighbourhood and in London.”
“Who was Naomi Brocklehurst?”
“The lady who built the new part of
this house as that tablet records, and whose son overlooks and
directs everything here.”
“Why?”
“Because he is treasurer and manager of
the establishment.”
“Then this house does not belong to
that tall lady who wears a watch, and who said we were to have
some bread and cheese?”
“To Miss Temple? Oh, no! I wish it
did: she has to answer to Mr. Brocklehurst for all she does.
Mr. Brocklehurst buys all our food and all our clothes.”
“Does he live here?”
“No—two miles off, at a large hall.”
“Is he a good man?”
“He is a clergyman, and is said to do a
great deal of good.”
“Did you say that tall lady was called
Miss Temple?”
“Yes.”
“And what are the other teachers
called?”
“The one with red cheeks is called Miss
Smith; she attends to the work, and cuts out—for we make our own
clothes, our frocks, and pelisses, and everything; the little
one with black hair is Miss Scatcherd; she teaches history and
grammar, and hears the second class repetitions; and the one who
wears a shawl, and has a pocket-handkerchief tied to her side
with a yellow ribband, is Madame Pierrot: she comes from Lisle,
in France, and teaches French.”
“Do you like the teachers?”
“Well enough.”
“Do you like the little black one, and
the Madame ---?—I cannot pronounce her name as you do.”
“Miss Scatcherd is hasty—you must take
care not to offend her; Madame Pierrot is not a bad sort of
person.”
“But Miss Temple is the best—isn’t
she?”
“Miss Temple is very good and very
clever; she is above the rest, because she knows far more than
they do.”
“Have you been long here?”
“Two years.”
“Are you an orphan?”
“My mother is dead.”
“Are you happy here?”
“You ask rather too many questions. I
have given you answers enough for the present: now I want to
read.”
But at that moment the summons sounded
for dinner; all re-entered the house. The odour which now
filled the refectory was scarcely more appetising than that
which had regaled our nostrils at breakfast: the dinner was
served in two huge tin-plated vessels, whence rose a strong
steam redolent of rancid fat. I found the mess to consist of
indifferent potatoes and strange shreds of rusty meat, mixed and
cooked together. Of this preparation a tolerably abundant
plateful was apportioned to each pupil. I ate what I could, and
wondered within myself whether every day’s fare would be like
this.
After dinner, we immediately adjourned
to the schoolroom: lessons recommenced, and were continued till
five o’clock.
The only marked event of the afternoon
was, that I saw the girl with whom I had conversed in the
verandah dismissed in disgrace by Miss Scatcherd from a history
class, and sent to stand in the middle of the large schoolroom.
The punishment seemed to me in a high degree ignominious,
especially for so great a girl—she looked thirteen or upwards.
I expected she would show signs of great distress and shame; but
to my surprise she neither wept nor blushed: composed, though
grave, she stood, the central mark of all eyes. “How can she
bear it so quietly—so firmly?” I asked of myself. “Were I in
her place, it seems to me I should wish the earth to open and
swallow me up. She looks as if she were thinking of something
beyond her punishment—beyond her situation: of something not
round her nor before her. I have heard of day-dreams—is she in
a day-dream now? Her eyes are fixed on the floor, but I am sure
they do not see it—her sight seems turned in, gone down into her
heart: she is looking at what she can remember, I believe; not
at what is really present. I wonder what sort of a girl she
is—whether good or naughty.”
Soon after five p.m. we had another
meal, consisting of a small mug of coffee, and half-a-slice of
brown bread. I devoured my bread and drank my coffee with
relish; but I should have been glad of as much more—I was still
hungry. Half-an-hour’s recreation succeeded, then study; then
the glass of water and the piece of oat-cake, prayers, and bed.
Such was my first day at Lowood.
CHAPTER VI
The next day commenced as before,
getting up and dressing by rushlight; but this morning we were
obliged to dispense with the ceremony of washing; the water in
the pitchers was frozen. A change had taken place in the
weather the preceding evening, and a keen north-east wind,
whistling through the crevices of our bedroom windows all night
long, had made us shiver in our beds, and turned the contents of
the ewers to ice.
Before the long hour and a half of
prayers and Bible-reading was over, I felt ready to perish with
cold. Breakfast-time came at last, and this morning the
porridge was not burnt; the quality was eatable, the quantity
small. How small my portion seemed! I wished it had been
doubled.
In the course of the day I was enrolled
a member of the fourth class, and regular tasks and occupations
were assigned me: hitherto, I had only been a spectator of the
proceedings at Lowood; I was now to become an actor therein. At
first, being little accustomed to learn by heart, the lessons
appeared to me both long and difficult; the frequent change from
task to task, too, bewildered me; and I was glad when, about
three o’clock in the afternoon, Miss Smith put into my hands a
border of muslin two yards long, together with needle, thimble,
&c., and sent me to sit in a quiet corner of the schoolroom,
with directions to hem the same. At that hour most of the
others were sewing likewise; but one class still stood round
Miss Scatcherd’s chair reading, and as all was quiet, the
subject of their lessons could be heard, together with the
manner in which each girl acquitted herself, and the
animadversions or commendations of Miss Scatcherd on the
performance. It was English history: among the readers I
observed my acquaintance of the verandah: at the commencement of
the lesson, her place had been at the top of the class, but for
some error of pronunciation, or some inattention to stops, she
was suddenly sent to the very bottom. Even in that obscure
position, Miss Scatcherd continued to make her an object of
constant notice: she was continually addressing to her such
phrases as the following:—
“Burns” (such it seems was her name:
the girls here were all called by their surnames, as boys are
elsewhere), “Burns, you are standing on the side of your shoe;
turn your toes out immediately.” “Burns, you poke your chin
most unpleasantly; draw it in.” “Burns, I insist on your
holding your head up; I will not have you before me in that
attitude,” &c. &c.
A chapter having been read through
twice, the books were closed and the girls examined. The lesson
had comprised part of the reign of Charles I., and there were
sundry questions about tonnage and poundage and ship-money,
which most of them appeared unable to answer; still, every
little difficulty was solved instantly when it reached Burns:
her memory seemed to have retained the substance of the whole
lesson, and she was ready with answers on every point. I kept
expecting that Miss Scatcherd would praise her attention; but,
instead of that, she suddenly cried out—
“You dirty, disagreeable girl! you have
never cleaned your nails this morning!”
Burns made no answer: I wondered at her
silence. “Why,” thought I, “does she not explain that she could
neither clean her nails nor wash her face, as the water was
frozen?”
My attention was now called off by Miss
Smith desiring me to hold a skein of thread: while she was
winding it, she talked to me from time to time, asking whether I
had ever been at school before, whether I could mark, stitch,
knit, &c.; till she dismissed me, I could not pursue my
observations on Miss Scatcherd’s movements. When I returned to
my seat, that lady was just delivering an order of which I did
not catch the import; but Burns immediately left the class, and
going into the small inner room where the books were kept,
returned in half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of
twigs tied together at one end. This ominous tool she presented
to Miss Scatcherd with a respectful curtesy; then she quietly,
and without being told, unloosed her pinafore, and the teacher
instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with
the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to Burns’ eye; and, while I
paused from my sewing, because my fingers quivered at this
spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not
a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression.
“Hardened girl!” exclaimed Miss
Scatcherd; “nothing can correct you of your slatternly habits:
carry the rod away.”
Burns obeyed: I looked at her narrowly
as she emerged from the book-closet; she was just putting back
her handkerchief into her pocket, and the trace of a tear
glistened on her thin cheek.
The play-hour in the evening I thought
the pleasantest fraction of the day at Lowood: the bit of bread,
the draught of coffee swallowed at five o’clock had revived
vitality, if it had not satisfied hunger: the long restraint of
the day was slackened; the schoolroom felt warmer than in the
morning—its fires being allowed to burn a little more brightly,
to supply, in some measure, the place of candles, not yet
introduced: the ruddy gloaming, the licensed uproar, the
confusion of many voices gave one a welcome sense of liberty.
On the evening of the day on which I
had seen Miss Scatcherd flog her pupil, Burns, I wandered as
usual among the forms and tables and laughing groups without a
companion, yet not feeling lonely: when I passed the windows, I
now and then lifted a blind, and looked out; it snowed fast, a
drift was already forming against the lower panes; putting my
ear close to the window, I could distinguish from the gleeful
tumult within, the disconsolate moan of the wind outside.
Probably, if I had lately left a good
home and kind parents, this would have been the hour when I
should most keenly have regretted the separation; that wind
would then have saddened my heart; this obscure chaos would have
disturbed my peace! as it was, I derived from both a strange
excitement, and reckless and feverish, I wished the wind to howl
more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and the confusion
to rise to clamour.
Jumping over forms, and creeping under
tables, I made my way to one of the fire-places; there, kneeling
by the high wire fender, I found Burns, absorbed, silent,
abstracted from all round her by the companionship of a book,
which she read by the dim glare of the embers.
“Is it still ‘Rasselas’?” I asked,
coming behind her.
“Yes,” she said, “and I have just
finished it.”
And in five minutes more she shut it
up. I was glad of this. “Now,” thought I, “I can perhaps get
her to talk.” I sat down by her on the floor.
“What is your name besides Burns?”
“Helen.”
“Do you come a long way from here?”
“I come from a place farther north,
quite on the borders of Scotland.”
“Will you ever go back?”
“I hope so; but nobody can be sure of
the future.”
“You must wish to leave Lowood?”
“No! why should I? I was sent to
Lowood to get an education; and it would be of no use going away
until I have attained that object.”
“But that teacher, Miss Scatcherd, is
so cruel to you?”
“Cruel? Not at all! She is severe:
she dislikes my faults.”
“And if I were in your place I should
dislike her; I should resist her. If she struck me with that
rod, I should get it from her hand; I should break it under her
nose.”
“Probably you would do nothing of the
sort: but if you did, Mr. Brocklehurst would expel you from the
school; that would be a great grief to your relations. It is
far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but
yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences
will extend to all connected with you; and besides, the Bible
bids us return good for evil.”
“But then it seems disgraceful to be
flogged, and to be sent to stand in the middle of a room full of
people; and you are such a great girl: I am far younger than
you, and I could not bear it.”
“Yet it would be your duty to bear it,
if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you
cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.”
I heard her with wonder: I could not
comprehend this doctrine of endurance; and still less could I
understand or sympathise with the forbearance she expressed for
her chastiser. Still I felt that Helen Burns considered things
by a light invisible to my eyes. I suspected she might be right
and I wrong; but I would not ponder the matter deeply; like
Felix, I put it off to a more convenient season.
“You say you have faults, Helen: what
are they? To me you seem very good.”
“Then learn from me, not to judge by
appearances: I am, as Miss Scatcherd said, slatternly; I seldom
put, and never keep, things, in order; I am careless; I forget
rules; I read when I should learn my lessons; I have no method;
and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot bear to be
subjected to systematic arrangements. This is all very
provoking to Miss Scatcherd, who is naturally neat, punctual,
and particular.”
“And cross and cruel,” I added; but
Helen Burns would not admit my addition: she kept silence.
“Is Miss Temple as severe to you as
Miss Scatcherd?”
At the utterance of Miss Temple’s name,
a soft smile flitted over her grave face.
“Miss Temple is full of goodness; it
pains her to be severe to any one, even the worst in the school:
she sees my errors, and tells me of them gently; and, if I do
anything worthy of praise, she gives me my meed liberally. One
strong proof of my wretchedly defective nature is, that even her
expostulations, so mild, so rational, have not influence to cure
me of my faults; and even her praise, though I value it most
highly, cannot stimulate me to continued care and foresight.”
“That is curious,” said I, “it is so
easy to be careful.”
“For you I have no doubt it is.
I observed you in your class this morning, and saw you were
closely attentive: your thoughts never seemed to wander while
Miss Miller explained the lesson and questioned you. Now, mine
continually rove away; when I should be listening to Miss
Scatcherd, and collecting all she says with assiduity, often I
lose the very sound of her voice; I fall into a sort of dream.
Sometimes I think I am in Northumberland, and that the noises I
hear round me are the bubbling of a little brook which runs
through Deepden, near our house;—then, when it comes to my turn
to reply, I have to be awakened; and having heard nothing of
what was read for listening to the visionary brook, I have no
answer ready.”
“Yet how well you replied this
afternoon.”
“It was mere chance; the subject on
which we had been reading had interested me. This afternoon,
instead of dreaming of Deepden, I was wondering how a man who
wished to do right could act so unjustly and unwisely as Charles
the First sometimes did; and I thought what a pity it was that,
with his integrity and conscientiousness, he could see no
farther than the prerogatives of the crown. If he had but been
able to look to a distance, and see how what they call the
spirit of the age was tending! Still, I like Charles—I respect
him—I pity him, poor murdered king! Yes, his enemies were the
worst: they shed blood they had no right to shed. How dared
they kill him!”
Helen was talking to herself now: she
had forgotten I could not very well understand her—that I was
ignorant, or nearly so, of the subject she discussed. I
recalled her to my level.
“And when Miss Temple teaches you, do
your thoughts wander then?”
“No, certainly, not often; because Miss
Temple has generally something to say which is newer than my own
reflections; her language is singularly agreeable to me, and the
information she communicates is often just what I wished to
gain.”
“Well, then, with Miss Temple you are
good?”
“Yes, in a passive way: I make no
effort; I follow as inclination guides me. There is no merit in
such goodness.”
“A great deal: you are good to those
who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. If people
were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust,
the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would
never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow
worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we
should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should—so hard
as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.”
“You will change your mind, I hope,
when you grow older: as yet you are but a little untaught girl.”
“But I feel this, Helen; I must dislike
those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking
me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as
natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or
submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.”
“Heathens and savage tribes hold that
doctrine, but Christians and civilised nations disown it.”
“How? I don’t understand.”
“It is not violence that best overcomes
hate—nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”
“What then?”
“Read the New Testament, and observe
what Christ says, and how He acts; make His word your rule, and
His conduct your example.”
“What does He say?”
“Love your enemies; bless them that
curse you; do good to them that hate you and despitefully use
you.”
“Then I should love Mrs. Reed, which I
cannot do; I should bless her son John, which is impossible.”
In her turn, Helen Burns asked me to
explain, and I proceeded forthwith to pour out, in my own way,
the tale of my sufferings and resentments. Bitter and truculent
when excited, I spoke as I felt, without reserve or softening.
Helen heard me patiently to the end: I
expected she would then make a remark, but she said nothing.
“Well,” I asked impatiently, “is not
Mrs. Reed a hard-hearted, bad woman?”
“She has been unkind to you, no doubt;
because you see, she dislikes your cast of character, as Miss
Scatcherd does mine; but how minutely you remember all she has
done and said to you! What a singularly deep impression her
injustice seems to have made on your heart! No ill-usage so
brands its record on my feelings. Would you not be happier if
you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate
emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent
in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. We are, and must
be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the
time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in
putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will
fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the
spark of the spirit will remain,—the impalpable principle of
light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire
the creature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be
communicated to some being higher than man—perhaps to pass
through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to
brighten to the seraph! Surely it will never, on the contrary,
be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend? No; I cannot
believe that: I hold another creed: which no one ever taught me,
and which I seldom mention; but in which I delight, and to which
I cling: for it extends hope to all: it makes Eternity a rest—a
mighty home, not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this
creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his
crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the
last: with this creed revenge never worries my heart,
degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never
crushes me too low: I live in calm, looking to the end.”
Helen’s head, always drooping, sank a
little lower as she finished this sentence. I saw by her look
she wished no longer to talk to me, but rather to converse with
her own thoughts. She was not allowed much time for meditation:
a monitor, a great rough girl, presently came up, exclaiming in
a strong Cumberland accent—
“Helen Burns, if you don’t go and put
your drawer in order, and fold up your work this minute, I’ll
tell Miss Scatcherd to come and look at it!”
Helen sighed as her reverie fled, and
getting up, obeyed the monitor without reply as without delay.
CHAPTER VII
My first quarter at Lowood seemed an
age; and not the golden age either; it comprised an irksome
struggle with difficulties in habituating myself to new rules
and unwonted tasks. The fear of failure in these points
harassed me worse than the physical hardships of my lot; though
these were no trifles.
During January, February, and part of
March, the deep snows, and, after their melting, the almost
impassable roads, prevented our stirring beyond the garden
walls, except to go to church; but within these limits we had to
pass an hour every day in the open air. Our clothing was
insufficient to protect us from the severe cold: we had no
boots, the snow got into our shoes and melted there: our
ungloved hands became numbed and covered with chilblains, as
were our feet: I remember well the distracting irritation I
endured from this cause every evening, when my feet inflamed;
and the torture of thrusting the swelled, raw, and stiff toes
into my shoes in the morning. Then the scanty supply of food
was distressing: with the keen appetites of growing children, we
had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid. From
this deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed
hardly on the younger pupils: whenever the famished great girls
had an opportunity, they would coax or menace the little ones
out of their portion. Many a time I have shared between two
claimants the precious morsel of brown bread distributed at
tea-time; and after relinquishing to a third half the contents
of my mug of coffee, I have swallowed the remainder with an
accompaniment of secret tears, forced from me by the exigency of
hunger.
Sundays were dreary days in that wintry
season. We had to walk two miles to Brocklebridge Church, where
our patron officiated. We set out cold, we arrived at church
colder: during the morning service we became almost paralysed.
It was too far to return to dinner, and an allowance of cold
meat and bread, in the same penurious proportion observed in our
ordinary meals, was served round between the services.
At the close of the afternoon service
we returned by an exposed and hilly road, where the bitter
winter wind, blowing over a range of snowy summits to the north,
almost flayed the skin from our faces.
I can remember Miss Temple walking
lightly and rapidly along our drooping line, her plaid cloak,
which the frosty wind fluttered, gathered close about her, and
encouraging us, by precept and example, to keep up our spirits,
and march forward, as she said, “like stalwart soldiers.” The
other teachers, poor things, were generally themselves too much
dejected to attempt the task of cheering others.
How we longed for the light and heat of
a blazing fire when we got back! But, to the little ones at
least, this was denied: each hearth in the schoolroom was
immediately surrounded by a double row of great girls, and
behind them the younger children crouched in groups, wrapping
their starved arms in their pinafores.
A little solace came at tea-time, in
the shape of a double ration of bread—a whole, instead of a
half, slice—with the delicious addition of a thin scrape of
butter: it was the hebdomadal treat to which we all looked
forward from Sabbath to Sabbath. I generally contrived to
reserve a moiety of this bounteous repast for myself; but the
remainder I was invariably obliged to part with.
The Sunday evening was spent in
repeating, by heart, the Church Catechism, and the fifth, sixth,
and seventh chapters of St. Matthew; and in listening to a long
sermon, read by Miss Miller, whose irrepressible yawns attested
her weariness. A frequent interlude of these performances was
the enactment of the part of Eutychus by some half-dozen of
little girls, who, overpowered with sleep, would fall down, if
not out of the third loft, yet off the fourth form, and be taken
up half dead. The remedy was, to thrust them forward into the
centre of the schoolroom, and oblige them to stand there till
the sermon was finished. Sometimes their feet failed them, and
they sank together in a heap; they were then propped up with the
monitors’ high stools.
I have not yet alluded to the visits of
Mr. Brocklehurst; and indeed that gentleman was from home during
the greater part of the first month after my arrival; perhaps
prolonging his stay with his friend the archdeacon: his absence
was a relief to me. I need not say that I had my own reasons
for dreading his coming: but come he did at last.
One afternoon (I had then been three
weeks at Lowood), as I was sitting with a slate in my hand,
puzzling over a sum in long division, my eyes, raised in
abstraction to the window, caught sight of a figure just
passing: I recognised almost instinctively that gaunt outline;
and when, two minutes after, all the school, teachers included,
rose en masse, it was not necessary for me to look up in
order to ascertain whose entrance they thus greeted. A long
stride measured the schoolroom, and presently beside Miss
Temple, who herself had risen, stood the same black column which
had frowned on me so ominously from the hearthrug of Gateshead.
I now glanced sideways at this piece of architecture. Yes, I
was right: it was Mr. Brocklehurst, buttoned up in a surtout,
and looking longer, narrower, and more rigid than ever.
I had my own reasons for being dismayed
at this apparition; too well I remembered the perfidious hints
given by Mrs. Reed about my disposition, &c.; the promise
pledged by Mr. Brocklehurst to apprise Miss Temple and the
teachers of my vicious nature. All along I had been dreading
the fulfilment of this promise,—I had been looking out daily for
the “Coming Man,” whose information respecting my past life and
conversation was to brand me as a bad child for ever: now there
he was.
He stood at Miss Temple’s side; he was
speaking low in her ear: I did not doubt he was making
disclosures of my villainy; and I watched her eye with painful
anxiety, expecting every moment to see its dark orb turn on me a
glance of repugnance and contempt. I listened too; and as I
happened to be seated quite at the top of the room, I caught
most of what he said: its import relieved me from immediate
apprehension.
“I suppose, Miss Temple, the thread I
bought at Lowton will do; it struck me that it would be just of
the quality for the calico chemises, and I sorted the needles to
match. You may tell Miss Smith that I forgot to make a
memorandum of the darning needles, but she shall have some
papers sent in next week; and she is not, on any account, to
give out more than one at a time to each pupil: if they have
more, they are apt to be careless and lose them. And, O ma’am!
I wish the woollen stockings were better looked to!—when I was
here last, I went into the kitchen-garden and examined the
clothes drying on the line; there was a quantity of black hose
in a very bad state of repair: from the size of the holes in
them I was sure they had not been well mended from time to
time.”
He paused.
“Your directions shall be attended to,
sir,” said Miss Temple.
“And, ma’am,” he continued, “the
laundress tells me some of the girls have two clean tuckers in
the week: it is too much; the rules limit them to one.”
“I think I can explain that
circumstance, sir. Agnes and Catherine Johnstone were invited
to take tea with some friends at Lowton last Thursday, and I
gave them leave to put on clean tuckers for the occasion.”
Mr. Brocklehurst nodded.
“Well, for once it may pass; but please
not to let the circumstance occur too often. And there is
another thing which surprised me; I find, in settling accounts
with the housekeeper, that a lunch, consisting of bread and
cheese, has twice been served out to the girls during the past
fortnight. How is this? I looked over the regulations, and I
find no such meal as lunch mentioned. Who introduced this
innovation? and by what authority?”
“I must be responsible for the
circumstance, sir,” replied Miss Temple: “the breakfast was so
ill prepared that the pupils could not possibly eat it; and I
dared not allow them to remain fasting till dinner-time.”
“Madam, allow me an instant. You are
aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is, not to
accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render
them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should any little accidental
disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of a
meal, the under or the over dressing of a dish, the incident
ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something more
delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and obviating
the aim of this institution; it ought to be improved to the
spiritual edification of the pupils, by encouraging them to
evince fortitude under temporary privation. A brief address on
those occasions would not be mistimed, wherein a judicious
instructor would take the opportunity of referring to the
sufferings of the primitive Christians; to the torments of
martyrs; to the exhortations of our blessed Lord Himself,
calling upon His disciples to take up their cross and follow
Him; to His warnings that man shall not live by bread alone, but
by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; to His
divine consolations, “If ye suffer hunger or thirst for My sake,
happy are ye.” Oh, madam, when you put bread and cheese,
instead of burnt porridge, into these children’s mouths, you may
indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you
starve their immortal souls!”
Mr. Brocklehurst again paused—perhaps
overcome by his feelings. Miss Temple had looked down when he
first began to speak to her; but she now gazed straight before
her, and her face, naturally pale as marble, appeared to be
assuming also the coldness and fixity of that material;
especially her mouth, closed as if it would have required a
sculptor’s chisel to open it, and her brow settled gradually
into petrified severity.
Meantime, Mr. Brocklehurst, standing on
the hearth with his hands behind his back, majestically surveyed
the whole school. Suddenly his eye gave a blink, as if it had
met something that either dazzled or shocked its pupil; turning,
he said in more rapid accents than he had hitherto used—
“Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what—what
is that girl with curled hair? Red hair, ma’am, curled—curled
all over?” And extending his cane he pointed to the awful
object, his hand shaking as he did so.
“It is Julia Severn,” replied Miss
Temple, very quietly.
“Julia Severn, ma’am! And why has she,
or any other, curled hair? Why, in defiance of every precept
and principle of this house, does she conform to the world so
openly—here in an evangelical, charitable establishment—as to
wear her hair one mass of curls?”
“Julia’s hair curls naturally,”
returned Miss Temple, still more quietly.
“Naturally! Yes, but we are not to
conform to nature; I wish these girls to be the children of
Grace: and why that abundance? I have again and again intimated
that I desire the hair to be arranged closely, modestly,
plainly. Miss Temple, that girl’s hair must be cut off
entirely; I will send a barber to-morrow: and I see others who
have far too much of the excrescence—that tall girl, tell her to
turn round. Tell all the first form to rise up and direct their
faces to the wall.”
Miss Temple passed her handkerchief
over her lips, as if to smooth away the involuntary smile that
curled them; she gave the order, however, and when the first
class could take in what was required of them, they obeyed.
Leaning a little back on my bench, I could see the looks and
grimaces with which they commented on this manoeuvre: it was a
pity Mr. Brocklehurst could not see them too; he would perhaps
have felt that, whatever he might do with the outside of the cup
and platter, the inside was further beyond his interference than
he imagined.
He scrutinised the reverse of these
living medals some five minutes, then pronounced sentence.
These words fell like the knell of doom—
“All those top-knots must be cut off.”
Miss Temple seemed to remonstrate.
“Madam,” he pursued, “I have a Master
to serve whose kingdom is not of this world: my mission is to
mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh; to teach them to
clothe themselves with shame-facedness and sobriety, not with
braided hair and costly apparel; and each of the young persons
before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which vanity
itself might have woven; these, I repeat, must be cut off; think
of the time wasted, of—”
Mr. Brocklehurst was here interrupted:
three other visitors, ladies, now entered the room. They ought
to have come a little sooner to have heard his lecture on dress,
for they were splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs. The
two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and seventeen)
had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich
plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell
a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled; the elder lady
was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with ermine, and
she wore a false front of French curls.
These ladies were deferentially
received by Miss Temple, as Mrs. and the Misses Brocklehurst,
and conducted to seats of honour at the top of the room. It
seems they had come in the carriage with their reverend
relative, and had been conducting a rummaging scrutiny of the
room upstairs, while he transacted business with the
housekeeper, questioned the laundress, and lectured the
superintendent. They now proceeded to address divers remarks
and reproofs to Miss Smith, who was charged with the care of the
linen and the inspection of the dormitories: but I had no time
to listen to what they said; other matters called off and
enchanted my attention.
Hitherto, while gathering up the
discourse of Mr. Brocklehurst and Miss Temple, I had not, at the
same time, neglected precautions to secure my personal safety;
which I thought would be effected, if I could only elude
observation. To this end, I had sat well back on the form, and
while seeming to be busy with my sum, had held my slate in such
a manner as to conceal my face: I might have escaped notice, had
not my treacherous slate somehow happened to slip from my hand,
and falling with an obtrusive crash, directly drawn every eye
upon me; I knew it was all over now, and, as I stooped to pick
up the two fragments of slate, I rallied my forces for the
worst. It came.
“A careless girl!” said Mr.
Brocklehurst, and immediately after—“It is the new pupil, I
perceive.” And before I could draw breath, “I must not forget I
have a word to say respecting her.” Then aloud: how loud it
seemed to me! “Let the child who broke her slate come forward!”
Of my own accord I could not have
stirred; I was paralysed: but the two great girls who sit on
each side of me, set me on my legs and pushed me towards the
dread judge, and then Miss Temple gently assisted me to his very
feet, and I caught her whispered counsel—
“Don’t be afraid, Jane, I saw it was an
accident; you shall not be punished.”
The kind whisper went to my heart like
a dagger.
“Another minute, and she will despise
me for a hypocrite,” thought I; and an impulse of fury against
Reed, Brocklehurst, and Co. bounded in my pulses at the
conviction. I was no Helen Burns.
“Fetch that stool,” said Mr.
Brocklehurst, pointing to a very high one from which a monitor
had just risen: it was brought.
“Place the child upon it.”
And I was placed there, by whom I don’t
know: I was in no condition to note particulars; I was only
aware that they had hoisted me up to the height of Mr.
Brocklehurst’s nose, that he was within a yard of me, and that a
spread of shot orange and purple silk pelisses and a cloud of
silvery plumage extended and waved below me.
Mr. Brocklehurst hemmed.
“Ladies,” said he, turning to his
family, “Miss Temple, teachers, and children, you all see this
girl?”
Of course they did; for I felt their
eyes directed like burning-glasses against my scorched skin.
“You see she is yet young; you observe
she possesses the ordinary form of childhood; God has graciously
given her the shape that He has given to all of us; no signal
deformity points her out as a marked character. Who would think
that the Evil One had already found a servant and agent in her?
Yet such, I grieve to say, is the case.”
A pause—in which I began to steady the
palsy of my nerves, and to feel that the Rubicon was passed; and
that the trial, no longer to be shirked, must be firmly
sustained.
“My dear children,” pursued the black
marble clergyman, with pathos, “this is a sad, a melancholy
occasion; for it becomes my duty to warn you, that this girl,
who might be one of God’s own lambs, is a little castaway: not a
member of the true flock, but evidently an interloper and an
alien. You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her
example; if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your
sports, and shut her out from your converse. Teachers, you must
watch her: keep your eyes on her movements, weigh well her
words, scrutinise her actions, punish her body to save her soul:
if, indeed, such salvation be possible, for (my tongue falters
while I tell it) this girl, this child, the native of a
Christian land, worse than many a little heathen who says its
prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut—this girl is—a
liar!”
Now came a pause of ten minutes, during
which I, by this time in perfect possession of my wits, observed
all the female Brocklehursts produce their pocket-handkerchiefs
and apply them to their optics, while the elderly lady swayed
herself to and fro, and the two younger ones whispered, “How
shocking!” Mr. Brocklehurst resumed.
“This I learned from her benefactress;
from the pious and charitable lady who adopted her in her orphan
state, reared her as her own daughter, and whose kindness, whose
generosity the unhappy girl repaid by an ingratitude so bad, so
dreadful, that at last her excellent patroness was obliged to
separate her from her own young ones, fearful lest her vicious
example should contaminate their purity: she has sent her here
to be healed, even as the Jews of old sent their diseased to the
troubled pool of Bethesda; and, teachers, superintendent, I beg
of you not to allow the waters to stagnate round her.”
With this sublime conclusion, Mr.
Brocklehurst adjusted the top button of his surtout, muttered
something to his family, who rose, bowed to Miss Temple, and
then all the great people sailed in state from the room.
Turning at the door, my judge said—
“Let her stand half-an-hour longer on
that stool, and let no one speak to her during the remainder of
the day.”
There was I, then, mounted aloft; I,
who had said I could not bear the shame of standing on my
natural feet in the middle of the room, was now exposed to
general view on a pedestal of infamy. What my sensations were
no language can describe; but just as they all rose, stifling my
breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me:
in passing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange light inspired
them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through
me! How the new feeling bore me up! It was as if a martyr, a
hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the
transit. I mastered the rising hysteria, lifted up my head, and
took a firm stand on the stool. Helen Burns asked some slight
question about her work of Miss Smith, was chidden for the
triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place, and smiled at
me as she again went by. What a smile! I remember it now, and
I know that it was the effluence of fine intellect, of true
courage; it lit up her marked lineaments, her thin face, her
sunken grey eye, like a reflection from the aspect of an angel.
Yet at that moment Helen Burns wore on her arm “the untidy
badge;” scarcely an hour ago I had heard her condemned by Miss
Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and water on the morrow because
she had blotted an exercise in copying it out. Such is the
imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the
clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd’s can only see
those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of
the orb.
CHAPTER VIII
Ere the half-hour ended, five o’clock
struck; school was dismissed, and all were gone into the
refectory to tea. I now ventured to descend: it was deep dusk;
I retired into a corner and sat down on the floor. The spell by
which I had been so far supported began to dissolve; reaction
took place, and soon, so overwhelming was the grief that seized
me, I sank prostrate with my face to the ground. Now I wept:
Helen Burns was not here; nothing sustained me; left to myself I
abandoned myself, and my tears watered the boards. I had meant
to be so good, and to do so much at Lowood: to make so many
friends, to earn respect and win affection. Already I had made
visible progress: that very morning I had reached the head of my
class; Miss Miller had praised me warmly; Miss Temple had smiled
approbation; she had promised to teach me drawing, and to let me
learn French, if I continued to make similar improvement two
months longer: and then I was well received by my fellow-pupils;
treated as an equal by those of my own age, and not molested by
any; now, here I lay again crushed and trodden on; and could I
ever rise more?
“Never,” I thought; and ardently I
wished to die. While sobbing out this wish in broken accents,
some one approached: I started up—again Helen Burns was near me;
the fading fires just showed her coming up the long, vacant
room; she brought my coffee and bread.
“Come, eat something,” she said; but I
put both away from me, feeling as if a drop or a crumb would
have choked me in my present condition. Helen regarded me,
probably with surprise: I could not now abate my agitation,
though I tried hard; I continued to weep aloud. She sat down on
the ground near me, embraced her knees with her arms, and rested
her head upon them; in that attitude she remained silent as an
Indian. I was the first who spoke—
“Helen, why do you stay with a girl
whom everybody believes to be a liar?”
“Everybody, Jane? Why, there are only
eighty people who have heard you called so, and the world
contains hundreds of millions.”
“But what have I to do with millions?
The eighty, I know, despise me.”
“Jane, you are mistaken: probably not
one in the school either despises or dislikes you: many, I am
sure, pity you much.”
“How can they pity me after what Mr.
Brocklehurst has said?”
“Mr. Brocklehurst is not a god: nor is
he even a great and admired man: he is little liked here; he
never took steps to make himself liked. Had he treated you as
an especial favourite, you would have found enemies, declared or
covert, all around you; as it is, the greater number would offer
you sympathy if they dared. Teachers and pupils may look coldly
on you for a day or two, but friendly feelings are concealed in
their hearts; and if you persevere in doing well, these feelings
will ere long appear so much the more evidently for their
temporary suppression. Besides, Jane”—she paused.
“Well, Helen?” said I, putting my hand
into hers: she chafed my fingers gently to warm them, and went
on—
“If all the world hated you, and
believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and
absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.”
“No; I know I should think well of
myself; but that is not enough: if others don’t love me I would
rather die than live—I cannot bear to be solitary and hated,
Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from you, or Miss
Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit
to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or
to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my
chest—”
“Hush, Jane! you think too much of the
love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement; the
sovereign hand that created your frame, and put life into it,
has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or
than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth, and besides
the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of
spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those
spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if
we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides,
and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise our
innocence (if innocent we be: as I know you are of this charge
which Mr. Brocklehurst has weakly and pompously repeated at
second-hand from Mrs. Reed; for I read a sincere nature in your
ardent eyes and on your clear front), and God waits only the
separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward.
Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when
life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to
happiness—to glory?”
I was silent; Helen had calmed me; but
in the tranquillity she imparted there was an alloy of
inexpressible sadness. I felt the impression of woe as she
spoke, but I could not tell whence it came; and when, having
done speaking, she breathed a little fast and coughed a short
cough, I momentarily forgot my own sorrows to yield to a vague
concern for her.
Resting my head on Helen’s shoulder, I
put my arms round her waist; she drew me to her, and we reposed
in silence. We had not sat long thus, when another person came
in. Some heavy clouds, swept from the sky by a rising wind, had
left the moon bare; and her light, streaming in through a window
near, shone full both on us and on the approaching figure, which
we at once recognised as Miss Temple.
“I came on purpose to find you, Jane
Eyre,” said she; “I want you in my room; and as Helen Burns is
with you, she may come too.”
We went; following the superintendent’s
guidance, we had to thread some intricate passages, and mount a
staircase before we reached her apartment; it contained a good
fire, and looked cheerful. Miss Temple told Helen Burns to be
seated in a low arm-chair on one side of the hearth, and herself
taking another, she called me to her side.
“Is it all over?” she asked, looking
down at my face. “Have you cried your grief away?”
“I am afraid I never shall do that.”
“Why?”
“Because I have been wrongly accused;
and you, ma’am, and everybody else, will now think me wicked.”
“We shall think you what you prove
yourself to be, my child. Continue to act as a good girl, and
you will satisfy us.”
“Shall I, Miss Temple?”
“You will,” said she, passing her arm
round me. “And now tell me who is the lady whom Mr.
Brocklehurst called your benefactress?”
“Mrs. Reed, my uncle’s wife. My uncle
is dead, and he left me to her care.”
“Did she not, then, adopt you of her
own accord?”
“No, ma’am; she was sorry to have to do
it: but my uncle, as I have often heard the servants say, got
her to promise before he died that she would always keep me.”
“Well now, Jane, you know, or at least
I will tell you, that when a criminal is accused, he is always
allowed to speak in his own defence. You have been charged with
falsehood; defend yourself to me as well as you can. Say
whatever your memory suggests is true; but add nothing and
exaggerate nothing.”
I resolved, in the depth of my heart,
that I would be most moderate—most correct; and, having
reflected a few minutes in order to arrange coherently what I
had to say, I told her all the story of my sad childhood.
Exhausted by emotion, my language was more subdued than it
generally was when it developed that sad theme; and mindful of
Helen’s warnings against the indulgence of resentment, I infused
into the narrative far less of gall and wormwood than ordinary.
Thus restrained and simplified, it sounded more credible: I felt
as I went on that Miss Temple fully believed me.
In the course of the tale I had
mentioned Mr. Lloyd as having come to see me after the fit: for
I never forgot the, to me, frightful episode of the red-room: in
detailing which, my excitement was sure, in some degree, to
break bounds; for nothing could soften in my recollection the
spasm of agony which clutched my heart when Mrs. Reed spurned my
wild supplication for pardon, and locked me a second time in the
dark and haunted chamber.
I had finished: Miss Temple regarded me
a few minutes in silence; she then said—
“I know something of Mr. Lloyd; I shall
write to him; if his reply agrees with your statement, you shall
be publicly cleared from every imputation; to me, Jane, you are
clear now.”
She kissed me, and still keeping me at
her side (where I was well contented to stand, for I derived a
child’s pleasure from the contemplation of her face, her dress,
her one or two ornaments, her white forehead, her clustered and
shining curls, and beaming dark eyes), she proceeded to address
Helen Burns.
“How are you to-night, Helen? Have you
coughed much to-day?”
“Not quite so much, I think, ma’am.”
“And the pain in your chest?”
“It is a little better.”
Miss Temple got up, took her hand and
examined her pulse; then she returned to her own seat: as she
resumed it, I heard her sigh low. She was pensive a few
minutes, then rousing herself, she said cheerfully—
“But you two are my visitors to-night;
I must treat you as such.” She rang her bell.
“Barbara,” she said to the servant who
answered it, “I have not yet had tea; bring the tray and place
cups for these two young ladies.”
And a tray was soon brought. How
pretty, to my eyes, did the china cups and bright teapot look,
placed on the little round table near the fire! How fragrant
was the steam of the beverage, and the scent of the toast! of
which, however, I, to my dismay (for I was beginning to be
hungry) discerned only a very small portion: Miss Temple
discerned it too.
“Barbara,” said she, “can you not bring
a little more bread and butter? There is not enough for three.”
Barbara went out: she returned soon—
“Madam, Mrs. Harden says she has sent
up the usual quantity.”
Mrs. Harden, be it observed, was the
housekeeper: a woman after Mr. Brocklehurst’s own heart, made up
of equal parts of whalebone and iron.
“Oh, very well!” returned Miss Temple;
“we must make it do, Barbara, I suppose.” And as the girl
withdrew she added, smiling, “Fortunately, I have it in my power
to supply deficiencies for this once.”
Having invited Helen and me to approach
the table, and placed before each of us a cup of tea with one
delicious but thin morsel of toast, she got up, unlocked a
drawer, and taking from it a parcel wrapped in paper, disclosed
presently to our eyes a good-sized seed-cake.
“I meant to give each of you some of
this to take with you,” said she, “but as there is so little
toast, you must have it now,” and she proceeded to cut slices
with a generous hand.
We feasted that evening as on nectar
and ambrosia; and not the least delight of the entertainment was
the smile of gratification with which our hostess regarded us,
as we satisfied our famished appetites on the delicate fare she
liberally supplied.
Tea over and the tray removed, she
again summoned us to the fire; we sat one on each side of her,
and now a conversation followed between her and Helen, which it
was indeed a privilege to be admitted to hear.
Miss Temple had always something of
serenity in her air, of state in her mien, of refined propriety
in her language, which precluded deviation into the ardent, the
excited, the eager: something which chastened the pleasure of
those who looked on her and listened to her, by a controlling
sense of awe; and such was my feeling now: but as to Helen
Burns, I was struck with wonder.
The refreshing meal, the brilliant
fire, the presence and kindness of her beloved instructress, or,
perhaps, more than all these, something in her own unique mind,
had roused her powers within her. They woke, they kindled:
first, they glowed in the bright tint of her cheek, which till
this hour I had never seen but pale and bloodless; then they
shone in the liquid lustre of her eyes, which had suddenly
acquired a beauty more singular than that of Miss Temple’s—a
beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled
brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance. Then her soul
sat on her lips, and language flowed, from what source I cannot
tell. Has a girl of fourteen a heart large enough, vigorous
enough, to hold the swelling spring of pure, full, fervid
eloquence? Such was the characteristic of Helen’s discourse on
that, to me, memorable evening; her spirit seemed hastening to
live within a very brief span as much as many live during a
protracted existence.
They conversed of things I had never
heard of; of nations and times past; of countries far away; of
secrets of nature discovered or guessed at: they spoke of books:
how many they had read! What stores of knowledge they
possessed! Then they seemed so familiar with French names and
French authors: but my amazement reached its climax when Miss
Temple asked Helen if she sometimes snatched a moment to recall
the Latin her father had taught her, and taking a book from a
shelf, bade her read and construe a page of Virgil; and Helen
obeyed, my organ of veneration expanding at every sounding
line. She had scarcely finished ere the bell announced bedtime!
no delay could be admitted; Miss Temple embraced us both,
saying, as she drew us to her heart—
“God bless you, my children!”
Helen she held a little longer than me:
she let her go more reluctantly; it was Helen her eye followed
to the door; it was for her she a second time breathed a sad
sigh; for her she wiped a tear from her cheek.
On reaching the bedroom, we heard the
voice of Miss Scatcherd: she was examining drawers; she had just
pulled out Helen Burns’s, and when we entered Helen was greeted
with a sharp reprimand, and told that to-morrow she should have
half-a-dozen of untidily folded articles pinned to her shoulder.
“My things were indeed in shameful
disorder,” murmured Helen to me, in a low voice: “I intended to
have arranged them, but I forgot.”
Next morning, Miss Scatcherd wrote in
conspicuous characters on a piece of pasteboard the word
“Slattern,” and bound it like a phylactery round Helen’s large,
mild, intelligent, and benign-looking forehead. She wore it
till evening, patient, unresentful, regarding it as a deserved
punishment. The moment Miss Scatcherd withdrew after afternoon
school, I ran to Helen, tore it off, and thrust it into the
fire: the fury of which she was incapable had been burning in my
soul all day, and tears, hot and large, had continually been
scalding my cheek; for the spectacle of her sad resignation gave
me an intolerable pain at the heart.
About a week subsequently to the
incidents above narrated, Miss Temple, who had written to Mr.
Lloyd, received his answer: it appeared that what he said went
to corroborate my account. Miss Temple, having assembled the
whole school, announced that inquiry had been made into the
charges alleged against Jane Eyre, and that she was most happy
to be able to pronounce her completely cleared from every
imputation. The teachers then shook hands with me and kissed
me, and a murmur of pleasure ran through the ranks of my
companions.
Thus relieved of a grievous load, I
from that hour set to work afresh, resolved to pioneer my way
through every difficulty: I toiled hard, and my success was
proportionate to my efforts; my memory, not naturally tenacious,
improved with practice; exercise sharpened my wits; in a few
weeks I was promoted to a higher class; in less than two months
I was allowed to commence French and drawing. I learned the
first two tenses of the verb Etre, and sketched my first
cottage (whose walls, by-the-bye, outrivalled in slope those of
the leaning tower of Pisa), on the same day. That night, on
going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide
supper of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with
which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings: I feasted instead
on the spectacle of ideal drawings, which I saw in the dark; all
the work of my own hands: freely pencilled houses and trees,
picturesque rocks and ruins, Cuyp-like groups of cattle, sweet
paintings of butterflies hovering over unblown roses, of birds
picking at ripe cherries, of wren’s nests enclosing pearl-like
eggs, wreathed about with young ivy sprays. I examined, too, in
thought, the possibility of my ever being able to translate
currently a certain little French story which Madame Pierrot had
that day shown me; nor was that problem solved to my
satisfaction ere I fell sweetly asleep.
Well has Solomon said—“Better is a
dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred
therewith.”
I would not now have exchanged Lowood
with all its privations for Gateshead and its daily luxuries.
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CHAPTER IX
But the privations, or rather the
hardships, of Lowood lessened. Spring drew on: she was indeed
already come; the frosts of winter had ceased; its snows were
melted, its cutting winds ameliorated. My wretched feet, flayed
and swollen to lameness by the sharp air of January, began to
heal and subside under the gentler breathings of April; the
nights and mornings no longer by their Canadian temperature
froze the very blood in our veins; we could now endure the
play-hour passed in the garden: sometimes on a sunny day it
began even to be pleasant and genial, and a greenness grew over
those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought
that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning
brighter traces of her steps. Flowers peeped out amongst the
leaves; snow-drops, crocuses, purple auriculas, and golden-eyed
pansies. On Thursday afternoons (half-holidays) we now took
walks, and found still sweeter flowers opening by the wayside,
under the hedges.
I discovered, too, that a great
pleasure, an enjoyment which the horizon only bounded, lay all
outside the high and spike-guarded walls of our garden: this
pleasure consisted in prospect of noble summits girdling a great
hill-hollow, rich in verdure and shadow; in a bright beck, full
of dark stones and sparkling eddies. How different had this
scene looked when I viewed it laid out beneath the iron sky of
winter, stiffened in frost, shrouded with snow!—when mists as
chill as death wandered to the impulse of east winds along those
purple peaks, and rolled down “ing” and holm till they blended
with the frozen fog of the beck! That beck itself was then a
torrent, turbid and curbless: it tore asunder the wood, and sent
a raving sound through the air, often thickened with wild rain
or whirling sleet; and for the forest on its banks, that
showed only ranks of skeletons.
April advanced to May: a bright serene
May it was; days of blue sky, placid sunshine, and soft western
or southern gales filled up its duration. And now vegetation
matured with vigour; Lowood shook loose its tresses; it became
all green, all flowery; its great elm, ash, and oak skeletons
were restored to majestic life; woodland plants sprang up
profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled
its hollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the
wealth of its wild primrose plants: I have seen their pale gold
gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest
lustre. All this I enjoyed often and fully, free, unwatched,
and almost alone: for this unwonted liberty and pleasure there
was a cause, to which it now becomes my task to advert.
Have I not described a pleasant site
for a dwelling, when I speak of it as bosomed in hill and wood,
and rising from the verge of a stream? Assuredly, pleasant
enough: but whether healthy or not is another question.
That forest-dell, where Lowood lay, was
the cradle of fog and fog-bred pestilence; which, quickening
with the quickening spring, crept into the Orphan Asylum,
breathed typhus through its crowded schoolroom and dormitory,
and, ere May arrived, transformed the seminary into an hospital.
Semi-starvation and neglected colds had
predisposed most of the pupils to receive infection: forty-five
out of the eighty girls lay ill at one time. Classes were
broken up, rules relaxed. The few who continued well were
allowed almost unlimited license; because the medical attendant
insisted on the necessity of frequent exercise to keep them in
health: and had it been otherwise, no one had leisure to watch
or restrain them. Miss Temple’s whole attention was absorbed by
the patients: she lived in the sick-room, never quitting it
except to snatch a few hours’ rest at night. The teachers were
fully occupied with packing up and making other necessary
preparations for the departure of those girls who were fortunate
enough to have friends and relations able and willing to remove
them from the seat of contagion. Many, already smitten, went
home only to die: some died at the school, and were buried
quietly and quickly, the nature of the malady forbidding delay.
While disease had thus become an
inhabitant of Lowood, and death its frequent visitor; while
there was gloom and fear within its walls; while its rooms and
passages steamed with hospital smells, the drug and the pastille
striving vainly to overcome the effluvia of mortality, that
bright May shone unclouded over the bold hills and beautiful
woodland out of doors. Its garden, too, glowed with flowers:
hollyhocks had sprung up tall as trees, lilies had opened,
tulips and roses were in bloom; the borders of the little beds
were gay with pink thrift and crimson double daisies; the
sweetbriars gave out, morning and evening, their scent of spice
and apples; and these fragrant treasures were all useless for
most of the inmates of Lowood, except to furnish now and then a
handful of herbs and blossoms to put in a coffin.
But I, and the rest who continued well,
enjoyed fully the beauties of the scene and season; they let us
ramble in the wood, like gipsies, from morning till night; we
did what we liked, went where we liked: we lived better too.
Mr. Brocklehurst and his family never came near Lowood now:
household matters were not scrutinised into; the cross
housekeeper was gone, driven away by the fear of infection; her
successor, who had been matron at the Lowton Dispensary, unused
to the ways of her new abode, provided with comparative
liberality. Besides, there were fewer to feed; the sick could
eat little; our breakfast-basins were better filled; when there
was no time to prepare a regular dinner, which often happened,
she would give us a large piece of cold pie, or a thick slice of
bread and cheese, and this we carried away with us to the wood,
where we each chose the spot we liked best, and dined
sumptuously.
My favourite seat was a smooth and
broad stone, rising white and dry from the very middle of the
beck, and only to be got at by wading through the water; a feat
I accomplished barefoot. The stone was just broad enough to
accommodate, comfortably, another girl and me, at that time my
chosen comrade—one Mary Ann Wilson; a shrewd, observant
personage, whose society I took pleasure in, partly because she
was witty and original, and partly because she had a manner
which set me at my ease. Some years older than I, she knew more
of the world, and could tell me many things I liked to hear:
with her my curiosity found gratification: to my faults also she
gave ample indulgence, never imposing curb or rein on anything I
said. She had a turn for narrative, I for analysis; she liked
to inform, I to question; so we got on swimmingly together,
deriving much entertainment, if not much improvement, from our
mutual intercourse.
And where, meantime, was Helen Burns?
Why did I not spend these sweet days of liberty with her? Had I
forgotten her? or was I so worthless as to have grown tired of
her pure society? Surely the Mary Ann Wilson I have mentioned
was inferior to my first acquaintance: she could only tell me
amusing stories, and reciprocate any racy and pungent gossip I
chose to indulge in; while, if I have spoken truth of Helen, she
was qualified to give those who enjoyed the privilege of her
converse a taste of far higher things.
True, reader; and I knew and felt this:
and though I am a defective being, with many faults and few
redeeming points, yet I never tired of Helen Burns; nor ever
ceased to cherish for her a sentiment of attachment, as strong,
tender, and respectful as any that ever animated my heart. How
could it be otherwise, when Helen, at all times and under all
circumstances, evinced for me a quiet and faithful friendship,
which ill-humour never soured, nor irritation never troubled?
But Helen was ill at present: for some weeks she had been
removed from my sight to I knew not what room upstairs. She was
not, I was told, in the hospital portion of the house with the
fever patients; for her complaint was consumption, not typhus:
and by consumption I, in my ignorance, understood something
mild, which time and care would be sure to alleviate.
I was confirmed in this idea by the
fact of her once or twice coming downstairs on very warm sunny
afternoons, and being taken by Miss Temple into the garden; but,
on these occasions, I was not allowed to go and speak to her; I
only saw her from the schoolroom window, and then not
distinctly; for she was much wrapped up, and sat at a distance
under the verandah.
One evening, in the beginning of June,
I had stayed out very late with Mary Ann in the wood; we had, as
usual, separated ourselves from the others, and had wandered
far; so far that we lost our way, and had to ask it at a lonely
cottage, where a man and woman lived, who looked after a herd of
half-wild swine that fed on the mast in the wood. When we got
back, it was after moonrise: a pony, which we knew to be the
surgeon’s, was standing at the garden door. Mary Ann remarked
that she supposed some one must be very ill, as Mr. Bates had
been sent for at that time of the evening. She went into the
house; I stayed behind a few minutes to plant in my garden a
handful of roots I had dug up in the forest, and which I feared
would wither if I left them till the morning. This done, I
lingered yet a little longer: the flowers smelt so sweet as the
dew fell; it was such a pleasant evening, so serene, so warm;
the still glowing west promised so fairly another fine day on
the morrow; the moon rose with such majesty in the grave east.
I was noting these things and enjoying them as a child might,
when it entered my mind as it had never done before:—
“How sad to be lying now on a sick bed,
and to be in danger of dying! This world is pleasant—it would
be dreary to be called from it, and to have to go who knows
where?”
And then my mind made its first earnest
effort to comprehend what had been infused into it concerning
heaven and hell; and for the first time it recoiled, baffled;
and for the first time glancing behind, on each side, and before
it, it saw all round an unfathomed gulf: it felt the one point
where it stood—the present; all the rest was formless cloud and
vacant depth; and it shuddered at the thought of tottering, and
plunging amid that chaos. While pondering this new idea, I
heard the front door open; Mr. Bates came out, and with him was
a nurse. After she had seen him mount his horse and depart, she
was about to close the door, but I ran up to her.
“How is Helen Burns?”
“Very poorly,” was the answer.
“Is it her Mr. Bates has been to see?”
“Yes.”
“And what does he say about her?”
“He says she’ll not be here long.”
This phrase, uttered in my hearing
yesterday, would have only conveyed the notion that she was
about to be removed to Northumberland, to her own home. I
should not have suspected that it meant she was dying; but I
knew instantly now! It opened clear on my comprehension that
Helen Burns was numbering her last days in this world, and that
she was going to be taken to the region of spirits, if such
region there were. I experienced a shock of horror, then a
strong thrill of grief, then a desire—a necessity to see her;
and I asked in what room she lay.
“She is in Miss Temple’s room,” said
the nurse.
“May I go up and speak to her?”
“Oh no, child! It is not likely; and
now it is time for you to come in; you’ll catch the fever if you
stop out when the dew is falling.”
The nurse closed the front door; I went
in by the side entrance which led to the schoolroom: I was just
in time; it was nine o’clock, and Miss Miller was calling the
pupils to go to bed.
It might be two hours later, probably
near eleven, when I—not having been able to fall asleep, and
deeming, from the perfect silence of the dormitory, that my
companions were all wrapt in profound repose—rose softly, put on
my frock over my night-dress, and, without shoes, crept from the
apartment, and set off in quest of Miss Temple’s room. It was
quite at the other end of the house; but I knew my way; and the
light of the unclouded summer moon, entering here and there at
passage windows, enabled me to find it without difficulty. An
odour of camphor and burnt vinegar warned me when I came near
the fever room: and I passed its door quickly, fearful lest the
nurse who sat up all night should hear me. I dreaded being
discovered and sent back; for I must see Helen,—I must
embrace her before she died,—I must give her one last kiss,
exchange with her one last word.
Having descended a staircase, traversed
a portion of the house below, and succeeded in opening and
shutting, without noise, two doors, I reached another flight of
steps; these I mounted, and then just opposite to me was Miss
Temple’s room. A light shone through the keyhole and from under
the door; a profound stillness pervaded the vicinity. Coming
near, I found the door slightly ajar; probably to admit some
fresh air into the close abode of sickness. Indisposed to
hesitate, and full of impatient impulses—soul and senses
quivering with keen throes—I put it back and looked in. My eye
sought Helen, and feared to find death.
Close by Miss Temple’s bed, and half
covered with its white curtains, there stood a little crib. I
saw the outline of a form under the clothes, but the face was
hid by the hangings: the nurse I had spoken to in the garden sat
in an easy-chair asleep; an unsnuffed candle burnt dimly on the
table. Miss Temple was not to be seen: I knew afterwards that
she had been called to a delirious patient in the fever-room. I
advanced; then paused by the crib side: my hand was on the
curtain, but I preferred speaking before I withdrew it. I still
recoiled at the dread of seeing a corpse.
“Helen!” I whispered softly, “are you
awake?”
She stirred herself, put back the
curtain, and I saw her face, pale, wasted, but quite composed:
she looked so little changed that my fear was instantly
dissipated.
“Can it be you, Jane?” she asked, in
her own gentle voice.
“Oh!” I thought, “she is not going to
die; they are mistaken: she could not speak and look so calmly
if she were.”
I got on to her crib and kissed her:
her forehead was cold, and her cheek both cold and thin, and so
were her hand and wrist; but she smiled as of old.
“Why are you come here, Jane? It is
past eleven o’clock: I heard it strike some minutes since.”
“I came to see you, Helen: I heard you
were very ill, and I could not sleep till I had spoken to you.”
“You came to bid me good-bye, then: you
are just in time probably.”
“Are you going somewhere, Helen? Are
you going home?”
“Yes; to my long home—my last home.”
“No, no, Helen!” I stopped,
distressed. While I tried to devour my tears, a fit of coughing
seized Helen; it did not, however, wake the nurse; when it was
over, she lay some minutes exhausted; then she whispered—
“Jane, your little feet are bare; lie
down and cover yourself with my quilt.”
I did so: she put her arm over me, and
I nestled close to her. After a long silence, she resumed,
still whispering—
“I am very happy, Jane; and when you
hear that I am dead, you must be sure and not grieve: there is
nothing to grieve about. We all must die one day, and the
illness which is removing me is not painful; it is gentle and
gradual: my mind is at rest. I leave no one to regret me much:
I have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not
miss me. By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I
had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the
world: I should have been continually at fault.”
“But where are you going to, Helen?
Can you see? Do you know?”
“I believe; I have faith: I am going to
God.”
“Where is God? What is God?”
“My Maker and yours, who will never
destroy what He created. I rely implicitly on His power, and
confide wholly in His goodness: I count the hours till that
eventful one arrives which shall restore me to Him, reveal Him
to me.”
“You are sure, then, Helen, that there
is such a place as heaven, and that our souls can get to it when
we die?”
“I am sure there is a future state; I
believe God is good; I can resign my immortal part to Him
without any misgiving. God is my father; God is my friend: I
love Him; I believe He loves me.”
“And shall I see you again, Helen, when
I die?”
“You will come to the same region of
happiness: be received by the same mighty, universal Parent, no
doubt, dear Jane.”
Again I questioned, but this time only
in thought. “Where is that region? Does it exist?” And I
clasped my arms closer round Helen; she seemed dearer to me than
ever; I felt as if I could not let her go; I lay with my face
hidden on her neck. Presently she said, in the sweetest tone—
“How comfortable I am! That last fit
of coughing has tired me a little; I feel as if I could sleep:
but don’t leave me, Jane; I like to have you near me.”
“I’ll stay with you, dear Helen:
no one shall take me away.”
“Are you warm, darling?”
“Yes.”
“Good-night, Jane.”
“Good-night, Helen.”
She kissed me, and I her, and we both
soon slumbered.
When I awoke it was day: an unusual
movement roused me; I looked up; I was in somebody’s arms; the
nurse held me; she was carrying me through the passage back to
the dormitory. I was not reprimanded for leaving my bed; people
had something else to think about; no explanation was afforded
then to my many questions; but a day or two afterwards I learned
that Miss Temple, on returning to her own room at dawn, had
found me laid in the little crib; my face against Helen Burns’s
shoulder, my arms round her neck. I was asleep, and Helen
was—dead.
Her grave is in Brocklebridge
churchyard: for fifteen years after her death it was only
covered by a grassy mound; but now a grey marble tablet marks
the spot, inscribed with her name, and the word “Resurgam.”
CHAPTER X
Hitherto I have recorded in detail the
events of my insignificant existence: to the first ten years of
my life I have given almost as many chapters. But this is not
to be a regular autobiography. I am only bound to invoke Memory
where I know her responses will possess some degree of interest;
therefore I now pass a space of eight years almost in silence: a
few lines only are necessary to keep up the links of connection.
When the typhus fever had fulfilled its
mission of devastation at Lowood, it gradually disappeared from
thence; but not till its virulence and the number of its victims
had drawn public attention on the school. Inquiry was made into
the origin of the scourge, and by degrees various facts came out
which excited public indignation in a high degree. The
unhealthy nature of the site; the quantity and quality of the
children’s food; the brackish, fetid water used in its
preparation; the pupils’ wretched clothing and
accommodations—all these things were discovered, and the
discovery produced a result mortifying to Mr. Brocklehurst, but
beneficial to the institution.
Several wealthy and benevolent
individuals in the county subscribed largely for the erection of
a more convenient building in a better situation; new
regulations were made; improvements in diet and clothing
introduced; the funds of the school were intrusted to the
management of a committee. Mr. Brocklehurst, who, from his
wealth and family connections, could not be overlooked, still
retained the post of treasurer; but he was aided in the
discharge of his duties by gentlemen of rather more enlarged and
sympathising minds: his office of inspector, too, was shared by
those who knew how to combine reason with strictness, comfort
with economy, compassion with uprightness. The school, thus
improved, became in time a truly useful and noble institution.
I remained an inmate of its walls, after its regeneration, for
eight years: six as pupil, and two as teacher; and in both
capacities I bear my testimony to its value and importance.
During these eight years my life was
uniform: but not unhappy, because it was not inactive. I had
the means of an excellent education placed within my reach; a
fondness for some of my studies, and a desire to excel in all,
together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers,
especially such as I loved, urged me on: I availed myself fully
of the advantages offered me. In time I rose to be the first
girl of the first class; then I was invested with the office of
teacher; which I discharged with zeal for two years: but at the
end of that time I altered.
Miss Temple, through all changes, had
thus far continued superintendent of the seminary: to her
instruction I owed the best part of my acquirements; her
friendship and society had been my continual solace; she had
stood me in the stead of mother, governess, and, latterly,
companion. At this period she married, removed with her husband
(a clergyman, an excellent man, almost worthy of such a wife) to
a distant county, and consequently was lost to me.
From the day she left I was no longer
the same: with her was gone every settled feeling, every
association that had made Lowood in some degree a home to me. I
had imbibed from her something of her nature and much of her
habits: more harmonious thoughts: what seemed better regulated
feelings had become the inmates of my mind. I had given in
allegiance to duty and order; I was quiet; I believed I was
content: to the eyes of others, usually even to my own, I
appeared a disciplined and subdued character.
But destiny, in the shape of the Rev.
Mr. Nasmyth, came between me and Miss Temple: I saw her in her
travelling dress step into a post-chaise, shortly after the
marriage ceremony; I watched the chaise mount the hill and
disappear beyond its brow; and then retired to my own room, and
there spent in solitude the greatest part of the half-holiday
granted in honour of the occasion.
I walked about the chamber most of the
time. I imagined myself only to be regretting my loss, and
thinking how to repair it; but when my reflections were
concluded, and I looked up and found that the afternoon was
gone, and evening far advanced, another discovery dawned on me,
namely, that in the interval I had undergone a transforming
process; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss
Temple—or rather that she had taken with her the serene
atmosphere I had been breathing in her vicinity—and that now I
was left in my natural element, and beginning to feel the
stirring of old emotions. It did not seem as if a prop were
withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone: it was not the
power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for
tranquillity was no more. My world had for some years been in
Lowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I
remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field
of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those
who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real
knowledge of life amidst its perils.
I went to my window, opened it, and
looked out. There were the two wings of the building; there was
the garden; there were the skirts of Lowood; there was the hilly
horizon. My eye passed all other objects to rest on those most
remote, the blue peaks; it was those I longed to surmount; all
within their boundary of rock and heath seemed prison-ground,
exile limits. I traced the white road winding round the base of
one mountain, and vanishing in a gorge between two; how I longed
to follow it farther! I recalled the time when I had travelled
that very road in a coach; I remembered descending that hill at
twilight; an age seemed to have elapsed since the day which
brought me first to Lowood, and I had never quitted it since.
My vacations had all been spent at school: Mrs. Reed had never
sent for me to Gateshead; neither she nor any of her family had
ever been to visit me. I had had no communication by letter or
message with the outer world: school-rules, school-duties,
school-habits and notions, and voices, and faces, and phrases,
and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies—such was what I
knew of existence. And now I felt that it was not enough; I
tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired
liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer;
it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I
abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication; for change,
stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space:
“Then,” I cried, half desperate, “grant me at least a new
servitude!”
Here a bell, ringing the hour of
supper, called me downstairs.
I was not free to resume the
interrupted chain of my reflections till bedtime: even then a
teacher who occupied the same room with me kept me from the
subject to which I longed to recur, by a prolonged effusion of
small talk. How I wished sleep would silence her. It seemed as
if, could I but go back to the idea which had last entered my
mind as I stood at the window, some inventive suggestion would
rise for my relief.
Miss Gryce snored at last; she was a
heavy Welshwoman, and till now her habitual nasal strains had
never been regarded by me in any other light than as a nuisance;
to-night I hailed the first deep notes with satisfaction; I was
debarrassed of interruption; my half-effaced thought instantly
revived.
“A new servitude! There is something
in that,” I soliloquised (mentally, be it understood; I did not
talk aloud), “I know there is, because it does not sound too
sweet; it is not like such words as Liberty, Excitement,
Enjoyment: delightful sounds truly; but no more than sounds for
me; and so hollow and fleeting that it is mere waste of time to
listen to them. But Servitude! That must be matter of fact.
Any one may serve: I have served here eight years; now all I
want is to serve elsewhere. Can I not get so much of my own
will? Is not the thing feasible? Yes—yes—the end is not so
difficult; if I had only a brain active enough to ferret out the
means of attaining it.”
I sat up in bed by way of arousing this
said brain: it was a chilly night; I covered my shoulders with a
shawl, and then I proceeded to think again with all my
might.
“What do I want? A new place, in a new
house, amongst new faces, under new circumstances: I want this
because it is of no use wanting anything better. How do people
do to get a new place? They apply to friends, I suppose: I have
no friends. There are many others who have no friends, who must
look about for themselves and be their own helpers; and what is
their resource?”
I could not tell: nothing answered me;
I then ordered my brain to find a response, and quickly. It
worked and worked faster: I felt the pulses throb in my head and
temples; but for nearly an hour it worked in chaos; and no
result came of its efforts. Feverish with vain labour, I got up
and took a turn in the room; undrew the curtain, noted a star or
two, shivered with cold, and again crept to bed.
A kind fairy, in my absence, had surely
dropped the required suggestion on my pillow; for as I lay down,
it came quietly and naturally to my mind.—“Those who want
situations advertise; you must advertise in the ---shire
Herald.”
“How? I know nothing about
advertising.”
Replies rose smooth and prompt now:—
“You must enclose the advertisement and
the money to pay for it under a cover directed to the editor of
the Herald; you must put it, the first opportunity you
have, into the post at Lowton; answers must be addressed to J.E.,
at the post-office there; you can go and inquire in about a week
after you send your letter, if any are come, and act
accordingly.”
This scheme I went over twice, thrice;
it was then digested in my mind; I had it in a clear practical
form: I felt satisfied, and fell asleep.
With earliest day, I was up: I had my
advertisement written, enclosed, and directed before the bell
rang to rouse the school; it ran thus:—
“A young lady accustomed to tuition”
(had I not been a teacher two years?) “is desirous of meeting
with a situation in a private family where the children are
under fourteen (I thought that as I was barely eighteen, it
would not do to undertake the guidance of pupils nearer my own
age). She is qualified to teach the usual branches of a good
English education, together with French, Drawing, and Music” (in
those days, reader, this now narrow catalogue of
accomplishments, would have been held tolerably comprehensive).
“Address, J.E., Post-office, Lowton, ---shire.”
This document remained locked in my
drawer all day: after tea, I asked leave of the new
superintendent to go to Lowton, in order to perform some small
commissions for myself and one or two of my fellow-teachers;
permission was readily granted; I went. It was a walk of two
miles, and the evening was wet, but the days were still long; I
visited a shop or two, slipped the letter into the post-office,
and came back through heavy rain, with streaming garments, but
with a relieved heart.
The succeeding week seemed long: it
came to an end at last, however, like all sublunary things, and
once more, towards the close of a pleasant autumn day, I found
myself afoot on the road to Lowton. A picturesque track it was,
by the way; lying along the side of the beck and through the
sweetest curves of the dale: but that day I thought more of the
letters, that might or might not be awaiting me at the little
burgh whither I was bound, than of the charms of lea and water.
My ostensible errand on this occasion
was to get measured for a pair of shoes; so I discharged that
business first, and when it was done, I stepped across the clean
and quiet little street from the shoemaker’s to the post-office:
it was kept by an old dame, who wore horn spectacles on her
nose, and black mittens on her hands.
“Are there any letters for J.E.?” I
asked.
She peered at me over her spectacles,
and then she opened a drawer and fumbled among its contents for
a long time, so long that my hopes began to falter. At last,
having held a document before her glasses for nearly five
minutes, she presented it across the counter, accompanying the
act by another inquisitive and mistrustful glance—it was for J.E.
“Is there only one?” I demanded.
“There are no more,” said she; and I
put it in my pocket and turned my face homeward: I could not
open it then; rules obliged me to be back by eight, and it was
already half-past seven.
Various duties awaited me on my
arrival. I had to sit with the girls during their hour of
study; then it was my turn to read prayers; to see them to bed:
afterwards I supped with the other teachers. Even when we
finally retired for the night, the inevitable Miss Gryce was
still my companion: we had only a short end of candle in our
candlestick, and I dreaded lest she should talk till it was all
burnt out; fortunately, however, the heavy supper she had eaten
produced a soporific effect: she was already snoring before I
had finished undressing. There still remained an inch of
candle: I now took out my letter; the seal was an initial F.; I
broke it; the contents were brief.
“If J.E., who advertised in the
---shire Herald of last Thursday, possesses the acquirements
mentioned, and if she is in a position to give satisfactory
references as to character and competency, a situation can be
offered her where there is but one pupil, a little girl, under
ten years of age; and where the salary is thirty pounds per
annum. J.E. is requested to send references, name, address, and
all particulars to the direction:—
“Mrs. Fairfax, Thornfield, near
Millcote, ---shire.”
I examined the document long: the
writing was old-fashioned and rather uncertain, like that of an
elderly lady. This circumstance was satisfactory: a private
fear had haunted me, that in thus acting for myself, and by my
own guidance, I ran the risk of getting into some scrape; and,
above all things, I wished the result of my endeavours to be
respectable, proper, en règle. I now felt that an
elderly lady was no bad ingredient in the business I had on
hand. Mrs. Fairfax! I saw her in a black gown and widow’s cap;
frigid, perhaps, but not uncivil: a model of elderly English
respectability. Thornfield! that, doubtless, was the name of
her house: a neat orderly spot, I was sure; though I failed in
my efforts to conceive a correct plan of the premises. Millcote,
---shire; I brushed up my recollections of the map of England,
yes, I saw it; both the shire and the town. ---shire was
seventy miles nearer London than the remote county where I now
resided: that was a recommendation to me. I longed to go where
there was life and movement: Millcote was a large manufacturing
town on the banks of the A-; a busy place enough, doubtless: so
much the better; it would be a complete change at least. Not
that my fancy was much captivated by the idea of long chimneys
and clouds of smoke—“but,” I argued, “Thornfield will, probably,
be a good way from the town.”
Here the socket of the candle dropped,
and the wick went out.
Next day new steps were to be taken; my
plans could no longer be confined to my own breast; I must
impart them in order to achieve their success. Having sought
and obtained an audience of the superintendent during the
noontide recreation, I told her I had a prospect of getting a
new situation where the salary would be double what I now
received (for at Lowood I only got £15 per annum); and requested
she would break the matter for me to Mr. Brocklehurst, or some
of the committee, and ascertain whether they would permit me to
mention them as references. She obligingly consented to act as
mediatrix in the matter. The next day she laid the affair
before Mr. Brocklehurst, who said that Mrs. Reed must be written
to, as she was my natural guardian. A note was accordingly
addressed to that lady, who returned for answer, that “I might
do as I pleased: she had long relinquished all interference in
my affairs.” This note went the round of the committee, and at
last, after what appeared to me most tedious delay, formal leave
was given me to better my condition if I could; and an assurance
added, that as I had always conducted myself well, both as
teacher and pupil, at Lowood, a testimonial of character and
capacity, signed by the inspectors of that institution, should
forthwith be furnished me.
This testimonial I accordingly received
in about a month, forwarded a copy of it to Mrs. Fairfax, and
got that lady’s reply, stating that she was satisfied, and
fixing that day fortnight as the period for my assuming the post
of governess in her house.
I now busied myself in preparations:
the fortnight passed rapidly. I had not a very large wardrobe,
though it was adequate to my wants; and the last day sufficed to
pack my trunk,—the same I had brought with me eight years ago
from Gateshead.
The box was corded, the card nailed
on. In half-an-hour the carrier was to call for it to take it
to Lowton, whither I myself was to repair at an early hour the
next morning to meet the coach. I had brushed my black stuff
travelling-dress, prepared my bonnet, gloves, and muff; sought
in all my drawers to see that no article was left behind; and
now having nothing more to do, I sat down and tried to rest. I
could not; though I had been on foot all day, I could not now
repose an instant; I was too much excited. A phase of my life
was closing to-night, a new one opening to-morrow: impossible to
slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the
change was being accomplished.
“Miss,” said a servant who met me in
the lobby, where I was wandering like a troubled spirit, “a
person below wishes to see you.”
“The carrier, no doubt,” I thought, and
ran downstairs without inquiry. I was passing the back-parlour
or teachers’ sitting-room, the door of which was half open, to
go to the kitchen, when some one ran out—
“It’s her, I am sure!—I could have told
her anywhere!” cried the individual who stopped my progress and
took my hand.
I looked: I saw a woman attired like a
well-dressed servant, matronly, yet still young; very
good-looking, with black hair and eyes, and lively complexion.
“Well, who is it?” she asked, in a
voice and with a smile I half recognised; “you’ve not quite
forgotten me, I think, Miss Jane?”
In another second I was embracing and
kissing her rapturously: “Bessie! Bessie! Bessie!” that was
all I said; whereat she half laughed, half cried, and we both
went into the parlour. By the fire stood a little fellow of
three years old, in plaid frock and trousers.
“That is my little boy,” said Bessie
directly.
“Then you are married, Bessie?”
“Yes; nearly five years since to Robert
Leaven, the coachman; and I’ve a little girl besides Bobby
there, that I’ve christened Jane.”
“And you don’t live at Gateshead?”
“I live at the lodge: the old porter
has left.”
“Well, and how do they all get on?
Tell me everything about them, Bessie: but sit down first; and,
Bobby, come and sit on my knee, will you?” but Bobby preferred
sidling over to his mother.
“You’re not grown so very tall, Miss
Jane, nor so very stout,” continued Mrs. Leaven. “I dare say
they’ve not kept you too well at school: Miss Reed is the head
and shoulders taller than you are; and Miss Georgiana would make
two of you in breadth.”
“Georgiana is handsome, I suppose,
Bessie?”
“Very. She went up to London last
winter with her mama, and there everybody admired her, and a
young lord fell in love with her: but his relations were against
the match; and—what do you think?—he and Miss Georgiana made it
up to run away; but they were found out and stopped. It was
Miss Reed that found them out: I believe she was envious; and
now she and her sister lead a cat and dog life together; they
are always quarrelling—”
“Well, and what of John Reed?”
“Oh, he is not doing so well as his
mama could wish. He went to college, and he got—plucked, I
think they call it: and then his uncles wanted him to be a
barrister, and study the law: but he is such a dissipated young
man, they will never make much of him, I think.”
“What does he look like?”
“He is very tall: some people call him
a fine-looking young man; but he has such thick lips.”
“And Mrs. Reed?”
“Missis looks stout and well enough in
the face, but I think she’s not quite easy in her mind: Mr.
John’s conduct does not please her—he spends a deal of money.”
“Did she send you here, Bessie?”
“No, indeed: but I have long wanted to
see you, and when I heard that there had been a letter from you,
and that you were going to another part of the country, I
thought I’d just set off, and get a look at you before you were
quite out of my reach.”
“I am afraid you are disappointed in
me, Bessie.” I said this laughing: I perceived that Bessie’s
glance, though it expressed regard, did in no shape denote
admiration.
“No, Miss Jane, not exactly: you are
genteel enough; you look like a lady, and it is as much as ever
I expected of you: you were no beauty as a child.”
I smiled at Bessie’s frank answer: I
felt that it was correct, but I confess I was not quite
indifferent to its import: at eighteen most people wish to
please, and the conviction that they have not an exterior likely
to second that desire brings anything but gratification.
“I dare say you are clever, though,”
continued Bessie, by way of solace. “What can you do? Can you
play on the piano?”
“A little.”
There was one in the room; Bessie went
and opened it, and then asked me to sit down and give her a
tune: I played a waltz or two, and she was charmed.
“The Miss Reeds could not play as
well!” said she exultingly. “I always said you would surpass
them in learning: and can you draw?”
“That is one of my paintings over the
chimney-piece.” It was a landscape in water colours, of which I
had made a present to the superintendent, in acknowledgment of
her obliging mediation with the committee on my behalf, and
which she had framed and glazed.
“Well, that is beautiful, Miss Jane!
It is as fine a picture as any Miss Reed’s drawing-master could
paint, let alone the young ladies themselves, who could not come
near it: and have you learnt French?”
“Yes, Bessie, I can both read it and
speak it.”
“And you can work on muslin and
canvas?”
“I can.”
“Oh, you are quite a lady, Miss Jane!
I knew you would be: you will get on whether your relations
notice you or not. There was something I wanted to ask you.
Have you ever heard anything from your father’s kinsfolk, the
Eyres?”
“Never in my life.”
“Well, you know Missis always said they
were poor and quite despicable: and they may be poor; but I
believe they are as much gentry as the Reeds are; for one day,
nearly seven years ago, a Mr. Eyre came to Gateshead and wanted
to see you; Missis said you were at school fifty miles off; he
seemed so much disappointed, for he could not stay: he was going
on a voyage to a foreign country, and the ship was to sail from
London in a day or two. He looked quite a gentleman, and I
believe he was your father’s brother.”
“What foreign country was he going to,
Bessie?”
“An island thousands of miles off,
where they make wine—the butler did tell me—”
“Madeira?” I suggested.
“Yes, that is it—that is the very
word.”
“So he went?”
“Yes; he did not stay many minutes in
the house: Missis was very high with him; she called him
afterwards a ‘sneaking tradesman.’ My Robert believes he was a
wine-merchant.”
“Very likely,” I returned; “or perhaps
clerk or agent to a wine-merchant.”
Bessie and I conversed about old times
an hour longer, and then she was obliged to leave me: I saw her
again for a few minutes the next morning at Lowton, while I was
waiting for the coach. We parted finally at the door of the
Brocklehurst Arms there: each went her separate way; she set off
for the brow of Lowood Fell to meet the conveyance which was to
take her back to Gateshead, I mounted the vehicle which was to
bear me to new duties and a new life in the unknown environs of
Millcote.
CHAPTER XI
A new chapter in a novel is something
like a new scene in a play; and when I draw up the curtain this
time, reader, you must fancy you see a room in the George Inn at
Millcote, with such large figured papering on the walls as inn
rooms have; such a carpet, such furniture, such ornaments on the
mantelpiece, such prints, including a portrait of George the
Third, and another of the Prince of Wales, and a representation
of the death of Wolfe. All this is visible to you by the light
of an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, and by that of an
excellent fire, near which I sit in my cloak and bonnet; my muff
and umbrella lie on the table, and I am warming away the
numbness and chill contracted by sixteen hours’ exposure to the
rawness of an October day: I left Lowton at four o’clock a.m.,
and the Millcote town clock is now just striking eight.
Reader, though I look comfortably
accommodated, I am not very tranquil in my mind. I thought when
the coach stopped here there would be some one to meet me; I
looked anxiously round as I descended the wooden steps the
“boots” placed for my convenience, expecting to hear my name
pronounced, and to see some description of carriage waiting to
convey me to Thornfield. Nothing of the sort was visible; and
when I asked a waiter if any one had been to inquire after a
Miss Eyre, I was answered in the negative: so I had no resource
but to request to be shown into a private room: and here I am
waiting, while all sorts of doubts and fears are troubling my
thoughts.
It is a very strange sensation to
inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut
adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to
which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many
impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of
adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it;
but then the throb of fear disturbs it; and fear with me became
predominant when half-an-hour elapsed and still I was alone. I
bethought myself to ring the bell.
“Is there a place in this neighbourhood
called Thornfield?” I asked of the waiter who answered the
summons.
“Thornfield? I don’t know, ma’am; I’ll
inquire at the bar.” He vanished, but reappeared instantly—
“Is your name Eyre, Miss?”
“Yes.”
“Person here waiting for you.”
I jumped up, took my muff and umbrella,
and hastened into the inn-passage: a man was standing by the
open door, and in the lamp-lit street I dimly saw a one-horse
conveyance.
“This will be your luggage, I suppose?”
said the man rather abruptly when he saw me, pointing to my
trunk in the passage.
“Yes.” He hoisted it on to the
vehicle, which was a sort of car, and then I got in; before he
shut me up, I asked him how far it was to Thornfield.
“A matter of six miles.”
“How long shall we be before we get
there?”
“Happen an hour and a half.”
He fastened the car door, climbed to
his own seat outside, and we set off. Our progress was
leisurely, and gave me ample time to reflect; I was content to
be at length so near the end of my journey; and as I leaned back
in the comfortable though not elegant conveyance, I meditated
much at my ease.
“I suppose,” thought I, “judging from
the plainness of the servant and carriage, Mrs. Fairfax is not a
very dashing person: so much the better; I never lived amongst
fine people but once, and I was very miserable with them. I
wonder if she lives alone except this little girl; if so, and if
she is in any degree amiable, I shall surely be able to get on
with her; I will do my best; it is a pity that doing one’s best
does not always answer. At Lowood, indeed, I took that
resolution, kept it, and succeeded in pleasing; but with Mrs.
Reed, I remember my best was always spurned with scorn. I pray
God Mrs. Fairfax may not turn out a second Mrs. Reed; but if she
does, I am not bound to stay with her! let the worst come to the
worst, I can advertise again. How far are we on our road now, I
wonder?”
I let down the window and looked out;
Millcote was behind us; judging by the number of its lights, it
seemed a place of considerable magnitude, much larger than
Lowton. We were now, as far as I could see, on a sort of
common; but there were houses scattered all over the district; I
felt we were in a different region to Lowood, more populous,
less picturesque; more stirring, less romantic.
The roads were heavy, the night misty;
my conductor let his horse walk all the way, and the hour and a
half extended, I verily believe, to two hours; at last he turned
in his seat and said—
“You’re noan so far fro’ Thornfield
now.”
Again I looked out: we were passing a
church; I saw its low broad tower against the sky, and its bell
was tolling a quarter; I saw a narrow galaxy of lights too, on a
hillside, marking a village or hamlet. About ten minutes after,
the driver got down and opened a pair of gates: we passed
through, and they clashed to behind us. We now slowly ascended
a drive, and came upon the long front of a house: candlelight
gleamed from one curtained bow-window; all the rest were dark.
The car stopped at the front door; it was opened by a
maid-servant; I alighted and went in.
“Will you walk this way, ma’am?” said
the girl; and I followed her across a square hall with high
doors all round: she ushered me into a room whose double
illumination of fire and candle at first dazzled me, contrasting
as it did with the darkness to which my eyes had been for two
hours inured; when I could see, however, a cosy and agreeable
picture presented itself to my view.
A snug small room; a round table by a
cheerful fire; an arm-chair high-backed and old-fashioned,
wherein sat the neatest imaginable little elderly lady, in
widow’s cap, black silk gown, and snowy muslin apron; exactly
like what I had fancied Mrs. Fairfax, only less stately and
milder looking. She was occupied in knitting; a large cat sat
demurely at her feet; nothing in short was wanting to complete
the beau-ideal of domestic comfort. A more reassuring
introduction for a new governess could scarcely be conceived;
there was no grandeur to overwhelm, no stateliness to embarrass;
and then, as I entered, the old lady got up and promptly and
kindly came forward to meet me.
“How do you do, my dear? I am afraid
you have had a tedious ride; John drives so slowly; you must be
cold, come to the fire.”
“Mrs. Fairfax, I suppose?” said I.
“Yes, you are right: do sit down.”
She conducted me to her own chair, and
then began to remove my shawl and untie my bonnet-strings; I
begged she would not give herself so much trouble.
“Oh, it is no trouble; I dare say your
own hands are almost numbed with cold. Leah, make a little hot
negus and cut a sandwich or two: here are the keys of the
storeroom.”
And she produced from her pocket a most
housewifely bunch of keys, and delivered them to the servant.
“Now, then, draw nearer to the fire,”
she continued. “You’ve brought your luggage with you, haven’t
you, my dear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll see it carried into your room,”
she said, and bustled out.
“She treats me like a visitor,” thought
I. “I little expected such a reception; I anticipated only
coldness and stiffness: this is not like what I have heard of
the treatment of governesses; but I must not exult too soon.”
She returned; with her own hands
cleared her knitting apparatus and a book or two from the table,
to make room for the tray which Leah now brought, and then
herself handed me the refreshments. I felt rather confused at
being the object of more attention than I had ever before
received, and, that too, shown by my employer and superior; but
as she did not herself seem to consider she was doing anything
out of her place, I thought it better to take her civilities
quietly.
“Shall I have the pleasure of seeing
Miss Fairfax to-night?” I asked, when I had partaken of what she
offered me.
“What did you say, my dear? I am a
little deaf,” returned the good lady, approaching her ear to my
mouth.
I repeated the question more
distinctly.
“Miss Fairfax? Oh, you mean Miss
Varens! Varens is the name of your future pupil.”
“Indeed! Then she is not your
daughter?”
“No,—I have no family.”
I should have followed up my first
inquiry, by asking in what way Miss Varens was connected with
her; but I recollected it was not polite to ask too many
questions: besides, I was sure to hear in time.
“I am so glad,” she continued, as she
sat down opposite to me, and took the cat on her knee; “I am so
glad you are come; it will be quite pleasant living here now
with a companion. To be sure it is pleasant at any time; for
Thornfield is a fine old hall, rather neglected of late years
perhaps, but still it is a respectable place; yet you know in
winter-time one feels dreary quite alone in the best quarters.
I say alone—Leah is a nice girl to be sure, and John and his
wife are very decent people; but then you see they are only
servants, and one can’t converse with them on terms of equality:
one must keep them at due distance, for fear of losing one’s
authority. I’m sure last winter (it was a very severe one, if
you recollect, and when it did not snow, it rained and blew),
not a creature but the butcher and postman came to the house,
from November till February; and I really got quite melancholy
with sitting night after night alone; I had Leah in to read to
me sometimes; but I don’t think the poor girl liked the task
much: she felt it confining. In spring and summer one got on
better: sunshine and long days make such a difference; and then,
just at the commencement of this autumn, little Adela Varens
came and her nurse: a child makes a house alive all at once; and
now you are here I shall be quite gay.”
My heart really warmed to the worthy
lady as I heard her talk; and I drew my chair a little nearer to
her, and expressed my sincere wish that she might find my
company as agreeable as she anticipated.
“But I’ll not keep you sitting up late
to-night,” said she; “it is on the stroke of twelve now, and you
have been travelling all day: you must feel tired. If you have
got your feet well warmed, I’ll show you your bedroom. I’ve had
the room next to mine prepared for you; it is only a small
apartment, but I thought you would like it better than one of
the large front chambers: to be sure they have finer furniture,
but they are so dreary and solitary, I never sleep in them
myself.”
I thanked her for her considerate
choice, and as I really felt fatigued with my long journey,
expressed my readiness to retire. She took her candle, and I
followed her from the room. First she went to see if the
hall-door was fastened; having taken the key from the lock, she
led the way upstairs. The steps and banisters were of oak; the
staircase window was high and latticed; both it and the long
gallery into which the bedroom doors opened looked as if they
belonged to a church rather than a house. A very chill and
vault-like air pervaded the stairs and gallery, suggesting
cheerless ideas of space and solitude; and I was glad, when
finally ushered into my chamber, to find it of small dimensions,
and furnished in ordinary, modern style.
When Mrs. Fairfax had bidden me a kind
good-night, and I had fastened my door, gazed leisurely round,
and in some measure effaced the eerie impression made by that
wide hall, that dark and spacious staircase, and that long, cold
gallery, by the livelier aspect of my little room, I remembered
that, after a day of bodily fatigue and mental anxiety, I was
now at last in safe haven. The impulse of gratitude swelled my
heart, and I knelt down at the bedside, and offered up thanks
where thanks were due; not forgetting, ere I rose, to implore
aid on my further path, and the power of meriting the kindness
which seemed so frankly offered me before it was earned. My
couch had no thorns in it that night; my solitary room no
fears. At once weary and content, I slept soon and soundly:
when I awoke it was broad day.
The chamber looked such a bright little
place to me as the sun shone in between the gay blue chintz
window curtains, showing papered walls and a carpeted floor, so
unlike the bare planks and stained plaster of Lowood, that my
spirits rose at the view. Externals have a great effect on the
young: I thought that a fairer era of life was beginning for me,
one that was to have its flowers and pleasures, as well as its
thorns and toils. My faculties, roused by the change of scene,
the new field offered to hope, seemed all astir. I cannot
precisely define what they expected, but it was something
pleasant: not perhaps that day or that month, but at an
indefinite future period.
I rose; I dressed myself with care:
obliged to be plain—for I had no article of attire that was not
made with extreme simplicity—I was still by nature solicitous to
be neat. It was not my habit to be disregardful of appearance
or careless of the impression I made: on the contrary, I ever
wished to look as well as I could, and to please as much as my
want of beauty would permit. I sometimes regretted that I was
not handsomer; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a
straight nose, and small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall,
stately, and finely developed in figure; I felt it a misfortune
that I was so little, so pale, and had features so irregular and
so marked. And why had I these aspirations and these regrets?
It would be difficult to say: I could not then distinctly say it
to myself; yet I had a reason, and a logical, natural reason
too. However, when I had brushed my hair very smooth, and put
on my black frock—which, Quakerlike as it was, at least had the
merit of fitting to a nicety—and adjusted my clean white tucker,
I thought I should do respectably enough to appear before Mrs.
Fairfax, and that my new pupil would not at least recoil from me
with antipathy. Having opened my chamber window, and seen that
I left all things straight and neat on the toilet table, I
ventured forth.
Traversing the long and matted gallery,
I descended the slippery steps of oak; then I gained the hall: I
halted there a minute; I looked at some pictures on the walls
(one, I remember, represented a grim man in a cuirass, and one a
lady with powdered hair and a pearl necklace), at a bronze lamp
pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock whose case was of oak
curiously carved, and ebon black with time and rubbing.
Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me; but then I
was so little accustomed to grandeur. The hall-door, which was
half of glass, stood open; I stepped over the threshold. It was
a fine autumn morning; the early sun shone serenely on embrowned
groves and still green fields; advancing on to the lawn, I
looked up and surveyed the front of the mansion. It was three
storeys high, of proportions not vast, though considerable: a
gentleman’s manor-house, not a nobleman’s seat: battlements
round the top gave it a picturesque look. Its grey front stood
out well from the background of a rookery, whose cawing tenants
were now on the wing: they flew over the lawn and grounds to
alight in a great meadow, from which these were separated by a
sunk fence, and where an array of mighty old thorn trees,
strong, knotty, and broad as oaks, at once explained the
etymology of the mansion’s designation. Farther off were hills:
not so lofty as those round Lowood, nor so craggy, nor so like
barriers of separation from the living world; but yet quiet and
lonely hills enough, and seeming to embrace Thornfield with a
seclusion I had not expected to find existent so near the
stirring locality of Millcote. A little hamlet, whose roofs
were blent with trees, straggled up the side of one of these
hills; the church of the district stood nearer Thornfield: its
old tower-top looked over a knoll between the house and gates.
I was yet enjoying the calm prospect
and pleasant fresh air, yet listening with delight to the cawing
of the rooks, yet surveying the wide, hoary front of the hall,
and thinking what a great place it was for one lonely little
dame like Mrs. Fairfax to inhabit, when that lady appeared at
the door.
“What! out already?” said she. “I see
you are an early riser.” I went up to her, and was received
with an affable kiss and shake of the hand.
“How do you like Thornfield?” she
asked. I told her I liked it very much.
“Yes,” she said, “it is a pretty place;
but I fear it will be getting out of order, unless Mr. Rochester
should take it into his head to come and reside here
permanently; or, at least, visit it rather oftener: great houses
and fine grounds require the presence of the proprietor.”
“Mr. Rochester!” I exclaimed. “Who is
he?”
“The owner of Thornfield,” she
responded quietly. “Did you not know he was called Rochester?”
Of course I did not—I had never heard
of him before; but the old lady seemed to regard his existence
as a universally understood fact, with which everybody must be
acquainted by instinct.
“I thought,” I continued, “Thornfield
belonged to you.”
“To me? Bless you, child; what an
idea! To me! I am only the housekeeper—the manager. To be
sure I am distantly related to the Rochesters by the mother’s
side, or at least my husband was; he was a clergyman, incumbent
of Hay—that little village yonder on the hill—and that church
near the gates was his. The present Mr. Rochester’s mother was
a Fairfax, and second cousin to my husband: but I never presume
on the connection—in fact, it is nothing to me; I consider
myself quite in the light of an ordinary housekeeper: my
employer is always civil, and I expect nothing more.”
“And the little girl—my pupil!”
“She is Mr. Rochester’s ward; he
commissioned me to find a governess for her. He intended to
have her brought up in ---shire, I believe. Here she comes,
with her ‘bonne,’ as she calls her nurse.” The enigma then was
explained: this affable and kind little widow was no great dame;
but a dependant like myself. I did not like her the worse for
that; on the contrary, I felt better pleased than ever. The
equality between her and me was real; not the mere result of
condescension on her part: so much the better—my position was
all the freer.
As I was meditating on this discovery,
a little girl, followed by her attendant, came running up the
lawn. I looked at my pupil, who did not at first appear to
notice me: she was quite a child, perhaps seven or eight years
old, slightly built, with a pale, small-featured face, and a
redundancy of hair falling in curls to her waist.
“Good morning, Miss Adela,” said Mrs.
Fairfax. “Come and speak to the lady who is to teach you, and
to make you a clever woman some day.” She approached.
“C’est là ma gouverante!” said she,
pointing to me, and addressing her nurse; who answered—
“Mais oui, certainement.”
“Are they foreigners?” I inquired,
amazed at hearing the French language.
“The nurse is a foreigner, and Adela
was born on the Continent; and, I believe, never left it till
within six months ago. When she first came here she could speak
no English; now she can make shift to talk it a little: I don’t
understand her, she mixes it so with French; but you will make
out her meaning very well, I dare say.”
Fortunately I had had the advantage of
being taught French by a French lady; and as I had always made a
point of conversing with Madame Pierrot as often as I could, and
had besides, during the last seven years, learnt a portion of
French by heart daily—applying myself to take pains with my
accent, and imitating as closely as possible the pronunciation
of my teacher, I had acquired a certain degree of readiness and
correctness in the language, and was not likely to be much at a
loss with Mademoiselle Adela. She came and shook hand with me
when she heard that I was her governess; and as I led her in to
breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue:
she replied briefly at first, but after we were seated at the
table, and she had examined me some ten minutes with her large
hazel eyes, she suddenly commenced chattering fluently.
“Ah!” cried she, in French, “you speak
my language as well as Mr. Rochester does: I can talk to you as
I can to him, and so can Sophie. She will be glad: nobody here
understands her: Madame Fairfax is all English. Sophie is my
nurse; she came with me over the sea in a great ship with a
chimney that smoked—how it did smoke!—and I was sick, and so was
Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester lay down on a
sofa in a pretty room called the salon, and Sophie and I had
little beds in another place. I nearly fell out of mine; it was
like a shelf. And Mademoiselle—what is your name?”
“Eyre—Jane Eyre.”
“Aire? Bah! I cannot say it. Well,
our ship stopped in the morning, before it was quite daylight,
at a great city—a huge city, with very dark houses and all
smoky; not at all like the pretty clean town I came from; and
Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the land,
and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach, which took
us to a beautiful large house, larger than this and finer,
called an hotel. We stayed there nearly a week: I and Sophie
used to walk every day in a great green place full of trees,
called the Park; and there were many children there besides me,
and a pond with beautiful birds in it, that I fed with crumbs.”
“Can you understand her when she runs
on so fast?” asked Mrs. Fairfax.
I understood her very well, for I had
been accustomed to the fluent tongue of Madame Pierrot.
“I wish,” continued the good lady, “you
would ask her a question or two about her parents: I wonder if
she remembers them?”
“Adèle,” I inquired, “with whom did you
live when you were in that pretty clean town you spoke of?”
“I lived long ago with mama; but she is
gone to the Holy Virgin. Mama used to teach me to dance and
sing, and to say verses. A great many gentlemen and ladies came
to see mama, and I used to dance before them, or to sit on their
knees and sing to them: I liked it. Shall I let you hear me
sing now?”
She had finished her breakfast, so I
permitted her to give a specimen of her accomplishments.
Descending from her chair, she came and placed herself on my
knee; then, folding her little hands demurely before her,
shaking back her curls and lifting her eyes to the ceiling, she
commenced singing a song from some opera. It was the strain of
a forsaken lady, who, after bewailing the perfidy of her lover,
calls pride to her aid; desires her attendant to deck her in her
brightest jewels and richest robes, and resolves to meet the
false one that night at a ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety
of her demeanour, how little his desertion has affected her.
The subject seemed strangely chosen for
an infant singer; but I suppose the point of the exhibition lay
in hearing the notes of love and jealousy warbled with the lisp
of childhood; and in very bad taste that point was: at least I
thought so.
Adèle sang the canzonette tunefully
enough, and with the naïveté of her age. This achieved,
she jumped from my knee and said, “Now, Mademoiselle, I will
repeat you some poetry.”
Assuming an attitude, she began, “La
Ligue des Rats: fable de La Fontaine.” She then declaimed the
little piece with an attention to punctuation and emphasis, a
flexibility of voice and an appropriateness of gesture, very
unusual indeed at her age, and which proved she had been
carefully trained.
“Was it your mama who taught you that
piece?” I asked.
“Yes, and she just used to say it in
this way: ‘Qu’ avez vous donc? lui dit un de ces rats; parlez!’
She made me lift my hand—so—to remind me to raise my voice at
the question. Now shall I dance for you?”
“No, that will do: but after your mama
went to the Holy Virgin, as you say, with whom did you live
then?”
“With Madame Frédéric and her husband:
she took care of me, but she is nothing related to me. I think
she is poor, for she had not so fine a house as mama. I was not
long there. Mr. Rochester asked me if I would like to go and
live with him in England, and I said yes; for I knew Mr.
Rochester before I knew Madame Frédéric, and he was always kind
to me and gave me pretty dresses and toys: but you see he has
not kept his word, for he has brought me to England, and now he
is gone back again himself, and I never see him.”
After breakfast, Adèle and I withdrew
to the library, which room, it appears, Mr. Rochester had
directed should be used as the schoolroom. Most of the books
were locked up behind glass doors; but there was one bookcase
left open containing everything that could be needed in the way
of elementary works, and several volumes of light literature,
poetry, biography, travels, a few romances, &c. I suppose he
had considered that these were all the governess would require
for her private perusal; and, indeed, they contented me amply
for the present; compared with the scanty pickings I had now and
then been able to glean at Lowood, they seemed to offer an
abundant harvest of entertainment and information. In this
room, too, there was a cabinet piano, quite new and of superior
tone; also an easel for painting and a pair of globes.
I found my pupil sufficiently docile,
though disinclined to apply: she had not been used to regular
occupation of any kind. I felt it would be injudicious to
confine her too much at first; so, when I had talked to her a
great deal, and got her to learn a little, and when the morning
had advanced to noon, I allowed her to return to her nurse. I
then proposed to occupy myself till dinner-time in drawing some
little sketches for her use.
As I was going upstairs to fetch my
portfolio and pencils, Mrs. Fairfax called to me: “Your morning
school-hours are over now, I suppose,” said she. She was in a
room the folding-doors of which stood open: I went in when she
addressed me. It was a large, stately apartment, with purple
chairs and curtains, a Turkey carpet, walnut-panelled walls, one
vast window rich in slanted glass, and a lofty ceiling, nobly
moulded. Mrs. Fairfax was dusting some vases of fine purple
spar, which stood on a sideboard.
“What a beautiful room!” I exclaimed,
as I looked round; for I had never before seen any half so
imposing.
“Yes; this is the dining-room. I have
just opened the window, to let in a little air and sunshine; for
everything gets so damp in apartments that are seldom inhabited;
the drawing-room yonder feels like a vault.”
She pointed to a wide arch
corresponding to the window, and hung like it with a Tyrian-dyed
curtain, now looped up. Mounting to it by two broad steps, and
looking through, I thought I caught a glimpse of a fairy place,
so bright to my novice-eyes appeared the view beyond. Yet it
was merely a very pretty drawing-room, and within it a boudoir,
both spread with white carpets, on which seemed laid brilliant
garlands of flowers; both ceiled with snowy mouldings of white
grapes and vine-leaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast
crimson couches and ottomans; while the ornaments on the pale
Parian mantelpiece were of sparkling Bohemian glass, ruby red;
and between the windows large mirrors repeated the general
blending of snow and fire.
“In what order you keep these rooms,
Mrs. Fairfax!” said I. “No dust, no canvas coverings: except
that the air feels chilly, one would think they were inhabited
daily.”
“Why, Miss Eyre, though Mr. Rochester’s
visits here are rare, they are always sudden and unexpected; and
as I observed that it put him out to find everything swathed up,
and to have a bustle of arrangement on his arrival, I thought it
best to keep the rooms in readiness.”
“Is Mr. Rochester an exacting,
fastidious sort of man?”
“Not particularly so; but he has a
gentleman’s tastes and habits, and he expects to have things
managed in conformity to them.”
“Do you like him? Is he generally
liked?”
“Oh, yes; the family have always been
respected here. Almost all the land in this neighbourhood, as
far as you can see, has belonged to the Rochesters time out of
mind.”
“Well, but, leaving his land out of the
question, do you like him? Is he liked for himself?”
“I have no cause to do otherwise than
like him; and I believe he is considered a just and liberal
landlord by his tenants: but he has never lived much amongst
them.”
“But has he no peculiarities? What, in
short, is his character?”
“Oh! his character is unimpeachable, I
suppose. He is rather peculiar, perhaps: he has travelled a
great deal, and seen a great deal of the world, I should think.
I dare say he is clever, but I never had much conversation with
him.”
“In what way is he peculiar?”
“I don’t know—it is not easy to
describe—nothing striking, but you feel it when he speaks to
you; you cannot be always sure whether he is in jest or earnest,
whether he is pleased or the contrary; you don’t thoroughly
understand him, in short—at least, I don’t: but it is of no
consequence, he is a very good master.”
This was all the account I got from
Mrs. Fairfax of her employer and mine. There are people who
seem to have no notion of sketching a character, or observing
and describing salient points, either in persons or things: the
good lady evidently belonged to this class; my queries puzzled,
but did not draw her out. Mr. Rochester was Mr. Rochester in
her eyes; a gentleman, a landed proprietor—nothing more: she
inquired and searched no further, and evidently wondered at my
wish to gain a more definite notion of his identity.
When we left the dining-room, she
proposed to show me over the rest of the house; and I followed
her upstairs and downstairs, admiring as I went; for all was
well arranged and handsome. The large front chambers I thought
especially grand: and some of the third-storey rooms, though
dark and low, were interesting from their air of antiquity. The
furniture once appropriated to the lower apartments had from
time to time been removed here, as fashions changed: and the
imperfect light entering by their narrow casement showed
bedsteads of a hundred years old; chests in oak or walnut,
looking, with their strange carvings of palm branches and
cherubs’ heads, like types of the Hebrew ark; rows of venerable
chairs, high-backed and narrow; stools still more antiquated, on
whose cushioned tops were yet apparent traces of half-effaced
embroideries, wrought by fingers that for two generations had
been coffin-dust. All these relics gave to the third storey of
Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine of
memory. I liked the hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these
retreats in the day; but I by no means coveted a night’s repose
on one of those wide and heavy beds: shut in, some of them, with
doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought old English hangings
crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of strange flowers,
and stranger birds, and strangest human beings,—all which would
have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of moonlight.
“Do the servants sleep in these rooms?”
I asked.
“No; they occupy a range of smaller
apartments to the back; no one ever sleeps here: one would
almost say that, if there were a ghost at Thornfield Hall, this
would be its haunt.”
“So I think: you have no ghost, then?”
“None that I ever heard of,” returned
Mrs. Fairfax, smiling.
“Nor any traditions of one? no legends
or ghost stories?”
“I believe not. And yet it is said the
Rochesters have been rather a violent than a quiet race in their
time: perhaps, though, that is the reason they rest tranquilly
in their graves now.”
“Yes—‘after life’s fitful fever they
sleep well,’” I muttered. “Where are you going now, Mrs.
Fairfax?” for she was moving away.
“On to the leads; will you come and see
the view from thence?” I followed still, up a very narrow
staircase to the attics, and thence by a ladder and through a
trap-door to the roof of the hall. I was now on a level with
the crow colony, and could see into their nests. Leaning over
the battlements and looking far down, I surveyed the grounds
laid out like a map: the bright and velvet lawn closely girdling
the grey base of the mansion; the field, wide as a park, dotted
with its ancient timber; the wood, dun and sere, divided by a
path visibly overgrown, greener with moss than the trees were
with foliage; the church at the gates, the road, the tranquil
hills, all reposing in the autumn day’s sun; the horizon bounded
by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white. No
feature in the scene was extraordinary, but all was pleasing.
When I turned from it and repassed the trap-door, I could
scarcely see my way down the ladder; the attic seemed black as a
vault compared with that arch of blue air to which I had been
looking up, and to that sunlit scene of grove, pasture, and
green hill, of which the hall was the centre, and over which I
had been gazing with delight.
Mrs. Fairfax stayed behind a moment to
fasten the trap-door; I, by drift of groping, found the outlet
from the attic, and proceeded to descend the narrow garret
staircase. I lingered in the long passage to which this led,
separating the front and back rooms of the third storey: narrow,
low, and dim, with only one little window at the far end, and
looking, with its two rows of small black doors all shut, like a
corridor in some Bluebeard’s castle.
While I paced softly on, the last sound
I expected to hear in so still a region, a laugh, struck my
ear. It was a curious laugh; distinct, formal, mirthless. I
stopped: the sound ceased, only for an instant; it began again,
louder: for at first, though distinct, it was very low. It
passed off in a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in
every lonely chamber; though it originated but in one, and I
could have pointed out the door whence the accents issued.
“Mrs. Fairfax!” I called out: for I now
heard her descending the great stairs. “Did you hear that loud
laugh? Who is it?”
“Some of the servants, very likely,”
she answered: “perhaps Grace Poole.”
“Did you hear it?” I again inquired.
“Yes, plainly: I often hear her: she
sews in one of these rooms. Sometimes Leah is with her; they
are frequently noisy together.”
The laugh was repeated in its low,
syllabic tone, and terminated in an odd murmur.
“Grace!” exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax.
I really did not expect any Grace to
answer; for the laugh was as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as
any I ever heard; and, but that it was high noon, and that no
circumstance of ghostliness accompanied the curious
cachinnation; but that neither scene nor season favoured fear, I
should have been superstitiously afraid. However, the event
showed me I was a fool for entertaining a sense even of
surprise.
The door nearest me opened, and a
servant came out,—a woman of between thirty and forty; a set,
square-made figure, red-haired, and with a hard, plain face: any
apparition less romantic or less ghostly could scarcely be
conceived.
“Too much noise, Grace,” said Mrs.
Fairfax. “Remember directions!” Grace curtseyed silently and
went in.
“She is a person we have to sew and
assist Leah in her housemaid’s work,” continued the widow; “not
altogether unobjectionable in some points, but she does well
enough. By-the-bye, how have you got on with your new pupil
this morning?”
The conversation, thus turned on Adèle,
continued till we reached the light and cheerful region below.
Adèle came running to meet us in the hall, exclaiming—
“Mesdames, vous êtes servies!” adding,
“J’ai bien faim, moi!”
We found dinner ready, and waiting for
us in Mrs. Fairfax’s room.
CHAPTER XII
The promise of a smooth career, which
my first calm introduction to Thornfield Hall seemed to pledge,
was not belied on a longer acquaintance with the place and its
inmates. Mrs. Fairfax turned out to be what she appeared, a
placid-tempered, kind-natured woman, of competent education and
average intelligence. My pupil was a lively child, who had been
spoilt and indulged, and therefore was sometimes wayward; but as
she was committed entirely to my care, and no injudicious
interference from any quarter ever thwarted my plans for her
improvement, she soon forgot her little freaks, and became
obedient and teachable. She had no great talents, no marked
traits of character, no peculiar development of feeling or taste
which raised her one inch above the ordinary level of childhood;
but neither had she any deficiency or vice which sunk her below
it. She made reasonable progress, entertained for me a
vivacious, though perhaps not very profound, affection; and by
her simplicity, gay prattle, and efforts to please, inspired me,
in return, with a degree of attachment sufficient to make us
both content in each other’s society.
This, par parenthèse, will be
thought cool language by persons who entertain solemn doctrines
about the angelic nature of children, and the duty of those
charged with their education to conceive for them an idolatrous
devotion: but I am not writing to flatter parental egotism, to
echo cant, or prop up humbug; I am merely telling the truth. I
felt a conscientious solicitude for Adèle’s welfare and
progress, and a quiet liking for her little self: just as I
cherished towards Mrs. Fairfax a thankfulness for her kindness,
and a pleasure in her society proportionate to the tranquil
regard she had for me, and the moderation of her mind and
character.
Anybody may blame me who likes, when I
add further, that, now and then, when I took a walk by myself in
the grounds; when I went down to the gates and looked through
them along the road; or when, while Adèle played with her nurse,
and Mrs. Fairfax made jellies in the storeroom, I climbed the
three staircases, raised the trap-door of the attic, and having
reached the leads, looked out afar over sequestered field and
hill, and along dim sky-line—that then I longed for a power of
vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the
busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never
seen—that then I desired more of practical experience than I
possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance
with variety of character, than was here within my reach. I
valued what was good in Mrs. Fairfax, and what was good in Adèle;
but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of
goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold.
Who blames me? Many, no doubt; and I
shall be called discontented. I could not help it: the
restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain
sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor
of the third storey, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence
and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind’s eye to dwell on
whatever bright visions rose before it—and, certainly, they were
many and glowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant
movement, which, while it swelled it in trouble, expanded it
with life; and, best of all, to open my inward ear to a tale
that was never ended—a tale my imagination created, and narrated
continuously; quickened with all of incident, life, fire,
feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence.
It is in vain to say human beings ought
to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and
they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are
condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in
silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many
rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of
life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm
generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise
for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as
their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too
absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is
narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say
that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and
knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering
bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if
they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced
necessary for their sex.
When thus alone, I not unfrequently
heard Grace Poole’s laugh: the same peal, the same low, slow ha!
ha! which, when first heard, had thrilled me: I heard, too, her
eccentric murmurs; stranger than her laugh. There were days
when she was quite silent; but there were others when I could
not account for the sounds she made. Sometimes I saw her: she
would come out of her room with a basin, or a plate, or a tray
in her hand, go down to the kitchen and shortly return,
generally (oh, romantic reader, forgive me for telling the plain
truth!) bearing a pot of porter. Her appearance always acted as
a damper to the curiosity raised by her oral oddities:
hard-featured and staid, she had no point to which interest
could attach. I made some attempts to draw her into
conversation, but she seemed a person of few words: a
monosyllabic reply usually cut short every effort of that sort.
The other members of the household,
viz., John and his wife, Leah the housemaid, and Sophie the
French nurse, were decent people; but in no respect remarkable;
with Sophie I used to talk French, and sometimes I asked her
questions about her native country; but she was not of a
descriptive or narrative turn, and generally gave such vapid and
confused answers as were calculated rather to check than
encourage inquiry.
October, November, December passed
away. One afternoon in January, Mrs. Fairfax had begged a
holiday for Adèle, because she had a cold; and, as Adèle
seconded the request with an ardour that reminded me how
precious occasional holidays had been to me in my own childhood,
I accorded it, deeming that I did well in showing pliability on
the point. It was a fine, calm day, though very cold; I was
tired of sitting still in the library through a whole long
morning: Mrs. Fairfax had just written a letter which was
waiting to be posted, so I put on my bonnet and cloak and
volunteered to carry it to Hay; the distance, two miles, would
be a pleasant winter afternoon walk. Having seen Adèle
comfortably seated in her little chair by Mrs. Fairfax’s parlour
fireside, and given her her best wax doll (which I usually kept
enveloped in silver paper in a drawer) to play with, and a
story-book for change of amusement; and having replied to her
“Revenez bientôt, ma bonne amie, ma chère Mdlle. Jeannette,”
with a kiss I set out.
The ground was hard, the air was still,
my road was lonely; I walked fast till I got warm, and then I
walked slowly to enjoy and analyse the species of pleasure
brooding for me in the hour and situation. It was three
o’clock; the church bell tolled as I passed under the belfry:
the charm of the hour lay in its approaching dimness, in the
low-gliding and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from Thornfield,
in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, for nuts and
blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral
treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in
its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a breath of air
stirred, it made no sound here; for there was not a holly, not
an evergreen to rustle, and the stripped hawthorn and hazel
bushes were as still as the white, worn stones which causewayed
the middle of the path. Far and wide, on each side, there were
only fields, where no cattle now browsed; and the little brown
birds, which stirred occasionally in the hedge, looked like
single russet leaves that had forgotten to drop.
This lane inclined up-hill all the way
to Hay; having reached the middle, I sat down on a stile which
led thence into a field. Gathering my mantle about me, and
sheltering my hands in my muff, I did not feel the cold, though
it froze keenly; as was attested by a sheet of ice covering the
causeway, where a little brooklet, now congealed, had overflowed
after a rapid thaw some days since. From my seat I could look
down on Thornfield: the grey and battlemented hall was the
principal object in the vale below me; its woods and dark
rookery rose against the west. I lingered till the sun went
down amongst the trees, and sank crimson and clear behind them.
I then turned eastward.
On the hill-top above me sat the rising
moon; pale yet as a cloud, but brightening momentarily, she
looked over Hay, which, half lost in trees, sent up a blue smoke
from its few chimneys: it was yet a mile distant, but in the
absolute hush I could hear plainly its thin murmurs of life. My
ear, too, felt the flow of currents; in what dales and depths I
could not tell: but there were many hills beyond Hay, and
doubtless many becks threading their passes. That evening calm
betrayed alike the tinkle of the nearest streams, the sough of
the most remote.
A rude noise broke on these fine
ripplings and whisperings, at once so far away and so clear: a
positive tramp, tramp, a metallic clatter, which effaced the
soft wave-wanderings; as, in a picture, the solid mass of a
crag, or the rough boles of a great oak, drawn in dark and
strong on the foreground, efface the aërial distance of azure
hill, sunny horizon, and blended clouds where tint melts into
tint.
The din was on the causeway: a horse
was coming; the windings of the lane yet hid it, but it
approached. I was just leaving the stile; yet, as the path was
narrow, I sat still to let it go by. In those days I was young,
and all sorts of fancies bright and dark tenanted my mind: the
memories of nursery stories were there amongst other rubbish;
and when they recurred, maturing youth added to them a vigour
and vividness beyond what childhood could give. As this horse
approached, and as I watched for it to appear through the dusk,
I remembered certain of Bessie’s tales, wherein figured a
North-of-England spirit called a “Gytrash,” which, in the form
of horse, mule, or large dog, haunted solitary ways, and
sometimes came upon belated travellers, as this horse was now
coming upon me.
It was very near, but not yet in sight;
when, in addition to the tramp, tramp, I heard a rush under the
hedge, and close down by the hazel stems glided a great dog,
whose black and white colour made him a distinct object against
the trees. It was exactly one form of Bessie’s Gytrash—a
lion-like creature with long hair and a huge head: it passed me,
however, quietly enough; not staying to look up, with strange
pretercanine eyes, in my face, as I half expected it would. The
horse followed,—a tall steed, and on its back a rider. The man,
the human being, broke the spell at once. Nothing ever rode the
Gytrash: it was always alone; and goblins, to my notions, though
they might tenant the dumb carcasses of beasts, could scarce
covet shelter in the commonplace human form. No Gytrash was
this,—only a traveller taking the short cut to Millcote. He
passed, and I went on; a few steps, and I turned: a sliding
sound and an exclamation of “What the deuce is to do now?” and a
clattering tumble, arrested my attention. Man and horse were
down; they had slipped on the sheet of ice which glazed the
causeway. The dog came bounding back, and seeing his master in
a predicament, and hearing the horse groan, barked till the
evening hills echoed the sound, which was deep in proportion to
his magnitude. He snuffed round the prostrate group, and then
he ran up to me; it was all he could do,—there was no other help
at hand to summon. I obeyed him, and walked down to the
traveller, by this time struggling himself free of his steed.
His efforts were so vigorous, I thought he could not be much
hurt; but I asked him the question—
“Are you injured, sir?”
I think he was swearing, but am not
certain; however, he was pronouncing some formula which
prevented him from replying to me directly.
“Can I do anything?” I asked again.
“You must just stand on one side,” he
answered as he rose, first to his knees, and then to his feet.
I did; whereupon began a heaving, stamping, clattering process,
accompanied by a barking and baying which removed me effectually
some yards’ distance; but I would not be driven quite away till
I saw the event. This was finally fortunate; the horse was
re-established, and the dog was silenced with a “Down, Pilot!”
The traveller now, stooping, felt his foot and leg, as if trying
whether they were sound; apparently something ailed them, for he
halted to the stile whence I had just risen, and sat down.
I was in the mood for being useful, or
at least officious, I think, for I now drew near him again.
“If you are hurt, and want help, sir, I
can fetch some one either from Thornfield Hall or from Hay.”
“Thank you: I shall do: I have no
broken bones,—only a sprain;” and again he stood up and tried
his foot, but the result extorted an involuntary “Ugh!”
Something of daylight still lingered,
and the moon was waxing bright: I could see him plainly. His
figure was enveloped in a riding cloak, fur collared and steel
clasped; its details were not apparent, but I traced the general
points of middle height and considerable breadth of chest. He
had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes
and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now; he
was past youth, but had not reached middle-age; perhaps he might
be thirty-five. I felt no fear of him, and but little shyness.
Had he been a handsome, heroic-looking young gentleman, I should
not have dared to stand thus questioning him against his will,
and offering my services unasked. I had hardly ever seen a
handsome youth; never in my life spoken to one. I had a
theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance,
gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate
in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they
neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and
should have shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or
anything else that is bright but antipathetic.
If even this stranger had smiled and
been good-humoured to me when I addressed him; if he had put off
my offer of assistance gaily and with thanks, I should have gone
on my way and not felt any vocation to renew inquiries: but the
frown, the roughness of the traveller, set me at my ease: I
retained my station when he waved to me to go, and announced—
“I cannot think of leaving you, sir, at
so late an hour, in this solitary lane, till I see you are fit
to mount your horse.”
He looked at me when I said this; he
had hardly turned his eyes in my direction before.
“I should think you ought to be at home
yourself,” said he, “if you have a home in this neighbourhood:
where do you come from?”
“From just below; and I am not at all
afraid of being out late when it is moonlight: I will run over
to Hay for you with pleasure, if you wish it: indeed, I am going
there to post a letter.”
“You live just below—do you mean at
that house with the battlements?” pointing to Thornfield Hall,
on which the moon cast a hoary gleam, bringing it out distinct
and pale from the woods that, by contrast with the western sky,
now seemed one mass of shadow.
“Yes, sir.”
“Whose house is it?”
“Mr. Rochester’s.”
“Do you know Mr. Rochester?”
“No, I have never seen him.”
“He is not resident, then?”
“No.”
“Can you tell me where he is?”
“I cannot.”
“You are not a servant at the hall, of
course. You are—” He stopped, ran his eye over my dress,
which, as usual, was quite simple: a black merino cloak, a black
beaver bonnet; neither of them half fine enough for a
lady’s-maid. He seemed puzzled to decide what I was; I helped
him.
“I am the governess.”
“Ah, the governess!” he repeated;
“deuce take me, if I had not forgotten! The governess!” and
again my raiment underwent scrutiny. In two minutes he rose
from the stile: his face expressed pain when he tried to move.
“I cannot commission you to fetch
help,” he said; “but you may help me a little yourself, if you
will be so kind.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have not an umbrella that I can
use as a stick?”
“No.”
“Try to get hold of my horse’s bridle
and lead him to me: you are not afraid?”
I should have been afraid to touch a
horse when alone, but when told to do it, I was disposed to
obey. I put down my muff on the stile, and went up to the tall
steed; I endeavoured to catch the bridle, but it was a spirited
thing, and would not let me come near its head; I made effort on
effort, though in vain: meantime, I was mortally afraid of its
trampling fore-feet. The traveller waited and watched for some
time, and at last he laughed.
“I see,” he said, “the mountain will
never be brought to Mahomet, so all you can do is to aid Mahomet
to go to the mountain; I must beg of you to come here.”
I came. “Excuse me,” he continued:
“necessity compels me to make you useful.” He laid a heavy hand
on my shoulder, and leaning on me with some stress, limped to
his horse. Having once caught the bridle, he mastered it
directly and sprang to his saddle; grimacing grimly as he made
the effort, for it wrenched his sprain.
“Now,” said he, releasing his under lip
from a hard bite, “just hand me my whip; it lies there under the
hedge.”
I sought it and found it.
“Thank you; now make haste with the
letter to Hay, and return as fast as you can.”
A touch of a spurred heel made his
horse first start and rear, and then bound away; the dog rushed
in his traces; all three vanished,
“Like heath that, in the
wilderness,
The wild wind whirls away.”
I took up my muff and walked on. The
incident had occurred and was gone for me: it was an
incident of no moment, no romance, no interest in a sense; yet
it marked with change one single hour of a monotonous life. My
help had been needed and claimed; I had given it: I was pleased
to have done something; trivial, transitory though the deed was,
it was yet an active thing, and I was weary of an existence all
passive. The new face, too, was like a new picture introduced
to the gallery of memory; and it was dissimilar to all the
others hanging there: firstly, because it was masculine; and,
secondly, because it was dark, strong, and stern. I had it
still before me when I entered Hay, and slipped the letter into
the post-office; I saw it as I walked fast down-hill all the way
home. When I came to the stile, I stopped a minute, looked
round and listened, with an idea that a horse’s hoofs might ring
on the causeway again, and that a rider in a cloak, and a
Gytrash-like Newfoundland dog, might be again apparent: I saw
only the hedge and a pollard willow before me, rising up still
and straight to meet the moonbeams; I heard only the faintest
waft of wind roaming fitful among the trees round Thornfield, a
mile distant; and when I glanced down in the direction of the
murmur, my eye, traversing the hall-front, caught a light
kindling in a window: it reminded me that I was late, and I
hurried on.
I did not like re-entering Thornfield.
To pass its threshold was to return to stagnation; to cross the
silent hall, to ascend the darksome staircase, to seek my own
lonely little room, and then to meet tranquil Mrs. Fairfax, and
spend the long winter evening with her, and her only, was to
quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk,—to slip
again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and
too still existence; of an existence whose very privileges of
security and ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating.
What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed
in the storms of an uncertain struggling life, and to have been
taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm
amidst which I now repined! Yes, just as much good as it would
do a man tired of sitting still in a “too easy chair” to take a
long walk: and just as natural was the wish to stir, under my
circumstances, as it would be under his.
I lingered at the gates; I lingered on
the lawn; I paced backwards and forwards on the pavement; the
shutters of the glass door were closed; I could not see into the
interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the
gloomy house—from the grey-hollow filled with rayless cells, as
it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me,—a blue sea
absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn
march; her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops,
from behind which she had come, far and farther below her, and
aspired to the zenith, midnight dark in its fathomless depth and
measureless distance; and for those trembling stars that
followed her course; they made my heart tremble, my veins glow
when I viewed them. Little things recall us to earth; the clock
struck in the hall; that sufficed; I turned from moon and stars,
opened a side-door, and went in.
The hall was not dark, nor yet was it
lit, only by the high-hung bronze lamp; a warm glow suffused
both it and the lower steps of the oak staircase. This ruddy
shine issued from the great dining-room, whose two-leaved door
stood open, and showed a genial fire in the grate, glancing on
marble hearth and brass fire-irons, and revealing purple
draperies and polished furniture, in the most pleasant
radiance. It revealed, too, a group near the mantelpiece: I had
scarcely caught it, and scarcely become aware of a cheerful
mingling of voices, amongst which I seemed to distinguish the
tones of Adèle, when the door closed.
I hastened to Mrs. Fairfax’s room;
there was a fire there too, but no candle, and no Mrs. Fairfax.
Instead, all alone, sitting upright on the rug, and gazing with
gravity at the blaze, I beheld a great black and white
long-haired dog, just like the Gytrash of the lane. It was so
like it that I went forward and said—“Pilot” and the thing got
up and came to me and snuffed me. I caressed him, and he wagged
his great tail; but he looked an eerie creature to be alone
with, and I could not tell whence he had come. I rang the bell,
for I wanted a candle; and I wanted, too, to get an account of
this visitant. Leah entered.
“What dog is this?”
“He came with master.”
“With whom?”
“With master—Mr. Rochester—he is just
arrived.”
“Indeed! and is Mrs. Fairfax with him?”
“Yes, and Miss Adèle; they are in the
dining-room, and John is gone for a surgeon; for master has had
an accident; his horse fell and his ankle is sprained.”
“Did the horse fall in Hay Lane?”
“Yes, coming down-hill; it slipped on
some ice.”
“Ah! Bring me a candle will you Leah?”
Leah brought it; she entered, followed
by Mrs. Fairfax, who repeated the news; adding that Mr. Carter
the surgeon was come, and was now with Mr. Rochester: then she
hurried out to give orders about tea, and I went upstairs to
take off my things.
CHAPTER XIII
Mr. Rochester, it seems, by the
surgeon’s orders, went to bed early that night; nor did he rise
soon next morning. When he did come down, it was to attend to
business: his agent and some of his tenants were arrived, and
waiting to speak with him.
Adèle and I had now to vacate the
library: it would be in daily requisition as a reception-room
for callers. A fire was lit in an apartment upstairs, and there
I carried our books, and arranged it for the future schoolroom.
I discerned in the course of the morning that Thornfield Hall
was a changed place: no longer silent as a church, it echoed
every hour or two to a knock at the door, or a clang of the
bell; steps, too, often traversed the hall, and new voices spoke
in different keys below; a rill from the outer world was flowing
through it; it had a master: for my part, I liked it better.
Adèle was not easy to teach that day;
she could not apply: she kept running to the door and looking
over the banisters to see if she could get a glimpse of Mr.
Rochester; then she coined pretexts to go downstairs, in order,
as I shrewdly suspected, to visit the library, where I knew she
was not wanted; then, when I got a little angry, and made her
sit still, she continued to talk incessantly of her “ami,
Monsieur Edouard Fairfax de Rochester,” as she dubbed him
(I had not before heard his prenomens), and to conjecture what
presents he had brought her: for it appears he had intimated the
night before, that when his luggage came from Millcote, there
would be found amongst it a little box in whose contents she had
an interest.
“Et cela doit signifier,” said she,
“qu’il y aura là dedans un cadeau pour moi, et peut-être pour
vous aussi, mademoiselle. Monsieur a parlé de vous: il m’a
demandé le nom de ma gouvernante, et si elle n’était pas une
petite personne, assez mince et un peu pâle. J’ai dit qu’oui:
car c’est vrai, n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle?”
I and my pupil dined as usual in Mrs.
Fairfax’s parlour; the afternoon was wild and snowy, and we
passed it in the schoolroom. At dark I allowed Adèle to put
away books and work, and to run downstairs; for, from the
comparative silence below, and from the cessation of appeals to
the door-bell, I conjectured that Mr. Rochester was now at
liberty. Left alone, I walked to the window; but nothing was to
be seen thence: twilight and snowflakes together thickened the
air, and hid the very shrubs on the lawn. I let down the
curtain and went back to the fireside.
In the clear embers I was tracing a
view, not unlike a picture I remembered to have seen of the
castle of Heidelberg, on the Rhine, when Mrs. Fairfax came in,
breaking up by her entrance the fiery mosaic I had been piercing
together, and scattering too some heavy unwelcome thoughts that
were beginning to throng on my solitude.
“Mr. Rochester would be glad if you and
your pupil would take tea with him in the drawing-room this
evening,” said she: “he has been so much engaged all day that he
could not ask to see you before.”
“When is his tea-time?” I inquired.
“Oh, at six o’clock: he keeps early
hours in the country. You had better change your frock now; I
will go with you and fasten it. Here is a candle.”
“Is it necessary to change my frock?”
“Yes, you had better: I always dress
for the evening when Mr. Rochester is here.”
This additional ceremony seemed
somewhat stately; however, I repaired to my room, and, with Mrs.
Fairfax’s aid, replaced my black stuff dress by one of black
silk; the best and the only additional one I had, except one of
light grey, which, in my Lowood notions of the toilette, I
thought too fine to be worn, except on first-rate occasions.
“You want a brooch,” said Mrs.
Fairfax. I had a single little pearl ornament which Miss Temple
gave me as a parting keepsake: I put it on, and then we went
downstairs. Unused as I was to strangers, it was rather a trial
to appear thus formally summoned in Mr. Rochester’s presence. I
let Mrs. Fairfax precede me into the dining-room, and kept in
her shade as we crossed that apartment; and, passing the arch,
whose curtain was now dropped, entered the elegant recess
beyond.
Two wax candles stood lighted on the
table, and two on the mantelpiece; basking in the light and heat
of a superb fire, lay Pilot—Adèle knelt near him. Half reclined
on a couch appeared Mr. Rochester, his foot supported by the
cushion; he was looking at Adèle and the dog: the fire shone
full on his face. I knew my traveller with his broad and jetty
eyebrows; his square forehead, made squarer by the horizontal
sweep of his black hair. I recognised his decisive nose, more
remarkable for character than beauty; his full nostrils,
denoting, I thought, choler; his grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes,
all three were very grim, and no mistake. His shape, now
divested of cloak, I perceived harmonised in squareness with his
physiognomy: I suppose it was a good figure in the athletic
sense of the term—broad chested and thin flanked, though neither
tall nor graceful.
Mr. Rochester must have been aware of
the entrance of Mrs. Fairfax and myself; but it appeared he was
not in the mood to notice us, for he never lifted his head as we
approached.
“Here is Miss Eyre, sir,” said Mrs.
Fairfax, in her quiet way. He bowed, still not taking his eyes
from the group of the dog and child.
“Let Miss Eyre be seated,” said he: and
there was something in the forced stiff bow, in the impatient
yet formal tone, which seemed further to express, “What the
deuce is it to me whether Miss Eyre be there or not? At this
moment I am not disposed to accost her.”
I sat down quite disembarrassed. A
reception of finished politeness would probably have confused
me: I could not have returned or repaid it by answering grace
and elegance on my part; but harsh caprice laid me under no
obligation; on the contrary, a decent quiescence, under the
freak of manner, gave me the advantage. Besides, the
eccentricity of the proceeding was piquant: I felt interested to
see how he would go on.
He went on as a statue would, that is,
he neither spoke nor moved. Mrs. Fairfax seemed to think it
necessary that some one should be amiable, and she began to
talk. Kindly, as usual—and, as usual, rather trite—she condoled
with him on the pressure of business he had had all day; on the
annoyance it must have been to him with that painful sprain:
then she commended his patience and perseverance in going
through with it.
“Madam, I should like some tea,” was
the sole rejoinder she got. She hastened to ring the bell; and
when the tray came, she proceeded to arrange the cups, spoons,
&c., with assiduous celerity. I and Adèle went to the table;
but the master did not leave his couch.
“Will you hand Mr. Rochester’s cup?”
said Mrs. Fairfax to me; “Adèle might perhaps spill it.”
I did as requested. As he took the cup
from my hand, Adèle, thinking the moment propitious for making a
request in my favour, cried out—
“N’est-ce pas, monsieur, qu’il y a un
cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre dans votre petit coffre?”
“Who talks of cadeaux?” said he
gruffly. “Did you expect a present, Miss Eyre? Are you fond of
presents?” and he searched my face with eyes that I saw were
dark, irate, and piercing.
“I hardly know, sir; I have little
experience of them: they are generally thought pleasant things.”
“Generally thought? But what do you
think?”
“I should be obliged to take time, sir,
before I could give you an answer worthy of your acceptance: a
present has many faces to it, has it not? and one should
consider all, before pronouncing an opinion as to its nature.”
“Miss Eyre, you are not so
unsophisticated as Adèle: she demands a ‘cadeau,’ clamorously,
the moment she sees me: you beat about the bush.”
“Because I have less confidence in my
deserts than Adèle has: she can prefer the claim of old
acquaintance, and the right too of custom; for she says you have
always been in the habit of giving her playthings; but if I had
to make out a case I should be puzzled, since I am a stranger,
and have done nothing to entitle me to an acknowledgment.”
“Oh, don’t fall back on over-modesty!
I have examined Adèle, and find you have taken great pains with
her: she is not bright, she has no talents; yet in a short time
she has made much improvement.”
“Sir, you have now given me my
‘cadeau;’ I am obliged to you: it is the meed teachers most
covet—praise of their pupils’ progress.”
“Humph!” said Mr. Rochester, and he
took his tea in silence.
“Come to the fire,” said the master,
when the tray was taken away, and Mrs. Fairfax had settled into
a corner with her knitting; while Adèle was leading me by the
hand round the room, showing me the beautiful books and
ornaments on the consoles and chiffonnières. We obeyed, as in
duty bound; Adèle wanted to take a seat on my knee, but she was
ordered to amuse herself with Pilot.
“You have been resident in my house
three months?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you came from—?”
“From Lowood school, in ---shire.”
“Ah! a charitable concern. How long
were you there?”
“Eight years.”
“Eight years! you must be tenacious of
life. I thought half the time in such a place would have done
up any constitution! No wonder you have rather the look of
another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of
face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I thought
unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand
whether you had bewitched my horse: I am not sure yet. Who are
your parents?”
“I have none.”
“Nor ever had, I suppose: do you
remember them?”
“No.”
“I thought not. And so you were
waiting for your people when you sat on that stile?”
“For whom, sir?”
“For the men in green: it was a proper
moonlight evening for them. Did I break through one of your
rings, that you spread that damned ice on the causeway?”
I shook my head. “The men in green all
forsook England a hundred years ago,” said I, speaking as
seriously as he had done. “And not even in Hay Lane, or the
fields about it, could you find a trace of them. I don’t think
either summer or harvest, or winter moon, will ever shine on
their revels more.”
Mrs. Fairfax had dropped her knitting,
and, with raised eyebrows, seemed wondering what sort of talk
this was.
“Well,” resumed Mr. Rochester, “if you
disown parents, you must have some sort of kinsfolk: uncles and
aunts?”
“No; none that I ever saw.”
“And your home?”
“I have none.”
“Where do your brothers and sisters
live?”
“I have no brothers or sisters.”
“Who recommended you to come here?”
“I advertised, and Mrs. Fairfax
answered my advertisement.”
“Yes,” said the good lady, who now knew
what ground we were upon, “and I am daily thankful for the
choice Providence led me to make. Miss Eyre has been an
invaluable companion to me, and a kind and careful teacher to
Adèle.”
“Don’t trouble yourself to give her a
character,” returned Mr. Rochester: “eulogiums will not bias me;
I shall judge for myself. She began by felling my horse.”
“Sir?” said Mrs. Fairfax.
“I have to thank her for this sprain.”
The widow looked bewildered.
“Miss Eyre, have you ever lived in a
town?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you seen much society?”
“None but the pupils and teachers of
Lowood, and now the inmates of Thornfield.”
“Have you read much?”
“Only such books as came in my way; and
they have not been numerous or very learned.”
“You have lived the life of a nun: no
doubt you are well drilled in religious forms;—Brocklehurst, who
I understand directs Lowood, is a parson, is he not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you girls probably worshipped him,
as a convent full of religieuses would worship their director.”
“Oh, no.”
“You are very cool! No! What! a
novice not worship her priest! That sounds blasphemous.”
“I disliked Mr. Brocklehurst; and I was
not alone in the feeling. He is a harsh man; at once pompous
and meddling; he cut off our hair; and for economy’s sake bought
us bad needles and thread, with which we could hardly sew.”
“That was very false economy,” remarked
Mrs. Fairfax, who now again caught the drift of the dialogue.
“And was that the head and front of his
offending?” demanded Mr. Rochester.
“He starved us when he had the sole
superintendence of the provision department, before the
committee was appointed; and he bored us with long lectures once
a week, and with evening readings from books of his own
inditing, about sudden deaths and judgments, which made us
afraid to go to bed.”
“What age were you when you went to
Lowood?”
“About ten.”
“And you stayed there eight years: you
are now, then, eighteen?”
I assented.
“Arithmetic, you see, is useful;
without its aid, I should hardly have been able to guess your
age. It is a point difficult to fix where the features and
countenance are so much at variance as in your case. And now
what did you learn at Lowood? Can you play?”
“A little.”
“Of course: that is the established
answer. Go into the library—I mean, if you please.—(Excuse my
tone of command; I am used to say, ‘Do this,’ and it is done: I
cannot alter my customary habits for one new inmate.)—Go, then,
into the library; take a candle with you; leave the door open;
sit down to the piano, and play a tune.”
I departed, obeying his directions.
“Enough!” he called out in a few
minutes. “You play a little, I see; like any other
English school-girl; perhaps rather better than some, but not
well.”
I closed the piano and returned. Mr.
Rochester continued—“Adèle showed me some sketches this morning,
which she said were yours. I don’t know whether they were
entirely of your doing; probably a master aided you?”
“No, indeed!” I interjected.
“Ah! that pricks pride. Well, fetch me
your portfolio, if you can vouch for its contents being
original; but don’t pass your word unless you are certain: I can
recognise patchwork.”
“Then I will say nothing, and you shall
judge for yourself, sir.”
I brought the portfolio from the
library.
“Approach the table,” said he; and I
wheeled it to his couch. Adèle and Mrs. Fairfax drew near to
see the pictures.
“No crowding,” said Mr. Rochester:
“take the drawings from my hand as I finish with them; but don’t
push your faces up to mine.”
He deliberately scrutinised each sketch
and painting. Three he laid aside; the others, when he had
examined them, he swept from him.
“Take them off to the other table, Mrs.
Fairfax,” said he, “and look at them with Adèle;—you” (glancing
at me) “resume your seat, and answer my questions. I perceive
those pictures were done by one hand: was that hand yours?”
“Yes.”
“And when did you find time to do
them? They have taken much time, and some thought.”
“I did them in the last two vacations I
spent at Lowood, when I had no other occupation.”
“Where did you get your copies?”
“Out of my head.”
“That head I see now on your
shoulders?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Has it other furniture of the same
kind within?”
“I should think it may have: I should
hope—better.”
He spread the pictures before him, and
again surveyed them alternately.
While he is so occupied, I will tell
you, reader, what they are: and first, I must premise that they
are nothing wonderful. The subjects had, indeed, risen vividly
on my mind. As I saw them with the spiritual eye, before I
attempted to embody them, they were striking; but my hand would
not second my fancy, and in each case it had wrought out but a
pale portrait of the thing I had conceived.
These pictures were in water-colours.
The first represented clouds low and livid, rolling over a
swollen sea: all the distance was in eclipse; so, too, was the
foreground; or rather, the nearest billows, for there was no
land. One gleam of light lifted into relief a half-submerged
mast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and large, with wings
flecked with foam; its beak held a gold bracelet set with gems,
that I had touched with as brilliant tints as my palette could
yield, and as glittering distinctness as my pencil could
impart. Sinking below the bird and mast, a drowned corpse
glanced through the green water; a fair arm was the only limb
clearly visible, whence the bracelet had been washed or torn.
The second picture contained for
foreground only the dim peak of a hill, with grass and some
leaves slanting as if by a breeze. Beyond and above spread an
expanse of sky, dark blue as at twilight: rising into the sky
was a woman’s shape to the bust, portrayed in tints as dusk and
soft as I could combine. The dim forehead was crowned with a
star; the lineaments below were seen as through the suffusion of
vapour; the eyes shone dark and wild; the hair streamed shadowy,
like a beamless cloud torn by storm or by electric travail. On
the neck lay a pale reflection like moonlight; the same faint
lustre touched the train of thin clouds from which rose and
bowed this vision of the Evening Star.
The third showed the pinnacle of an
iceberg piercing a polar winter sky: a muster of northern lights
reared their dim lances, close serried, along the horizon.
Throwing these into distance, rose, in the foreground, a head,—a
colossal head, inclined towards the iceberg, and resting against
it. Two thin hands, joined under the forehead, and supporting
it, drew up before the lower features a sable veil, a brow quite
bloodless, white as bone, and an eye hollow and fixed, blank of
meaning but for the glassiness of despair, alone were visible.
Above the temples, amidst wreathed turban folds of black
drapery, vague in its character and consistency as cloud,
gleamed a ring of white flame, gemmed with sparkles of a more
lurid tinge. This pale crescent was “the likeness of a kingly
crown;” what it diademed was “the shape which shape had none.”
“Were you happy when you painted these
pictures?” asked Mr. Rochester presently.
“I was absorbed, sir: yes, and I was
happy. To paint them, in short, was to enjoy one of the keenest
pleasures I have ever known.”
“That is not saying much. Your
pleasures, by your own account, have been few; but I daresay you
did exist in a kind of artist’s dreamland while you blent and
arranged these strange tints. Did you sit at them long each
day?”
“I had nothing else to do, because it
was the vacation, and I sat at them from morning till noon, and
from noon till night: the length of the midsummer days favoured
my inclination to apply.”
“And you felt self-satisfied with the
result of your ardent labours?”
“Far from it. I was tormented by the
contrast between my idea and my handiwork: in each case I had
imagined something which I was quite powerless to realise.”
“Not quite: you have secured the shadow
of your thought; but no more, probably. You had not enough of
the artist’s skill and science to give it full being: yet the
drawings are, for a school-girl, peculiar. As to the thoughts,
they are elfish. These eyes in the Evening Star you must have
seen in a dream. How could you make them look so clear, and yet
not at all brilliant? for the planet above quells their rays.
And what meaning is that in their solemn depth? And who taught
you to paint wind? There is a high gale in that sky, and on
this hill-top. Where did you see Latmos? For that is Latmos.
There! put the drawings away!”
I had scarce tied the strings of the
portfolio, when, looking at his watch, he said abruptly—
“It is nine o’clock: what are you
about, Miss Eyre, to let Adèle sit up so long? Take her to
bed.”
Adèle went to kiss him before quitting
the room: he endured the caress, but scarcely seemed to relish
it more than Pilot would have done, nor so much.
“I wish you all good-night, now,” said
he, making a movement of the hand towards the door, in token
that he was tired of our company, and wished to dismiss us.
Mrs. Fairfax folded up her knitting: I took my portfolio: we
curtseyed to him, received a frigid bow in return, and so
withdrew.
“You said Mr. Rochester was not
strikingly peculiar, Mrs. Fairfax,” I observed, when I rejoined
her in her room, after putting Adèle to bed.
“Well, is he?”
“I think so: he is very changeful and
abrupt.”
“True: no doubt he may appear so to a
stranger, but I am so accustomed to his manner, I never think of
it; and then, if he has peculiarities of temper, allowance
should be made.”
“Why?”
“Partly because it is his nature—and we
can none of us help our nature; and partly because he has
painful thoughts, no doubt, to harass him, and make his spirits
unequal.”
“What about?”
“Family troubles, for one thing.”
“But he has no family.”
“Not now, but he has had—or, at least,
relatives. He lost his elder brother a few years since.”
“His elder brother?”
“Yes. The present Mr. Rochester has
not been very long in possession of the property; only about
nine years.”
“Nine years is a tolerable time. Was
he so very fond of his brother as to be still inconsolable for
his loss?”
“Why, no—perhaps not. I believe there
were some misunderstandings between them. Mr. Rowland Rochester
was not quite just to Mr. Edward; and perhaps he prejudiced his
father against him. The old gentleman was fond of money, and
anxious to keep the family estate together. He did not like to
diminish the property by division, and yet he was anxious that
Mr. Edward should have wealth, too, to keep up the consequence
of the name; and, soon after he was of age, some steps were
taken that were not quite fair, and made a great deal of
mischief. Old Mr. Rochester and Mr. Rowland combined to bring
Mr. Edward into what he considered a painful position, for the
sake of making his fortune: what the precise nature of that
position was I never clearly knew, but his spirit could not
brook what he had to suffer in it. He is not very forgiving: he
broke with his family, and now for many years he has led an
unsettled kind of life. I don’t think he has ever been resident
at Thornfield for a fortnight together, since the death of his
brother without a will left him master of the estate; and,
indeed, no wonder he shuns the old place.”
“Why should he shun it?”
“Perhaps he thinks it gloomy.”
The answer was evasive. I should have
liked something clearer; but Mrs. Fairfax either could not, or
would not, give me more explicit information of the origin and
nature of Mr. Rochester’s trials. She averred they were a
mystery to herself, and that what she knew was chiefly from
conjecture. It was evident, indeed, that she wished me to drop
the subject, which I did accordingly.
CHAPTER XIV
For several subsequent days I saw
little of Mr. Rochester. In the mornings he seemed much engaged
with business, and, in the afternoon, gentlemen from Millcote or
the neighbourhood called, and sometimes stayed to dine with
him. When his sprain was well enough to admit of horse
exercise, he rode out a good deal; probably to return these
visits, as he generally did not come back till late at night.
During this interval, even Adèle was
seldom sent for to his presence, and all my acquaintance with
him was confined to an occasional rencontre in the hall, on the
stairs, or in the gallery, when he would sometimes pass me
haughtily and coldly, just acknowledging my presence by a
distant nod or a cool glance, and sometimes bow and smile with
gentlemanlike affability. His changes of mood did not offend
me, because I saw that I had nothing to do with their
alternation; the ebb and flow depended on causes quite
disconnected with me.
One day he had had company to dinner,
and had sent for my portfolio; in order, doubtless, to exhibit
its contents: the gentlemen went away early, to attend a public
meeting at Millcote, as Mrs. Fairfax informed me; but the night
being wet and inclement, Mr. Rochester did not accompany them.
Soon after they were gone he rang the bell: a message came that
I and Adèle were to go downstairs. I brushed Adèle’s hair and
made her neat, and having ascertained that I was myself in my
usual Quaker trim, where there was nothing to retouch—all being
too close and plain, braided locks included, to admit of
disarrangement—we descended, Adèle wondering whether the
petit coffre was at length come; for, owing to some mistake,
its arrival had hitherto been delayed. She was gratified: there
it stood, a little carton, on the table when we entered the
dining-room. She appeared to know it by instinct.
“Ma boite! ma boite!” exclaimed she,
running towards it.
“Yes, there is your ‘boite’ at last:
take it into a corner, you genuine daughter of Paris, and amuse
yourself with disembowelling it,” said the deep and rather
sarcastic voice of Mr. Rochester, proceeding from the depths of
an immense easy-chair at the fireside. “And mind,” he
continued, “don’t bother me with any details of the anatomical
process, or any notice of the condition of the entrails: let
your operation be conducted in silence: tiens-toi tranquille,
enfant; comprends-tu?”
Adèle seemed scarcely to need the
warning—she had already retired to a sofa with her treasure, and
was busy untying the cord which secured the lid. Having removed
this impediment, and lifted certain silvery envelopes of tissue
paper, she merely exclaimed—
“Oh ciel! Que c’est beau!” and then
remained absorbed in ecstatic contemplation.
“Is Miss Eyre there?” now demanded the
master, half rising from his seat to look round to the door,
near which I still stood.
“Ah! well, come forward; be seated
here.” He drew a chair near his own. “I am not fond of the
prattle of children,” he continued; “for, old bachelor as I am,
I have no pleasant associations connected with their lisp. It
would be intolerable to me to pass a whole evening
tête-à-tête with a brat. Don’t draw that chair farther off,
Miss Eyre; sit down exactly where I placed it—if you please,
that is. Confound these civilities! I continually forget
them. Nor do I particularly affect simple-minded old ladies.
By-the-bye, I must have mine in mind; it won’t do to neglect
her; she is a Fairfax, or wed to one; and blood is said to be
thicker than water.”
He rang, and despatched an invitation
to Mrs. Fairfax, who soon arrived, knitting-basket in hand.
“Good evening, madam; I sent to you for
a charitable purpose. I have forbidden Adèle to talk to me
about her presents, and she is bursting with repletion: have the
goodness to serve her as auditress and interlocutrice; it will
be one of the most benevolent acts you ever performed.”
Adèle, indeed, no sooner saw Mrs.
Fairfax, than she summoned her to her sofa, and there quickly
filled her lap with the porcelain, the ivory, the waxen contents
of her “boite;” pouring out, meantime, explanations and raptures
in such broken English as she was mistress of.
“Now I have performed the part of a
good host,” pursued Mr. Rochester, “put my guests into the way
of amusing each other, I ought to be at liberty to attend to my
own pleasure. Miss Eyre, draw your chair still a little farther
forward: you are yet too far back; I cannot see you without
disturbing my position in this comfortable chair, which I have
no mind to do.”
I did as I was bid, though I would much
rather have remained somewhat in the shade; but Mr. Rochester
had such a direct way of giving orders, it seemed a matter of
course to obey him promptly.
We were, as I have said, in the
dining-room: the lustre, which had been lit for dinner, filled
the room with a festal breadth of light; the large fire was all
red and clear; the purple curtains hung rich and ample before
the lofty window and loftier arch; everything was still, save
the subdued chat of Adèle (she dared not speak loud), and,
filling up each pause, the beating of winter rain against the
panes.
Mr. Rochester, as he sat in his
damask-covered chair, looked different to what I had seen him
look before; not quite so stern—much less gloomy. There was a
smile on his lips, and his eyes sparkled, whether with wine or
not, I am not sure; but I think it very probable. He was, in
short, in his after-dinner mood; more expanded and genial, and
also more self-indulgent than the frigid and rigid temper of the
morning; still he looked preciously grim, cushioning his massive
head against the swelling back of his chair, and receiving the
light of the fire on his granite-hewn features, and in his
great, dark eyes; for he had great, dark eyes, and very fine
eyes, too—not without a certain change in their depths
sometimes, which, if it was not softness, reminded you, at
least, of that feeling.
He had been looking two minutes at the
fire, and I had been looking the same length of time at him,
when, turning suddenly, he caught my gaze fastened on his
physiognomy.
“You examine me, Miss Eyre,” said he:
“do you think me handsome?”
I should, if I had deliberated, have
replied to this question by something conventionally vague and
polite; but the answer somehow slipped from my tongue before I
was aware—“No, sir.”
“Ah! By my word! there is something
singular about you,” said he: “you have the air of a little
nonnette; quaint, quiet, grave, and simple, as you sit with
your hands before you, and your eyes generally bent on the
carpet (except, by-the-bye, when they are directed piercingly to
my face; as just now, for instance); and when one asks you a
question, or makes a remark to which you are obliged to reply,
you rap out a round rejoinder, which, if not blunt, is at least
brusque. What do you mean by it?”
“Sir, I was too plain; I beg your
pardon. I ought to have replied that it was not easy to give an
impromptu answer to a question about appearances; that tastes
mostly differ; and that beauty is of little consequence, or
something of that sort.”
“You ought to have replied no such
thing. Beauty of little consequence, indeed! And so, under
pretence of softening the previous outrage, of stroking and
soothing me into placidity, you stick a sly penknife under my
ear! Go on: what fault do you find with me, pray? I suppose I
have all my limbs and all my features like any other man?”
“Mr. Rochester, allow me to disown my
first answer: I intended no pointed repartee: it was only a
blunder.”
“Just so: I think so: and you shall be
answerable for it. Criticise me: does my forehead not please
you?”
He lifted up the sable waves of hair
which lay horizontally over his brow, and showed a solid enough
mass of intellectual organs, but an abrupt deficiency where the
suave sign of benevolence should have risen.
“Now, ma’am, am I a fool?”
“Far from it, sir. You would, perhaps,
think me rude if I inquired in return whether you are a
philanthropist?”
“There again! Another stick of the
penknife, when she pretended to pat my head: and that is because
I said I did not like the society of children and old women (low
be it spoken!). No, young lady, I am not a general
philanthropist; but I bear a conscience;” and he pointed to the
prominences which are said to indicate that faculty, and which,
fortunately for him, were sufficiently conspicuous; giving,
indeed, a marked breadth to the upper part of his head: “and,
besides, I once had a kind of rude tenderness of heart. When I
was as old as you, I was a feeling fellow enough, partial to the
unfledged, unfostered, and unlucky; but Fortune has knocked me
about since: she has even kneaded me with her knuckles, and now
I flatter myself I am hard and tough as an India-rubber ball;
pervious, though, through a chink or two still, and with one
sentient point in the middle of the lump. Yes: does that leave
hope for me?”
“Hope of what, sir?”
“Of my final re-transformation from
India-rubber back to flesh?”
“Decidedly he has had too much wine,” I
thought; and I did not know what answer to make to his queer
question: how could I tell whether he was capable of being
re-transformed?
“You looked very much puzzled, Miss
Eyre; and though you are not pretty any more than I am handsome,
yet a puzzled air becomes you; besides, it is convenient, for it
keeps those searching eyes of yours away from my physiognomy,
and busies them with the worsted flowers of the rug; so puzzle
on. Young lady, I am disposed to be gregarious and
communicative to-night.”
With this announcement he rose from his
chair, and stood, leaning his arm on the marble mantelpiece: in
that attitude his shape was seen plainly as well as his face;
his unusual breadth of chest, disproportionate almost to his
length of limb. I am sure most people would have thought him an
ugly man; yet there was so much unconscious pride in his port;
so much ease in his demeanour; such a look of complete
indifference to his own external appearance; so haughty a
reliance on the power of other qualities, intrinsic or
adventitious, to atone for the lack of mere personal
attractiveness, that, in looking at him, one inevitably shared
the indifference, and, even in a blind, imperfect sense, put
faith in the confidence.
“I am disposed to be gregarious and
communicative to-night,” he repeated, “and that is why I sent
for you: the fire and the chandelier were not sufficient company
for me; nor would Pilot have been, for none of these can talk.
Adèle is a degree better, but still far below the mark; Mrs.
Fairfax ditto; you, I am persuaded, can suit me if you will: you
puzzled me the first evening I invited you down here. I have
almost forgotten you since: other ideas have driven yours from
my head; but to-night I am resolved to be at ease; to dismiss
what importunes, and recall what pleases. It would please me
now to draw you out—to learn more of you—therefore speak.”
Instead of speaking, I smiled; and not
a very complacent or submissive smile either.
“Speak,” he urged.
“What about, sir?”
“Whatever you like. I leave both the
choice of subject and the manner of treating it entirely to
yourself.”
Accordingly I sat and said nothing: “If
he expects me to talk for the mere sake of talking and showing
off, he will find he has addressed himself to the wrong person,”
I thought.
“You are dumb, Miss Eyre.”
I was dumb still. He bent his head a
little towards me, and with a single hasty glance seemed to dive
into my eyes.
“Stubborn?” he said, “and annoyed. Ah!
it is consistent. I put my request in an absurd, almost
insolent form. Miss Eyre, I beg your pardon. The fact is, once
for all, I don’t wish to treat you like an inferior: that is”
(correcting himself), “I claim only such superiority as must
result from twenty years’ difference in age and a century’s
advance in experience. This is legitimate, et j’y tiens,
as Adèle would say; and it is by virtue of this superiority, and
this alone, that I desire you to have the goodness to talk to me
a little now, and divert my thoughts, which are galled with
dwelling on one point—cankering as a rusty nail.”
He had deigned an explanation, almost
an apology, and I did not feel insensible to his condescension,
and would not seem so.
“I am willing to amuse you, if I can,
sir—quite willing; but I cannot introduce a topic, because how
do I know what will interest you? Ask me questions, and I will
do my best to answer them.”
“Then, in the first place, do you agree
with me that I have a right to be a little masterful, abrupt,
perhaps exacting, sometimes, on the grounds I stated, namely,
that I am old enough to be your father, and that I have battled
through a varied experience with many men of many nations, and
roamed over half the globe, while you have lived quietly with
one set of people in one house?”
“Do as you please, sir.”
“That is no answer; or rather it is a
very irritating, because a very evasive one. Reply clearly.”
“I don’t think, sir, you have a right
to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because
you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to
superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and
experience.”
“Humph! Promptly spoken. But I won’t
allow that, seeing that it would never suit my case, as I have
made an indifferent, not to say a bad, use of both advantages.
Leaving superiority out of the question, then, you must still
agree to receive my orders now and then, without being piqued or
hurt by the tone of command. Will you?”
I smiled: I thought to myself Mr.
Rochester is peculiar—he seems to forget that he pays me
£30 per annum for receiving his orders.
“The smile is very well,” said he,
catching instantly the passing expression; “but speak too.”
“I was thinking, sir, that very few
masters would trouble themselves to inquire whether or not their
paid subordinates were piqued and hurt by their orders.”
“Paid subordinates! What! you are my
paid subordinate, are you? Oh yes, I had forgotten the salary!
Well then, on that mercenary ground, will you agree to let me
hector a little?”
“No, sir, not on that ground; but, on
the ground that you did forget it, and that you care whether or
not a dependent is comfortable in his dependency, I agree
heartily.”
“And will you consent to dispense with
a great many conventional forms and phrases, without thinking
that the omission arises from insolence?”
“I am sure, sir, I should never mistake
informality for insolence: one I rather like, the other nothing
free-born would submit to, even for a salary.”
“Humbug! Most things free-born will
submit to anything for a salary; therefore, keep to yourself,
and don’t venture on generalities of which you are intensely
ignorant. However, I mentally shake hands with you for your
answer, despite its inaccuracy; and as much for the manner in
which it was said, as for the substance of the speech; the
manner was frank and sincere; one does not often see such a
manner: no, on the contrary, affectation, or coldness, or
stupid, coarse-minded misapprehension of one’s meaning are the
usual rewards of candour. Not three in three thousand raw
school-girl-governesses would have answered me as you have just
done. But I don’t mean to flatter you: if you are cast in a
different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature
did it. And then, after all, I go too fast in my conclusions:
for what I yet know, you may be no better than the rest; you may
have intolerable defects to counterbalance your few good
points.”
“And so may you,” I thought. My eye
met his as the idea crossed my mind: he seemed to read the
glance, answering as if its import had been spoken as well as
imagined—
“Yes, yes, you are right,” said he; “I
have plenty of faults of my own: I know it, and I don’t wish to
palliate them, I assure you. God wot I need not be too severe
about others; I have a past existence, a series of deeds, a
colour of life to contemplate within my own breast, which might
well call my sneers and censures from my neighbours to myself.
I started, or rather (for like other defaulters, I like to lay
half the blame on ill fortune and adverse circumstances) was
thrust on to a wrong tack at the age of one-and-twenty, and have
never recovered the right course since: but I might have been
very different; I might have been as good as you—wiser—almost as
stainless. I envy you your peace of mind, your clean
conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a memory
without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure—an
inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not?”
“How was your memory when you were
eighteen, sir?”
“All right then; limpid, salubrious: no
gush of bilge water had turned it to fetid puddle. I was your
equal at eighteen—quite your equal. Nature meant me to be, on
the whole, a good man, Miss Eyre; one of the better kind, and
you see I am not so. You would say you don’t see it; at least I
flatter myself I read as much in your eye (beware, by-the-bye,
what you express with that organ; I am quick at interpreting its
language). Then take my word for it,—I am not a villain: you
are not to suppose that—not to attribute to me any such bad
eminence; but, owing, I verily believe, rather to circumstances
than to my natural bent, I am a trite commonplace sinner,
hackneyed in all the poor petty dissipations with which the rich
and worthless try to put on life. Do you wonder that I avow
this to you? Know, that in the course of your future life you
will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of
your acquaintances’ secrets: people will instinctively find out,
as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself,
but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel,
too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their
indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less
comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its
manifestations.”
“How do you know?—how can you guess all
this, sir?”
“I know it well; therefore I proceed
almost as freely as if I were writing my thoughts in a diary.
You would say, I should have been superior to circumstances; so
I should—so I should; but you see I was not. When fate wronged
me, I had not the wisdom to remain cool: I turned desperate;
then I degenerated. Now, when any vicious simpleton excites my
disgust by his paltry ribaldry, I cannot flatter myself that I
am better than he: I am forced to confess that he and I are on a
level. I wish I had stood firm—God knows I do! Dread remorse
when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of
life.”
“Repentance is said to be its cure,
sir.”
“It is not its cure. Reformation may
be its cure; and I could reform—I have strength yet for
that—if—but where is the use of thinking of it, hampered,
burdened, cursed as I am? Besides, since happiness is
irrevocably denied me, I have a right to get pleasure out of
life: and I will get it, cost what it may.”
“Then you will degenerate still more,
sir.”
“Possibly: yet why should I, if I can
get sweet, fresh pleasure? And I may get it as sweet and fresh
as the wild honey the bee gathers on the moor.”
“It will sting—it will taste bitter,
sir.”
“How do you know?—you never tried it.
How very serious—how very solemn you look: and you are as
ignorant of the matter as this cameo head” (taking one from the
mantelpiece). “You have no right to preach to me, you neophyte,
that have not passed the porch of life, and are absolutely
unacquainted with its mysteries.”
“I only remind you of your own words,
sir: you said error brought remorse, and you pronounced remorse
the poison of existence.”
“And who talks of error now? I
scarcely think the notion that flittered across my brain was an
error. I believe it was an inspiration rather than a
temptation: it was very genial, very soothing—I know that. Here
it comes again! It is no devil, I assure you; or if it be, it
has put on the robes of an angel of light. I think I must admit
so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart.”
“Distrust it, sir; it is not a true
angel.”
“Once more, how do you know? By what
instinct do you pretend to distinguish between a fallen seraph
of the abyss and a messenger from the eternal throne—between a
guide and a seducer?”
“I judged by your countenance, sir,
which was troubled when you said the suggestion had returned
upon you. I feel sure it will work you more misery if you
listen to it.”
“Not at all—it bears the most gracious
message in the world: for the rest, you are not my
conscience-keeper, so don’t make yourself uneasy. Here, come
in, bonny wanderer!”
He said this as if he spoke to a
vision, viewless to any eye but his own; then, folding his arms,
which he had half extended, on his chest, he seemed to enclose
in their embrace the invisible being.
“Now,” he continued, again addressing
me, “I have received the pilgrim—a disguised deity, as I verily
believe. Already it has done me good: my heart was a sort of
charnel; it will now be a shrine.”
“To speak truth, sir, I don’t
understand you at all: I cannot keep up the conversation,
because it has got out of my depth. Only one thing, I know: you
said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that you
regretted your own imperfection;—one thing I can comprehend: you
intimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane.
It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find
it possible to become what you yourself would approve; and that
if from this day you began with resolution to correct your
thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a
new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might
revert with pleasure.”
“Justly thought; rightly said, Miss
Eyre; and, at this moment, I am paving hell with energy.”
“Sir?”
“I am laying down good intentions,
which I believe durable as flint. Certainly, my associates and
pursuits shall be other than they have been.”
“And better?”
“And better—so much better as pure ore
is than foul dross. You seem to doubt me; I don’t doubt myself:
I know what my aim is, what my motives are; and at this moment I
pass a law, unalterable as that of the Medes and Persians, that
both are right.”
“They cannot be, sir, if they require a
new statute to legalise them.”
“They are, Miss Eyre, though they
absolutely require a new statute: unheard-of combinations of
circumstances demand unheard-of rules.”
“That sounds a dangerous maxim, sir;
because one can see at once that it is liable to abuse.”
“Sententious sage! so it is: but I
swear by my household gods not to abuse it.”
“You are human and fallible.”
“I am: so are you—what then?”
“The human and fallible should not
arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be
safely intrusted.”
“What power?”
“That of saying of any strange,
unsanctioned line of action,—‘Let it be right.’”
“‘Let it be right’—the very words: you
have pronounced them.”
“May it be right then,” I said,
as I rose, deeming it useless to continue a discourse which was
all darkness to me; and, besides, sensible that the character of
my interlocutor was beyond my penetration; at least, beyond its
present reach; and feeling the uncertainty, the vague sense of
insecurity, which accompanies a conviction of ignorance.
“Where are you going?”
“To put Adèle to bed: it is past her
bedtime.”
“You are afraid of me, because I talk
like a Sphynx.”
“Your language is enigmatical, sir: but
though I am bewildered, I am certainly not afraid.”
“You are afraid—your self-love
dreads a blunder.”
“In that sense I do feel apprehensive—I
have no wish to talk nonsense.”
“If you did, it would be in such a
grave, quiet manner, I should mistake it for sense. Do you
never laugh, Miss Eyre? Don’t trouble yourself to answer—I see
you laugh rarely; but you can laugh very merrily: believe me,
you are not naturally austere, any more than I am naturally
vicious. The Lowood constraint still clings to you somewhat;
controlling your features, muffling your voice, and restricting
your limbs; and you fear in the presence of a man and a
brother—or father, or master, or what you will—to smile too
gaily, speak too freely, or move too quickly: but, in time, I
think you will learn to be natural with me, as I find it
impossible to be conventional with you; and then your looks and
movements will have more vivacity and variety than they dare
offer now. I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of
bird through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless,
resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar
cloud-high. You are still bent on going?”
“It has struck nine, sir.”
“Never mind,—wait a minute: Adèle is
not ready to go to bed yet. My position, Miss Eyre, with my
back to the fire, and my face to the room, favours observation.
While talking to you, I have also occasionally watched Adèle (I
have my own reasons for thinking her a curious study,—reasons
that I may, nay, that I shall, impart to you some day). She
pulled out of her box, about ten minutes ago, a little pink silk
frock; rapture lit her face as she unfolded it; coquetry runs in
her blood, blends with her brains, and seasons the marrow of her
bones. ‘Il faut que je l’essaie!’ cried she, ‘et à l’instant
même!’ and she rushed out of the room. She is now with Sophie,
undergoing a robing process: in a few minutes she will re-enter;
and I know what I shall see,—a miniature of Céline Varens, as
she used to appear on the boards at the rising of—But never mind
that. However, my tenderest feelings are about to receive a
shock: such is my presentiment; stay now, to see whether it will
be realised.”
Ere long, Adèle’s little foot was heard
tripping across the hall. She entered, transformed as her
guardian had predicted. A dress of rose-coloured satin, very
short, and as full in the skirt as it could be gathered,
replaced the brown frock she had previously worn; a wreath of
rosebuds circled her forehead; her feet were dressed in silk
stockings and small white satin sandals.
“Est-ce que ma robe va bien?” cried
she, bounding forwards; “et mes souliers? et mes bas? Tenez, je
crois que je vais danser!”
And spreading out her dress, she
chasséed across the room till, having reached Mr. Rochester, she
wheeled lightly round before him on tip-toe, then dropped on one
knee at his feet, exclaiming—
“Monsieur, je vous remercie mille fois
de votre bonté;” then rising, she added, “C’est comme cela que
maman faisait, n’est-ce pas, monsieur?”
“Pre-cise-ly!” was the answer; “and,
‘comme cela,’ she charmed my English gold out of my British
breeches’ pocket. I have been green, too, Miss Eyre,—ay, grass
green: not a more vernal tint freshens you now than once
freshened me. My Spring is gone, however, but it has left me
that French floweret on my hands, which, in some moods, I would
fain be rid of. Not valuing now the root whence it sprang;
having found that it was of a sort which nothing but gold dust
could manure, I have but half a liking to the blossom,
especially when it looks so artificial as just now. I keep it
and rear it rather on the Roman Catholic principle of expiating
numerous sins, great or small, by one good work. I’ll explain
all this some day. Good-night.”
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CHAPTER XV
Mr. Rochester did, on a future
occasion, explain it. It was one afternoon, when he chanced to
meet me and Adèle in the grounds: and while she played with
Pilot and her shuttlecock, he asked me to walk up and down a
long beech avenue within sight of her.
He then said that she was the daughter
of a French opera-dancer, Céline Varens, towards whom he had
once cherished what he called a “grande passion.” This
passion Céline had professed to return with even superior ardour.
He thought himself her idol, ugly as he was: he believed, as he
said, that she preferred his “taille d’athlète” to the
elegance of the Apollo Belvidere.
“And, Miss Eyre, so much was I
flattered by this preference of the Gallic sylph for her British
gnome, that I installed her in an hotel; gave her a complete
establishment of servants, a carriage, cashmeres, diamonds,
dentelles, &c. In short, I began the process of ruining myself
in the received style, like any other spoony. I had not, it
seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and
destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not
to deviate an inch from the beaten centre. I had—as I deserved
to have—the fate of all other spoonies. Happening to call one
evening when Céline did not expect me, I found her out; but it
was a warm night, and I was tired with strolling through Paris,
so I sat down in her boudoir; happy to breathe the air
consecrated so lately by her presence. No,—I exaggerate; I
never thought there was any consecrating virtue about her: it
was rather a sort of pastille perfume she had left; a scent of
musk and amber, than an odour of sanctity. I was just beginning
to stifle with the fumes of conservatory flowers and sprinkled
essences, when I bethought myself to open the window and step
out on to the balcony. It was moonlight and gaslight besides,
and very still and serene. The balcony was furnished with a
chair or two; I sat down, and took out a cigar,—I will take one
now, if you will excuse me.”
Here ensued a pause, filled up by the
producing and lighting of a cigar; having placed it to his lips
and breathed a trail of Havannah incense on the freezing and
sunless air, he went on—
“I liked bonbons too in those days,
Miss Eyre, and I was croquant—(overlook the barbarism)—croquant
chocolate comfits, and smoking alternately, watching meantime
the equipages that rolled along the fashionable streets towards
the neighbouring opera-house, when in an elegant close carriage
drawn by a beautiful pair of English horses, and distinctly seen
in the brilliant city-night, I recognised the ‘voiture’ I had
given Céline. She was returning: of course my heart thumped
with impatience against the iron rails I leant upon. The
carriage stopped, as I had expected, at the hotel door; my flame
(that is the very word for an opera inamorata) alighted: though
muffed in a cloak—an unnecessary encumbrance, by-the-bye, on so
warm a June evening—I knew her instantly by her little foot,
seen peeping from the skirt of her dress, as she skipped from
the carriage-step. Bending over the balcony, I was about to
murmur ‘Mon ange’—in a tone, of course, which should be audible
to the ear of love alone—when a figure jumped from the carriage
after her; cloaked also; but that was a spurred heel which had
rung on the pavement, and that was a hatted head which now
passed under the arched porte cochère of the hotel.
“You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss
Eyre? Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt
love. You have both sentiments yet to experience: your soul
sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall waken it. You
think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in which
your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes
and muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far
off in the bed of the flood, nor hear the breakers boil at their
base. But I tell you—and you may mark my words—you will come
some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of
life’s stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and
noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or
lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer
current—as I am now.
“I like this day; I like that sky of
steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world under
this frost. I like Thornfield, its antiquity, its retirement,
its old crow-trees and thorn-trees, its grey façade, and lines
of dark windows reflecting that metal welkin: and yet how long
have I abhorred the very thought of it, shunned it like a great
plague-house? How I do still abhor—”
He ground his teeth and was silent: he
arrested his step and struck his boot against the hard ground.
Some hated thought seemed to have him in its grip, and to hold
him so tightly that he could not advance.
We were ascending the avenue when he
thus paused; the hall was before us. Lifting his eye to its
battlements, he cast over them a glare such as I never saw
before or since. Pain, shame, ire, impatience, disgust,
detestation, seemed momentarily to hold a quivering conflict in
the large pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrow. Wild was the
wrestle which should be paramount; but another feeling rose and
triumphed: something hard and cynical: self-willed and resolute:
it settled his passion and petrified his countenance: he went
on—
“During the moment I was silent, Miss
Eyre, I was arranging a point with my destiny. She stood there,
by that beech-trunk—a hag like one of those who appeared to
Macbeth on the heath of Forres. ‘You like Thornfield?’ she
said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the air a
memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the
house-front, between the upper and lower row of windows, ‘Like
it if you can! Like it if you dare!’
“‘I will like it,’ said I; ‘I dare like
it;’ and” (he subjoined moodily) “I will keep my word; I will
break obstacles to happiness, to goodness—yes, goodness. I wish
to be a better man than I have been, than I am; as Job’s
leviathan broke the spear, the dart, and the habergeon,
hindrances which others count as iron and brass, I will esteem
but straw and rotten wood.”
Adèle here ran before him with her
shuttlecock. “Away!” he cried harshly; “keep at a distance,
child; or go in to Sophie!” Continuing then to pursue his walk
in silence, I ventured to recall him to the point whence he had
abruptly diverged—
“Did you leave the balcony, sir,” I
asked, “when Mdlle. Varens entered?”
I almost expected a rebuff for this
hardly well-timed question, but, on the contrary, waking out of
his scowling abstraction, he turned his eyes towards me, and the
shade seemed to clear off his brow. “Oh, I had forgotten Céline!
Well, to resume. When I saw my charmer thus come in accompanied
by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake of
jealousy, rising on undulating coils from the moonlit balcony,
glided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two minutes to my
heart’s core. Strange!” he exclaimed, suddenly starting again
from the point. “Strange that I should choose you for the
confidant of all this, young lady; passing strange that you
should listen to me quietly, as if it were the most usual thing
in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his
opera-mistresses to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you! But
the last singularity explains the first, as I intimated once
before: you, with your gravity, considerateness, and caution
were made to be the recipient of secrets. Besides, I know what
sort of a mind I have placed in communication with my own: I
know it is one not liable to take infection: it is a peculiar
mind: it is a unique one. Happily I do not mean to harm it:
but, if I did, it would not take harm from me. The more you and
I converse, the better; for while I cannot blight you, you may
refresh me.” After this digression he proceeded—
“I remained in the balcony. ‘They will
come to her boudoir, no doubt,’ thought I: ‘let me prepare an
ambush.’ So putting my hand in through the open window, I drew
the curtain over it, leaving only an opening through which I
could take observations; then I closed the casement, all but a
chink just wide enough to furnish an outlet to lovers’ whispered
vows: then I stole back to my chair; and as I resumed it the
pair came in. My eye was quickly at the aperture. Céline’s
chamber-maid entered, lit a lamp, left it on the table, and
withdrew. The couple were thus revealed to me clearly: both
removed their cloaks, and there was ‘the Varens,’ shining in
satin and jewels,—my gifts of course,—and there was her
companion in an officer’s uniform; and I knew him for a young
roué of a vicomte—a brainless and vicious youth whom I had
sometimes met in society, and had never thought of hating
because I despised him so absolutely. On recognising him, the
fang of the snake Jealousy was instantly broken; because at the
same moment my love for Céline sank under an extinguisher. A
woman who could betray me for such a rival was not worth
contending for; she deserved only scorn; less, however, than I,
who had been her dupe.
“They began to talk; their conversation
eased me completely: frivolous, mercenary, heartless, and
senseless, it was rather calculated to weary than enrage a
listener. A card of mine lay on the table; this being
perceived, brought my name under discussion. Neither of them
possessed energy or wit to belabour me soundly, but they
insulted me as coarsely as they could in their little way:
especially Céline, who even waxed rather brilliant on my
personal defects—deformities she termed them. Now it had been
her custom to launch out into fervent admiration of what she
called my ‘beauté mâle:’ wherein she differed
diametrically from you, who told me point-blank, at the second
interview, that you did not think me handsome. The contrast
struck me at the time and—”
Adèle here came running up again.
“Monsieur, John has just been to say
that your agent has called and wishes to see you.”
“Ah! in that case I must abridge.
Opening the window, I walked in upon them; liberated Céline from
my protection; gave her notice to vacate her hotel; offered her
a purse for immediate exigencies; disregarded screams,
hysterics, prayers, protestations, convulsions; made an
appointment with the vicomte for a meeting at the Bois de
Boulogne. Next morning I had the pleasure of encountering him;
left a bullet in one of his poor etiolated arms, feeble as the
wing of a chicken in the pip, and then thought I had done with
the whole crew. But unluckily the Varens, six months before,
had given me this filette Adèle, who, she affirmed, was my
daughter; and perhaps she may be, though I see no proofs of such
grim paternity written in her countenance: Pilot is more like me
than she. Some years after I had broken with the mother, she
abandoned her child, and ran away to Italy with a musician or
singer. I acknowledged no natural claim on Adèle’s part to be
supported by me, nor do I now acknowledge any, for I am not her
father; but hearing that she was quite destitute, I e’en took
the poor thing out of the slime and mud of Paris, and
transplanted it here, to grow up clean in the wholesome soil of
an English country garden. Mrs. Fairfax found you to train it;
but now you know that it is the illegitimate offspring of a
French opera-girl, you will perhaps think differently of your
post and protégée: you will be coming to me some day with notice
that you have found another place—that you beg me to look out
for a new governess, &c.—Eh?”
“No: Adèle is not answerable for either
her mother’s faults or yours: I have a regard for her; and now
that I know she is, in a sense, parentless—forsaken by her
mother and disowned by you, sir—I shall cling closer to her than
before. How could I possibly prefer the spoilt pet of a wealthy
family, who would hate her governess as a nuisance, to a lonely
little orphan, who leans towards her as a friend?”
“Oh, that is the light in which you
view it! Well, I must go in now; and you too: it darkens.”
But I stayed out a few minutes longer
with Adèle and Pilot—ran a race with her, and played a game of
battledore and shuttlecock. When we went in, and I had removed
her bonnet and coat, I took her on my knee; kept her there an
hour, allowing her to prattle as she liked: not rebuking even
some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to
stray when much noticed, and which betrayed in her a
superficiality of character, inherited probably from her mother,
hardly congenial to an English mind. Still she had her merits;
and I was disposed to appreciate all that was good in her to the
utmost. I sought in her countenance and features a likeness to
Mr. Rochester, but found none: no trait, no turn of expression
announced relationship. It was a pity: if she could but have
been proved to resemble him, he would have thought more of her.
It was not till after I had withdrawn
to my own chamber for the night, that I steadily reviewed the
tale Mr. Rochester had told me. As he had said, there was
probably nothing at all extraordinary in the substance of the
narrative itself: a wealthy Englishman’s passion for a French
dancer, and her treachery to him, were every-day matters enough,
no doubt, in society; but there was something decidedly strange
in the paroxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized him when he
was in the act of expressing the present contentment of his
mood, and his newly revived pleasure in the old hall and its
environs. I meditated wonderingly on this incident; but
gradually quitting it, as I found it for the present
inexplicable, I turned to the consideration of my master’s
manner to myself. The confidence he had thought fit to repose
in me seemed a tribute to my discretion: I regarded and accepted
it as such. His deportment had now for some weeks been more
uniform towards me than at the first. I never seemed in his
way; he did not take fits of chilling hauteur: when he met me
unexpectedly, the encounter seemed welcome; he had always a word
and sometimes a smile for me: when summoned by formal invitation
to his presence, I was honoured by a cordiality of reception
that made me feel I really possessed the power to amuse him, and
that these evening conferences were sought as much for his
pleasure as for my benefit.
I, indeed, talked comparatively little,
but I heard him talk with relish. It was his nature to be
communicative; he liked to open to a mind unacquainted with the
world glimpses of its scenes and ways (I do not mean its corrupt
scenes and wicked ways, but such as derived their interest from
the great scale on which they were acted, the strange novelty by
which they were characterised); and I had a keen delight in
receiving the new ideas he offered, in imagining the new
pictures he portrayed, and following him in thought through the
new regions he disclosed, never startled or troubled by one
noxious allusion.
The ease of his manner freed me from
painful restraint: the friendly frankness, as correct as
cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to him. I felt at
times as if he were my relation rather than my master: yet he
was imperious sometimes still; but I did not mind that; I saw it
was his way. So happy, so gratified did I become with this new
interest added to life, that I ceased to pine after kindred: my
thin crescent-destiny seemed to enlarge; the blanks of existence
were filled up; my bodily health improved; I gathered flesh and
strength.
And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my
eyes? No, reader: gratitude, and many associations, all
pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I best liked to
see; his presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest
fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults; indeed, I could not,
for he brought them frequently before me. He was proud,
sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description: in my
secret soul I knew that his great kindness to me was balanced by
unjust severity to many others. He was moody, too;
unaccountably so; I more than once, when sent for to read to
him, found him sitting in his library alone, with his head bent
on his folded arms; and, when he looked up, a morose, almost a
malignant, scowl blackened his features. But I believed that
his moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of morality
(I say former, for now he seemed corrected of them) had
their source in some cruel cross of fate. I believed he was
naturally a man of better tendencies, higher principles, and
purer tastes than such as circumstances had developed, education
instilled, or destiny encouraged. I thought there were
excellent materials in him; though for the present they hung
together somewhat spoiled and tangled. I cannot deny that I
grieved for his grief, whatever that was, and would have given
much to assuage it.
Though I had now extinguished my candle
and was laid down in bed, I could not sleep for thinking of his
look when he paused in the avenue, and told how his destiny had
risen up before him, and dared him to be happy at Thornfield.
“Why not?” I asked myself. “What
alienates him from the house? Will he leave it again soon?
Mrs. Fairfax said he seldom stayed here longer than a fortnight
at a time; and he has now been resident eight weeks. If he does
go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent
spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days
will seem!”
I hardly know whether I had slept or
not after this musing; at any rate, I started wide awake on
hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and lugubrious, which sounded,
I thought, just above me. I wished I had kept my candle
burning: the night was drearily dark; my spirits were
depressed. I rose and sat up in bed, listening. The sound was
hushed.
I tried again to sleep; but my heart
beat anxiously: my inward tranquillity was broken. The clock,
far down in the hall, struck two. Just then it seemed my
chamber-door was touched; as if fingers had swept the panels in
groping a way along the dark gallery outside. I said, “Who is
there?” Nothing answered. I was chilled with fear.
All at once I remembered that it might
be Pilot, who, when the kitchen-door chanced to be left open,
not unfrequently found his way up to the threshold of Mr.
Rochester’s chamber: I had seen him lying there myself in the
mornings. The idea calmed me somewhat: I lay down. Silence
composes the nerves; and as an unbroken hush now reigned again
through the whole house, I began to feel the return of slumber.
But it was not fated that I should sleep that night. A dream
had scarcely approached my ear, when it fled affrighted, scared
by a marrow-freezing incident enough.
This was a demoniac laugh—low,
suppressed, and deep—uttered, as it seemed, at the very keyhole
of my chamber door. The head of my bed was near the door, and I
thought at first the goblin-laugher stood at my bedside—or
rather, crouched by my pillow: but I rose, looked round, and
could see nothing; while, as I still gazed, the unnatural sound
was reiterated: and I knew it came from behind the panels. My
first impulse was to rise and fasten the bolt; my next, again to
cry out, “Who is there?”
Something gurgled and moaned. Ere
long, steps retreated up the gallery towards the third-storey
staircase: a door had lately been made to shut in that
staircase; I heard it open and close, and all was still.
“Was that Grace Poole? and is she
possessed with a devil?” thought I. Impossible now to remain
longer by myself: I must go to Mrs. Fairfax. I hurried on my
frock and a shawl; I withdrew the bolt and opened the door with
a trembling hand. There was a candle burning just outside, and
on the matting in the gallery. I was surprised at this
circumstance: but still more was I amazed to perceive the air
quite dim, as if filled with smoke; and, while looking to the
right hand and left, to find whence these blue wreaths issued, I
became further aware of a strong smell of burning.
Something creaked: it was a door ajar;
and that door was Mr. Rochester’s, and the smoke rushed in a
cloud from thence. I thought no more of Mrs. Fairfax; I thought
no more of Grace Poole, or the laugh: in an instant, I was
within the chamber. Tongues of flame darted round the bed: the
curtains were on fire. In the midst of blaze and vapour, Mr.
Rochester lay stretched motionless, in deep sleep.
“Wake! wake!” I cried. I shook him,
but he only murmured and turned: the smoke had stupefied him.
Not a moment could be lost: the very sheets were kindling, I
rushed to his basin and ewer; fortunately, one was wide and the
other deep, and both were filled with water. I heaved them up,
deluged the bed and its occupant, flew back to my own room,
brought my own water-jug, baptized the couch afresh, and, by
God’s aid, succeeded in extinguishing the flames which were
devouring it.
The hiss of the quenched element, the
breakage of a pitcher which I flung from my hand when I had
emptied it, and, above all, the splash of the shower-bath I had
liberally bestowed, roused Mr. Rochester at last. Though it was
now dark, I knew he was awake; because I heard him fulminating
strange anathemas at finding himself lying in a pool of water.
“Is there a flood?” he cried.
“No, sir,” I answered; “but there has
been a fire: get up, do; you are quenched now; I will fetch you
a candle.”
“In the name of all the elves in
Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?” he demanded. “What have you
done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the room besides
you? Have you plotted to drown me?”
“I will fetch you a candle, sir; and,
in Heaven’s name, get up. Somebody has plotted something: you
cannot too soon find out who and what it is.”
“There! I am up now; but at your peril
you fetch a candle yet: wait two minutes till I get into some
dry garments, if any dry there be—yes, here is my
dressing-gown. Now run!”
I did run; I brought the candle which
still remained in the gallery. He took it from my hand, held it
up, and surveyed the bed, all blackened and scorched, the sheets
drenched, the carpet round swimming in water.
“What is it? and who did it?” he
asked. I briefly related to him what had transpired: the
strange laugh I had heard in the gallery: the step ascending to
the third storey; the smoke,—the smell of fire which had
conducted me to his room; in what state I had found matters
there, and how I had deluged him with all the water I could lay
hands on.
He listened very gravely; his face, as
I went on, expressed more concern than astonishment; he did not
immediately speak when I had concluded.
“Shall I call Mrs. Fairfax?” I asked.
“Mrs. Fairfax? No; what the deuce
would you call her for? What can she do? Let her sleep
unmolested.”
“Then I will fetch Leah, and wake John
and his wife.”
“Not at all: just be still. You have a
shawl on. If you are not warm enough, you may take my cloak
yonder; wrap it about you, and sit down in the arm-chair:
there,—I will put it on. Now place your feet on the stool, to
keep them out of the wet. I am going to leave you a few
minutes. I shall take the candle. Remain where you are till I
return; be as still as a mouse. I must pay a visit to the
second storey. Don’t move, remember, or call any one.”
He went: I watched the light withdraw.
He passed up the gallery very softly, unclosed the staircase
door with as little noise as possible, shut it after him, and
the last ray vanished. I was left in total darkness. I
listened for some noise, but heard nothing. A very long time
elapsed. I grew weary: it was cold, in spite of the cloak; and
then I did not see the use of staying, as I was not to rouse the
house. I was on the point of risking Mr. Rochester’s
displeasure by disobeying his orders, when the light once more
gleamed dimly on the gallery wall, and I heard his unshod feet
tread the matting. “I hope it is he,” thought I, “and not
something worse.”
He re-entered, pale and very gloomy.
“I have found it all out,” said he, setting his candle down on
the washstand; “it is as I thought.”
“How, sir?”
He made no reply, but stood with his
arms folded, looking on the ground. At the end of a few minutes
he inquired in rather a peculiar tone—
“I forget whether you said you saw
anything when you opened your chamber door.”
“No, sir, only the candlestick on the
ground.”
“But you heard an odd laugh? You have
heard that laugh before, I should think, or something like it?”
“Yes, sir: there is a woman who sews
here, called Grace Poole,—she laughs in that way. She is a
singular person.”
“Just so. Grace Poole—you have guessed
it. She is, as you say, singular—very. Well, I shall reflect
on the subject. Meantime, I am glad that you are the only
person, besides myself, acquainted with the precise details of
to-night’s incident. You are no talking fool: say nothing about
it. I will account for this state of affairs” (pointing to the
bed): “and now return to your own room. I shall do very well on
the sofa in the library for the rest of the night. It is near
four:—in two hours the servants will be up.”
“Good-night, then, sir,” said I,
departing.
He seemed surprised—very inconsistently
so, as he had just told me to go.
“What!” he exclaimed, “are you quitting
me already, and in that way?”
“You said I might go, sir.”
“But not without taking leave; not
without a word or two of acknowledgment and good-will: not, in
short, in that brief, dry fashion. Why, you have saved my
life!—snatched me from a horrible and excruciating death! and
you walk past me as if we were mutual strangers! At least shake
hands.”
He held out his hand; I gave him mine:
he took it first in one, them in both his own.
“You have saved my life: I have a
pleasure in owing you so immense a debt. I cannot say more.
Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable to me in
the character of creditor for such an obligation: but you: it is
different;—I feel your benefits no burden, Jane.”
He paused; gazed at me: words almost
visible trembled on his lips,—but his voice was checked.
“Good-night again, sir. There is no
debt, benefit, burden, obligation, in the case.”
“I knew,” he continued, “you would do
me good in some way, at some time;—I saw it in your eyes when I
first beheld you: their expression and smile did not”—(again he
stopped)—“did not” (he proceeded hastily) “strike delight to my
very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural
sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of
truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, goodnight!”
Strange energy was in his voice,
strange fire in his look.
“I am glad I happened to be awake,” I
said: and then I was going.
“What! you will go?”
“I am cold, sir.”
“Cold? Yes,—and standing in a pool!
Go, then, Jane; go!” But he still retained my hand, and I could
not free it. I bethought myself of an expedient.
“I think I hear Mrs. Fairfax move,
sir,” said I.
“Well, leave me:” he relaxed his
fingers, and I was gone.
I regained my couch, but never thought
of sleep. Till morning dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but
unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of
joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore,
sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a freshening
gale, wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards the
bourne: but I could not reach it, even in fancy—a counteracting
breeze blew off land, and continually drove me back. Sense
would resist delirium: judgment would warn passion. Too
feverish to rest, I rose as soon as day dawned.
CHAPTER XVI
I both wished and feared to see Mr.
Rochester on the day which followed this sleepless night: I
wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to meet his eye.
During the early part of the morning, I momentarily expected his
coming; he was not in the frequent habit of entering the
schoolroom, but he did step in for a few minutes sometimes, and
I had the impression that he was sure to visit it that day.
But the morning passed just as usual:
nothing happened to interrupt the quiet course of Adèle’s
studies; only soon after breakfast, I heard some bustle in the
neighbourhood of Mr. Rochester’s chamber, Mrs. Fairfax’s voice,
and Leah’s, and the cook’s—that is, John’s wife—and even John’s
own gruff tones. There were exclamations of “What a mercy
master was not burnt in his bed!” “It is always dangerous to
keep a candle lit at night.” “How providential that he had
presence of mind to think of the water-jug!” “I wonder he waked
nobody!” “It is to be hoped he will not take cold with sleeping
on the library sofa,” &c.
To much confabulation succeeded a sound
of scrubbing and setting to rights; and when I passed the room,
in going downstairs to dinner, I saw through the open door that
all was again restored to complete order; only the bed was
stripped of its hangings. Leah stood up in the window-seat,
rubbing the panes of glass dimmed with smoke. I was about to
address her, for I wished to know what account had been given of
the affair: but, on advancing, I saw a second person in the
chamber—a woman sitting on a chair by the bedside, and sewing
rings to new curtains. That woman was no other than Grace
Poole.
There she sat, staid and
taciturn-looking, as usual, in her brown stuff gown, her check
apron, white handkerchief, and cap. She was intent on her work,
in which her whole thoughts seemed absorbed: on her hard
forehead, and in her commonplace features, was nothing either of
the paleness or desperation one would have expected to see
marking the countenance of a woman who had attempted murder, and
whose intended victim had followed her last night to her lair,
and (as I believed), charged her with the crime she wished to
perpetrate. I was amazed—confounded. She looked up, while I
still gazed at her: no start, no increase or failure of colour
betrayed emotion, consciousness of guilt, or fear of detection.
She said “Good morning, Miss,” in her usual phlegmatic and brief
manner; and taking up another ring and more tape, went on with
her sewing.
“I will put her to some test,” thought
I: “such absolute impenetrability is past comprehension.”
“Good morning, Grace,” I said. “Has
anything happened here? I thought I heard the servants all
talking together a while ago.”
“Only master had been reading in his
bed last night; he fell asleep with his candle lit, and the
curtains got on fire; but, fortunately, he awoke before the
bed-clothes or the wood-work caught, and contrived to quench the
flames with the water in the ewer.”
“A strange affair!” I said, in a low
voice: then, looking at her fixedly—“Did Mr. Rochester wake
nobody? Did no one hear him move?”
She again raised her eyes to me, and
this time there was something of consciousness in their
expression. She seemed to examine me warily; then she answered—
“The servants sleep so far off, you
know, Miss, they would not be likely to hear. Mrs. Fairfax’s
room and yours are the nearest to master’s; but Mrs. Fairfax
said she heard nothing: when people get elderly, they often
sleep heavy.” She paused, and then added, with a sort of
assumed indifference, but still in a marked and significant
tone—“But you are young, Miss; and I should say a light sleeper:
perhaps you may have heard a noise?”
“I did,” said I, dropping my voice, so
that Leah, who was still polishing the panes, could not hear me,
“and at first I thought it was Pilot: but Pilot cannot laugh;
and I am certain I heard a laugh, and a strange one.”
She took a new needleful of thread,
waxed it carefully, threaded her needle with a steady hand, and
then observed, with perfect composure—
“It is hardly likely master would
laugh, I should think, Miss, when he was in such danger: You
must have been dreaming.”
“I was not dreaming,” I said, with some
warmth, for her brazen coolness provoked me. Again she looked
at me; and with the same scrutinising and conscious eye.
“Have you told master that you heard a
laugh?” she inquired.
“I have not had the opportunity of
speaking to him this morning.”
“You did not think of opening your door
and looking out into the gallery?” she further asked.
She appeared to be cross-questioning
me, attempting to draw from me information unawares. The idea
struck me that if she discovered I knew or suspected her guilt,
she would be playing of some of her malignant pranks on me; I
thought it advisable to be on my guard.
“On the contrary,” said I, “I bolted my
door.”
“Then you are not in the habit of
bolting your door every night before you get into bed?”
“Fiend! she wants to know my habits,
that she may lay her plans accordingly!” Indignation again
prevailed over prudence: I replied sharply, “Hitherto I have
often omitted to fasten the bolt: I did not think it necessary.
I was not aware any danger or annoyance was to be dreaded at
Thornfield Hall: but in future” (and I laid marked stress on the
words) “I shall take good care to make all secure before I
venture to lie down.”
“It will be wise so to do,” was her
answer: “this neighbourhood is as quiet as any I know, and I
never heard of the hall being attempted by robbers since it was
a house; though there are hundreds of pounds’ worth of plate in
the plate-closet, as is well known. And you see, for such a
large house, there are very few servants, because master has
never lived here much; and when he does come, being a bachelor,
he needs little waiting on: but I always think it best to err on
the safe side; a door is soon fastened, and it is as well to
have a drawn bolt between one and any mischief that may be
about. A deal of people, Miss, are for trusting all to
Providence; but I say Providence will not dispense with the
means, though He often blesses them when they are used
discreetly.” And here she closed her harangue: a long one for
her, and uttered with the demureness of a Quakeress.
I still stood absolutely dumfoundered
at what appeared to me her miraculous self-possession and most
inscrutable hypocrisy, when the cook entered.
“Mrs. Poole,” said she, addressing
Grace, “the servants’ dinner will soon be ready: will you come
down?”
“No; just put my pint of porter and bit
of pudding on a tray, and I’ll carry it upstairs.”
“You’ll have some meat?”
“Just a morsel, and a taste of cheese,
that’s all.”
“And the sago?”
“Never mind it at present: I shall be
coming down before teatime: I’ll make it myself.”
The cook here turned to me, saying that
Mrs. Fairfax was waiting for me: so I departed.
I hardly heard Mrs. Fairfax’s account
of the curtain conflagration during dinner, so much was I
occupied in puzzling my brains over the enigmatical character of
Grace Poole, and still more in pondering the problem of her
position at Thornfield and questioning why she had not been
given into custody that morning, or, at the very least,
dismissed from her master’s service. He had almost as much as
declared his conviction of her criminality last night: what
mysterious cause withheld him from accusing her? Why had he
enjoined me, too, to secrecy? It was strange: a bold,
vindictive, and haughty gentleman seemed somehow in the power of
one of the meanest of his dependants; so much in her power, that
even when she lifted her hand against his life, he dared not
openly charge her with the attempt, much less punish her for it.
Had Grace been young and handsome, I
should have been tempted to think that tenderer feelings than
prudence or fear influenced Mr. Rochester in her behalf; but,
hard-favoured and matronly as she was, the idea could not be
admitted. “Yet,” I reflected, “she has been young once; her
youth would be contemporary with her master’s: Mrs. Fairfax told
me once, she had lived here many years. I don’t think she can
ever have been pretty; but, for aught I know, she may possess
originality and strength of character to compensate for the want
of personal advantages. Mr. Rochester is an amateur of the
decided and eccentric: Grace is eccentric at least. What if a
former caprice (a freak very possible to a nature so sudden and
headstrong as his) has delivered him into her power, and she now
exercises over his actions a secret influence, the result of his
own indiscretion, which he cannot shake off, and dare not
disregard?” But, having reached this point of conjecture, Mrs.
Poole’s square, flat figure, and uncomely, dry, even coarse
face, recurred so distinctly to my mind’s eye, that I thought,
“No; impossible! my supposition cannot be correct. Yet,”
suggested the secret voice which talks to us in our own hearts,
“you are not beautiful either, and perhaps Mr. Rochester
approves you: at any rate, you have often felt as if he did; and
last night—remember his words; remember his look; remember his
voice!”
I well remembered all; language,
glance, and tone seemed at the moment vividly renewed. I was
now in the schoolroom; Adèle was drawing; I bent over her and
directed her pencil. She looked up with a sort of start.
“Qu’ avez-vous, mademoiselle?” said
she. “Vos doigts tremblent comme la feuille, et vos joues sont
rouges: mais, rouges comme des cerises!”
“I am hot, Adèle, with stooping!” She
went on sketching; I went on thinking.
I hastened to drive from my mind the
hateful notion I had been conceiving respecting Grace Poole; it
disgusted me. I compared myself with her, and found we were
different. Bessie Leaven had said I was quite a lady; and she
spoke truth—I was a lady. And now I looked much better than I
did when Bessie saw me; I had more colour and more flesh, more
life, more vivacity, because I had brighter hopes and keener
enjoyments.
“Evening approaches,” said I, as I
looked towards the window. “I have never heard Mr. Rochester’s
voice or step in the house to-day; but surely I shall see him
before night: I feared the meeting in the morning; now I desire
it, because expectation has been so long baffled that it is
grown impatient.”
When dusk actually closed, and when
Adèle left me to go and play in the nursery with Sophie, I did
most keenly desire it. I listened for the bell to ring below; I
listened for Leah coming up with a message; I fancied sometimes
I heard Mr. Rochester’s own tread, and I turned to the door,
expecting it to open and admit him. The door remained shut;
darkness only came in through the window. Still it was not
late; he often sent for me at seven and eight o’clock, and it
was yet but six. Surely I should not be wholly disappointed
to-night, when I had so many things to say to him! I wanted
again to introduce the subject of Grace Poole, and to hear what
he would answer; I wanted to ask him plainly if he really
believed it was she who had made last night’s hideous attempt;
and if so, why he kept her wickedness a secret. It little
mattered whether my curiosity irritated him; I knew the pleasure
of vexing and soothing him by turns; it was one I chiefly
delighted in, and a sure instinct always prevented me from going
too far; beyond the verge of provocation I never ventured; on
the extreme brink I liked well to try my skill. Retaining every
minute form of respect, every propriety of my station, I could
still meet him in argument without fear or uneasy restraint;
this suited both him and me.
A tread creaked on the stairs at last.
Leah made her appearance; but it was only to intimate that tea
was ready in Mrs. Fairfax’s room. Thither I repaired, glad at
least to go downstairs; for that brought me, I imagined, nearer
to Mr. Rochester’s presence.
“You must want your tea,” said the good
lady, as I joined her; “you ate so little at dinner. I am
afraid,” she continued, “you are not well to-day: you look
flushed and feverish.”
“Oh, quite well! I never felt better.”
“Then you must prove it by evincing a
good appetite; will you fill the teapot while I knit off this
needle?” Having completed her task, she rose to draw down the
blind, which she had hitherto kept up, by way, I suppose, of
making the most of daylight, though dusk was now fast deepening
into total obscurity.
“It is fair to-night,” said she, as she
looked through the panes, “though not starlight; Mr. Rochester
has, on the whole, had a favourable day for his journey.”
“Journey!—Is Mr. Rochester gone
anywhere? I did not know he was out.”
“Oh, he set off the moment he had
breakfasted! He is gone to the Leas, Mr. Eshton’s place, ten
miles on the other side Millcote. I believe there is quite a
party assembled there; Lord Ingram, Sir George Lynn, Colonel
Dent, and others.”
“Do you expect him back to-night?”
“No—nor to-morrow either; I should
think he is very likely to stay a week or more: when these fine,
fashionable people get together, they are so surrounded by
elegance and gaiety, so well provided with all that can please
and entertain, they are in no hurry to separate. Gentlemen
especially are often in request on such occasions; and Mr.
Rochester is so talented and so lively in society, that I
believe he is a general favourite: the ladies are very fond of
him; though you would not think his appearance calculated to
recommend him particularly in their eyes: but I suppose his
acquirements and abilities, perhaps his wealth and good blood,
make amends for any little fault of look.”
“Are there ladies at the Leas?”
“There are Mrs. Eshton and her three
daughters—very elegant young ladies indeed; and there are the
Honourable Blanche and Mary Ingram, most beautiful women, I
suppose: indeed I have seen Blanche, six or seven years since,
when she was a girl of eighteen. She came here to a Christmas
ball and party Mr. Rochester gave. You should have seen the
dining-room that day—how richly it was decorated, how
brilliantly lit up! I should think there were fifty ladies and
gentlemen present—all of the first county families; and Miss
Ingram was considered the belle of the evening.”
“You saw her, you say, Mrs. Fairfax:
what was she like?”
“Yes, I saw her. The dining-room doors
were thrown open; and, as it was Christmas-time, the servants
were allowed to assemble in the hall, to hear some of the ladies
sing and play. Mr. Rochester would have me to come in, and I
sat down in a quiet corner and watched them. I never saw a more
splendid scene: the ladies were magnificently dressed; most of
them—at least most of the younger ones—looked handsome; but Miss
Ingram was certainly the queen.”
“And what was she like?”
“Tall, fine bust, sloping shoulders;
long, graceful neck: olive complexion, dark and clear; noble
features; eyes rather like Mr. Rochester’s: large and black, and
as brilliant as her jewels. And then she had such a fine head
of hair; raven-black and so becomingly arranged: a crown of
thick plaits behind, and in front the longest, the glossiest
curls I ever saw. She was dressed in pure white; an amber-coloured
scarf was passed over her shoulder and across her breast, tied
at the side, and descending in long, fringed ends below her
knee. She wore an amber-coloured flower, too, in her hair: it
contrasted well with the jetty mass of her curls.”
“She was greatly admired, of course?”
“Yes, indeed: and not only for her
beauty, but for her accomplishments. She was one of the ladies
who sang: a gentleman accompanied her on the piano. She and Mr.
Rochester sang a duet.”
“Mr. Rochester? I was not aware he
could sing.”
“Oh! he has a fine bass voice, and an
excellent taste for music.”
“And Miss Ingram: what sort of a voice
had she?”
“A very rich and powerful one: she sang
delightfully; it was a treat to listen to her;—and she played
afterwards. I am no judge of music, but Mr. Rochester is; and I
heard him say her execution was remarkably good.”
“And this beautiful and accomplished
lady, she is not yet married?”
“It appears not: I fancy neither she
nor her sister have very large fortunes. Old Lord Ingram’s
estates were chiefly entailed, and the eldest son came in for
everything almost.”
“But I wonder no wealthy nobleman or
gentleman has taken a fancy to her: Mr. Rochester, for
instance. He is rich, is he not?”
“Oh! yes. But you see there is a
considerable difference in age: Mr. Rochester is nearly forty;
she is but twenty-five.”
“What of that? More unequal matches
are made every day.”
“True: yet I should scarcely fancy Mr.
Rochester would entertain an idea of the sort. But you eat
nothing: you have scarcely tasted since you began tea.”
“No: I am too thirsty to eat. Will you
let me have another cup?”
I was about again to revert to the
probability of a union between Mr. Rochester and the beautiful
Blanche; but Adèle came in, and the conversation was turned into
another channel.
When once more alone, I reviewed the
information I had got; looked into my heart, examined its
thoughts and feelings, and endeavoured to bring back with a
strict hand such as had been straying through imagination’s
boundless and trackless waste, into the safe fold of common
sense.
Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having
given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been
cherishing since last night—of the general state of mind in
which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having
come forward and told, in her own quiet way a plain, unvarnished
tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rabidly devoured
the ideal;—I pronounced judgment to this effect:—
That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had
never breathed the breath of life; that a more fantastic idiot
had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison
as if it were nectar.
“You,” I said, “a favourite with
Mr. Rochester? You gifted with the power of pleasing
him? You of importance to him in any way? Go! your
folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional
tokens of preference—equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of
family and a man of the world to a dependent and a novice. How
dared you? Poor stupid dupe!—Could not even self-interest make
you wiser? You repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene
of last night?—Cover your face and be ashamed! He said
something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind puppy! Open
their bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness!
It does good to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who
cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in all
women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if
unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and,
if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatus-like,
into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.
“Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your
sentence: to-morrow, place the glass before you, and draw in
chalk your own picture, faithfully, without softening one
defect; omit no harsh line, smooth away no displeasing
irregularity; write under it, ‘Portrait of a Governess,
disconnected, poor, and plain.’
“Afterwards, take a piece of smooth
ivory—you have one prepared in your drawing-box: take your
palette, mix your freshest, finest, clearest tints; choose your
most delicate camel-hair pencils; delineate carefully the
loveliest face you can imagine; paint it in your softest shades
and sweetest lines, according to the description given by Mrs.
Fairfax of Blanche Ingram; remember the raven ringlets, the
oriental eye;—What! you revert to Mr. Rochester as a model!
Order! No snivel!—no sentiment!—no regret! I will endure only
sense and resolution. Recall the august yet harmonious
lineaments, the Grecian neck and bust; let the round and
dazzling arm be visible, and the delicate hand; omit neither
diamond ring nor gold bracelet; portray faithfully the attire,
aërial lace and glistening satin, graceful scarf and golden
rose; call it ‘Blanche, an accomplished lady of rank.’
“Whenever, in future, you should chance
to fancy Mr. Rochester thinks well of you, take out these two
pictures and compare them: say, ‘Mr. Rochester might probably
win that noble lady’s love, if he chose to strive for it; is it
likely he would waste a serious thought on this indigent and
insignificant plebeian?’”
“I’ll do it,” I resolved: and having
framed this determination, I grew calm, and fell asleep.
I kept my word. An hour or two
sufficed to sketch my own portrait in crayons; and in less than
a fortnight I had completed an ivory miniature of an imaginary
Blanche Ingram. It looked a lovely face enough, and when
compared with the real head in chalk, the contrast was as great
as self-control could desire. I derived benefit from the task:
it had kept my head and hands employed, and had given force and
fixedness to the new impressions I wished to stamp indelibly on
my heart.
Ere long, I had reason to congratulate
myself on the course of wholesome discipline to which I had thus
forced my feelings to submit. Thanks to it, I was able to meet
subsequent occurrences with a decent calm, which, had they found
me unprepared, I should probably have been unequal to maintain,
even externally.
CHAPTER XVII
A week passed, and no news arrived of
Mr. Rochester: ten days, and still he did not come. Mrs.
Fairfax said she should not be surprised if he were to go
straight from the Leas to London, and thence to the Continent,
and not show his face again at Thornfield for a year to come; he
had not unfrequently quitted it in a manner quite as abrupt and
unexpected. When I heard this, I was beginning to feel a
strange chill and failing at the heart. I was actually
permitting myself to experience a sickening sense of
disappointment; but rallying my wits, and recollecting my
principles, I at once called my sensations to order; and it was
wonderful how I got over the temporary blunder—how I cleared up
the mistake of supposing Mr. Rochester’s movements a matter in
which I had any cause to take a vital interest. Not that I
humbled myself by a slavish notion of inferiority: on the
contrary, I just said—
“You have nothing to do with the master
of Thornfield, further than to receive the salary he gives you
for teaching his protégée, and to be grateful for such
respectful and kind treatment as, if you do your duty, you have
a right to expect at his hands. Be sure that is the only tie he
seriously acknowledges between you and him; so don’t make him
the object of your fine feelings, your raptures, agonies, and so
forth. He is not of your order: keep to your caste, and be too
self-respecting to lavish the love of the whole heart, soul, and
strength, where such a gift is not wanted and would be
despised.”
I went on with my day’s business
tranquilly; but ever and anon vague suggestions kept wandering
across my brain of reasons why I should quit Thornfield; and I
kept involuntarily framing advertisements and pondering
conjectures about new situations: these thoughts I did not think
to check; they might germinate and bear fruit if they could.
Mr. Rochester had been absent upwards
of a fortnight, when the post brought Mrs. Fairfax a letter.
“It is from the master,” said she, as
she looked at the direction. “Now I suppose we shall know
whether we are to expect his return or not.”
And while she broke the seal and
perused the document, I went on taking my coffee (we were at
breakfast): it was hot, and I attributed to that circumstance a
fiery glow which suddenly rose to my face. Why my hand shook,
and why I involuntarily spilt half the contents of my cup into
my saucer, I did not choose to consider.
“Well, I sometimes think we are too
quiet; but we run a chance of being busy enough now: for a
little while at least,” said Mrs. Fairfax, still holding the
note before her spectacles.
Ere I permitted myself to request an
explanation, I tied the string of Adèle’s pinafore, which
happened to be loose: having helped her also to another bun and
refilled her mug with milk, I said, nonchalantly—
“Mr. Rochester is not likely to return
soon, I suppose?”
“Indeed he is—in three days, he says:
that will be next Thursday; and not alone either. I don’t know
how many of the fine people at the Leas are coming with him: he
sends directions for all the best bedrooms to be prepared; and
the library and drawing-rooms are to be cleaned out; I am to get
more kitchen hands from the George Inn, at Millcote, and from
wherever else I can; and the ladies will bring their maids and
the gentlemen their valets: so we shall have a full house of
it.” And Mrs. Fairfax swallowed her breakfast and hastened away
to commence operations.
The three days were, as she had
foretold, busy enough. I had thought all the rooms at
Thornfield beautifully clean and well arranged; but it appears I
was mistaken. Three women were got to help; and such scrubbing,
such brushing, such washing of paint and beating of carpets,
such taking down and putting up of pictures, such polishing of
mirrors and lustres, such lighting of fires in bedrooms, such
airing of sheets and feather-beds on hearths, I never beheld,
either before or since. Adèle ran quite wild in the midst of
it: the preparations for company and the prospect of their
arrival, seemed to throw her into ecstasies. She would have
Sophie to look over all her “toilettes,” as she called frocks;
to furbish up any that were “passées,” and to air and
arrange the new. For herself, she did nothing but caper about
in the front chambers, jump on and off the bedsteads, and lie on
the mattresses and piled-up bolsters and pillows before the
enormous fires roaring in the chimneys. From school duties she
was exonerated: Mrs. Fairfax had pressed me into her service,
and I was all day in the storeroom, helping (or hindering) her
and the cook; learning to make custards and cheese-cakes and
French pastry, to truss game and garnish desert-dishes.
The party were expected to arrive on
Thursday afternoon, in time for dinner at six. During the
intervening period I had no time to nurse chimeras; and I
believe I was as active and gay as anybody—Adèle excepted.
Still, now and then, I received a damping check to my
cheerfulness; and was, in spite of myself, thrown back on the
region of doubts and portents, and dark conjectures. This was
when I chanced to see the third-storey staircase door (which of
late had always been kept locked) open slowly, and give passage
to the form of Grace Poole, in prim cap, white apron, and
handkerchief; when I watched her glide along the gallery, her
quiet tread muffled in a list slipper; when I saw her look into
the bustling, topsy-turvy bedrooms,—just say a word, perhaps, to
the charwoman about the proper way to polish a grate, or clean a
marble mantelpiece, or take stains from papered walls, and then
pass on. She would thus descend to the kitchen once a day, eat
her dinner, smoke a moderate pipe on the hearth, and go back,
carrying her pot of porter with her, for her private solace, in
her own gloomy, upper haunt. Only one hour in the twenty-four
did she pass with her fellow-servants below; all the rest of her
time was spent in some low-ceiled, oaken chamber of the second
storey: there she sat and sewed—and probably laughed drearily to
herself,—as companionless as a prisoner in his dungeon.
The strangest thing of all was, that
not a soul in the house, except me, noticed her habits, or
seemed to marvel at them: no one discussed her position or
employment; no one pitied her solitude or isolation. I once,
indeed, overheard part of a dialogue between Leah and one of the
charwomen, of which Grace formed the subject. Leah had been
saying something I had not caught, and the charwoman remarked—
“She gets good wages, I guess?”
“Yes,” said Leah; “I wish I had as
good; not that mine are to complain of,—there’s no stinginess at
Thornfield; but they’re not one fifth of the sum Mrs. Poole
receives. And she is laying by: she goes every quarter to the
bank at Millcote. I should not wonder but she has saved enough
to keep her independent if she liked to leave; but I suppose
she’s got used to the place; and then she’s not forty yet, and
strong and able for anything. It is too soon for her to give up
business.”
“She is a good hand, I daresay,” said
the charwoman.
“Ah!—she understands what she has to
do,—nobody better,” rejoined Leah significantly; “and it is not
every one could fill her shoes—not for all the money she gets.”
“That it is not!” was the reply. “I
wonder whether the master—”
The charwoman was going on; but here
Leah turned and perceived me, and she instantly gave her
companion a nudge.
“Doesn’t she know?” I heard the woman
whisper.
Leah shook her head, and the
conversation was of course dropped. All I had gathered from it
amounted to this,—that there was a mystery at Thornfield; and
that from participation in that mystery I was purposely
excluded.
Thursday came: all work had been
completed the previous evening; carpets were laid down,
bed-hangings festooned, radiant white counterpanes spread,
toilet tables arranged, furniture rubbed, flowers piled in
vases: both chambers and saloons looked as fresh and bright as
hands could make them. The hall, too, was scoured; and the
great carved clock, as well as the steps and banisters of the
staircase, were polished to the brightness of glass; in the
dining-room, the sideboard flashed resplendent with plate; in
the drawing-room and boudoir, vases of exotics bloomed on all
sides.
Afternoon arrived: Mrs. Fairfax assumed
her best black satin gown, her gloves, and her gold watch; for
it was her part to receive the company,—to conduct the ladies to
their rooms, &c. Adèle, too, would be dressed: though I thought
she had little chance of being introduced to the party that day
at least. However, to please her, I allowed Sophie to apparel
her in one of her short, full muslin frocks. For myself, I had
no need to make any change; I should not be called upon to quit
my sanctum of the schoolroom; for a sanctum it was now become to
me,—“a very pleasant refuge in time of trouble.”
It had been a mild, serene spring
day—one of those days which, towards the end of March or the
beginning of April, rise shining over the earth as heralds of
summer. It was drawing to an end now; but the evening was even
warm, and I sat at work in the schoolroom with the window open.
“It gets late,” said Mrs. Fairfax,
entering in rustling state. “I am glad I ordered dinner an hour
after the time Mr. Rochester mentioned; for it is past six now.
I have sent John down to the gates to see if there is anything
on the road: one can see a long way from thence in the direction
of Millcote.” She went to the window. “Here he is!” said she.
“Well, John” (leaning out), “any news?”
“They’re coming, ma’am,” was the
answer. “They’ll be here in ten minutes.”
Adèle flew to the window. I followed,
taking care to stand on one side, so that, screened by the
curtain, I could see without being seen.
The ten minutes John had given seemed
very long, but at last wheels were heard; four equestrians
galloped up the drive, and after them came two open carriages.
Fluttering veils and waving plumes filled the vehicles; two of
the cavaliers were young, dashing-looking gentlemen; the third
was Mr. Rochester, on his black horse, Mesrour, Pilot bounding
before him; at his side rode a lady, and he and she were the
first of the party. Her purple riding-habit almost swept the
ground, her veil streamed long on the breeze; mingling with its
transparent folds, and gleaming through them, shone rich raven
ringlets.
“Miss Ingram!” exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax,
and away she hurried to her post below.
The cavalcade, following the sweep of
the drive, quickly turned the angle of the house, and I lost
sight of it. Adèle now petitioned to go down; but I took her on
my knee, and gave her to understand that she must not on any
account think of venturing in sight of the ladies, either now or
at any other time, unless expressly sent for: that Mr. Rochester
would be very angry, &c. “Some natural tears she shed” on being
told this; but as I began to look very grave, she consented at
last to wipe them.
A joyous stir was now audible in the
hall: gentlemen’s deep tones and ladies’ silvery accents blent
harmoniously together, and distinguishable above all, though not
loud, was the sonorous voice of the master of Thornfield Hall,
welcoming his fair and gallant guests under its roof. Then
light steps ascended the stairs; and there was a tripping
through the gallery, and soft cheerful laughs, and opening and
closing doors, and, for a time, a hush.
“Elles changent de toilettes,” said
Adèle; who, listening attentively, had followed every movement;
and she sighed.
“Chez maman,” said she, “quand il y
avait du monde, je le suivais partout, au salon et à leurs
chambres; souvent je regardais les femmes de chambre coiffer et
habiller les dames, et c’était si amusant: comme cela on apprend.”
“Don’t you feel hungry, Adèle?”
“Mais oui, mademoiselle: voilà cinq ou
six heures que nous n’avons pas mangé.”
“Well now, while the ladies are in
their rooms, I will venture down and get you something to eat.”
And issuing from my asylum with
precaution, I sought a back-stairs which conducted directly to
the kitchen. All in that region was fire and commotion; the
soup and fish were in the last stage of projection, and the cook
hung over her crucibles in a frame of mind and body threatening
spontaneous combustion. In the servants’ hall two coachmen and
three gentlemen’s gentlemen stood or sat round the fire; the
abigails, I suppose, were upstairs with their mistresses; the
new servants, that had been hired from Millcote, were bustling
about everywhere. Threading this chaos, I at last reached the
larder; there I took possession of a cold chicken, a roll of
bread, some tarts, a plate or two and a knife and fork: with
this booty I made a hasty retreat. I had regained the gallery,
and was just shutting the back-door behind me, when an
accelerated hum warned me that the ladies were about to issue
from their chambers. I could not proceed to the schoolroom
without passing some of their doors, and running the risk of
being surprised with my cargo of victualage; so I stood still at
this end, which, being windowless, was dark: quite dark now, for
the sun was set and twilight gathering.
Presently the chambers gave up their
fair tenants one after another: each came out gaily and airily,
with dress that gleamed lustrous through the dusk. For a moment
they stood grouped together at the other extremity of the
gallery, conversing in a key of sweet subdued vivacity: they
then descended the staircase almost as noiselessly as a bright
mist rolls down a hill. Their collective appearance had left on
me an impression of high-born elegance, such as I had never
before received.
I found Adèle peeping through the
schoolroom door, which she held ajar. “What beautiful ladies!”
cried she in English. “Oh, I wish I might go to them! Do you
think Mr. Rochester will send for us by-and-bye, after dinner?”
“No, indeed, I don’t; Mr. Rochester has
something else to think about. Never mind the ladies to-night;
perhaps you will see them to-morrow: here is your dinner.”
She was really hungry, so the chicken
and tarts served to divert her attention for a time. It was
well I secured this forage, or both she, I, and Sophie, to whom
I conveyed a share of our repast, would have run a chance of
getting no dinner at all: every one downstairs was too much
engaged to think of us. The dessert was not carried out till
after nine and at ten footmen were still running to and fro with
trays and coffee-cups. I allowed Adèle to sit up much later
than usual; for she declared she could not possibly go to sleep
while the doors kept opening and shutting below, and people
bustling about. Besides, she added, a message might possibly
come from Mr. Rochester when she was undressed; “et alors quel
dommage!”
I told her stories as long as she would
listen to them; and then for a change I took her out into the
gallery. The hall lamp was now lit, and it amused her to look
over the balustrade and watch the servants passing backwards and
forwards. When the evening was far advanced, a sound of music
issued from the drawing-room, whither the piano had been
removed; Adèle and I sat down on the top step of the stairs to
listen. Presently a voice blent with the rich tones of the
instrument; it was a lady who sang, and very sweet her notes
were. The solo over, a duet followed, and then a glee: a joyous
conversational murmur filled up the intervals. I listened long:
suddenly I discovered that my ear was wholly intent on analysing
the mingled sounds, and trying to discriminate amidst the
confusion of accents those of Mr. Rochester; and when it caught
them, which it soon did, it found a further task in framing the
tones, rendered by distance inarticulate, into words.
The clock struck eleven. I looked at
Adèle, whose head leant against my shoulder; her eyes were
waxing heavy, so I took her up in my arms and carried her off to
bed. It was near one before the gentlemen and ladies sought
their chambers.
The next day was as fine as its
predecessor: it was devoted by the party to an excursion to some
site in the neighbourhood. They set out early in the forenoon,
some on horseback, the rest in carriages; I witnessed both the
departure and the return. Miss Ingram, as before, was the only
lady equestrian; and, as before, Mr. Rochester galloped at her
side; the two rode a little apart from the rest. I pointed out
this circumstance to Mrs. Fairfax, who was standing at the
window with me—
“You said it was not likely they should
think of being married,” said I, “but you see Mr. Rochester
evidently prefers her to any of the other ladies.”
“Yes, I daresay: no doubt he admires
her.”
“And she him,” I added; “look how she
leans her head towards him as if she were conversing
confidentially; I wish I could see her face; I have never had a
glimpse of it yet.”
“You will see her this evening,”
answered Mrs. Fairfax. “I happened to remark to Mr. Rochester
how much Adèle wished to be introduced to the ladies, and he
said: ‘Oh! let her come into the drawing-room after dinner; and
request Miss Eyre to accompany her.’”
“Yes; he said that from mere
politeness: I need not go, I am sure,” I answered.
“Well, I observed to him that as you
were unused to company, I did not think you would like appearing
before so gay a party—all strangers; and he replied, in his
quick way—‘Nonsense! If she objects, tell her it is my
particular wish; and if she resists, say I shall come and fetch
her in case of contumacy.’”
“I will not give him that trouble,” I
answered. “I will go, if no better may be; but I don’t like
it. Shall you be there, Mrs. Fairfax?”
“No; I pleaded off, and he admitted my
plea. I’ll tell you how to manage so as to avoid the
embarrassment of making a formal entrance, which is the most
disagreeable part of the business. You must go into the
drawing-room while it is empty, before the ladies leave the
dinner-table; choose your seat in any quiet nook you like; you
need not stay long after the gentlemen come in, unless you
please: just let Mr. Rochester see you are there and then slip
away—nobody will notice you.”
“Will these people remain long, do you
think?”
“Perhaps two or three weeks, certainly
not more. After the Easter recess, Sir George Lynn, who was
lately elected member for Millcote, will have to go up to town
and take his seat; I daresay Mr. Rochester will accompany him:
it surprises me that he has already made so protracted a stay at
Thornfield.”
It was with some trepidation that I
perceived the hour approach when I was to repair with my charge
to the drawing-room. Adèle had been in a state of ecstasy all
day, after hearing she was to be presented to the ladies in the
evening; and it was not till Sophie commenced the operation of
dressing her that she sobered down. Then the importance of the
process quickly steadied her, and by the time she had her curls
arranged in well-smoothed, drooping clusters, her pink satin
frock put on, her long sash tied, and her lace mittens adjusted,
she looked as grave as any judge. No need to warn her not to
disarrange her attire: when she was dressed, she sat demurely
down in her little chair, taking care previously to lift up the
satin skirt for fear she should crease it, and assured me she
would not stir thence till I was ready. This I quickly was: my
best dress (the silver-grey one, purchased for Miss Temple’s
wedding, and never worn since) was soon put on; my hair was soon
smoothed; my sole ornament, the pearl brooch, soon assumed. We
descended.
Fortunately there was another entrance
to the drawing-room than that through the saloon where they were
all seated at dinner. We found the apartment vacant; a large
fire burning silently on the marble hearth, and wax candles
shining in bright solitude, amid the exquisite flowers with
which the tables were adorned. The crimson curtain hung before
the arch: slight as was the separation this drapery formed from
the party in the adjoining saloon, they spoke in so low a key
that nothing of their conversation could be distinguished beyond
a soothing murmur.
Adèle, who appeared to be still under
the influence of a most solemnising impression, sat down,
without a word, on the footstool I pointed out to her. I
retired to a window-seat, and taking a book from a table near,
endeavoured to read. Adèle brought her stool to my feet; ere
long she touched my knee.
“What is it, Adèle?”
“Est-ce que je ne puis pas prendrie une
seule de ces fleurs magnifiques, mademoiselle? Seulement pour
completer ma toilette.”
“You think too much of your ‘toilette,’
Adèle: but you may have a flower.” And I took a rose from a
vase and fastened it in her sash. She sighed a sigh of
ineffable satisfaction, as if her cup of happiness were now
full. I turned my face away to conceal a smile I could not
suppress: there was something ludicrous as well as painful in
the little Parisienne’s earnest and innate devotion to matters
of dress.
A soft sound of rising now became
audible; the curtain was swept back from the arch; through it
appeared the dining-room, with its lit lustre pouring down light
on the silver and glass of a magnificent dessert-service
covering a long table; a band of ladies stood in the opening;
they entered, and the curtain fell behind them.
There were but eight; yet, somehow, as
they flocked in, they gave the impression of a much larger
number. Some of them were very tall; many were dressed in
white; and all had a sweeping amplitude of array that seemed to
magnify their persons as a mist magnifies the moon. I rose and
curtseyed to them: one or two bent their heads in return, the
others only stared at me.
They dispersed about the room,
reminding me, by the lightness and buoyancy of their movements,
of a flock of white plumy birds. Some of them threw themselves
in half-reclining positions on the sofas and ottomans: some bent
over the tables and examined the flowers and books: the rest
gathered in a group round the fire: all talked in a low but
clear tone which seemed habitual to them. I knew their names
afterwards, and may as well mention them now.
First, there was Mrs. Eshton and two of
her daughters. She had evidently been a handsome woman, and was
well preserved still. Of her daughters, the eldest, Amy, was
rather little: naive, and child-like in face and manner, and
piquant in form; her white muslin dress and blue sash became her
well. The second, Louisa, was taller and more elegant in
figure; with a very pretty face, of that order the French term
minois chiffoné: both sisters were fair as lilies.
Lady Lynn was a large and stout
personage of about forty, very erect, very haughty-looking,
richly dressed in a satin robe of changeful sheen: her dark hair
shone glossily under the shade of an azure plume, and within the
circlet of a band of gems.
Mrs. Colonel Dent was less showy; but,
I thought, more lady-like. She had a slight figure, a pale,
gentle face, and fair hair. Her black satin dress, her scarf of
rich foreign lace, and her pearl ornaments, pleased me better
than the rainbow radiance of the titled dame.
But the three most
distinguished—partly, perhaps, because the tallest figures of
the band—were the Dowager Lady Ingram and her daughters, Blanche
and Mary. They were all three of the loftiest stature of
women. The Dowager might be between forty and fifty: her shape
was still fine; her hair (by candle-light at least) still black;
her teeth, too, were still apparently perfect. Most people
would have termed her a splendid woman of her age: and so she
was, no doubt, physically speaking; but then there was an
expression of almost insupportable haughtiness in her bearing
and countenance. She had Roman features and a double chin,
disappearing into a throat like a pillar: these features
appeared to me not only inflated and darkened, but even furrowed
with pride; and the chin was sustained by the same principle, in
a position of almost preternatural erectness. She had,
likewise, a fierce and a hard eye: it reminded me of Mrs.
Reed’s; she mouthed her words in speaking; her voice was deep,
its inflections very pompous, very dogmatical,—very intolerable,
in short. A crimson velvet robe, and a shawl turban of some
gold-wrought Indian fabric, invested her (I suppose she thought)
with a truly imperial dignity.
Blanche and Mary were of equal
stature,—straight and tall as poplars. Mary was too slim for
her height, but Blanche was moulded like a Dian. I regarded
her, of course, with special interest. First, I wished to see
whether her appearance accorded with Mrs. Fairfax’s description;
secondly, whether it at all resembled the fancy miniature I had
painted of her; and thirdly—it will out!—whether it were such as
I should fancy likely to suit Mr. Rochester’s taste.
As far as person went, she answered
point for point, both to my picture and Mrs. Fairfax’s
description. The noble bust, the sloping shoulders, the
graceful neck, the dark eyes and black ringlets were all
there;—but her face? Her face was like her mother’s; a youthful
unfurrowed likeness: the same low brow, the same high features,
the same pride. It was not, however, so saturnine a pride! she
laughed continually; her laugh was satirical, and so was the
habitual expression of her arched and haughty lip.
Genius is said to be self-conscious. I
cannot tell whether Miss Ingram was a genius, but she was
self-conscious—remarkably self-conscious indeed. She entered
into a discourse on botany with the gentle Mrs. Dent. It seemed
Mrs. Dent had not studied that science: though, as she said, she
liked flowers, “especially wild ones;” Miss Ingram had, and she
ran over its vocabulary with an air. I presently perceived she
was (what is vernacularly termed) trailing Mrs. Dent;
that is, playing on her ignorance—her trail might be
clever, but it was decidedly not good-natured. She played: her
execution was brilliant; she sang: her voice was fine; she
talked French apart to her mamma; and she talked it well, with
fluency and with a good accent.
Mary had a milder and more open
countenance than Blanche; softer features too, and a skin some
shades fairer (Miss Ingram was dark as a Spaniard)—but Mary was
deficient in life: her face lacked expression, her eye lustre;
she had nothing to say, and having once taken her seat, remained
fixed like a statue in its niche. The sisters were both attired
in spotless white.
And did I now think Miss Ingram such a
choice as Mr. Rochester would be likely to make? I could not
tell—I did not know his taste in female beauty. If he liked the
majestic, she was the very type of majesty: then she was
accomplished, sprightly. Most gentlemen would admire her, I
thought; and that he did admire her, I already seemed to
have obtained proof: to remove the last shade of doubt, it
remained but to see them together.
You are not to suppose, reader, that
Adèle has all this time been sitting motionless on the stool at
my feet: no; when the ladies entered, she rose, advanced to meet
them, made a stately reverence, and said with gravity—
“Bon jour, mesdames.”
And Miss Ingram had looked down at her
with a mocking air, and exclaimed, “Oh, what a little puppet!”
Lady Lynn had remarked, “It is Mr.
Rochester’s ward, I suppose—the little French girl he was
speaking of.”
Mrs. Dent had kindly taken her hand,
and given her a kiss.
Amy and Louisa Eshton had cried out
simultaneously—“What a love of a child!”
And then they had called her to a sofa,
where she now sat, ensconced between them, chattering
alternately in French and broken English; absorbing not only the
young ladies’ attention, but that of Mrs. Eshton and Lady Lynn,
and getting spoilt to her heart’s content.
At last coffee is brought in, and the
gentlemen are summoned. I sit in the shade—if any shade there
be in this brilliantly-lit apartment; the window-curtain half
hides me. Again the arch yawns; they come. The collective
appearance of the gentlemen, like that of the ladies, is very
imposing: they are all costumed in black; most of them are tall,
some young. Henry and Frederick Lynn are very dashing sparks
indeed; and Colonel Dent is a fine soldierly man. Mr. Eshton,
the magistrate of the district, is gentleman-like: his hair is
quite white, his eyebrows and whiskers still dark, which gives
him something of the appearance of a “père noble de théâtre.”
Lord Ingram, like his sisters, is very tall; like them, also, he
is handsome; but he shares Mary’s apathetic and listless look:
he seems to have more length of limb than vivacity of blood or
vigour of brain.
And where is Mr. Rochester?
He comes in last: I am not looking at
the arch, yet I see him enter. I try to concentrate my
attention on those netting-needles, on the meshes of the purse I
am forming—I wish to think only of the work I have in my hands,
to see only the silver beads and silk threads that lie in my
lap; whereas, I distinctly behold his figure, and I inevitably
recall the moment when I last saw it; just after I had rendered
him, what he deemed, an essential service, and he, holding my
hand, and looking down on my face, surveyed me with eyes that
revealed a heart full and eager to overflow; in whose emotions I
had a part. How near had I approached him at that moment! What
had occurred since, calculated to change his and my relative
positions? Yet now, how distant, how far estranged we were! So
far estranged, that I did not expect him to come and speak to
me. I did not wonder, when, without looking at me, he took a
seat at the other side of the room, and began conversing with
some of the ladies.
No sooner did I see that his attention
was riveted on them, and that I might gaze without being
observed, than my eyes were drawn involuntarily to his face; I
could not keep their lids under control: they would rise, and
the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an acute pleasure
in looking,—a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a
steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing
man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is
poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.
Most true is it that “beauty is in the
eye of the gazer.” My master’s colourless, olive face, square,
massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong
features, firm, grim mouth,—all energy, decision, will,—were not
beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful
to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite
mastered me,—that took my feelings from my own power and
fettered them in his. I had not intended to love him; the
reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the
germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view
of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong! He made
me love him without looking at me.
I compared him with his guests. What
was the gallant grace of the Lynns, the languid elegance of Lord
Ingram,—even the military distinction of Colonel Dent,
contrasted with his look of native pith and genuine power? I
had no sympathy in their appearance, their expression: yet I
could imagine that most observers would call them attractive,
handsome, imposing; while they would pronounce Mr. Rochester at
once harsh-featured and melancholy-looking. I saw them smile,
laugh—it was nothing; the light of the candles had as much soul
in it as their smile; the tinkle of the bell as much
significance as their laugh. I saw Mr. Rochester smile:—his
stern features softened; his eye grew both brilliant and gentle,
its ray both searching and sweet. He was talking, at the
moment, to Louisa and Amy Eshton. I wondered to see them
receive with calm that look which seemed to me so penetrating: I
expected their eyes to fall, their colour to rise under it; yet
I was glad when I found they were in no sense moved. “He is not
to them what he is to me,” I thought: “he is not of their kind.
I believe he is of mine;—I am sure he is—I feel akin to him—I
understand the language of his countenance and movements: though
rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain
and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally
to him. Did I say, a few days since, that I had nothing to do
with him but to receive my salary at his hands? Did I forbid
myself to think of him in any other light than as a paymaster?
Blasphemy against nature! Every good, true, vigorous feeling I
have gathers impulsively round him. I know I must conceal my
sentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he cannot
care much for me. For when I say that I am of his kind, I do
not mean that I have his force to influence, and his spell to
attract; I mean only that I have certain tastes and feelings in
common with him. I must, then, repeat continually that we are
for ever sundered:—and yet, while I breathe and think, I must
love him.”
Coffee is handed. The ladies, since
the gentlemen entered, have become lively as larks; conversation
waxes brisk and merry. Colonel Dent and Mr. Eshton argue on
politics; their wives listen. The two proud dowagers, Lady Lynn
and Lady Ingram, confabulate together. Sir George—whom,
by-the-bye, I have forgotten to describe,—a very big, and very
fresh-looking country gentleman, stands before their sofa,
coffee-cup in hand, and occasionally puts in a word. Mr.
Frederick Lynn has taken a seat beside Mary Ingram, and is
showing her the engravings of a splendid volume: she looks,
smiles now and then, but apparently says little. The tall and
phlegmatic Lord Ingram leans with folded arms on the chair-back
of the little and lively Amy Eshton; she glances up at him, and
chatters like a wren: she likes him better than she does Mr.
Rochester. Henry Lynn has taken possession of an ottoman at the
feet of Louisa: Adèle shares it with him: he is trying to talk
French with her, and Louisa laughs at his blunders. With whom
will Blanche Ingram pair? She is standing alone at the table,
bending gracefully over an album. She seems waiting to be
sought; but she will not wait too long: she herself selects a
mate.
Mr. Rochester, having quitted the
Eshtons, stands on the hearth as solitary as she stands by the
table: she confronts him, taking her station on the opposite
side of the mantelpiece.
“Mr. Rochester, I thought you were not
fond of children?”
“Nor am I.”
“Then, what induced you to take charge
of such a little doll as that?” (pointing to Adèle). “Where did
you pick her up?”
“I did not pick her up; she was left on
my hands.”
“You should have sent her to school.”
“I could not afford it: schools are so
dear.”
“Why, I suppose you have a governess
for her: I saw a person with her just now—is she gone? Oh, no!
there she is still, behind the window-curtain. You pay her, of
course; I should think it quite as expensive,—more so; for you
have them both to keep in addition.”
I feared—or should I say, hoped?—the
allusion to me would make Mr. Rochester glance my way; and I
involuntarily shrank farther into the shade: but he never turned
his eyes.
“I have not considered the subject,”
said he indifferently, looking straight before him.
“No, you men never do consider economy
and common sense. You should hear mama on the chapter of
governesses: Mary and I have had, I should think, a dozen at
least in our day; half of them detestable and the rest
ridiculous, and all incubi—were they not, mama?”
“Did you speak, my own?”
The young lady thus claimed as the
dowager’s special property, reiterated her question with an
explanation.
“My dearest, don’t mention governesses;
the word makes me nervous. I have suffered a martyrdom from
their incompetency and caprice. I thank Heaven I have now done
with them!”
Mrs. Dent here bent over to the pious
lady and whispered something in her ear; I suppose, from the
answer elicited, it was a reminder that one of the anathematised
race was present.
“Tant pis!” said her Ladyship, “I hope
it may do her good!” Then, in a lower tone, but still loud
enough for me to hear, “I noticed her; I am a judge of
physiognomy, and in hers I see all the faults of her class.”
“What are they, madam?” inquired Mr.
Rochester aloud.
“I will tell you in your private ear,”
replied she, wagging her turban three times with portentous
significancy.
“But my curiosity will be past its
appetite; it craves food now.”
“Ask Blanche; she is nearer you than
I.”
“Oh, don’t refer him to me, mama! I
have just one word to say of the whole tribe; they are a
nuisance. Not that I ever suffered much from them; I took care
to turn the tables. What tricks Theodore and I used to play on
our Miss Wilsons, and Mrs. Greys, and Madame Jouberts! Mary was
always too sleepy to join in a plot with spirit. The best fun
was with Madame Joubert: Miss Wilson was a poor sickly thing,
lachrymose and low-spirited, not worth the trouble of
vanquishing, in short; and Mrs. Grey was coarse and insensible;
no blow took effect on her. But poor Madame Joubert! I see her
yet in her raging passions, when we had driven her to
extremities—spilt our tea, crumbled our bread and butter, tossed
our books up to the ceiling, and played a charivari with the
ruler and desk, the fender and fire-irons. Theodore, do you
remember those merry days?”
“Yaas, to be sure I do,” drawled Lord
Ingram; “and the poor old stick used to cry out ‘Oh you villains
childs!’—and then we sermonised her on the presumption of
attempting to teach such clever blades as we were, when she was
herself so ignorant.”
“We did; and, Tedo, you know, I helped
you in prosecuting (or persecuting) your tutor, whey-faced Mr.
Vining—the parson in the pip, as we used to call him. He and
Miss Wilson took the liberty of falling in love with each
other—at least Tedo and I thought so; we surprised sundry tender
glances and sighs which we interpreted as tokens of ‘la belle
passion,’ and I promise you the public soon had the benefit of
our discovery; we employed it as a sort of lever to hoist our
dead-weights from the house. Dear mama, there, as soon as she
got an inkling of the business, found out that it was of an
immoral tendency. Did you not, my lady-mother?”
“Certainly, my best. And I was quite
right: depend on that: there are a thousand reasons why liaisons
between governesses and tutors should never be tolerated a
moment in any well-regulated house; firstly—”
“Oh, gracious, mama! Spare us the
enumeration! Au reste, we all know them: danger of bad
example to innocence of childhood; distractions and consequent
neglect of duty on the part of the attached—mutual alliance and
reliance; confidence thence resulting—insolence
accompanying—mutiny and general blow-up. Am I right, Baroness
Ingram, of Ingram Park?”
“My lily-flower, you are right now, as
always.”
“Then no more need be said: change the
subject.”
Amy Eshton, not hearing or not heeding
this dictum, joined in with her soft, infantine tone: “Louisa
and I used to quiz our governess too; but she was such a good
creature, she would bear anything: nothing put her out. She was
never cross with us; was she, Louisa?”
“No, never: we might do what we
pleased; ransack her desk and her workbox, and turn her drawers
inside out; and she was so good-natured, she would give us
anything we asked for.”
“I suppose, now,” said Miss Ingram,
curling her lip sarcastically, “we shall have an abstract of the
memoirs of all the governesses extant: in order to avert such a
visitation, I again move the introduction of a new topic. Mr.
Rochester, do you second my motion?”
“Madam, I support you on this point, as
on every other.”
“Then on me be the onus of bringing it
forward. Signior Eduardo, are you in voice to-night?”
“Donna Bianca, if you command it, I
will be.”
“Then, signior, I lay on you my
sovereign behest to furbish up your lungs and other vocal
organs, as they will be wanted on my royal service.”
“Who would not be the Rizzio of so
divine a Mary?”
“A fig for Rizzio!” cried she, tossing
her head with all its curls, as she moved to the piano. “It is
my opinion the fiddler David must have been an insipid sort of
fellow; I like black Bothwell better: to my mind a man is
nothing without a spice of the devil in him; and history may say
what it will of James Hepburn, but I have a notion, he was just
the sort of wild, fierce, bandit hero whom I could have
consented to gift with my hand.”
“Gentlemen, you hear! Now which of you
most resembles Bothwell?” cried Mr. Rochester.
“I should say the preference lies with
you,” responded Colonel Dent.
“On my honour, I am much obliged to
you,” was the reply.
Miss Ingram, who had now seated herself
with proud grace at the piano, spreading out her snowy robes in
queenly amplitude, commenced a brilliant prelude; talking
meantime. She appeared to be on her high horse to-night; both
her words and her air seemed intended to excite not only the
admiration, but the amazement of her auditors: she was evidently
bent on striking them as something very dashing and daring
indeed.
“Oh, I am so sick of the young men of
the present day!” exclaimed she, rattling away at the
instrument. “Poor, puny things, not fit to stir a step beyond
papa’s park gates: nor to go even so far without mama’s
permission and guardianship! Creatures so absorbed in care
about their pretty faces, and their white hands, and their small
feet; as if a man had anything to do with beauty! As if
loveliness were not the special prerogative of woman—her
legitimate appanage and heritage! I grant an ugly woman
is a blot on the fair face of creation; but as to the
gentlemen, let them be solicitous to possess only strength
and valour: let their motto be:—Hunt, shoot, and fight: the rest
is not worth a fillip. Such should be my device, were I a man.”
“Whenever I marry,” she continued after
a pause which none interrupted, “I am resolved my husband shall
not be a rival, but a foil to me. I will suffer no competitor
near the throne; I shall exact an undivided homage: his
devotions shall not be shared between me and the shape he sees
in his mirror. Mr. Rochester, now sing, and I will play for
you.”
“I am all obedience,” was the response.
“Here then is a Corsair-song. Know
that I doat on Corsairs; and for that reason, sing it con
spirito.”
“Commands from Miss Ingram’s lips would
put spirit into a mug of milk and water.”
“Take care, then: if you don’t please
me, I will shame you by showing how such things should be
done.”
“That is offering a premium on
incapacity: I shall now endeavour to fail.”
“Gardez-vous en bien! If you err
wilfully, I shall devise a proportionate punishment.”
“Miss Ingram ought to be clement, for
she has it in her power to inflict a chastisement beyond mortal
endurance.”
“Ha! explain!” commanded the lady.
“Pardon me, madam: no need of
explanation; your own fine sense must inform you that one of
your frowns would be a sufficient substitute for capital
punishment.”
“Sing!” said she, and again touching
the piano, she commenced an accompaniment in spirited style.
“Now is my time to slip away,” thought
I: but the tones that then severed the air arrested me. Mrs.
Fairfax had said Mr. Rochester possessed a fine voice: he did—a
mellow, powerful bass, into which he threw his own feeling, his
own force; finding a way through the ear to the heart, and there
waking sensation strangely. I waited till the last deep and
full vibration had expired—till the tide of talk, checked an
instant, had resumed its flow; I then quitted my sheltered
corner and made my exit by the side-door, which was fortunately
near. Thence a narrow passage led into the hall: in crossing
it, I perceived my sandal was loose; I stopped to tie it,
kneeling down for that purpose on the mat at the foot of the
staircase. I heard the dining-room door unclose; a gentleman
came out; rising hastily, I stood face to face with him: it was
Mr. Rochester.
“How do you do?” he asked.
“I am very well, sir.”
“Why did you not come and speak to me
in the room?”
I thought I might have retorted the
question on him who put it: but I would not take that freedom.
I answered—
“I did not wish to disturb you, as you
seemed engaged, sir.”
“What have you been doing during my
absence?”
“Nothing particular; teaching Adèle as
usual.”
“And getting a good deal paler than you
were—as I saw at first sight. What is the matter?”
“Nothing at all, sir.”
“Did you take any cold that night you
half drowned me?”
“Not the least.”
“Return to the drawing-room: you are
deserting too early.”
“I am tired, sir.”
He looked at me for a minute.
“And a little depressed,” he said.
“What about? Tell me.”
“Nothing—nothing, sir. I am not
depressed.”
“But I affirm that you are: so much
depressed that a few more words would bring tears to your
eyes—indeed, they are there now, shining and swimming; and a
bead has slipped from the lash and fallen on to the flag. If I
had time, and was not in mortal dread of some prating prig of a
servant passing, I would know what all this means. Well,
to-night I excuse you; but understand that so long as my
visitors stay, I expect you to appear in the drawing-room every
evening; it is my wish; don’t neglect it. Now go, and send
Sophie for Adèle. Good-night, my—” He stopped, bit his lip,
and abruptly left me.
CHAPTER XVIII
Merry days were these at Thornfield
Hall; and busy days too: how different from the first three
months of stillness, monotony, and solitude I had passed beneath
its roof! All sad feelings seemed now driven from the house,
all gloomy associations forgotten: there was life everywhere,
movement all day long. You could not now traverse the gallery,
once so hushed, nor enter the front chambers, once so
tenantless, without encountering a smart lady’s-maid or a dandy
valet.
The kitchen, the butler’s pantry, the
servants’ hall, the entrance hall, were equally alive; and the
saloons were only left void and still when the blue sky and
halcyon sunshine of the genial spring weather called their
occupants out into the grounds. Even when that weather was
broken, and continuous rain set in for some days, no damp seemed
cast over enjoyment: indoor amusements only became more lively
and varied, in consequence of the stop put to outdoor gaiety.
I wondered what they were going to do
the first evening a change of entertainment was proposed: they
spoke of “playing charades,” but in my ignorance I did not
understand the term. The servants were called in, the
dining-room tables wheeled away, the lights otherwise disposed,
the chairs placed in a semicircle opposite the arch. While Mr.
Rochester and the other gentlemen directed these alterations,
the ladies were running up and down stairs ringing for their
maids. Mrs. Fairfax was summoned to give information respecting
the resources of the house in shawls, dresses, draperies of any
kind; and certain wardrobes of the third storey were ransacked,
and their contents, in the shape of brocaded and hooped
petticoats, satin sacques, black modes, lace lappets, &c., were
brought down in armfuls by the abigails; then a selection was
made, and such things as were chosen were carried to the boudoir
within the drawing-room.
Meantime, Mr. Rochester had again
summoned the ladies round him, and was selecting certain of
their number to be of his party. “Miss Ingram is mine, of
course,” said he: afterwards he named the two Misses Eshton, and
Mrs. Dent. He looked at me: I happened to be near him, as I had
been fastening the clasp of Mrs. Dent’s bracelet, which had got
loose.
“Will you play?” he asked. I shook my
head. He did not insist, which I rather feared he would have
done; he allowed me to return quietly to my usual seat.
He and his aids now withdrew behind the
curtain: the other party, which was headed by Colonel Dent, sat
down on the crescent of chairs. One of the gentlemen, Mr.
Eshton, observing me, seemed to propose that I should be asked
to join them; but Lady Ingram instantly negatived the notion.
“No,” I heard her say: “she looks too
stupid for any game of the sort.”
Ere long a bell tinkled, and the
curtain drew up. Within the arch, the bulky figure of Sir
George Lynn, whom Mr. Rochester had likewise chosen, was seen
enveloped in a white sheet: before him, on a table, lay open a
large book; and at his side stood Amy Eshton, draped in Mr.
Rochester’s cloak, and holding a book in her hand. Somebody,
unseen, rang the bell merrily; then Adèle (who had insisted on
being one of her guardian’s party), bounded forward, scattering
round her the contents of a basket of flowers she carried on her
arm. Then appeared the magnificent figure of Miss Ingram, clad
in white, a long veil on her head, and a wreath of roses round
her brow; by her side walked Mr. Rochester, and together they
drew near the table. They knelt; while Mrs. Dent and Louisa
Eshton, dressed also in white, took up their stations behind
them. A ceremony followed, in dumb show, in which it was easy
to recognise the pantomime of a marriage. At its termination,
Colonel Dent and his party consulted in whispers for two
minutes, then the Colonel called out—
“Bride!” Mr. Rochester bowed, and the
curtain fell.
A considerable interval elapsed before
it again rose. Its second rising displayed a more elaborately
prepared scene than the last. The drawing-room, as I have
before observed, was raised two steps above the dining-room, and
on the top of the upper step, placed a yard or two back within
the room, appeared a large marble basin—which I recognised as an
ornament of the conservatory—where it usually stood, surrounded
by exotics, and tenanted by gold fish—and whence it must have
been transported with some trouble, on account of its size and
weight.
Seated on the carpet, by the side of
this basin, was seen Mr. Rochester, costumed in shawls, with a
turban on his head. His dark eyes and swarthy skin and Paynim
features suited the costume exactly: he looked the very model of
an Eastern emir, an agent or a victim of the bowstring.
Presently advanced into view Miss Ingram. She, too, was attired
in oriental fashion: a crimson scarf tied sash-like round the
waist: an embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples;
her beautifully-moulded arms bare, one of them upraised in the
act of supporting a pitcher, poised gracefully on her head.
Both her cast of form and feature, her complexion and her
general air, suggested the idea of some Israelitish princess of
the patriarchal days; and such was doubtless the character she
intended to represent.
She approached the basin, and bent over
it as if to fill her pitcher; she again lifted it to her head.
The personage on the well-brink now seemed to accost her; to
make some request:—“She hasted, let down her pitcher on her
hand, and gave him to drink.” From the bosom of his robe he
then produced a casket, opened it and showed magnificent
bracelets and earrings; she acted astonishment and admiration;
kneeling, he laid the treasure at her feet; incredulity and
delight were expressed by her looks and gestures; the stranger
fastened the bracelets on her arms and the rings in her ears.
It was Eliezer and Rebecca: the camels only were wanting.
The divining party again laid their
heads together: apparently they could not agree about the word
or syllable the scene illustrated. Colonel Dent, their
spokesman, demanded “the tableau of the whole;” whereupon the
curtain again descended.
On its third rising only a portion of
the drawing-room was disclosed; the rest being concealed by a
screen, hung with some sort of dark and coarse drapery. The
marble basin was removed; in its place, stood a deal table and a
kitchen chair: these objects were visible by a very dim light
proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax candles being all
extinguished.
Amidst this sordid scene, sat a man
with his clenched hands resting on his knees, and his eyes bent
on the ground. I knew Mr. Rochester; though the begrimed face,
the disordered dress (his coat hanging loose from one arm, as if
it had been almost torn from his back in a scuffle), the
desperate and scowling countenance, the rough, bristling hair
might well have disguised him. As he moved, a chain clanked; to
his wrists were attached fetters.
“Bridewell!” exclaimed Colonel Dent,
and the charade was solved.
A sufficient interval having elapsed
for the performers to resume their ordinary costume, they
re-entered the dining-room. Mr. Rochester led in Miss Ingram;
she was complimenting him on his acting.
“Do you know,” said she, “that, of the
three characters, I liked you in the last best? Oh, had you but
lived a few years earlier, what a gallant gentleman-highwayman
you would have made!”
“Is all the soot washed from my face?”
he asked, turning it towards her.
“Alas! yes: the more’s the pity!
Nothing could be more becoming to your complexion than that
ruffian’s rouge.”
“You would like a hero of the road
then?”
“An English hero of the road would be
the next best thing to an Italian bandit; and that could only be
surpassed by a Levantine pirate.”
“Well, whatever I am, remember you are
my wife; we were married an hour since, in the presence of all
these witnesses.” She giggled, and her colour rose.
“Now, Dent,” continued Mr. Rochester,
“it is your turn.” And as the other party withdrew, he and his
band took the vacated seats. Miss Ingram placed herself at her
leader’s right hand; the other diviners filled the chairs on
each side of him and her. I did not now watch the actors; I no
longer waited with interest for the curtain to rise; my
attention was absorbed by the spectators; my eyes, erewhile
fixed on the arch, were now irresistibly attracted to the
semicircle of chairs. What charade Colonel Dent and his party
played, what word they chose, how they acquitted themselves, I
no longer remember; but I still see the consultation which
followed each scene: I see Mr. Rochester turn to Miss Ingram,
and Miss Ingram to him; I see her incline her head towards him,
till the jetty curls almost touch his shoulder and wave against
his cheek; I hear their mutual whisperings; I recall their
interchanged glances; and something even of the feeling roused
by the spectacle returns in memory at this moment.
I have told you, reader, that I had
learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I could not unlove him now, merely
because I found that he had ceased to notice me—because I might
pass hours in his presence, and he would never once turn his
eyes in my direction—because I saw all his attentions
appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me with the
hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and
imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly
as from an object too mean to merit observation. I could not
unlove him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very
lady—because I read daily in her a proud security in his
intentions respecting her—because I witnessed hourly in him a
style of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be
sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness,
captivating, and in its very pride, irresistible.
There was nothing to cool or banish
love in these circumstances, though much to create despair.
Much too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy: if a
woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in
Miss Ingram’s. But I was not jealous: or very rarely;—the
nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that
word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too
inferior to excite the feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I
mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine:
she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind
was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed
spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted
by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original: she
used to repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered,
nor had, an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of
sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and
pity; tenderness and truth were not in her. Too often she
betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a spiteful
antipathy she had conceived against little Adèle: pushing her
away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach
her; sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating
her with coldness and acrimony. Other eyes besides mine watched
these manifestations of character—watched them closely, keenly,
shrewdly. Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself,
exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was
from this sagacity—this guardedness of his—this perfect, clear
consciousness of his fair one’s defects—this obvious absence of
passion in his sentiments towards her, that my ever-torturing
pain arose.
I saw he was going to marry her, for
family, perhaps political reasons, because her rank and
connections suited him; I felt he had not given her his love,
and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him
that treasure. This was the point—this was where the nerve was
touched and teased—this was where the fever was sustained and
fed: she could not charm him.
If she had managed the victory at once,
and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I
should have covered my face, turned to the wall, and
(figuratively) have died to them. If Miss Ingram had been a
good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, kindness,
sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two
tigers—jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and
devoured, I should have admired her—acknowledged her excellence,
and been quiet for the rest of my days: and the more absolute
her superiority, the deeper would have been my admiration—the
more truly tranquil my quiescence. But as matters really stood,
to watch Miss Ingram’s efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester, to
witness their repeated failure—herself unconscious that they did
fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and
infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and
self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to
allure—to witness this, was to be at once under ceaseless
excitation and ruthless restraint.
Because, when she failed, I saw how she
might have succeeded. Arrows that continually glanced off from
Mr. Rochester’s breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I
knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud
heart—have called love into his stern eye, and softness into his
sardonic face; or, better still, without weapons a silent
conquest might have been won.
“Why can she not influence him more,
when she is privileged to draw so near to him?” I asked myself.
“Surely she cannot truly like him, or not like him with true
affection! If she did, she need not coin her smiles so
lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture airs
so elaborate, graces so multitudinous. It seems to me that she
might, by merely sitting quietly at his side, saying little and
looking less, get nigher his heart. I have seen in his face a
far different expression from that which hardens it now while
she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself:
it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated
manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it—to answer what he asked
without pretension, to address him when needful without
grimace—and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and
warmed one like a fostering sunbeam. How will she manage to
please him when they are married? I do not think she will
manage it; and yet it might be managed; and his wife might, I
verily believe, be the very happiest woman the sun shines on.”
I have not yet said anything
condemnatory of Mr. Rochester’s project of marrying for interest
and connections. It surprised me when I first discovered that
such was his intention: I had thought him a man unlikely to be
influenced by motives so commonplace in his choice of a wife;
but the longer I considered the position, education, &c., of the
parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming either
him or Miss Ingram for acting in conformity to ideas and
principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their
childhood. All their class held these principles: I supposed,
then, they had reasons for holding them such as I could not
fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I
would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the
very obviousness of the advantages to the husband’s own
happiness offered by this plan convinced me that there must be
arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite
ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I
wished to act.
But in other points, as well as this, I
was growing very lenient to my master: I was forgetting all his
faults, for which I had once kept a sharp look-out. It had
formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of his character:
to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing of
both, to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The
sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me
once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their
presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as
comparatively insipid. And as for the vague something—was it a
sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding
expression?—that opened upon a careful observer, now and then,
in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange
depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me
fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst
volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver
and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still;
and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead
of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare—to divine it; and I
thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into
the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their
nature.
Meantime, while I thought only of my
master and his future bride—saw only them, heard only their
discourse, and considered only their movements of importance—the
rest of the party were occupied with their own separate
interests and pleasures. The Ladies Lynn and Ingram continued
to consort in solemn conferences, where they nodded their two
turbans at each other, and held up their four hands in
confronting gestures of surprise, or mystery, or horror,
according to the theme on which their gossip ran, like a pair of
magnified puppets. Mild Mrs. Dent talked with good-natured Mrs.
Eshton; and the two sometimes bestowed a courteous word or smile
on me. Sir George Lynn, Colonel Dent, and Mr. Eshton discussed
politics, or county affairs, or justice business. Lord Ingram
flirted with Amy Eshton; Louisa played and sang to and with one
of the Messrs. Lynn; and Mary Ingram listened languidly to the
gallant speeches of the other. Sometimes all, as with one
consent, suspended their by-play to observe and listen to the
principal actors: for, after all, Mr. Rochester and—because
closely connected with him—Miss Ingram were the life and soul of
the party. If he was absent from the room an hour, a
perceptible dulness seemed to steal over the spirits of his
guests; and his re-entrance was sure to give a fresh impulse to
the vivacity of conversation.
The want of his animating influence
appeared to be peculiarly felt one day that he had been summoned
to Millcote on business, and was not likely to return till
late. The afternoon was wet: a walk the party had proposed to
take to see a gipsy camp, lately pitched on a common beyond Hay,
was consequently deferred. Some of the gentlemen were gone to
the stables: the younger ones, together with the younger ladies,
were playing billiards in the billiard-room. The dowagers
Ingram and Lynn sought solace in a quiet game at cards. Blanche
Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some
efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into
conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and
airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the
library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa,
and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious
hours of absence. The room and the house were silent: only now
and then the merriment of the billiard-players was heard from
above.
It was verging on dusk, and the clock
had already given warning of the hour to dress for dinner, when
little Adèle, who knelt by me in the drawing-room window-seat,
suddenly exclaimed—
“Voilà, Monsieur Rochester, qui revient!”
I turned, and Miss Ingram darted
forwards from her sofa: the others, too, looked up from their
several occupations; for at the same time a crunching of wheels
and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became audible on the wet
gravel. A post-chaise was approaching.
“What can possess him to come home in
that style?” said Miss Ingram. “He rode Mesrour (the black
horse), did he not, when he went out? and Pilot was with
him:—what has he done with the animals?”
As she said this, she approached her
tall person and ample garments so near the window, that I was
obliged to bend back almost to the breaking of my spine: in her
eagerness she did not observe me at first, but when she did, she
curled her lip and moved to another casement. The post-chaise
stopped; the driver rang the door-bell, and a gentleman alighted
attired in travelling garb; but it was not Mr. Rochester; it was
a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger.
“How provoking!” exclaimed Miss Ingram:
“you tiresome monkey!” (apostrophising Adèle), “who perched you
up in the window to give false intelligence?” and she cast on me
an angry glance, as if I were in fault.
Some parleying was audible in the hall,
and soon the new-comer entered. He bowed to Lady Ingram, as
deeming her the eldest lady present.
“It appears I come at an inopportune
time, madam,” said he, “when my friend, Mr. Rochester, is from
home; but I arrive from a very long journey, and I think I may
presume so far on old and intimate acquaintance as to instal
myself here till he returns.”
His manner was polite; his accent, in
speaking, struck me as being somewhat unusual,—not precisely
foreign, but still not altogether English: his age might be
about Mr. Rochester’s,—between thirty and forty; his complexion
was singularly sallow: otherwise he was a fine-looking man, at
first sight especially. On closer examination, you detected
something in his face that displeased, or rather that failed to
please. His features were regular, but too relaxed: his eye was
large and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a tame,
vacant life—at least so I thought.
The sound of the dressing-bell
dispersed the party. It was not till after dinner that I saw
him again: he then seemed quite at his ease. But I liked his
physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as being at the
same time unsettled and inanimate. His eye wandered, and had no
meaning in its wandering: this gave him an odd look, such as I
never remembered to have seen. For a handsome and not an
unamiable-looking man, he repelled me exceedingly: there was no
power in that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape: no
firmness in that aquiline nose and small cherry mouth; there was
no thought on the low, even forehead; no command in that blank,
brown eye.
As I sat in my usual nook, and looked
at him with the light of the girandoles on the mantelpiece
beaming full over him—for he occupied an arm-chair drawn close
to the fire, and kept shrinking still nearer, as if he were
cold, I compared him with Mr. Rochester. I think (with
deference be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater
between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon: between a meek sheep
and the rough-coated keen-eyed dog, its guardian.
He had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an
old friend. A curious friendship theirs must have been: a
pointed illustration, indeed, of the old adage that “extremes
meet.”
Two or three of the gentlemen sat near
him, and I caught at times scraps of their conversation across
the room. At first I could not make much sense of what I heard;
for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary Ingram, who sat
nearer to me, confused the fragmentary sentences that reached me
at intervals. These last were discussing the stranger; they
both called him “a beautiful man.” Louisa said he was “a love
of a creature,” and she “adored him;” and Mary instanced his
“pretty little mouth, and nice nose,” as her ideal of the
charming.
“And what a sweet-tempered forehead he
has!” cried Louisa,—“so smooth—none of those frowning
irregularities I dislike so much; and such a placid eye and
smile!”
And then, to my great relief, Mr. Henry
Lynn summoned them to the other side of the room, to settle some
point about the deferred excursion to Hay Common.
I was now able to concentrate my
attention on the group by the fire, and I presently gathered
that the new-comer was called Mr. Mason; then I learned that he
was but just arrived in England, and that he came from some hot
country: which was the reason, doubtless, his face was so
sallow, and that he sat so near the hearth, and wore a surtout
in the house. Presently the words Jamaica, Kingston, Spanish
Town, indicated the West Indies as his residence; and it was
with no little surprise I gathered, ere long, that he had there
first seen and become acquainted with Mr. Rochester. He spoke
of his friend’s dislike of the burning heats, the hurricanes,
and rainy seasons of that region. I knew Mr. Rochester had been
a traveller: Mrs. Fairfax had said so; but I thought the
continent of Europe had bounded his wanderings; till now I had
never heard a hint given of visits to more distant shores.
I was pondering these things, when an
incident, and a somewhat unexpected one, broke the thread of my
musings. Mr. Mason, shivering as some one chanced to open the
door, asked for more coal to be put on the fire, which had burnt
out its flame, though its mass of cinder still shone hot and
red. The footman who brought the coal, in going out, stopped
near Mr. Eshton’s chair, and said something to him in a low
voice, of which I heard only the words, “old woman,”—“quite
troublesome.”
“Tell her she shall be put in the
stocks if she does not take herself off,” replied the
magistrate.
“No—stop!” interrupted Colonel Dent.
“Don’t send her away, Eshton; we might turn the thing to
account; better consult the ladies.” And speaking aloud, he
continued—“Ladies, you talked of going to Hay Common to visit
the gipsy camp; Sam here says that one of the old Mother Bunches
is in the servants’ hall at this moment, and insists upon being
brought in before ‘the quality,’ to tell them their fortunes.
Would you like to see her?”
“Surely, colonel,” cried Lady Ingram,
“you would not encourage such a low impostor? Dismiss her, by
all means, at once!”
“But I cannot persuade her to go away,
my lady,” said the footman; “nor can any of the servants: Mrs.
Fairfax is with her just now, entreating her to be gone; but she
has taken a chair in the chimney-corner, and says nothing shall
stir her from it till she gets leave to come in here.”
“What does she want?” asked Mrs. Eshton.
“‘To tell the gentry their fortunes,’
she says, ma’am; and she swears she must and will do it.”
“What is she like?” inquired the Misses
Eshton, in a breath.
“A shockingly ugly old creature, miss;
almost as black as a crock.”
“Why, she’s a real sorceress!” cried
Frederick Lynn. “Let us have her in, of course.”
“To be sure,” rejoined his brother; “it
would be a thousand pities to throw away such a chance of fun.”
“My dear boys, what are you thinking
about?” exclaimed Mrs. Lynn.
“I cannot possibly countenance any such
inconsistent proceeding,” chimed in the Dowager Ingram.
“Indeed, mama, but you can—and will,”
pronounced the haughty voice of Blanche, as she turned round on
the piano-stool; where till now she had sat silent, apparently
examining sundry sheets of music. “I have a curiosity to hear
my fortune told: therefore, Sam, order the beldame forward.”
“My darling Blanche! recollect—”
“I do—I recollect all you can suggest;
and I must have my will—quick, Sam!”
“Yes—yes—yes!” cried all the juveniles,
both ladies and gentlemen. “Let her come—it will be excellent
sport!”
The footman still lingered. “She looks
such a rough one,” said he.
“Go!” ejaculated Miss Ingram, and the
man went.
Excitement instantly seized the whole
party: a running fire of raillery and jests was proceeding when
Sam returned.
“She won’t come now,” said he. “She
says it’s not her mission to appear before the ‘vulgar herd’ (them’s
her words). I must show her into a room by herself, and then
those who wish to consult her must go to her one by one.”
“You see now, my queenly Blanche,”
began Lady Ingram, “she encroaches. Be advised, my angel
girl—and—”
“Show her into the library, of course,”
cut in the “angel girl.” “It is not my mission to listen to her
before the vulgar herd either: I mean to have her all to
myself. Is there a fire in the library?”
“Yes, ma’am—but she looks such a
tinkler.”
“Cease that chatter, blockhead! and do
my bidding.”
Again Sam vanished; and mystery,
animation, expectation rose to full flow once more.
“She’s ready now,” said the footman, as
he reappeared. “She wishes to know who will be her first
visitor.”
“I think I had better just look in upon
her before any of the ladies go,” said Colonel Dent.
“Tell her, Sam, a gentleman is coming.”
Sam went and returned.
“She says, sir, that she’ll have no
gentlemen; they need not trouble themselves to come near her;
nor,” he added, with difficulty suppressing a titter, “any
ladies either, except the young, and single.”
“By Jove, she has taste!” exclaimed
Henry Lynn.
Miss Ingram rose solemnly: “I go
first,” she said, in a tone which might have befitted the leader
of a forlorn hope, mounting a breach in the van of his men.
“Oh, my best! oh, my dearest!
pause—reflect!” was her mama’s cry; but she swept past her in
stately silence, passed through the door which Colonel Dent held
open, and we heard her enter the library.
A comparative silence ensued. Lady
Ingram thought it “le cas” to wring her hands: which she did
accordingly. Miss Mary declared she felt, for her part, she
never dared venture. Amy and Louisa Eshton tittered under their
breath, and looked a little frightened.
The minutes passed very slowly: fifteen
were counted before the library-door again opened. Miss Ingram
returned to us through the arch.
Would she laugh? Would she take it as
a joke? All eyes met her with a glance of eager curiosity, and
she met all eyes with one of rebuff and coldness; she looked
neither flurried nor merry: she walked stiffly to her seat, and
took it in silence.
“Well, Blanche?” said Lord Ingram.
“What did she say, sister?” asked Mary.
“What did you think? How do you
feel?—Is she a real fortune-teller?” demanded the Misses Eshton.
“Now, now, good people,” returned Miss
Ingram, “don’t press upon me. Really your organs of wonder and
credulity are easily excited: you seem, by the importance of you
all—my good mama included—ascribe to this matter, absolutely to
believe we have a genuine witch in the house, who is in close
alliance with the old gentleman. I have seen a gipsy vagabond;
she has practised in hackneyed fashion the science of palmistry
and told me what such people usually tell. My whim is
gratified; and now I think Mr. Eshton will do well to put the
hag in the stocks to-morrow morning, as he threatened.”
Miss Ingram took a book, leant back in
her chair, and so declined further conversation. I watched her
for nearly half-an-hour: during all that time she never turned a
page, and her face grew momently darker, more dissatisfied, and
more sourly expressive of disappointment. She had obviously not
heard anything to her advantage: and it seemed to me, from her
prolonged fit of gloom and taciturnity, that she herself,
notwithstanding her professed indifference, attached undue
importance to whatever revelations had been made her.
Meantime, Mary Ingram, Amy and Louisa
Eshton, declared they dared not go alone; and yet they all
wished to go. A negotiation was opened through the medium of
the ambassador, Sam; and after much pacing to and fro, till, I
think, the said Sam’s calves must have ached with the exercise,
permission was at last, with great difficulty, extorted from the
rigorous Sibyl, for the three to wait upon her in a body.
Their visit was not so still as Miss
Ingram’s had been: we heard hysterical giggling and little
shrieks proceeding from the library; and at the end of about
twenty minutes they burst the door open, and came running across
the hall, as if they were half-scared out of their wits.
“I am sure she is something not right!”
they cried, one and all. “She told us such things! She knows
all about us!” and they sank breathless into the various seats
the gentlemen hastened to bring them.
Pressed for further explanation, they
declared she had told them of things they had said and done when
they were mere children; described books and ornaments they had
in their boudoirs at home: keepsakes that different relations
had presented to them. They affirmed that she had even divined
their thoughts, and had whispered in the ear of each the name of
the person she liked best in the world, and informed them of
what they most wished for.
Here the gentlemen interposed with
earnest petitions to be further enlightened on these two
last-named points; but they got only blushes, ejaculations,
tremors, and titters, in return for their importunity. The
matrons, meantime, offered vinaigrettes and wielded fans; and
again and again reiterated the expression of their concern that
their warning had not been taken in time; and the elder
gentlemen laughed, and the younger urged their services on the
agitated fair ones.
In the midst of the tumult, and while
my eyes and ears were fully engaged in the scene before me, I
heard a hem close at my elbow: I turned, and saw Sam.
“If you please, miss, the gipsy
declares that there is another young single lady in the room who
has not been to her yet, and she swears she will not go till she
has seen all. I thought it must be you: there is no one else
for it. What shall I tell her?”
“Oh, I will go by all means,” I
answered: and I was glad of the unexpected opportunity to
gratify my much-excited curiosity. I slipped out of the room,
unobserved by any eye—for the company were gathered in one mass
about the trembling trio just returned—and I closed the door
quietly behind me.
“If you like, miss,” said Sam, “I’ll
wait in the hall for you; and if she frightens you, just call
and I’ll come in.”
“No, Sam, return to the kitchen: I am
not in the least afraid.” Nor was I; but I was a good deal
interested and excited.
CHAPTER XIX
The library looked tranquil enough as I
entered it, and the Sibyl—if Sibyl she were—was seated snugly
enough in an easy-chair at the chimney-corner. She had on a red
cloak and a black bonnet: or rather, a broad-brimmed gipsy hat,
tied down with a striped handkerchief under her chin. An
extinguished candle stood on the table; she was bending over the
fire, and seemed reading in a little black book, like a
prayer-book, by the light of the blaze: she muttered the words
to herself, as most old women do, while she read; she did not
desist immediately on my entrance: it appeared she wished to
finish a paragraph.
I stood on the rug and warmed my hands,
which were rather cold with sitting at a distance from the
drawing-room fire. I felt now as composed as ever I did in my
life: there was nothing indeed in the gipsy’s appearance to
trouble one’s calm. She shut her book and slowly looked up; her
hat-brim partially shaded her face, yet I could see, as she
raised it, that it was a strange one. It looked all brown and
black: elf-locks bristled out from beneath a white band which
passed under her chin, and came half over her cheeks, or rather
jaws: her eye confronted me at once, with a bold and direct
gaze.
“Well, and you want your fortune told?”
she said, in a voice as decided as her glance, as harsh as her
features.
“I don’t care about it, mother; you may
please yourself: but I ought to warn you, I have no faith.”
“It’s like your impudence to say so: I
expected it of you; I heard it in your step as you crossed the
threshold.”
“Did you? You’ve a quick ear.”
“I have; and a quick eye and a quick
brain.”
“You need them all in your trade.”
“I do; especially when I’ve customers
like you to deal with. Why don’t you tremble?”
“I’m not cold.”
“Why don’t you turn pale?”
“I am not sick.”
“Why don’t you consult my art?”
“I’m not silly.”
The old crone “nichered” a laugh under
her bonnet and bandage; she then drew out a short black pipe,
and lighting it began to smoke. Having indulged a while in this
sedative, she raised her bent body, took the pipe from her lips,
and while gazing steadily at the fire, said very
deliberately—“You are cold; you are sick; and you are silly.”
“Prove it,” I rejoined.
“I will, in few words. You are cold,
because you are alone: no contact strikes the fire from you that
is in you. You are sick; because the best of feelings, the
highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far away from you.
You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not beckon
it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it
waits you.”
She again put her short black pipe to
her lips, and renewed her smoking with vigour.
“You might say all that to almost any
one who you knew lived as a solitary dependent in a great
house.”
“I might say it to almost any one: but
would it be true of almost any one?”
“In my circumstances.”
“Yes; just so, in your
circumstances: but find me another precisely placed as you are.”
“It would be easy to find you
thousands.”
“You could scarcely find me one. If
you knew it, you are peculiarly situated: very near happiness;
yes, within reach of it. The materials are all prepared; there
only wants a movement to combine them. Chance laid them
somewhat apart; let them be once approached and bliss results.”
“I don’t understand enigmas. I never
could guess a riddle in my life.”
“If you wish me to speak more plainly,
show me your palm.”
“And I must cross it with silver, I
suppose?”
“To be sure.”
I gave her a shilling: she put it into
an old stocking-foot which she took out of her pocket, and
having tied it round and returned it, she told me to hold out my
hand. I did. She approached her face to the palm, and pored
over it without touching it.
“It is too fine,” said she. “I can
make nothing of such a hand as that; almost without lines:
besides, what is in a palm? Destiny is not written there.”
“I believe you,” said I.
“No,” she continued, “it is in the
face: on the forehead, about the eyes, in the lines of the
mouth. Kneel, and lift up your head.”
“Ah! now you are coming to reality,” I
said, as I obeyed her. “I shall begin to put some faith in you
presently.”
I knelt within half a yard of her. She
stirred the fire, so that a ripple of light broke from the
disturbed coal: the glare, however, as she sat, only threw her
face into deeper shadow: mine, it illumined.
“I wonder with what feelings you came
to me to-night,” she said, when she had examined me a while. “I
wonder what thoughts are busy in your heart during all the hours
you sit in yonder room with the fine people flitting before you
like shapes in a magic-lantern: just as little sympathetic
communion passing between you and them as if they were really
mere shadows of human forms, and not the actual substance.”
“I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes,
but seldom sad.”
“Then you have some secret hope to buoy
you up and please you with whispers of the future?”
“Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save
money enough out of my earnings to set up a school some day in a
little house rented by myself.”
“A mean nutriment for the spirit to
exist on: and sitting in that window-seat (you see I know your
habits )—”
“You have learned them from the
servants.”
“Ah! you think yourself sharp. Well,
perhaps I have: to speak truth, I have an acquaintance with one
of them, Mrs. Poole—”
I started to my feet when I heard the
name.
“You have—have you?” thought I; “there
is diablerie in the business after all, then!”
“Don’t be alarmed,” continued the
strange being; “she’s a safe hand is Mrs. Poole: close and
quiet; any one may repose confidence in her. But, as I was
saying: sitting in that window-seat, do you think of nothing but
your future school? Have you no present interest in any of the
company who occupy the sofas and chairs before you? Is there
not one face you study? one figure whose movements you follow
with at least curiosity?”
“I like to observe all the faces and
all the figures.”
“But do you never single one from the
rest—or it may be, two?”
“I do frequently; when the gestures or
looks of a pair seem telling a tale: it amuses me to watch
them.”
“What tale do you like best to hear?”
“Oh, I have not much choice! They
generally run on the same theme—courtship; and promise to end in
the same catastrophe—marriage.”
“And do you like that monotonous
theme?”
“Positively, I don’t care about it: it
is nothing to me.”
“Nothing to you? When a lady, young
and full of life and health, charming with beauty and endowed
with the gifts of rank and fortune, sits and smiles in the eyes
of a gentleman you—”
“I what?”
“You know—and perhaps think well of.”
“I don’t know the gentlemen here. I
have scarcely interchanged a syllable with one of them; and as
to thinking well of them, I consider some respectable, and
stately, and middle-aged, and others young, dashing, handsome,
and lively: but certainly they are all at liberty to be the
recipients of whose smiles they please, without my feeling
disposed to consider the transaction of any moment to me.”
“You don’t know the gentlemen here?
You have not exchanged a syllable with one of them? Will you
say that of the master of the house!”
“He is not at home.”
“A profound remark! A most ingenious
quibble! He went to Millcote this morning, and will be back
here to-night or to-morrow: does that circumstance exclude him
from the list of your acquaintance—blot him, as it were, out of
existence?”
“No; but I can scarcely see what Mr.
Rochester has to do with the theme you had introduced.”
“I was talking of ladies smiling in the
eyes of gentlemen; and of late so many smiles have been shed
into Mr. Rochester’s eyes that they overflow like two cups
filled above the brim: have you never remarked that?”
“Mr. Rochester has a right to enjoy the
society of his guests.”
“No question about his right: but have
you never observed that, of all the tales told here about
matrimony, Mr. Rochester has been favoured with the most lively
and the most continuous?”
“The eagerness of a listener quickens
the tongue of a narrator.” I said this rather to myself than to
the gipsy, whose strange talk, voice, manner, had by this time
wrapped me in a kind of dream. One unexpected sentence came
from her lips after another, till I got involved in a web of
mystification; and wondered what unseen spirit had been sitting
for weeks by my heart watching its workings and taking record of
every pulse.
“Eagerness of a listener!” repeated
she: “yes; Mr. Rochester has sat by the hour, his ear inclined
to the fascinating lips that took such delight in their task of
communicating; and Mr. Rochester was so willing to receive and
looked so grateful for the pastime given him; you have noticed
this?”
“Grateful! I cannot remember detecting
gratitude in his face.”
“Detecting! You have analysed, then.
And what did you detect, if not gratitude?”
I said nothing.
“You have seen love: have you not?—and,
looking forward, you have seen him married, and beheld his bride
happy?”
“Humph! Not exactly. Your witch’s
skill is rather at fault sometimes.”
“What the devil have you seen, then?”
“Never mind: I came here to inquire,
not to confess. Is it known that Mr. Rochester is to be
married?”
“Yes; and to the beautiful Miss
Ingram.”
“Shortly?”
“Appearances would warrant that
conclusion: and, no doubt (though, with an audacity that wants
chastising out of you, you seem to question it), they will be a
superlatively happy pair. He must love such a handsome, noble,
witty, accomplished lady; and probably she loves him, or, if not
his person, at least his purse. I know she considers the
Rochester estate eligible to the last degree; though (God pardon
me!) I told her something on that point about an hour ago which
made her look wondrous grave: the corners of her mouth fell half
an inch. I would advise her blackaviced suitor to look out: if
another comes, with a longer or clearer rent-roll,—he’s dished—”
“But, mother, I did not come to hear
Mr. Rochester’s fortune: I came to hear my own; and you have
told me nothing of it.”
“Your fortune is yet doubtful: when I
examined your face, one trait contradicted another. Chance has
meted you a measure of happiness: that I know. I knew it before
I came here this evening. She has laid it carefully on one side
for you. I saw her do it. It depends on yourself to stretch
out your hand, and take it up: but whether you will do so, is
the problem I study. Kneel again on the rug.”
“Don’t keep me long; the fire scorches
me.”
I knelt. She did not stoop towards me,
but only gazed, leaning back in her chair. She began
muttering,—
“The flame flickers in the eye; the eye
shines like dew; it looks soft and full of feeling; it smiles at
my jargon: it is susceptible; impression follows impression
through its clear sphere; where it ceases to smile, it is sad;
an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid: that signifies
melancholy resulting from loneliness. It turns from me; it will
not suffer further scrutiny; it seems to deny, by a mocking
glance, the truth of the discoveries I have already made,—to
disown the charge both of sensibility and chagrin: its pride and
reserve only confirm me in my opinion. The eye is favourable.
“As to the mouth, it delights at times
in laughter; it is disposed to impart all that the brain
conceives; though I daresay it would be silent on much the heart
experiences. Mobile and flexible, it was never intended to be
compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a mouth
which should speak much and smile often, and have human
affection for its interlocutor. That feature too is propitious.
“I see no enemy to a fortunate issue
but in the brow; and that brow professes to say,—‘I can live
alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do.
I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure
born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights
should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford
to give.’ The forehead declares, ‘Reason sits firm and holds
the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and
hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like
true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all
sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last
word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.
Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall
follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets
the dictates of conscience.’
“Well said, forehead; your declaration
shall be respected. I have formed my plans—right plans I deem
them—and in them I have attended to the claims of conscience,
the counsels of reason. I know how soon youth would fade and
bloom perish, if, in the cup of bliss offered, but one dreg of
shame, or one flavour of remorse were detected; and I do not
want sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution—such is not my taste. I
wish to foster, not to blight—to earn gratitude, not to wring
tears of blood—no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles,
in endearments, in sweet—That will do. I think I rave in a kind
of exquisite delirium. I should wish now to protract this
moment ad infinitum; but I dare not. So far I have
governed myself thoroughly. I have acted as I inwardly swore I
would act; but further might try me beyond my strength. Rise,
Miss Eyre: leave me; the play is played out’.”
Where was I? Did I wake or sleep? Had
I been dreaming? Did I dream still? The old woman’s voice had
changed: her accent, her gesture, and all were familiar to me as
my own face in a glass—as the speech of my own tongue. I got
up, but did not go. I looked; I stirred the fire, and I looked
again: but she drew her bonnet and her bandage closer about her
face, and again beckoned me to depart. The flame illuminated
her hand stretched out: roused now, and on the alert for
discoveries, I at once noticed that hand. It was no more the
withered limb of eld than my own; it was a rounded supple
member, with smooth fingers, symmetrically turned; a broad ring
flashed on the little finger, and stooping forward, I looked at
it, and saw a gem I had seen a hundred times before. Again I
looked at the face; which was no longer turned from me—on the
contrary, the bonnet was doffed, the bandage displaced, the head
advanced.
“Well, Jane, do you know me?” asked the
familiar voice.
“Only take off the red cloak, sir, and
then—”
“But the string is in a knot—help me.”
“Break it, sir.”
“There, then—‘Off, ye lendings!’” And
Mr. Rochester stepped out of his disguise.
“Now, sir, what a strange idea!”
“But well carried out, eh? Don’t you
think so?”
“With the ladies you must have managed
well.”
“But not with you?”
“You did not act the character of a
gipsy with me.”
“What character did I act? My own?”
“No; some unaccountable one. In short,
I believe you have been trying to draw me out—or in; you have
been talking nonsense to make me talk nonsense. It is scarcely
fair, sir.”
“Do you forgive me, Jane?”
“I cannot tell till I have thought it
all over. If, on reflection, I find I have fallen into no great
absurdity, I shall try to forgive you; but it was not right.”
“Oh, you have been very correct—very
careful, very sensible.”
I reflected, and thought, on the whole,
I had. It was a comfort; but, indeed, I had been on my guard
almost from the beginning of the interview. Something of
masquerade I suspected. I knew gipsies and fortune-tellers did
not express themselves as this seeming old woman had expressed
herself; besides I had noted her feigned voice, her anxiety to
conceal her features. But my mind had been running on Grace
Poole—that living enigma, that mystery of mysteries, as I
considered her. I had never thought of Mr. Rochester.
“Well,” said he, “what are you musing
about? What does that grave smile signify?”
“Wonder and self-congratulation, sir.
I have your permission to retire now, I suppose?”
“No; stay a moment; and tell me what
the people in the drawing-room yonder are doing.”
“Discussing the gipsy, I daresay.”
“Sit down!—Let me hear what they said
about me.”
“I had better not stay long, sir; it
must be near eleven o’clock. Oh, are you aware, Mr. Rochester,
that a stranger has arrived here since you left this morning?”
“A stranger!—no; who can it be? I
expected no one; is he gone?”
“No; he said he had known you long, and
that he could take the liberty of installing himself here till
you returned.”
“The devil he did! Did he give his
name?”
“His name is Mason, sir; and he comes
from the West Indies; from Spanish Town, in Jamaica, I think.”
Mr. Rochester was standing near me; he
had taken my hand, as if to lead me to a chair. As I spoke he
gave my wrist a convulsive grip; the smile on his lips froze:
apparently a spasm caught his breath.
“Mason!—the West Indies!” he said, in
the tone one might fancy a speaking automaton to enounce its
single words; “Mason!—the West Indies!” he reiterated; and he
went over the syllables three times, growing, in the intervals
of speaking, whiter than ashes: he hardly seemed to know what he
was doing.
“Do you feel ill, sir?” I inquired.
“Jane, I’ve got a blow; I’ve got a
blow, Jane!” He staggered.
“Oh, lean on me, sir.”
“Jane, you offered me your shoulder
once before; let me have it now.”
“Yes, sir, yes; and my arm.”
He sat down, and made me sit beside
him. Holding my hand in both his own, he chafed it; gazing on
me, at the same time, with the most troubled and dreary look.
“My little friend!” said he, “I wish I
were in a quiet island with only you; and trouble, and danger,
and hideous recollections removed from me.”
“Can I help you, sir?—I’d give my life
to serve you.”
“Jane, if aid is wanted, I’ll seek it
at your hands; I promise you that.”
“Thank you, sir. Tell me what to
do,—I’ll try, at least, to do it.”
“Fetch me now, Jane, a glass of wine
from the dining-room: they will be at supper there; and tell me
if Mason is with them, and what he is doing.”
I went. I found all the party in the
dining-room at supper, as Mr. Rochester had said; they were not
seated at table,—the supper was arranged on the sideboard; each
had taken what he chose, and they stood about here and there in
groups, their plates and glasses in their hands. Every one
seemed in high glee; laughter and conversation were general and
animated. Mr. Mason stood near the fire, talking to Colonel and
Mrs. Dent, and appeared as merry as any of them. I filled a
wine-glass (I saw Miss Ingram watch me frowningly as I did so:
she thought I was taking a liberty, I daresay), and I returned
to the library.
Mr. Rochester’s extreme pallor had
disappeared, and he looked once more firm and stern. He took
the glass from my hand.
“Here is to your health, ministrant
spirit!” he said. He swallowed the contents and returned it to
me. “What are they doing, Jane?”
“Laughing and talking, sir.”
“They don’t look grave and mysterious,
as if they had heard something strange?”
“Not at all: they are full of jests and
gaiety.”
“And Mason?”
“He was laughing too.”
“If all these people came in a body and
spat at me, what would you do, Jane?”
“Turn them out of the room, sir, if I
could.”
He half smiled. “But if I were to go
to them, and they only looked at me coldly, and whispered
sneeringly amongst each other, and then dropped off and left me
one by one, what then? Would you go with them?”
“I rather think not, sir: I should have
more pleasure in staying with you.”
“To comfort me?”
“Yes, sir, to comfort you, as well as I
could.”
“And if they laid you under a ban for
adhering to me?”
“I, probably, should know nothing about
their ban; and if I did, I should care nothing about it.”
“Then, you could dare censure for my
sake?”
“I could dare it for the sake of any
friend who deserved my adherence; as you, I am sure, do.”
“Go back now into the room; step
quietly up to Mason, and whisper in his ear that Mr. Rochester
is come and wishes to see him: show him in here and then leave
me.”
“Yes, sir.”
I did his behest. The company all
stared at me as I passed straight among them. I sought Mr.
Mason, delivered the message, and preceded him from the room: I
ushered him into the library, and then I went upstairs.
At a late hour, after I had been in bed
some time, I heard the visitors repair to their chambers: I
distinguished Mr. Rochester’s voice, and heard him say, “This
way, Mason; this is your room.”
He spoke cheerfully: the gay tones set
my heart at ease. I was soon asleep.
CHAPTER XX
I had forgotten to draw my curtain,
which I usually did, and also to let down my window-blind. The
consequence was, that when the moon, which was full and bright
(for the night was fine), came in her course to that space in
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 silence—its 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 was paralysed. The cry died, and was not
renewed. Indeed, whatever being uttered that fearful shriek
could not soon repeat it: not the widest-winged condor on the
Andes could, twice in 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 one it seemed
from the noise; and a half-smothered voice shouted—
“Help! help! help!” three times
rapidly.
“Will no one come?” it cried; and then,
while the staggering and stamping went on wildly, I
distinguished through plank and plaster:—
“Rochester! Rochester! for God’s sake,
come!”
A chamber-door opened: some one ran, or
rushed, along the gallery. Another step stamped on the flooring
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
confusedly on all hands. But for the moonlight they would have
been in complete darkness. They ran to and fro; they crowded
together: some sobbed, some stumbled: the confusion was
inextricable.
“Where the devil is Rochester?” cried
Colonel Dent. “I cannot find him in his bed.”
“Here! here!” was shouted in return.
“Be composed, all of you: I’m coming.”
And the door at the end of the gallery
opened, and Mr. Rochester advanced with a candle: he had just
descended 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 clinging about him
now; and the two dowagers, in vast white wrappers, 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 an excitable, nervous person: she construed 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
back into your rooms; for, till the house is settled, she cannot
be looked after. Gentlemen, have the goodness to set the ladies
the example. Miss Ingram, I am sure you will not fail in
evincing superiority to idle terrors. Amy and Louisa, return to
your nests like a pair of doves, as you are. Mesdames” (to the
dowagers), “you will take cold to a dead certainty, if you stay
in this chill gallery any longer.”
And so, by dint of alternate coaxing
and commanding, he contrived to get them all once more enclosed
in their separate dormitories. I did not wait to be ordered
back to mine, but retreated unnoticed, as unnoticed I had left
it.
Not, however, to go to bed: on the
contrary, I began and dressed myself carefully. The sounds I
had heard after the scream, and the words that had been uttered,
had probably been heard only by me; for they had proceeded from
the room above mine: but they assured me that it was not a
servant’s dream which had thus struck horror through the house;
and that the explanation Mr. Rochester had given was merely an
invention framed to pacify his guests. I dressed, then, to be
ready for emergencies. When dressed, I sat a long time by the
window looking out over the silent grounds and silvered fields
and waiting for I knew not what. It seemed to me that some
event must follow the strange cry, struggle, and call.
No: stillness returned: each murmur and
movement ceased gradually, and in about an hour Thornfield Hall
was again as hushed as a desert. It seemed that sleep and night
had resumed their empire. Meantime the moon declined: she was
about to set. Not liking to sit in the cold and darkness, I
thought I would lie down on my bed, dressed as I was. I left
the window, and moved with little noise across the carpet; as I
stooped to take off my shoes, a cautious hand tapped low at the
door.
“Am I wanted?” I asked.
“Are you up?” asked the voice I
expected to hear, viz., my master’s.
“Yes, sir.”
“And dressed?”
“Yes.”
“Come out, then, quietly.”
I obeyed. Mr. Rochester stood in the
gallery holding a light.
“I want you,” he said: “come this way:
take your time, and make no noise.”
My slippers were thin: I could walk the
matted floor as softly as a cat. He glided up the gallery and
up the stairs, and stopped in the dark, low corridor of the
fateful third storey: I had followed and stood at his side.
“Have you a sponge in your room?” he
asked in a whisper.
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you any salts—volatile salts?”
“Yes.”
“Go back and fetch both.”
I returned, sought the sponge on the
washstand, the salts in my drawer, and once more retraced my
steps. He still waited; he held a key in his hand: approaching
one of the small, black doors, he put it in the lock; he paused,
and addressed me again.
“You don’t turn sick at the sight of
blood?”
“I think I shall not: I have never been
tried yet.”
I felt a thrill while I answered him;
but no coldness, and no faintness.
“Just give me your hand,” he said: “it
will not do to risk a fainting fit.”
I put my fingers into his. “Warm and
steady,” was his remark: he turned the key and opened the door.
I saw a room I remembered to have seen
before, the day Mrs. Fairfax showed me over the house: it was
hung with tapestry; but the tapestry was now looped up in one
part, and there was a door apparent, which had then been
concealed. This door was open; a light shone out of the room
within: I heard thence a snarling, snatching sound, almost like
a dog quarrelling. Mr. Rochester, putting down his candle, said
to me, “Wait a minute,” and he went forward to the inner
apartment. A shout of laughter greeted his entrance; noisy at
first, and terminating in Grace Poole’s own goblin ha! ha!
She then was there. He made some sort of arrangement
without speaking, though I heard a low voice address him: he
came out and closed the door behind him.
“Here, Jane!” he said; and I walked
round to the other side of a large bed, which with its drawn
curtains concealed a considerable portion of the chamber. An
easy-chair was near the bed-head: a man sat in it, dressed with
the exception of his coat; he was still; his head leant back;
his eyes were closed. Mr. Rochester held the candle over him; I
recognised in his pale and seemingly lifeless face—the stranger,
Mason: I saw too that his linen on one side, and one arm, was
almost soaked in blood.
“Hold the candle,” said Mr. Rochester,
and I took it: he fetched a basin of water from the washstand:
“Hold that,” said he. I obeyed. He took the sponge, dipped it
in, and moistened the corpse-like face; he asked for my
smelling-bottle, and applied it to the nostrils. Mr. Mason
shortly unclosed his eyes; he groaned. Mr. Rochester opened the
shirt of the wounded man, whose arm and shoulder were bandaged:
he sponged away blood, trickling fast down.
“Is there immediate danger?” murmured
Mr. Mason.
“Pooh! No—a mere scratch. Don’t be so
overcome, man: bear up! I’ll fetch a surgeon for you now,
myself: you’ll be able to be removed by morning, I hope. Jane,”
he continued.
“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.
According as the shifting obscurity and
flickering gleam hovered here or glanced there, it was now the
bearded physician, Luke, that bent his brow; now St. John’s long
hair that waved; and anon the devilish face of Judas, that grew
out of the panel, and seemed gathering life and threatening a
revelation of the arch-traitor—of Satan himself—in his
subordinate’s form.
Amidst all this, I had to listen as
well as watch: to listen for the movements of the wild beast or
the fiend in yonder side den. But since Mr. Rochester’s visit
it seemed spellbound: all the night I heard but three sounds at
three long intervals,—a step creak, a momentary renewal of the
snarling, canine noise, and a deep human groan.
Then my own thoughts worried me. What
crime was this that lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion,
and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the owner?—what
mystery, that broke out now in fire and now in blood, at the
deadest hours of night? What creature was it, that, masked in
an ordinary woman’s face and shape, uttered the voice, now of a
mocking demon, and anon of a carrion-seeking bird of prey?
And this man I bent over—this
commonplace, quiet stranger—how had he become involved in the
web of horror? and why had the Fury flown at him? What made him
seek this quarter of the house at an untimely season, when he
should have been asleep in bed? I had heard Mr. Rochester
assign him an apartment below—what brought him here! And why,
now, was he so tame under the violence or treachery done him?
Why did he so quietly submit to the concealment Mr. Rochester
enforced? Why did Mr. Rochester enforce this
concealment? His guest had been outraged, his own life on a
former occasion had been hideously plotted against; and both
attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion! Lastly,
I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the
impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the
inertness of the former: the few words which had passed between
them assured me of this. It was evident that in their former
intercourse, the passive disposition of the one had been
habitually influenced by the active energy of the other: whence
then had arisen Mr. Rochester’s dismay when he heard of Mr.
Mason’s arrival? Why had the mere name of this unresisting
individual—whom his word now sufficed to control like a
child—fallen on him, a few hours since, as a thunderbolt might
fall on an oak?
Oh! I could not forget his look and
his paleness when he whispered: “Jane, I have got a blow—I have
got a blow, Jane.” I could not forget how the arm had trembled
which he rested on my shoulder: and it was no light matter which
could thus bow the resolute spirit and thrill the vigorous frame
of Fairfax Rochester.
“When will he come? When will he
come?” I cried inwardly, as the night lingered and lingered—as
my bleeding patient drooped, moaned, sickened: and neither day
nor aid arrived. I had, again and again, held the water to
Mason’s white lips; again and again offered him the stimulating
salts: my efforts seemed ineffectual: either bodily or mental
suffering, or loss of blood, or all three combined, were fast
prostrating his strength. He moaned so, and looked so weak,
wild, and lost, I feared he was dying; and I might not even
speak to him.
The candle, wasted at last, went out;
as it expired, I perceived streaks of grey light edging the
window curtains: dawn was then approaching. Presently I heard
Pilot bark far below, out of his distant kennel in the
courtyard: hope revived. Nor was it unwarranted: in five
minutes more the grating key, the yielding lock, warned me my
watch was relieved. It could not have lasted more than two
hours: many a week has seemed shorter.
Mr. Rochester entered, and with him the
surgeon he had been to fetch.
“Now, Carter, be on the alert,” he said
to this last: “I give you but half-an-hour for dressing the
wound, fastening the bandages, getting the patient downstairs
and all.”
“But is he fit to move, sir?”
“No doubt of it; it is nothing serious;
he is nervous, his spirits must be kept up. Come, set to work.”
Mr. Rochester drew back the thick
curtain, drew up the holland blind, let in all the daylight he
could; and I was surprised and cheered to see how far dawn was
advanced: what rosy streaks were beginning to brighten the
east. Then he approached Mason, whom the surgeon was already
handling.
“Now, my good fellow, how are you?” he
asked.
“She’s done for me, I fear,” was the
faint reply.
“Not a whit!—courage! This day
fortnight you’ll hardly be a pin the worse of it: you’ve lost a
little blood; that’s all. Carter, assure him there’s no
danger.”
“I can do that conscientiously,” said
Carter, who had now undone the bandages; “only I wish I could
have got here sooner: he would not have bled so much—but how is
this? The flesh on the shoulder is torn as well as cut. This
wound was not done with a knife: there have been teeth here!”
“She bit me,” he murmured. “She
worried me like a tigress, when Rochester got the knife from
her.”
“You should not have yielded: you
should have grappled with her at once,” said Mr. Rochester.
“But under such circumstances, what
could one do?” returned Mason. “Oh, it was frightful!” he
added, shuddering. “And I did not expect it: she looked so
quiet at first.”
“I warned you,” was his friend’s
answer; “I said—be on your guard when you go near her. Besides,
you might have waited till to-morrow, and had me with you: it
was mere folly to attempt the interview to-night, and alone.”
“I thought I could have done some
good.”
“You thought! you thought! Yes, it
makes me impatient to hear you: but, however, you have suffered,
and are likely to suffer enough for not taking my advice; so
I’ll say no more. Carter—hurry!—hurry! The sun will soon rise,
and I must have him off.”
“Directly, sir; the shoulder is just
bandaged. I must look to this other wound in the arm: she has
had her teeth here too, I think.”
“She sucked the blood: she said she’d
drain my heart,” said Mason.
I saw Mr. Rochester shudder: a
singularly marked expression of disgust, horror, hatred, warped
his countenance almost to distortion; but he only said—
“Come, be silent, Richard, and never
mind her gibberish: don’t repeat it.”
“I wish I could forget it,” was the
answer.
“You will when you are out of the
country: when you get back to Spanish Town, you may think of her
as dead and buried—or rather, you need not think of her at all.”
“Impossible to forget this night!”
“It is not impossible: have some
energy, man. You thought you were as dead as a herring two
hours since, and you are all alive and talking now.
There!—Carter has done with you or nearly so; I’ll make you
decent in a trice. Jane” (he turned to me for the first time
since his re-entrance), “take this key: go down into my bedroom,
and walk straight forward into my dressing-room: open the top
drawer of the wardrobe and take out a clean shirt and
neck-handkerchief: bring them here; and be nimble.”
I went; sought the repository he had
mentioned, found the articles named, and returned with them.
“Now,” said he, “go to the other side
of the bed while I order his toilet; but don’t leave the room:
you may be wanted again.”
I retired as directed.
“Was anybody stirring below when you
went down, Jane?” inquired Mr. Rochester presently.
“No, sir; all was very still.”
“We shall get you off cannily, Dick:
and it will be better, both for your sake, and for that of the
poor creature in yonder. I have striven long to avoid exposure,
and I should not like it to come at last. Here, Carter, help
him on with his waist-coat. Where did you leave your furred
cloak? You can’t travel a mile without that, I know, in this
damned cold climate. In your room?—Jane, run down to Mr.
Mason’s room,—the one next mine,—and fetch a cloak you will see
there.”
Again I ran, and again returned,
bearing an immense mantle lined and edged with fur.
“Now, I’ve another errand for you,”
said my untiring master; “you must away to my room again. What
a mercy you are shod with velvet, Jane!—a clod-hopping messenger
would never do at this juncture. You must open the middle
drawer of my toilet-table and take out a little phial and a
little glass you will find there,—quick!”
I flew thither and back, bringing the
desired vessels.
“That’s well! Now, doctor, I shall
take the liberty of administering a dose myself, on my own
responsibility. I got this cordial at Rome, of an Italian
charlatan—a fellow you would have kicked, Carter. It is not a
thing to be used indiscriminately, but it is good upon occasion:
as now, for instance. Jane, a little water.”
He held out the tiny glass, and I half
filled it from the water-bottle on the washstand.
“That will do;—now wet the lip of the
phial.”
I did so; he measured twelve drops of a
crimson liquid, and presented it to Mason.
“Drink, Richard: it will give you the
heart you lack, for an hour or so.”
“But will it hurt me?—is it
inflammatory?”
“Drink! drink! drink!”
Mr. Mason obeyed, because it was
evidently useless to resist. He was dressed now: he still
looked pale, but he was no longer gory and sullied. Mr.
Rochester let him sit three minutes after he had swallowed the
liquid; he then took his arm—
“Now I am sure you can get on your
feet,” he said—“try.”
The patient rose.
“Carter, take him under the other
shoulder. Be of good cheer, Richard; step out—that’s it!”
“I do feel better,” remarked Mr. Mason.
“I am sure you do. Now, Jane, trip on
before us away to the backstairs; unbolt the side-passage door,
and tell the driver of the post-chaise you will see in the
yard—or just outside, for I told him not to drive his rattling
wheels over the pavement—to be ready; we are coming: and, Jane,
if any one is about, come to the foot of the stairs and hem.”
It was by this time half-past five, and
the sun was on the point of rising; but I found the kitchen
still dark and silent. The side-passage door was fastened; I
opened it with as little noise as possible: all the yard was
quiet; but the gates stood wide open, and there was a
post-chaise, with horses ready harnessed, and driver seated on
the box, stationed outside. I approached him, and said the
gentlemen were coming; he nodded: then I looked carefully round
and listened. The stillness of early morning slumbered
everywhere; the curtains were yet drawn over the servants’
chamber windows; little birds were just twittering in the
blossom-blanched orchard trees, whose boughs drooped like white
garlands over the wall enclosing one side of the yard; the
carriage horses stamped from time to time in their closed
stables: all else was still.
The gentlemen now appeared. Mason,
supported by Mr. Rochester and the surgeon, seemed to walk with
tolerable ease: they assisted him into the chaise; Carter
followed.
“Take care of him,” said Mr. Rochester
to the latter, “and keep him at your house till he is quite
well: I shall ride over in a day or two to see how he gets on.
Richard, how is it with you?”
“The fresh air revives me, Fairfax.”
“Leave the window open on his side,
Carter; there is no wind—good-bye, Dick.”
“Fairfax—”
“Well what is it?”
“Let her be taken care of; let her be
treated as tenderly as may be: let her—” he stopped and burst
into tears.
“I do my best; and have done it, and
will do it,” was the answer: he shut up the chaise door, and the
vehicle drove away.
“Yet would to God there was an end of
all this!” added Mr. Rochester, as he closed and barred the
heavy yard-gates.
This done, he moved with slow step and
abstracted air towards a door in the wall bordering the
orchard. I, supposing he had done with me, prepared to return
to the house; again, however, I heard him call “Jane!” He had
opened feel portal and stood at it, waiting for me.
“Come where there is some freshness,
for a few moments,” he said; “that house is a mere dungeon:
don’t you feel it so?”
“It seems to me a splendid mansion,
sir.”
“The glamour of inexperience is over
your eyes,” he answered; “and you see it through a charmed
medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the
silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the
polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark. Now here”
(he pointed to the leafy enclosure we had entered) “all is real,
sweet, and pure.”
He strayed down a walk edged with box,
with apple trees, pear trees, and cherry trees on one side, and
a border on the other full of all sorts of old-fashioned
flowers, stocks, sweet-williams, primroses, pansies, mingled
with southernwood, sweet-briar, and various fragrant herbs.
They were fresh now as a succession of April showers and gleams,
followed by a lovely spring morning, could make them: the sun
was just entering the dappled east, and his light illumined the
wreathed and dewy orchard trees and shone down the quiet walks
under them.
“Jane, will you have a flower?”
He gathered a half-blown rose, the
first on the bush, and offered it to me.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Do you like this sunrise, Jane? That
sky with its high and light clouds which are sure to melt away
as the day waxes warm—this placid and balmly atmosphere?”
“I do, very much.”
“You have passed a strange night,
Jane.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And it has made you look pale—were you
afraid when I left you alone with Mason?”
“I was afraid of some one coming out of
the inner room.”
“But I had fastened the door—I had the
key in my pocket: I should have been a careless shepherd if I
had left a lamb—my pet lamb—so near a wolf’s den, unguarded: you
were safe.”
“Will Grace Poole live here still,
sir?”
“Oh yes! don’t trouble your head about
her—put the thing out of your thoughts.”
“Yet it seems to me your life is hardly
secure while she stays.”
“Never fear—I will take care of
myself.”
“Is the danger you apprehended last
night gone by now, sir?”
“I cannot vouch for that till Mason is
out of England: nor even then. To live, for me, Jane, is to
stand on a crater-crust which may crack and spue fire any day.”
“But Mr. Mason seems a man easily led.
Your influence, sir, is evidently potent with him: he will never
set you at defiance or wilfully injure you.”
“Oh, no! Mason will not defy me; nor,
knowing it, will he hurt me—but, unintentionally, he might in a
moment, by one careless word, deprive me, if not of life, yet
for ever of happiness.”
“Tell him to be cautious, sir: let him
know what you fear, and show him how to avert the danger.”
He laughed sardonically, hastily took
my hand, and as hastily threw it from him.
“If I could do that, simpleton, where
would the danger be? Annihilated in a moment. Ever since I
have known Mason, I have only had to say to him ‘Do that,’ and
the thing has been done. But I cannot give him orders in this
case: I cannot say ‘Beware of harming me, Richard;’ for it is
imperative that I should keep him ignorant that harm to me is
possible. Now you look puzzled; and I will puzzle you further.
You are my little friend, are you not?”
“I like to serve you, sir, and to obey
you in all that is right.”
“Precisely: I see you do. I see
genuine contentment in your gait and mien, your eye and face,
when you are helping me and pleasing me—working for me, and with
me, in, as you characteristically say, ‘all that is right:’
for if I bid you do what you thought wrong, there would be no
light-footed running, no neat-handed alacrity, no lively glance
and animated complexion. My friend would then turn to me, quiet
and pale, and would say, ‘No, sir; that is impossible: I cannot
do it, because it is wrong;’ and would become immutable as a
fixed star. Well, you too have power over me, and may injure
me: yet I dare not show you where I am vulnerable, lest,
faithful and friendly as you are, you should transfix me at
once.”
“If you have no more to fear from Mr.
Mason than you have from me, sir, you are very safe.”
“God grant it may be so! Here, Jane,
is an arbour; sit down.”
The arbour was an arch in the wall,
lined with ivy; it contained a rustic seat. Mr. Rochester took
it, leaving room, however, for me: but I stood before him.
“Sit,” he said; “the bench is long
enough for two. You don’t hesitate to take a place at my side,
do you? Is that wrong, Jane?”
I answered him by assuming it: to
refuse would, I felt, have been unwise.
“Now, my little friend, while the sun
drinks the dew—while all the flowers in this old garden awake
and expand, and the birds fetch their young ones’ breakfast out
of the Thornfield, and the early bees do their first spell of
work—I’ll put a case to you, which you must endeavour to suppose
your own: but first, look at me, and tell me you are at ease,
and not fearing that I err in detaining you, or that you err in
staying.”
“No, sir; I am content.”
“Well then, Jane, call to aid your
fancy:—suppose you were no longer a girl well reared and
disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from childhood upwards;
imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive that you
there commit a capital error, no matter of what nature or from
what motives, but one whose consequences must follow you through
life and taint all your existence. Mind, I don’t say a crime;
I am not speaking of shedding of blood or any other guilty act,
which might make the perpetrator amenable to the law: my word is
error. The results of what you have done become in time
to you utterly insupportable; you take measures to obtain
relief: unusual measures, but neither unlawful nor culpable.
Still you are miserable; for hope has quitted you on the very
confines of life: your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse, which
you feel will not leave it till the time of setting. Bitter and
base associations have become the sole food of your memory: you
wander here and there, seeking rest in exile: happiness in
pleasure—I mean in heartless, sensual pleasure—such as dulls
intellect and blights feeling. Heart-weary and soul-withered,
you come home after years of voluntary banishment: you make a
new acquaintance—how or where no matter: you find in this
stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you have
sought for twenty years, and never before encountered; and they
are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint. Such
society revives, regenerates: you feel better days come
back—higher wishes, purer feelings; you desire to recommence
your life, and to spend what remains to you of days in a way
more worthy of an immortal being. To attain this end, are you
justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom—a mere
conventional impediment which neither your conscience sanctifies
nor your judgment approves?”
He paused for an answer: and what was I
to say? Oh, for some good spirit to suggest a judicious and
satisfactory response! Vain aspiration! The west wind
whispered in the ivy round me; but no gentle Ariel borrowed its
breath as a medium of speech: the birds sang in the tree-tops;
but their song, however sweet, was inarticulate.
Again Mr. Rochester propounded his
query:
“Is the wandering and sinful, but now
rest-seeking and repentant, man justified in daring the world’s
opinion, in order to attach to him for ever this gentle,
gracious, genial stranger, thereby securing his own peace of
mind and regeneration of life?”
“Sir,” I answered, “a wanderer’s repose
or a sinner’s reformation should never depend on a
fellow-creature. Men and women die; philosophers falter in
wisdom, and Christians in goodness: if any one you know has
suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals for
strength to amend and solace to heal.”
“But the instrument—the instrument!
God, who does the work, ordains the instrument. I have myself—I
tell it you without parable—been a worldly, dissipated, restless
man; and I believe I have found the instrument for my cure in—”
He paused: the birds went on carolling,
the leaves lightly rustling. I almost wondered they did not
check their songs and whispers to catch the suspended
revelation; but they would have had to wait many minutes—so long
was the silence protracted. At last I looked up at the tardy
speaker: he was looking eagerly at me.
“Little friend,” said he, in quite a
changed tone—while his face changed too, losing all its softness
and gravity, and becoming harsh and sarcastic—“you have noticed
my tender penchant for Miss Ingram: don’t you think if I married
her she would regenerate me with a vengeance?”
He got up instantly, went quite to the
other end of the walk, and when he came back he was humming a
tune.
“Jane, Jane,” said he, stopping before
me, “you are quite pale with your vigils: don’t you curse me for
disturbing your rest?”
“Curse you? No, sir.”
“Shake hands in confirmation of the
word. What cold fingers! They were warmer last night when I
touched them at the door of the mysterious chamber. Jane, when
will you watch with me again?”
“Whenever I can be useful, sir.”
“For instance, the night before I am
married! I am sure I shall not be able to sleep. Will you
promise to sit up with me to bear me company? To you I can talk
of my lovely one: for now you have seen her and know her.”
“Yes, sir.”
“She’s a rare one, is she not, Jane?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A strapper—a real strapper, Jane: big,
brown, and buxom; with hair just such as the ladies of Carthage
must have had. Bless me! there’s Dent and Lynn in the stables!
Go in by the shrubbery, through that wicket.”
As I went one way, he went another, and
I heard him in the yard, saying cheerfully—
“Mason got the start of you all this
morning; he was gone before sunrise: I rose at four to see him
off.”
CHAPTER XXI
Presentiments are strange things! and
so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make
one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key. I
never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had
strange ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist (for
instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged
relatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity
of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings
baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may
be but the sympathies of Nature with man.
When I was a little girl, only six
years old, I one night heard Bessie Leaven say to Martha Abbot
that she had been dreaming about a little child; and that to
dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either to one’s
self or one’s kin. The saying might have worn out of my memory,
had not a circumstance immediately followed which served
indelibly to fix it there. The next day Bessie was sent for
home to the deathbed of her little sister.
Of late I had often recalled this
saying and this incident; for during the past week scarcely a
night had gone over my couch that had not brought with it a
dream of an infant, which I sometimes hushed in my arms,
sometimes dandled on my knee, sometimes watched playing with
daisies on a lawn, or again, dabbling its hands in running
water. It was a wailing child this night, and a laughing one
the next: now it nestled close to me, and now it ran from me;
but whatever mood the apparition evinced, whatever aspect it
wore, it failed not for seven successive nights to meet me the
moment I entered the land of slumber.
I did not like this iteration of one
idea—this strange recurrence of one image, and I grew nervous as
bedtime approached and the hour of the vision drew near. It was
from companionship with this baby-phantom I had been roused on
that moonlight night when I heard the cry; and it was on the
afternoon of the day following I was summoned downstairs by a
message that some one wanted me in Mrs. Fairfax’s room. On
repairing thither, I found a man waiting for me, having the
appearance of a gentleman’s servant: he was dressed in deep
mourning, and the hat he held in his hand was surrounded with a
crape band.
“I daresay you hardly remember me,
Miss,” he said, rising as I entered; “but my name is Leaven: I
lived coachman with Mrs. Reed when you were at Gateshead, eight
or nine years since, and I live there still.”
“Oh, Robert! how do you do? I remember
you very well: you used to give me a ride sometimes on Miss
Georgiana’s bay pony. And how is Bessie? You are married to
Bessie?”
“Yes, Miss: my wife is very hearty,
thank you; she brought me another little one about two months
since—we have three now—and both mother and child are thriving.”
“And are the family well at the house,
Robert?”
“I am sorry I can’t give you better
news of them, Miss: they are very badly at present—in great
trouble.”
“I hope no one is dead,” I said,
glancing at his black dress. He too looked down at the crape
round his hat and replied—
“Mr. John died yesterday was a week, at
his chambers in London.”
“Mr. John?”
“Yes.”
“And how does his mother bear it?”
“Why, you see, Miss Eyre, it is not a
common mishap: his life has been very wild: these last three
years he gave himself up to strange ways, and his death was
shocking.”
“I heard from Bessie he was not doing
well.”
“Doing well! He could not do worse: he
ruined his health and his estate amongst the worst men and the
worst women. He got into debt and into jail: his mother helped
him out twice, but as soon as he was free he returned to his old
companions and habits. His head was not strong: the knaves he
lived amongst fooled him beyond anything I ever heard. He came
down to Gateshead about three weeks ago and wanted missis to
give up all to him. Missis refused: her means have long been
much reduced by his extravagance; so he went back again, and the
next news was that he was dead. How he died, God knows!—they
say he killed himself.”
I was silent: the things were
frightful. Robert Leaven resumed—
“Missis had been out of health herself
for some time: she had got very stout, but was not strong with
it; and the loss of money and fear of poverty were quite
breaking her down. The information about Mr. John’s death and
the manner of it came too suddenly: it brought on a stroke. She
was three days without speaking; but last Tuesday she seemed
rather better: she appeared as if she wanted to say something,
and kept making signs to my wife and mumbling. It was only
yesterday morning, however, that Bessie understood she was
pronouncing your name; and at last she made out the words,
‘Bring Jane—fetch Jane Eyre: I want to speak to her.’ Bessie is
not sure whether she is in her right mind, or means anything by
the words; but she told Miss Reed and Miss Georgiana, and
advised them to send for you. The young ladies put it off at
first; but their mother grew so restless, and said, ‘Jane,
Jane,’ so many times, that at last they consented. I left
Gateshead yesterday: and if you can get ready, Miss, I should
like to take you back with me early to-morrow morning.”
“Yes, Robert, I shall be ready: it
seems to me that I ought to go.”
“I think so too, Miss. Bessie said she
was sure you would not refuse: but I suppose you will have to
ask leave before you can get off?”
“Yes; and I will do it now;” and having
directed him to the servants’ hall, and recommended him to the
care of John’s wife, and the attentions of John himself, I went
in search of Mr. Rochester.
He was not in any of the lower rooms;
he was not in the yard, the stables, or the grounds. I asked
Mrs. Fairfax if she had seen him;—yes: she believed he was
playing billiards with Miss Ingram. To the billiard-room I
hastened: the click of balls and the hum of voices resounded
thence; Mr. Rochester, Miss Ingram, the two Misses Eshton, and
their admirers, were all busied in the game. It required some
courage to disturb so interesting a party; my errand, however,
was one I could not defer, so I approached the master where he
stood at Miss Ingram’s side. She turned as I drew near, and
looked at me haughtily: her eyes seemed to demand, “What can the
creeping creature want now?” and when I said, in a low voice,
“Mr. Rochester,” she made a movement as if tempted to order me
away. I remember her appearance at the moment—it was very
graceful and very striking: she wore a morning robe of sky-blue
crape; a gauzy azure scarf was twisted in her hair. She had
been all animation with the game, and irritated pride did not
lower the expression of her haughty lineaments.
“Does that person want you?” she
inquired of Mr. Rochester; and Mr. Rochester turned to see who
the “person” was. He made a curious grimace—one of his strange
and equivocal demonstrations—threw down his cue and followed me
from the room.
“Well, Jane?” he said, as he rested his
back against the schoolroom door, which he had shut.
“If you please, sir, I want leave of
absence for a week or two.”
“What to do?—where to go?”
“To see a sick lady who has sent for
me.”
“What sick lady?—where does she live?”
“At Gateshead; in ---shire.”
“-shire? That is a hundred miles off!
Who may she be that sends for people to see her that distance?”
“Her name is Reed, sir—Mrs. Reed.”
“Reed of Gateshead? There was a Reed
of Gateshead, a magistrate.”
“It is his widow, sir.”
“And what have you to do with her? How
do you know her?”
“Mr. Reed was my uncle—my mother’s
brother.”
“The deuce he was! You never told me
that before: you always said you had no relations.”
“None that would own me, sir. Mr. Reed
is dead, and his wife cast me off.”
“Why?”
“Because I was poor, and burdensome,
and she disliked me.”
“But Reed left children?—you must have
cousins? Sir George Lynn was talking of a Reed of Gateshead
yesterday, who, he said, was one of the veriest rascals on town;
and Ingram was mentioning a Georgiana Reed of the same place,
who was much admired for her beauty a season or two ago in
London.”
“John Reed is dead, too, sir: he ruined
himself and half-ruined his family, and is supposed to have
committed suicide. The news so shocked his mother that it
brought on an apoplectic attack.”
“And what good can you do her?
Nonsense, Jane! I would never think of running a hundred miles
to see an old lady who will, perhaps, be dead before you reach
her: besides, you say she cast you off.”
“Yes, sir, but that is long ago; and
when her circumstances were very different: I could not be easy
to neglect her wishes now.”
“How long will you stay?”
“As short a time as possible, sir.”
“Promise me only to stay a week—”
“I had better not pass my word: I might
be obliged to break it.”
“At all events you will come
back: you will not be induced under any pretext to take up a
permanent residence with her?”
“Oh, no! I shall certainly return if
all be well.”
“And who goes with you? You don’t
travel a hundred miles alone.”
“No, sir, she has sent her coachman.”
“A person to be trusted?”
“Yes, sir, he has lived ten years in
the family.”
Mr. Rochester meditated. “When do you
wish to go?”
“Early to-morrow morning, sir.”
“Well, you must have some money; you
can’t travel without money, and I daresay you have not much: I
have given you no salary yet. How much have you in the world,
Jane?” he asked, smiling.
I drew out my purse; a meagre thing it
was. “Five shillings, sir.” He took the purse, poured the
hoard into his palm, and chuckled over it as if its scantiness
amused him. Soon he produced his pocket-book: “Here,” said he,
offering me a note; it was fifty pounds, and he owed me but
fifteen. I told him I had no change.
“I don’t want change; you know that.
Take your wages.”
I declined accepting more than was my
due. He scowled at first; then, as if recollecting something,
he said—
“Right, right! Better not give you all
now: you would, perhaps, stay away three months if you had fifty
pounds. There are ten; is it not plenty?”
“Yes, sir, but now you owe me five.”
“Come back for it, then; I am your
banker for forty pounds.”
“Mr. Rochester, I may as well mention
another matter of business to you while I have the opportunity.”
“Matter of business? I am curious to
hear it.”
“You have as good as informed me, sir,
that you are going shortly to be married?”
“Yes; what then?”
“In that case, sir, Adèle ought to go
to school: I am sure you will perceive the necessity of it.”
“To get her out of my bride’s way, who
might otherwise walk over her rather too emphatically? There’s
sense in the suggestion; not a doubt of it. Adèle, as you say,
must go to school; and you, of course, must march straight
to—the devil?”
“I hope not, sir; but I must seek
another situation somewhere.”
“In course!” he exclaimed, with a twang
of voice and a distortion of features equally fantastic and
ludicrous. He looked at me some minutes.
“And old Madam Reed, or the Misses, her
daughters, will be solicited by you to seek a place, I suppose?”
“No, sir; I am not on such terms with
my relatives as would justify me in asking favours of them—but I
shall advertise.”
“You shall walk up the pyramids of
Egypt!” he growled. “At your peril you advertise! I wish I had
only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds. Give me
back nine pounds, Jane; I’ve a use for it.”
“And so have I, sir,” I returned,
putting my hands and my purse behind me. “I could not spare the
money on any account.”
“Little niggard!” said he, “refusing me
a pecuniary request! Give me five pounds, Jane.”
“Not five shillings, sir; nor five
pence.”
“Just let me look at the cash.”
“No, sir; you are not to be trusted.”
“Jane!”
“Sir?”
“Promise me one thing.”
“I’ll promise you anything, sir, that I
think I am likely to perform.”
“Not to advertise: and to trust this
quest of a situation to me. I’ll find you one in time.”
“I shall be glad so to do, sir, if you,
in your turn, will promise that I and Adèle shall be both safe
out of the house before your bride enters it.”
“Very well! very well! I’ll pledge my
word on it. You go to-morrow, then?”
“Yes, sir; early.”
“Shall you come down to the
drawing-room after dinner?”
“No, sir, I must prepare for the
journey.”
“Then you and I must bid good-bye for a
little while?”
“I suppose so, sir.”
“And how do people perform that
ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me; I’m not quite up to it.”
“They say, Farewell, or any other form
they prefer.”
“Then say it.”
“Farewell, Mr. Rochester, for the
present.”
“What must I say?”
“The same, if you like, sir.”
“Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present;
is that all?”
“Yes?”
“It seems stingy, to my notions, and
dry, and unfriendly. I should like something else: a little
addition to the rite. If one shook hands, for instance; but
no—that would not content me either. So you’ll do no more than
say Farewell, Jane?”
“It is enough, sir: as much good-will
may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many.”
“Very likely; but it is blank and
cool—‘Farewell.’”
“How long is he going to stand with his
back against that door?” I asked myself; “I want to commence my
packing.” The dinner-bell rang, and suddenly away he bolted,
without another syllable: I saw him no more during the day, and
was off before he had risen in the morning.
I reached the lodge at Gateshead about
five o’clock in the afternoon of the first of May: I stepped in
there before going up to the hall. It was very clean and neat:
the ornamental windows were hung with little white curtains; the
floor was spotless; the grate and fire-irons were burnished
bright, and the fire burnt clear. Bessie sat on the hearth,
nursing her last-born, and Robert and his sister played quietly
in a corner.
“Bless you!—I knew you would come!”
exclaimed Mrs. Leaven, as I entered.
“Yes, Bessie,” said I, after I had
kissed her; “and I trust I am not too late. How is Mrs.
Reed?—Alive still, I hope.”
“Yes, she is alive; and more sensible
and collected than she was. The doctor says she may linger a
week or two yet; but he hardly thinks she will finally recover.”
“Has she mentioned me lately?”
“She was talking of you only this
morning, and wishing you would come, but she is sleeping now, or
was ten minutes ago, when I was up at the house. She generally
lies in a kind of lethargy all the afternoon, and wakes up about
six or seven. Will you rest yourself here an hour, Miss, and
then I will go up with you?”
Robert here entered, and Bessie laid
her sleeping child in the cradle and went to welcome him:
afterwards she insisted on my taking off my bonnet and having
some tea; for she said I looked pale and tired. I was glad to
accept her hospitality; and I submitted to be relieved of my
travelling garb just as passively as I used to let her undress
me when a child.
Old times crowded fast back on me as I
watched her bustling about—setting out the tea-tray with her
best china, cutting bread and butter, toasting a tea-cake, and,
between whiles, giving little Robert or Jane an occasional tap
or push, just as she used to give me in former days. Bessie had
retained her quick temper as well as her light foot and good
looks.
Tea ready, I was going to approach the
table; but she desired me to sit still, quite in her old
peremptory tones. I must be served at the fireside, she said;
and she placed before me a little round stand with my cup and a
plate of toast, absolutely as she used to accommodate me with
some privately purloined dainty on a nursery chair: and I smiled
and obeyed her as in bygone days.
She wanted to know if I was happy at
Thornfield Hall, and what sort of a person the mistress was; and
when I told her there was only a master, whether he was a nice
gentleman, and if I liked him. I told her he was rather an ugly
man, but quite a gentleman; and that he treated me kindly, and I
was content. Then I went on to describe to her the gay company
that had lately been staying at the house; and to these details
Bessie listened with interest: they were precisely of the kind
she relished.
In such conversation an hour was soon
gone: Bessie restored to me my bonnet, &c., and, accompanied by
her, I quitted the lodge for the hall. It was also accompanied
by her that I had, nearly nine years ago, walked down the path I
was now ascending. On a dark, misty, raw morning in January, I
had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered heart—a
sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation—to seek the chilly
harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so far away and unexplored.
The same hostile roof now again rose before me: my prospects
were doubtful yet; and I had yet an aching heart. I still felt
as a wanderer on the face of the earth; but I experienced firmer
trust in myself and my own powers, and less withering dread of
oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs, too, was now quite
healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished.
“You shall go into the breakfast-room
first,” said Bessie, as she preceded me through the hall; “the
young ladies will be there.”
In another moment I was within that
apartment. There was every article of furniture looking just as
it did on the morning I was first introduced to Mr. Brocklehurst:
the very rug he had stood upon still covered the hearth.
Glancing at the bookcases, I thought I could distinguish the two
volumes of Bewick’s British Birds occupying their old place on
the third shelf, and Gulliver’s Travels and the Arabian Nights
ranged just above. The inanimate objects were not changed; but
the living things had altered past recognition.
Two young ladies appeared before me;
one very tall, almost as tall as Miss Ingram—very thin too, with
a sallow face and severe mien. There was something ascetic in
her look, which was augmented by the extreme plainness of a
straight-skirted, black, stuff dress, a starched linen collar,
hair combed away from the temples, and the nun-like ornament of
a string of ebony beads and a crucifix. This I felt sure was
Eliza, though I could trace little resemblance to her former
self in that elongated and colourless visage.
The other was as certainly Georgiana:
but not the Georgiana I remembered—the slim and fairy-like girl
of eleven. This was a full-blown, very plump damsel, fair as
waxwork, with handsome and regular features, languishing blue
eyes, and ringleted yellow hair. The hue of her dress was black
too; but its fashion was so different from her sister’s—so much
more flowing and becoming—it looked as stylish as the other’s
looked puritanical.
In each of the sisters there was one
trait of the mother—and only one; the thin and pallid elder
daughter had her parent’s Cairngorm eye: the blooming and
luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and chin—perhaps a
little softened, but still imparting an indescribable hardness
to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous and buxom.
Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to
welcome me, and both addressed me by the name of “Miss Eyre.”
Eliza’s greeting was delivered in a short, abrupt voice, without
a smile; and then she sat down again, fixed her eyes on the
fire, and seemed to forget me. Georgiana added to her “How d’ye
do?” several commonplaces about my journey, the weather, and so
on, uttered in rather a drawling tone: and accompanied by sundry
side-glances that measured me from head to foot—now traversing
the folds of my drab merino pelisse, and now lingering on the
plain trimming of my cottage bonnet. Young ladies have a
remarkable way of letting you know that they think you a “quiz”
without actually saying the words. A certain superciliousness
of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone, express fully
their sentiments on the point, without committing them by any
positive rudeness in word or deed.
A sneer, however, whether covert or
open, had now no longer that power over me it once possessed: as
I sat between my cousins, I was surprised to find how easy I
felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi-sarcastic
attentions of the other—Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana
ruffle me. The fact was, I had other things to think about;
within the last few months feelings had been stirred in me so
much more potent than any they could raise—pains and pleasures
so much more acute and exquisite had been excited than any it
was in their power to inflict or bestow—that their airs gave me
no concern either for good or bad.
“How is Mrs. Reed?” I asked soon,
looking calmly at Georgiana, who thought fit to bridle at the
direct address, as if it were an unexpected liberty.
“Mrs. Reed? Ah! mama, you mean; she is
extremely poorly: I doubt if you can see her to-night.”
“If,” said I, “you would just step
upstairs and tell her I am come, I should be much obliged to
you.”
Georgiana almost started, and she
opened her blue eyes wild and wide. “I know she had a
particular wish to see me,” I added, “and I would not defer
attending to her desire longer than is absolutely necessary.”
“Mama dislikes being disturbed in an
evening,” remarked Eliza. I soon rose, quietly took off my
bonnet and gloves, uninvited, and said I would just step out to
Bessie—who was, I dared say, in the kitchen—and ask her to
ascertain whether Mrs. Reed was disposed to receive me or not
to-night. I went, and having found Bessie and despatched her on
my errand, I proceeded to take further measures. It had
heretofore been my habit always to shrink from arrogance:
received as I had been to-day, I should, a year ago, have
resolved to quit Gateshead the very next morning; now, it was
disclosed to me all at once that that would be a foolish plan.
I had taken a journey of a hundred miles to see my aunt, and I
must stay with her till she was better—or dead: as to her
daughters’ pride or folly, I must put it on one side, make
myself independent of it. So I addressed the housekeeper; asked
her to show me a room, told her I should probably be a visitor
here for a week or two, had my trunk conveyed to my chamber, and
followed it thither myself: I met Bessie on the landing.
“Missis is awake,” said she; “I have
told her you are here: come and let us see if she will know
you.”
I did not need to be guided to the
well-known room, to which I had so often been summoned for
chastisement or reprimand in former days. I hastened before
Bessie; I softly opened the door: a shaded light stood on the
table, for it was now getting dark. There was the great
four-post bed with amber hangings as of old; there the
toilet-table, the armchair, and the footstool, at which I had a
hundred times been sentenced to kneel, to ask pardon for
offences by me uncommitted. I looked into a certain corner
near, half-expecting to see the slim outline of a once dreaded
switch which used to lurk there, waiting to leap out imp-like
and lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck. I approached the
bed; I opened the curtains and leant over the high-piled
pillows.
Well did I remember Mrs. Reed’s face,
and I eagerly sought the familiar image. It is a happy thing
that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the
promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in
bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other
emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a
strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries—to be
reconciled and clasp hands in amity.
The well-known face was there: stern,
relentless as ever—there was that peculiar eye which nothing
could melt, and the somewhat raised, imperious, despotic
eyebrow. How often had it lowered on me menace and hate! and
how the recollection of childhood’s terrors and sorrows revived
as I traced its harsh line now! And yet I stooped down and
kissed her: she looked at me.
“Is this Jane Eyre?” she said.
“Yes, Aunt Reed. How are you, dear
aunt?”
I had once vowed that I would never
call her aunt again: I thought it no sin to forget and break
that vow now. My fingers had fastened on her hand which lay
outside the sheet: had she pressed mine kindly, I should at that
moment have experienced true pleasure. But unimpressionable
natures are not so soon softened, nor are natural antipathies so
readily eradicated. Mrs. Reed took her hand away, and, turning
her face rather from me, she remarked that the night was warm.
Again she regarded me so icily, I felt at once that her opinion
of me—her feeling towards me—was unchanged and unchangeable. I
knew by her stony eye—opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to
tears—that she was resolved to consider me bad to the last;
because to believe me good would give her no generous pleasure:
only a sense of mortification.
I felt pain, and then I felt ire; and
then I felt a determination to subdue her—to be her mistress in
spite both of her nature and her will. My tears had risen, just
as in childhood: I ordered them back to their source. I brought
a chair to the bed-head: I sat down and leaned over the pillow.
“You sent for me,” I said, “and I am
here; and it is my intention to stay till I see how you get on.”
“Oh, of course! You have seen my
daughters?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you may tell them I wish you to
stay till I can talk some things over with you I have on my
mind: to-night it is too late, and I have a difficulty in
recalling them. But there was something I wished to say—let me
see—”
The wandering look and changed
utterance told what wreck had taken place in her once vigorous
frame. Turning restlessly, she drew the bedclothes round her;
my elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt, fixed it down: she
was at once irritated.
“Sit up!” said she; “don’t annoy me
with holding the clothes fast. Are you Jane Eyre?”
“I am Jane Eyre.”
“I have had more trouble with that
child than any one would believe. Such a burden to be left on
my hands—and so much annoyance as she caused me, daily and
hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden
starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural watchings of
one’s movements! I declare she talked to me once like something
mad, or like a fiend—no child ever spoke or looked as she did; I
was glad to get her away from the house. What did they do with
her at Lowood? The fever broke out there, and many of the
pupils died. She, however, did not die: but I said she did—I
wish she had died!”
“A strange wish, Mrs. Reed; why do you
hate her so?”
“I had a dislike to her mother always;
for she was my husband’s only sister, and a great favourite with
him: he opposed the family’s disowning her when she made her low
marriage; and when news came of her death, he wept like a
simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I entreated him
rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its maintenance. I
hated it the first time I set my eyes on it—a sickly, whining,
pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all night long—not
screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering and
moaning. Reed pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it
as if it had been his own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed
his own at that age. He would try to make my children friendly
to the little beggar: the darlings could not bear it, and he was
angry with them when they showed their dislike. In his last
illness, he had it brought continually to his bedside; and but
an hour before he died, he bound me by vow to keep the
creature. I would as soon have been charged with a pauper brat
out of a workhouse: but he was weak, naturally weak. John does
not at all resemble his father, and I am glad of it: John is
like me and like my brothers—he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish
he would cease tormenting me with letters for money? I have no
more money to give him: we are getting poor. I must send away
half the servants and shut up part of the house; or let it off.
I can never submit to do that—yet how are we to get on?
Two-thirds of my income goes in paying the interest of
mortgages. John gambles dreadfully, and always loses—poor boy!
He is beset by sharpers: John is sunk and degraded—his look is
frightful—I feel ashamed for him when I see him.”
She was getting much excited. “I think
I had better leave her now,” said I to Bessie, who stood on the
other side of the bed.
“Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often
talks in this way towards night—in the morning she is calmer.”
I rose. “Stop!” exclaimed Mrs. Reed,
“there is another thing I wished to say. He threatens me—he
continually threatens me with his own death, or mine: and I
dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great wound in
his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face. I am come to
a strange pass: I have heavy troubles. What is to be done? How
is the money to be had?”
Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her
to take a sedative draught: she succeeded with difficulty. Soon
after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed, and sank into a dozing
state. I then left her.
More than ten days elapsed before I had
again any conversation with her. She continued either delirious
or lethargic; and the doctor forbade everything which could
painfully excite her. Meantime, I got on as well as I could
with Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold, indeed, at
first. Eliza would sit half the day sewing, reading, or
writing, and scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister.
Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour,
and take no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem at a
loss for occupation or amusement: I had brought my drawing
materials with me, and they served me for both.
Provided with a case of pencils, and
some sheets of paper, I used to take a seat apart from them,
near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes,
representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself
in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse of
sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its
disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad’s head,
crowned with lotus-flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting
in a hedge-sparrow’s nest, under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom.
One morning I fell to sketching a face:
what sort of a face it was to be, I did not care or know. I
took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad point, and worked
away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and prominent
forehead and a square lower outline of visage: that contour gave
me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with
features. Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced
under that brow; then followed, naturally, a well-defined nose,
with a straight ridge and full nostrils; then a flexible-looking
mouth, by no means narrow; then a firm chin, with a decided
cleft down the middle of it: of course, some black whiskers were
wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and waved
above the forehead. Now for the eyes: I had left them to the
last, because they required the most careful working. I drew
them large; I shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and
sombre; the irids lustrous and large. “Good! but not quite the
thing,” I thought, as I surveyed the effect: “they want more
force and spirit;” and I wrought the shades blacker, that the
lights might flash more brilliantly—a happy touch or two secured
success. There, I had a friend’s face under my gaze; and what
did it signify that those young ladies turned their backs on
me? I looked at it; I smiled at the speaking likeness: I was
absorbed and content.
“Is that a portrait of some one you
know?” asked Eliza, who had approached me unnoticed. I
responded that it was merely a fancy head, and hurried it
beneath the other sheets. Of course, I lied: it was, in fact, a
very faithful representation of Mr. Rochester. But what was
that to her, or to any one but myself? Georgiana also advanced
to look. The other drawings pleased her much, but she called
that “an ugly man.” They both seemed surprised at my skill. I
offered to sketch their portraits; and each, in turn, sat for a
pencil outline. Then Georgiana produced her album. I promised
to contribute a water-colour drawing: this put her at once into
good humour. She proposed a walk in the grounds. Before we had
been out two hours, we were deep in a confidential conversation:
she had favoured me with a description of the brilliant winter
she had spent in London two seasons ago—of the admiration she
had there excited—the attention she had received; and I even got
hints of the titled conquest she had made. In the course of the
afternoon and evening these hints were enlarged on: various soft
conversations were reported, and sentimental scenes represented;
and, in short, a volume of a novel of fashionable life was that
day improvised by her for my benefit. The communications were
renewed from day to day: they always ran on the same
theme—herself, her loves, and woes. It was strange she never
once adverted either to her mother’s illness, or her brother’s
death, or the present gloomy state of the family prospects. Her
mind seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety,
and aspirations after dissipations to come. She passed about
five minutes each day in her mother’s sick-room, and no more.
Eliza still spoke little: she had
evidently no time to talk. I never saw a busier person than she
seemed to be; yet it was difficult to say what she did: or
rather, to discover any result of her diligence. She had an
alarm to call her up early. I know not how she occupied herself
before breakfast, but after that meal she divided her time into
regular portions, and each hour had its allotted task. Three
times a day she studied a little book, which I found, on
inspection, was a Common Prayer Book. I asked her once what was
the great attraction of that volume, and she said, “the
Rubric.” Three hours she gave to stitching, with gold thread,
the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large enough for a
carpet. In answer to my inquiries after the use of this
article, she informed me it was a covering for the altar of a
new church lately erected near Gateshead. Two hours she devoted
to her diary; two to working by herself in the kitchen-garden;
and one to the regulation of her accounts. She seemed to want
no company; no conversation. I believe she was happy in her
way: this routine sufficed for her; and nothing annoyed her so
much as the occurrence of any incident which forced her to vary
its clockwork regularity.
She told me one evening, when more
disposed to be communicative than usual, that John’s conduct,
and the threatened ruin of the family, had been a source of
profound affliction to her: but she had now, she said, settled
her mind, and formed her resolution. Her own fortune she had
taken care to secure; and when her mother died—and it was wholly
improbable, she tranquilly remarked, that she should either
recover or linger long—she would execute a long-cherished
project: seek a retirement where punctual habits would be
permanently secured from disturbance, and place safe barriers
between herself and a frivolous world. I asked if Georgiana
would accompany her.
“Of course not. Georgiana and she had
nothing in common: they never had had. She would not be
burdened with her society for any consideration. Georgiana
should take her own course; and she, Eliza, would take hers.”
Georgiana, when not unburdening her
heart to me, spent most of her time in lying on the sofa,
fretting about the dulness of the house, and wishing over and
over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an invitation up
to town. “It would be so much better,” she said, “if she could
only get out of the way for a month or two, till all was over.”
I did not ask what she meant by “all being over,” but I suppose
she referred to the expected decease of her mother and the
gloomy sequel of funeral rites. Eliza generally took no more
notice of her sister’s indolence and complaints than if no such
murmuring, lounging object had been before her. One day,
however, as she put away her account-book and unfolded her
embroidery, she suddenly took her up thus—
“Georgiana, a more vain and absurd
animal than you was certainly never allowed to cumber the
earth. You had no right to be born, for you make no use of
life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a
reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness
on some other person’s strength: if no one can be found willing
to burden her or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless
thing, you cry out that you are ill-treated, neglected,
miserable. Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of
continual change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon:
you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be
flattered—you must have music, dancing, and society—or you
languish, you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system
which will make you independent of all efforts, and all wills,
but your own? Take one day; share it into sections; to each
section apportion its task: leave no stray unemployed quarters
of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes—include all; do each piece
of business in its turn with method, with rigid regularity. The
day will close almost before you are aware it has begun; and you
are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant
moment: you have had to seek no one’s company, conversation,
sympathy, forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an
independent being ought to do. Take this advice: the first and
last I shall offer you; then you will not want me or any one
else, happen what may. Neglect it—go on as heretofore, craving,
whining, and idling—and suffer the results of your idiocy,
however bad and insuperable they may be. I tell you this
plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat what I am
now about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my mother’s
death, I wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is
carried to the vault in Gateshead Church, you and I will be as
separate as if we had never known each other. You need not
think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents, I
shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim: I
can tell you this—if the whole human race, ourselves excepted,
were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth, I would
leave you in the old world, and betake myself to the new.”
She closed her lips.
“You might have spared yourself the
trouble of delivering that tirade,” answered Georgiana.
“Everybody knows you are the most selfish, heartless creature in
existence: and I know your spiteful hatred towards me: I
have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played me
about Lord Edwin Vere: you could not bear me to be raised above
you, to have a title, to be received into circles where you dare
not show your face, and so you acted the spy and informer, and
ruined my prospects for ever.” Georgiana took out her
handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour afterwards; Eliza sat
cold, impassable, and assiduously industrious.
True, generous feeling is made small
account of by some, but here were two natures rendered, the one
intolerably acrid, the other despicably savourless for the want
of it. Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but
judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel
for human deglutition.
It was a wet and windy afternoon:
Georgiana had fallen asleep on the sofa over the perusal of a
novel; Eliza was gone to attend a saint’s-day service at the new
church—for in matters of religion she was a rigid formalist: no
weather ever prevented the punctual discharge of what she
considered her devotional duties; fair or foul, she went to
church thrice every Sunday, and as often on week-days as there
were prayers.
I bethought myself to go upstairs and
see how the dying woman sped, who lay there almost unheeded: the
very servants paid her but a remittent attention: the hired
nurse, being little looked after, would slip out of the room
whenever she could. Bessie was faithful; but she had her own
family to mind, and could only come occasionally to the hall. I
found the sick-room unwatched, as I had expected: no nurse was
there; the patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic; her livid
face sunk in the pillows: the fire was dying in the grate. I
renewed the fuel, re-arranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile on
her who could not now gaze on me, and then I moved away to the
window.
The rain beat strongly against the
panes, the wind blew tempestuously: “One lies there,” I thought,
“who will soon be beyond the war of earthly elements. Whither
will that spirit—now struggling to quit its material
tenement—flit when at length released?”
In pondering the great mystery, I
thought of Helen Burns, recalled her dying words—her faith—her
doctrine of the equality of disembodied souls. I was still
listening in thought to her well-remembered tones—still
picturing her pale and spiritual aspect, her wasted face and
sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid deathbed, and whispered
her longing to be restored to her divine Father’s bosom—when a
feeble voice murmured from the couch behind: “Who is that?”
I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for
days: was she reviving? I went up to her.
“It is I, Aunt Reed.”
“Who—I?” was her answer. “Who are
you?” looking at me with surprise and a sort of alarm, but still
not wildly. “You are quite a stranger to me—where is Bessie?”
“She is at the lodge, aunt.”
“Aunt,” she repeated. “Who calls me
aunt? You are not one of the Gibsons; and yet I know you—that
face, and the eyes and forehead, are quiet familiar to me: you
are like—why, you are like Jane Eyre!”
I said nothing: I was afraid of
occasioning some shock by declaring my identity.
“Yet,” said she, “I am afraid it is a
mistake: my thoughts deceive me. I wished to see Jane Eyre, and
I fancy a likeness where none exists: besides, in eight years
she must be so changed.” I now gently assured her that I was
the person she supposed and desired me to be: and seeing that I
was understood, and that her senses were quite collected, I
explained how Bessie had sent her husband to fetch me from
Thornfield.
“I am very ill, I know,” she said ere
long. “I was trying to turn myself a few minutes since, and
find I cannot move a limb. It is as well I should ease my mind
before I die: what we think little of in health, burdens us at
such an hour as the present is to me. Is the nurse here? or is
there no one in the room but you?”
I assured her we were alone.
“Well, I have twice done you a wrong
which I regret now. One was in breaking the promise which I
gave my husband to bring you up as my own child; the other—” she
stopped. “After all, it is of no great importance, perhaps,”
she murmured to herself: “and then I may get better; and to
humble myself so to her is painful.”
She made an effort to alter her
position, but failed: her face changed; she seemed to experience
some inward sensation—the precursor, perhaps, of the last pang.
“Well, I must get it over. Eternity is
before me: I had better tell her.—Go to my dressing-case, open
it, and take out a letter you will see there.”
I obeyed her directions. “Read the
letter,” she said.
It was short, and thus conceived:—
“Madam,—Will you have the goodness
to send me the address of my niece, Jane Eyre, and to tell
me how she is? It is my intention to write shortly and
desire her to come to me at Madeira. Providence has blessed
my endeavours to secure a competency; and as I am unmarried
and childless, I wish to adopt her during my life, and
bequeath her at my death whatever I may have to leave.—I am,
Madam, &c., &c.,
“John Eyre,
Madeira.”
It was dated three years back.
“Why did I never hear of this?” I
asked.
“Because I disliked you too fixedly and
thoroughly ever to lend a hand in lifting you to prosperity. I
could not forget your conduct to me, Jane—the fury with which
you once turned on me; the tone in which you declared you
abhorred me the worst of anybody in the world; the unchildlike
look and voice with which you affirmed that the very thought of
me made you sick, and asserted that I had treated you with
miserable cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when
you thus started up and poured out the venom of your mind: I
felt fear as if an animal that I had struck or pushed had looked
up at me with human eyes and cursed me in a man’s voice.—Bring
me some water! Oh, make haste!”
“Dear Mrs. Reed,” said I, as I offered
her the draught she required, “think no more of all this, let it
pass away from your mind. Forgive me for my passionate
language: I was a child then; eight, nine years have passed
since that day.”
She heeded nothing of what I said; but
when she had tasted the water and drawn breath, she went on
thus—
“I tell you I could not forget it; and
I took my revenge: for you to be adopted by your uncle, and
placed in a state of ease and comfort, was what I could not
endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his
disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus
fever at Lowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my
assertion—expose my falsehood as soon as you like. You were
born, I think, to be my torment: my last hour is racked by the
recollection of a deed which, but for you, I should never have
been tempted to commit.”
“If you could but be persuaded to think
no more of it, aunt, and to regard me with kindness and
forgiveness”
“You have a very bad disposition,” said
she, “and one to this day I feel it impossible to understand:
how for nine years you could be patient and quiescent under any
treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and violence, I
can never comprehend.”
“My disposition is not so bad as you
think: I am passionate, but not vindictive. Many a time, as a
little child, I should have been glad to love you if you would
have let me; and I long earnestly to be reconciled to you now:
kiss me, aunt.”
I approached my cheek to her lips: she
would not touch it. She said I oppressed her by leaning over
the bed, and again demanded water. As I laid her down—for I
raised her and supported her on my arm while she drank—I covered
her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine: the feeble fingers
shrank from my touch—the glazing eyes shunned my gaze.
“Love me, then, or hate me, as you
will,” I said at last, “you have my full and free forgiveness:
ask now for God’s, and be at peace.”
Poor, suffering woman! it was too late
for her to make now the effort to change her habitual frame of
mind: living, she had ever hated me—dying, she must hate me
still.
The nurse now entered, and Bessie
followed. I yet lingered half-an-hour longer, hoping to see
some sign of amity: but she gave none. She was fast relapsing
into stupor; nor did her mind again rally: at twelve o’clock
that night she died. I was not present to close her eyes, nor
were either of her daughters. They came to tell us the next
morning that all was over. She was by that time laid out.
Eliza and I went to look at her: Georgiana, who had burst out
into loud weeping, said she dared not go. There was stretched
Sarah Reed’s once robust and active frame, rigid and still: her
eye of flint was covered with its cold lid; her brow and strong
traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul. A strange
and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with
gloom and pain: nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or
hopeful, or subduing did it inspire; only a grating anguish for
her woes—not my loss—and a sombre tearless dismay
at the fearfulness of death in such a form.
Eliza surveyed her parent calmly.
After a silence of some minutes she observed—
“With her constitution she should have
lived to a good old age: her life was shortened by trouble.”
And then a spasm constricted her mouth for an instant: as it
passed away she turned and left the room, and so did I. Neither
of us had dropt a tear.
CHAPTER XXII
Mr. Rochester had given me but one
week’s leave of absence: yet a month elapsed before I quitted
Gateshead. I wished to leave immediately after the funeral, but
Georgiana entreated me to stay till she could get off to London,
whither she was now at last invited by her uncle, Mr. Gibson,
who had come down to direct his sister’s interment and settle
the family affairs. Georgiana said she dreaded being left alone
with Eliza; from her she got neither sympathy in her dejection,
support in her fears, nor aid in her preparations; so I bore
with her feeble-minded wailings and selfish lamentations as well
as I could, and did my best in sewing for her and packing her
dresses. It is true, that while I worked, she would idle; and I
thought to myself, “If you and I were destined to live always
together, cousin, we would commence matters on a different
footing. I should not settle tamely down into being the
forbearing party; I should assign you your share of labour, and
compel you to accomplish it, or else it should be left undone: I
should insist, also, on your keeping some of those drawling,
half-insincere complaints hushed in your own breast. It is only
because our connection happens to be very transitory, and comes
at a peculiarly mournful season, that I consent thus to render
it so patient and compliant on my part.”
At last I saw Georgiana off; but now it
was Eliza’s turn to request me to stay another week. Her plans
required all her time and attention, she said; she was about to
depart for some unknown bourne; and all day long she stayed in
her own room, her door bolted within, filling trunks, emptying
drawers, burning papers, and holding no communication with any
one. She wished me to look after the house, to see callers, and
answer notes of condolence.
One morning she told me I was at
liberty. “And,” she added, “I am obliged to you for your
valuable services and discreet conduct! There is some
difference between living with such an one as you and with
Georgiana: you perform your own part in life and burden no one.
To-morrow,” she continued, “I set out for the Continent. I
shall take up my abode in a religious house near Lisle—a nunnery
you would call it; there I shall be quiet and unmolested. I
shall devote myself for a time to the examination of the Roman
Catholic dogmas, and to a careful study of the workings of their
system: if I find it to be, as I half suspect it is, the one
best calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently and
in order, I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and probably take
the veil.”
I neither expressed surprise at this
resolution nor attempted to dissuade her from it. “The vocation
will fit you to a hair,” I thought: “much good may it do you!”
When we parted, she said: “Good-bye,
cousin Jane Eyre; I wish you well: you have some sense.”
I then returned: “You are not without
sense, cousin Eliza; but what you have, I suppose, in another
year will be walled up alive in a French convent. However, it
is not my business, and so it suits you, I don’t much care.”
“You are in the right,” said she; and
with these words we each went our separate way. As I shall not
have occasion to refer either to her or her sister again, I may
as well mention here, that Georgiana made an advantageous match
with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion, and that Eliza actually
took the veil, and is at this day superior of the convent where
she passed the period of her novitiate, and which she endowed
with her fortune.
How people feel when they are returning
home from an absence, long or short, I did not know: I had never
experienced the sensation. I had known what it was to come back
to Gateshead when a child after a long walk, to be scolded for
looking cold or gloomy; and later, what it was to come back from
church to Lowood, to long for a plenteous meal and a good fire,
and to be unable to get either. Neither of these returnings was
very pleasant or desirable: no magnet drew me to a given point,
increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came. The
return to Thornfield was yet to be tried.
My journey seemed tedious—very tedious:
fifty miles one day, a night spent at an inn; fifty miles the
next day. During the first twelve hours I thought of Mrs. Reed
in her last moments; I saw her disfigured and discoloured face,
and heard her strangely altered voice. I mused on the funeral
day, the coffin, the hearse, the black train of tenants and
servants—few was the number of relatives—the gaping vault, the
silent church, the solemn service. Then I thought of Eliza and
Georgiana; I beheld one the cynosure of a ball-room, the other
the inmate of a convent cell; and I dwelt on and analysed their
separate peculiarities of person and character. The evening
arrival at the great town of—scattered these thoughts; night
gave them quite another turn: laid down on my traveller’s bed, I
left reminiscence for anticipation.
I was going back to Thornfield: but how
long was I to stay there? Not long; of that I was sure. I had
heard from Mrs. Fairfax in the interim of my absence: the party
at the hall was dispersed; Mr. Rochester had left for London
three weeks ago, but he was then expected to return in a
fortnight. Mrs. Fairfax surmised that he was gone to make
arrangements for his wedding, as he had talked of purchasing a
new carriage: she said the idea of his marrying Miss Ingram
still seemed strange to her; but from what everybody said, and
from what she had herself seen, she could no longer doubt that
the event would shortly take place. “You would be strangely
incredulous if you did doubt it,” was my mental comment. “I
don’t doubt it.”
The question followed, “Where was I to
go?” I dreamt of Miss Ingram all the night: in a vivid morning
dream I saw her closing the gates of Thornfield against me and
pointing me out another road; and Mr. Rochester looked on with
his arms folded—smiling sardonically, as it seemed, at both her
and me.
I had not notified to Mrs. Fairfax the
exact day of my return; for I did not wish either car or
carriage to meet me at Millcote. I proposed to walk the
distance quietly by myself; and very quietly, after leaving my
box in the ostler’s care, did I slip away from the George Inn,
about six o’clock of a June evening, and take the old road to
Thornfield: a road which lay chiefly through fields, and was now
little frequented.
It was not a bright or splendid summer
evening, though fair and soft: the haymakers were at work all
along the road; and the sky, though far from cloudless, was such
as promised well for the future: its blue—where blue was
visible—was mild and settled, and its cloud strata high and
thin. The west, too, was warm: no watery gleam chilled it—it
seemed as if there was a fire lit, an altar burning behind its
screen of marbled vapour, and out of apertures shone a golden
redness.
I felt glad as the road shortened
before me: so glad that I stopped once to ask myself what that
joy meant: and to remind reason that it was not to my home I was
going, or to a permanent resting-place, or to a place where fond
friends looked out for me and waited my arrival. “Mrs. Fairfax
will smile you a calm welcome, to be sure,” said I; “and little
Adèle will clap her hands and jump to see you: but you know very
well you are thinking of another than they, and that he is not
thinking of you.”
But what is so headstrong as youth?
What so blind as inexperience? These affirmed that it was
pleasure enough to have the privilege of again looking on Mr.
Rochester, whether he looked on me or not; and they
added—“Hasten! hasten! be with him while you may: but a few more
days or weeks, at most, and you are parted from him for ever!”
And then I strangled a new-born agony—a deformed thing which I
could not persuade myself to own and rear—and ran on.
They are making hay, too, in Thornfield
meadows: or rather, the labourers are just quitting their work,
and returning home with their rakes on their shoulders, now, at
the hour I arrive. I have but a field or two to traverse, and
then I shall cross the road and reach the gates. How full the
hedges are of roses! But I have no time to gather any; I want
to be at the house. I passed a tall briar, shooting leafy and
flowery branches across the path; I see the narrow stile with
stone steps; and I see—Mr. Rochester sitting there, a book and a
pencil in his hand; he is writing.
Well, he is not a ghost; yet every
nerve I have is unstrung: for a moment I am beyond my own
mastery. What does it mean? I did not think I should tremble
in this way when I saw him, or lose my voice or the power of
motion in his presence. I will go back as soon as I can stir: I
need not make an absolute fool of myself. I know another way to
the house. It does not signify if I knew twenty ways; for he
has seen me.
“Hillo!” he cries; and he puts up his
book and his pencil. “There you are! Come on, if you please.”
I suppose I do come on; though in what
fashion I know not; being scarcely cognisant of my movements,
and solicitous only to appear calm; and, above all, to control
the working muscles of my face—which I feel rebel insolently
against my will, and struggle to express what I had resolved to
conceal. But I have a veil—it is down: I may make shift yet to
behave with decent composure.
“And this is Jane Eyre? Are you coming
from Millcote, and on foot? Yes—just one of your tricks: not to
send for a carriage, and come clattering over street and road
like a common mortal, but to steal into the vicinage of your
home along with twilight, just as if you were a dream or a
shade. What the deuce have you done with yourself this last
month?”
“I have been with my aunt, sir, who is
dead.”
“A true Janian reply! Good angels be
my guard! She comes from the other world—from the abode of
people who are dead; and tells me so when she meets me alone
here in the gloaming! If I dared, I’d touch you, to see if you
are substance or shadow, you elf!—but I’d as soon offer to take
hold of a blue ignis fatuus light in a marsh. Truant!
truant!” he added, when he had paused an instant. “Absent from
me a whole month, and forgetting me quite, I’ll be sworn!”
I knew there would be pleasure in
meeting my master again, even though broken by the fear that he
was so soon to cease to be my master, and by the knowledge that
I was nothing to him: but there was ever in Mr. Rochester (so at
least I thought) such a wealth of the power of communicating
happiness, that to taste but of the crumbs he scattered to stray
and stranger birds like me, was to feast genially. His last
words were balm: they seemed to imply that it imported something
to him whether I forgot him or not. And he had spoken of
Thornfield as my home—would that it were my home!
He did not leave the stile, and I
hardly liked to ask to go by. I inquired soon if he had not
been to London.
“Yes; I suppose you found that out by
second-sight.”
“Mrs. Fairfax told me in a letter.”
“And did she inform you what I went to
do?”
“Oh, yes, sir! Everybody knew your
errand.”
“You must see the carriage, Jane, and
tell me if you don’t think it will suit Mrs. Rochester exactly;
and whether she won’t look like Queen Boadicea, leaning back
against those purple cushions. I wish, Jane, I were a trifle
better adapted to match with her externally. Tell me now, fairy
as you are—can’t you give me a charm, or a philter, or something
of that sort, to make me a handsome man?”
“It would be past the power of magic,
sir;” and, in thought, I added, “A loving eye is all the charm
needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather your
sternness has a power beyond beauty.”
Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my
unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the
present instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response;
but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and
which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think it too
good for common purposes: it was the real sunshine of feeling—he
shed it over me now.
“Pass, Janet,” said he, making room for
me to cross the stile: “go up home, and stay your weary little
wandering feet at a friend’s threshold.”
All I had now to do was to obey him in
silence: no need for me to colloquise further. I got over the
stile without a word, and meant to leave him calmly. An impulse
held me fast—a force turned me round. I said—or something in me
said for me, and in spite of me—
“Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your
great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you:
and wherever you are is my home—my only home.”
I walked on so fast that even he could
hardly have overtaken me had he tried. Little Adèle was half
wild with delight when she saw me. Mrs. Fairfax received me
with her usual plain friendliness. Leah smiled, and even Sophie
bid me “bon soir” with glee. This was very pleasant; there is
no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures,
and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.
I that evening shut my eyes resolutely
against the future: I stopped my cars against the voice that
kept warning me of near separation and coming grief. When tea
was over and Mrs. Fairfax had taken her knitting, and I had
assumed a low seat near her, and Adèle, kneeling on the carpet,
had nestled close up to me, and a sense of mutual affection
seemed to surround us with a ring of golden peace, I uttered a
silent prayer that we might not be parted far or soon; but when,
as we thus sat, Mr. Rochester entered, unannounced, and looking
at us, seemed to take pleasure in the spectacle of a group so
amicable—when he said he supposed the old lady was all right now
that she had got her adopted daughter back again, and added that
he saw Adèle was “prête à croquer sa petite maman Anglaise”—I
half ventured to hope that he would, even after his marriage,
keep us together somewhere under the shelter of his protection,
and not quite exiled from the sunshine of his presence.
A fortnight of dubious calm succeeded
my return to Thornfield Hall. Nothing was said of the master’s
marriage, and I saw no preparation going on for such an event.
Almost every day I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had yet heard
anything decided: her answer was always in the negative. Once
she said she had actually put the question to Mr. Rochester as
to when he was going to bring his bride home; but he had
answered her only by a joke and one of his queer looks, and she
could not tell what to make of him.
One thing specially surprised me, and
that was, there were no journeyings backward and forward, no
visits to Ingram Park: to be sure it was twenty miles off, on
the borders of another county; but what was that distance to an
ardent lover? To so practised and indefatigable a horseman as
Mr. Rochester, it would be but a morning’s ride. I began to
cherish hopes I had no right to conceive: that the match was
broken off; that rumour had been mistaken; that one or both
parties had changed their minds. I used to look at my master’s
face to see if it were sad or fierce; but I could not remember
the time when it had been so uniformly clear of clouds or evil
feelings. If, in the moments I and my pupil spent with him, I
lacked spirits and sank into inevitable dejection, he became
even gay. Never had he called me more frequently to his
presence; never been kinder to me when there—and, alas! never
had I loved him so well.
CHAPTER XXIII
A splendid Midsummer shone over
England: skies so pure, suns so radiant as were then seen in
long succession, seldom favour even singly, our wave-girt land.
It was as if a band of Italian days had come from the South,
like a flock of glorious passenger birds, and lighted to rest
them on the cliffs of Albion. The hay was all got in; the
fields round Thornfield were green and shorn; the roads white
and baked; the trees were in their dark prime; hedge and wood,
full-leaved and deeply tinted, contrasted well with the sunny
hue of the cleared meadows between.
On Midsummer-eve, Adèle, weary with
gathering wild strawberries in Hay Lane half the day, had gone
to bed with the sun. I watched her drop asleep, and when I left
her, I sought the garden.
It was now the sweetest hour of the
twenty-four:—“Day its fervid fires had wasted,” and dew fell
cool on panting plain and scorched summit. Where the sun had
gone down in simple state—pure of the pomp of clouds—spread a
solemn purple, burning with the light of red jewel and furnace
flame at one point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and
wide, soft and still softer, over half heaven. The east had its
own charm or fine deep blue, and its own modest gem, a casino
and solitary star: soon it would boast the moon; but she was yet
beneath the horizon.
I walked a while on the pavement; but a
subtle, well-known scent—that of a cigar—stole from some window;
I saw the library casement open a handbreadth; I knew I might be
watched thence; so I went apart into the orchard. No nook in
the grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like; it was full of
trees, it bloomed with flowers: a very high wall shut it out
from the court, on one side; on the other, a beech avenue
screened it from the lawn. At the bottom was a sunk fence; its
sole separation from lonely fields: a winding walk, bordered
with laurels and terminating in a giant horse-chestnut, circled
at the base by a seat, led down to the fence. Here one could
wander unseen. While such honey-dew fell, such silence reigned,
such gloaming gathered, I felt as if I could haunt such shade
for ever; but in threading the flower and fruit parterres at the
upper part of the enclosure, enticed there by the light the now
rising moon cast on this more open quarter, my step is
stayed—not by sound, not by sight, but once more by a warning
fragrance.
Sweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine,
pink, and rose have long been yielding their evening sacrifice
of incense: this new scent is neither of shrub nor flower; it
is—I know it well—it is Mr. Rochester’s cigar. I look round and
I listen. I see trees laden with ripening fruit. I hear a
nightingale warbling in a wood half a mile off; no moving form
is visible, no coming step audible; but that perfume increases:
I must flee. I make for the wicket leading to the shrubbery,
and I see Mr. Rochester entering. I step aside into the ivy
recess; he will not stay long: he will soon return whence he
came, and if I sit still he will never see me.
But no—eventide is as pleasant to him
as to me, and this antique garden as attractive; and he strolls
on, now lifting the gooseberry-tree branches to look at the
fruit, large as plums, with which they are laden; now taking a
ripe cherry from the wall; now stooping towards a knot of
flowers, either to inhale their fragrance or to admire the
dew-beads on their petals. A great moth goes humming by me; it
alights on a plant at Mr. Rochester’s foot: he sees it, and
bends to examine it.
“Now, he has his back towards me,”
thought I, “and he is occupied too; perhaps, if I walk softly, I
can slip away unnoticed.”
I trode on an edging of turf that the
crackle of the pebbly gravel might not betray me: he was
standing among the beds at a yard or two distant from where I
had to pass; the moth apparently engaged him. “I shall get by
very well,” I meditated. As I crossed his shadow, thrown long
over the garden by the moon, not yet risen high, he said
quietly, without turning—
“Jane, come and look at this fellow.”
I had made no noise: he had not eyes
behind—could his shadow feel? I started at first, and then I
approached him.
“Look at his wings,” said he, “he
reminds me rather of a West Indian insect; one does not often
see so large and gay a night-rover in England; there! he is
flown.”
The moth roamed away. I was sheepishly
retreating also; but Mr. Rochester followed me, and when we
reached the wicket, he said—
“Turn back: on so lovely a night it is
a shame to sit in the house; and surely no one can wish to go to
bed while sunset is thus at meeting with moonrise.”
It is one of my faults, that though my
tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times
when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the
lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible
pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful
embarrassment. I did not like to walk at this hour alone with
Mr. Rochester in the shadowy orchard; but I could not find a
reason to allege for leaving him. I followed with lagging step,
and thoughts busily bent on discovering a means of extrication;
but he himself looked so composed and so grave also, I became
ashamed of feeling any confusion: the evil—if evil existent or
prospective there was—seemed to lie with me only; his mind was
unconscious and quiet.
“Jane,” he recommenced, as we entered
the laurel walk, and slowly strayed down in the direction of the
sunk fence and the horse-chestnut, “Thornfield is a pleasant
place in summer, is it not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You must have become in some degree
attached to the house,—you, who have an eye for natural
beauties, and a good deal of the organ of Adhesiveness?”
“I am attached to it, indeed.”
“And though I don’t comprehend how it
is, I perceive you have acquired a degree of regard for that
foolish little child Adèle, too; and even for simple dame
Fairfax?”
“Yes, sir; in different ways, I have an
affection for both.”
“And would be sorry to part with them?”
“Yes.”
“Pity!” he said, and sighed and
paused. “It is always the way of events in this life,” he
continued presently: “no sooner have you got settled in a
pleasant resting-place, than a voice calls out to you to rise
and move on, for the hour of repose is expired.”
“Must I move on, sir?” I asked. “Must
I leave Thornfield?”
“I believe you must, Jane. I am sorry,
Janet, but I believe indeed you must.”
This was a blow: but I did not let it
prostrate me.
“Well, sir, I shall be ready when the
order to march comes.”
“It is come now—I must give it
to-night.”
“Then you are going to be
married, sir?”
“Ex-act-ly—pre-cise-ly: with your usual
acuteness, you have hit the nail straight on the head.”
“Soon, sir?”
“Very soon, my—that is, Miss Eyre: and
you’ll remember, Jane, the first time I, or Rumour, plainly
intimated to you that it was my intention to put my old
bachelor’s neck into the sacred noose, to enter into the holy
estate of matrimony—to take Miss Ingram to my bosom, in short
(she’s an extensive armful: but that’s not to the point—one
can’t have too much of such a very excellent thing as my
beautiful Blanche): well, as I was saying—listen to me, Jane!
You’re not turning your head to look after more moths, are you?
That was only a lady-clock, child, ‘flying away home.’ I wish
to remind you that it was you who first said to me, with that
discretion I respect in you—with that foresight, prudence, and
humility which befit your responsible and dependent
position—that in case I married Miss Ingram, both you and little
Adèle had better trot forthwith. I pass over the sort of slur
conveyed in this suggestion on the character of my beloved;
indeed, when you are far away, Janet, I’ll try to forget it: I
shall notice only its wisdom; which is such that I have made it
my law of action. Adèle must go to school; and you, Miss Eyre,
must get a new situation.”
“Yes, sir, I will advertise
immediately: and meantime, I suppose—” I was going to say, “I
suppose I may stay here, till I find another shelter to betake
myself to:” but I stopped, feeling it would not do to risk a
long sentence, for my voice was not quite under command.
“In about a month I hope to be a
bridegroom,” continued Mr. Rochester; “and in the interim, I
shall myself look out for employment and an asylum for you.”
“Thank you, sir; I am sorry to give—”
“Oh, no need to apologise! I consider
that when a dependent does her duty as well as you have done
yours, she has a sort of claim upon her employer for any little
assistance he can conveniently render her; indeed I have
already, through my future mother-in-law, heard of a place that
I think will suit: it is to undertake the education of the five
daughters of Mrs. Dionysius O’Gall of Bitternutt Lodge,
Connaught, Ireland. You’ll like Ireland, I think: they’re such
warm-hearted people there, they say.”
“It is a long way off, sir.”
“No matter—a girl of your sense will
not object to the voyage or the distance.”
“Not the voyage, but the distance: and
then the sea is a barrier—”
“From what, Jane?”
“From England and from Thornfield:
and—”
“Well?”
“From you, sir.”
I said this almost involuntarily, and,
with as little sanction of free will, my tears gushed out. I
did not cry so as to be heard, however; I avoided sobbing. The
thought of Mrs. O’Gall and Bitternutt Lodge struck cold to my
heart; and colder the thought of all the brine and foam,
destined, as it seemed, to rush between me and the master at
whose side I now walked, and coldest the remembrance of the
wider ocean—wealth, caste, custom intervened between me and what
I naturally and inevitably loved.
“It is a long way,” I again said.
“It is, to be sure; and when you get to
Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland, I shall never see you
again, Jane: that’s morally certain. I never go over to
Ireland, not having myself much of a fancy for the country. We
have been good friends, Jane; have we not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And when friends are on the eve of
separation, they like to spend the little time that remains to
them close to each other. Come! we’ll talk over the voyage and
the parting quietly half-an-hour or so, while the stars enter
into their shining life up in heaven yonder: here is the
chestnut tree: here is the bench at its old roots. Come, we
will sit there in peace to-night, though we should never more be
destined to sit there together.” He seated me and himself.
“It is a long way to Ireland, Janet,
and I am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels:
but if I can’t do better, how is it to be helped? Are you
anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?”
I could risk no sort of answer by this
time: my heart was still.
“Because,” he said, “I sometimes have a
queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near
me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left
ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string
situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And
if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land
come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will
be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to
bleeding inwardly. As for you,—you’d forget me.”
“That I never should, sir: you
know—” Impossible to proceed.
“Jane, do you hear that nightingale
singing in the wood? Listen!”
In listening, I sobbed convulsively;
for I could repress what I endured no longer; I was obliged to
yield, and I was shaken from head to foot with acute distress.
When I did speak, it was only to express an impetuous wish that
I had never been born, or never come to Thornfield.
“Because you are sorry to leave it?”
The vehemence of emotion, stirred by
grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling
for full sway, and asserting a right to predominate, to
overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last: yes,—and to speak.
“I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love
Thornfield:—I love it, because I have lived in it a full and
delightful life,—momentarily at least. I have not been trampled
on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with
inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion
with what is bright and energetic and high. I have talked, face
to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight in,—with an
original, a vigorous, an expanded mind. I have known you, Mr.
Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I
absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity
of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.”
“Where do you see the necessity?” he
asked suddenly.
“Where? You, sir, have placed it
before me.”
“In what shape?”
“In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble
and beautiful woman,—your bride.”
“My bride! What bride? I have no
bride!”
“But you will have.”
“Yes;—I will!—I will!” He set his
teeth.
“Then I must go:—you have said it
yourself.”
“No: you must stay! I swear it—and the
oath shall be kept.”
“I tell you I must go!” I retorted,
roused to something like passion. “Do you think I can stay to
become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?—a
machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of
bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed
from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain,
and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!—I
have as much soul as you,—and full as much heart! And if God
had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have
made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to
leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of
custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;—it is my
spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed
through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal,—as we
are!”
“As we are!” repeated Mr.
Rochester—“so,” he added, enclosing me in his arms. Gathering
me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips: “so, Jane!”
“Yes, so, sir,” I rejoined: “and yet
not so; for you are a married man—or as good as a married man,
and wed to one inferior to you—to one with whom you have no
sympathy—whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen
and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union:
therefore I am better than you—let me go!”
“Where, Jane? To Ireland?”
“Yes—to Ireland. I have spoken my
mind, and can go anywhere now.”
“Jane, be still; don’t struggle so,
like a wild frantic bird that is rending its own plumage in its
desperation.”
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me;
I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now
exert to leave you.”
Another effort set me at liberty, and I
stood erect before him.
“And your will shall decide your
destiny,” he said: “I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share
of all my possessions.”
“You play a farce, which I merely laugh
at.”
“I ask you to pass through life at my
side—to be my second self, and best earthly companion.”
“For that fate you have already made
your choice, and must abide by it.”
“Jane, be still a few moments: you are
over-excited: I will be still too.”
A waft of wind came sweeping down the
laurel-walk, and trembled through the boughs of the chestnut: it
wandered away—away—to an indefinite distance—it died. The
nightingale’s song was then the only voice of the hour: in
listening to it, I again wept. Mr. Rochester sat quiet, looking
at me gently and seriously. Some time passed before he spoke;
he at last said—
“Come to my side, Jane, and let us
explain and understand one another.”
“I will never again come to your side:
I am torn away now, and cannot return.”
“But, Jane, I summon you as my wife: it
is you only I intend to marry.”
I was silent: I thought he mocked me.
“Come, Jane—come hither.”
“Your bride stands between us.”
He rose, and with a stride reached me.
“My bride is here,” he said, again
drawing me to him, “because my equal is here, and my likeness.
Jane, will you marry me?”
Still I did not answer, and still I
writhed myself from his grasp: for I was still incredulous.
“Do you doubt me, Jane?”
“Entirely.”
“You have no faith in me?”
“Not a whit.”
“Am I a liar in your eyes?” he asked
passionately. “Little sceptic, you shall be convinced.
What love have I for Miss Ingram? None: and that you know.
What love has she for me? None: as I have taken pains to prove:
I caused a rumour to reach her that my fortune was not a third
of what was supposed, and after that I presented myself to see
the result; it was coldness both from her and her mother. I
would not—I could not—marry Miss Ingram. You—you strange, you
almost unearthly thing!—I love as my own flesh. You—poor and
obscure, and small and plain as you are—I entreat to accept me
as a husband.”
“What, me!” I ejaculated, beginning in
his earnestness—and especially in his incivility—to credit his
sincerity: “me who have not a friend in the world but you—if you
are my friend: not a shilling but what you have given me?”
“You, Jane, I must have you for my
own—entirely my own. Will you be mine? Say yes, quickly.”
“Mr. Rochester, let me look at your
face: turn to the moonlight.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to read your
countenance—turn!”
“There! you will find it scarcely more
legible than a crumpled, scratched page. Read on: only make
haste, for I suffer.”
His face was very much agitated and
very much flushed, and there were strong workings in the
features, and strange gleams in the eyes.
“Oh, Jane, you torture me!” he
exclaimed. “With that searching and yet faithful and generous
look, you torture me!”
“How can I do that? If you are true,
and your offer real, my only feelings to you must be gratitude
and devotion—they cannot torture.”
“Gratitude!” he ejaculated; and added
wildly—“Jane accept me quickly. Say, Edward—give me my
name—Edward—I will marry you.”
“Are you in earnest? Do you truly love
me? Do you sincerely wish me to be your wife?”
“I do; and if an oath is necessary to
satisfy you, I swear it.”
“Then, sir, I will marry you.”
“Edward—my little wife!”
“Dear Edward!”
“Come to me—come to me entirely now,”
said he; and added, in his deepest tone, speaking in my ear as
his cheek was laid on mine, “Make my happiness—I will make
yours.”
“God pardon me!” he subjoined ere long;
“and man meddle not with me: I have her, and will hold her.”
“There is no one to meddle, sir. I
have no kindred to interfere.”
“No—that is the best of it,” he said.
And if I had loved him less I should have thought his accent and
look of exultation savage; but, sitting by him, roused from the
nightmare of parting—called to the paradise of union—I thought
only of the bliss given me to drink in so abundant a flow.
Again and again he said, “Are you happy, Jane?” And again and
again I answered, “Yes.” After which he murmured, “It will
atone—it will atone. Have I not found her friendless, and cold,
and comfortless? Will I not guard, and cherish, and solace
her? Is there not love in my heart, and constancy in my
resolves? It will expiate at God’s tribunal. I know my Maker
sanctions what I do. For the world’s judgment—I wash my hands
thereof. For man’s opinion—I defy it.”
But what had befallen the night? The
moon was not yet set, and we were all in shadow: I could
scarcely see my master’s face, near as I was. And what ailed
the chestnut tree? it writhed and groaned; while wind roared in
the laurel walk, and came sweeping over us.
“We must go in,” said Mr. Rochester:
“the weather changes. I could have sat with thee till morning,
Jane.”
“And so,” thought I, “could I with
you.” I should have said so, perhaps, but a livid, vivid spark
leapt out of a cloud at which I was looking, and there was a
crack, a crash, and a close rattling peal; and I thought only of
hiding my dazzled eyes against Mr. Rochester’s shoulder.
The rain rushed down. He hurried me up
the walk, through the grounds, and into the house; but we were
quite wet before we could pass the threshold. He was taking off
my shawl in the hall, and shaking the water out of my loosened
hair, when Mrs. Fairfax emerged from her room. I did not
observe her at first, nor did Mr. Rochester. The lamp was lit.
The clock was on the stroke of twelve.
“Hasten to take off your wet things,”
said he; “and before you go, good-night—good-night, my darling!”
He kissed me repeatedly. When I looked
up, on leaving his arms, there stood the widow, pale, grave, and
amazed. I only smiled at her, and ran upstairs. “Explanation
will do for another time,” thought I. Still, when I reached my
chamber, I felt a pang at the idea she should even temporarily
misconstrue what she had seen. But joy soon effaced every other
feeling; and loud as the wind blew, near and deep as the thunder
crashed, fierce and frequent as the lightning gleamed,
cataract-like as the rain fell during a storm of two hours’
duration, I experienced no fear and little awe. Mr. Rochester
came thrice to my door in the course of it, to ask if I was safe
and tranquil: and that was comfort, that was strength for
anything.
Before I left my bed in the morning,
little Adèle came running in to tell me that the great
horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had been struck by
lightning in the night, and half of it split away.
CHAPTER XXIV
As I rose and dressed, I thought over
what had happened, and wondered if it were a dream. I could not
be certain of the reality till I had seen Mr. Rochester again,
and heard him renew his words of love and promise.
While arranging my hair, I looked at my
face in the glass, and felt it was no longer plain: there was
hope in its aspect and life in its colour; and my eyes seemed as
if they had beheld the fount of fruition, and borrowed beams
from the lustrous ripple. I had often been unwilling to look at
my master, because I feared he could not be pleased at my look;
but I was sure I might lift my face to his now, and not cool his
affection by its expression. I took a plain but clean and light
summer dress from my drawer and put it on: it seemed no attire
had ever so well become me, because none had I ever worn in so
blissful a mood.
I was not surprised, when I ran down
into the hall, to see that a brilliant June morning had
succeeded to the tempest of the night; and to feel, through the
open glass door, the breathing of a fresh and fragrant breeze.
Nature must be gladsome when I was so happy. A beggar-woman and
her little boy—pale, ragged objects both—were coming up the
walk, and I ran down and gave them all the money I happened to
have in my purse—some three or four shillings: good or bad, they
must partake of my jubilee. The rooks cawed, and blither birds
sang; but nothing was so merry or so musical as my own rejoicing
heart.
Mrs. Fairfax surprised me by looking
out of the window with a sad countenance, and saying
gravely—“Miss Eyre, will you come to breakfast?” During the
meal she was quiet and cool: but I could not undeceive her
then. I must wait for my master to give explanations; and so
must she. I ate what I could, and then I hastened upstairs. I
met Adèle leaving the schoolroom.
“Where are you going? It is time for
lessons.”
“Mr. Rochester has sent me away to the
nursery.”
“Where is he?”
“In there,” pointing to the apartment
she had left; and I went in, and there he stood.
“Come and bid me good-morning,” said
he. I gladly advanced; and it was not merely a cold word now,
or even a shake of the hand that I received, but an embrace and
a kiss. It seemed natural: it seemed genial to be so well
loved, so caressed by him.
“Jane, you look blooming, and smiling,
and pretty,” said he: “truly pretty this morning. Is this my
pale, little elf? Is this my mustard-seed? This little
sunny-faced girl with the dimpled cheek and rosy lips; the
satin-smooth hazel hair, and the radiant hazel eyes?” (I had
green eyes, reader; but you must excuse the mistake: for him
they were new-dyed, I suppose.)
“It is Jane Eyre, sir.”
“Soon to be Jane Rochester,” he added:
“in four weeks, Janet; not a day more. Do you hear that?”
I did, and I could not quite comprehend
it: it made me giddy. The feeling, the announcement sent
through me, was something stronger than was consistent with
joy—something that smote and stunned. It was, I think almost
fear.
“You blushed, and now you are white,
Jane: what is that for?”
“Because you gave me a new name—Jane
Rochester; and it seems so strange.”
“Yes, Mrs. Rochester,” said he; “young
Mrs. Rochester—Fairfax Rochester’s girl-bride.”
“It can never be, sir; it does not
sound likely. Human beings never enjoy complete happiness in
this world. I was not born for a different destiny to the rest
of my species: to imagine such a lot befalling me is a fairy
tale—a day-dream.”
“Which I can and will realise. I shall
begin to-day. This morning I wrote to my banker in London to
send me certain jewels he has in his keeping,—heirlooms for the
ladies of Thornfield. In a day or two I hope to pour them into
your lap: for every privilege, every attention shall be yours
that I would accord a peer’s daughter, if about to marry her.”
“Oh, sir!—never rain jewels! I don’t
like to hear them spoken of. Jewels for Jane Eyre sounds
unnatural and strange: I would rather not have them.”
“I will myself put the diamond chain
round your neck, and the circlet on your forehead,—which it will
become: for nature, at least, has stamped her patent of nobility
on this brow, Jane; and I will clasp the bracelets on these fine
wrists, and load these fairy-like fingers with rings.”
“No, no, sir! think of other subjects,
and speak of other things, and in another strain. Don’t address
me as if I were a beauty; I am your plain, Quakerish governess.”
“You are a beauty in my eyes, and a
beauty just after the desire of my heart,—delicate and aërial.”
“Puny and insignificant, you mean. You
are dreaming, sir,—or you are sneering. For God’s sake don’t be
ironical!”
“I will make the world acknowledge you
a beauty, too,” he went on, while I really became uneasy at the
strain he had adopted, because I felt he was either deluding
himself or trying to delude me. “I will attire my Jane in satin
and lace, and she shall have roses in her hair; and I will cover
the head I love best with a priceless veil.”
“And then you won’t know me, sir; and I
shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer, but an ape in a
harlequin’s jacket—a jay in borrowed plumes. I would as soon
see you, Mr. Rochester, tricked out in stage-trappings, as
myself clad in a court-lady’s robe; and I don’t call you
handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to
flatter you. Don’t flatter me.”
He pursued his theme, however, without
noticing my deprecation. “This very day I shall take you in the
carriage to Millcote, and you must choose some dresses for
yourself. I told you we shall be married in four weeks. The
wedding is to take place quietly, in the church down below
yonder; and then I shall waft you away at once to town. After a
brief stay there, I shall bear my treasure to regions nearer the
sun: to French vineyards and Italian plains; and she shall see
whatever is famous in old story and in modern record: she shall
taste, too, of the life of cities; and she shall learn to value
herself by just comparison with others.”
“Shall I travel?—and with you, sir?”
“You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and
Naples: at Florence, Venice, and Vienna: all the ground I have
wandered over shall be re-trodden by you: wherever I stamped my
hoof, your sylph’s foot shall step also. Ten years since, I
flew through Europe half mad; with disgust, hate, and rage as my
companions: now I shall revisit it healed and cleansed, with a
very angel as my comforter.”
I laughed at him as he said this. “I
am not an angel,” I asserted; “and I will not be one till I die:
I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor
exact anything celestial of me—for you will not get it, any more
than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.”
“What do you anticipate of me?”
“For a little while you will perhaps be
as you are now,—a very little while; and then you will turn
cool; and then you will be capricious; and then you will be
stern, and I shall have much ado to please you: but when you get
well used to me, you will perhaps like me again,—like me,
I say, not love me. I suppose your love will effervesce
in six months, or less. I have observed in books written by
men, that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband’s
ardour extends. Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, I
hope never to become quite distasteful to my dear master.”
“Distasteful! and like you again! I
think I shall like you again, and yet again: and I will make you
confess I do not only like, but love you—with
truth, fervour, constancy.”
“Yet are you not capricious, sir?”
“To women who please me only by their
faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither
souls nor hearts—when they open to me a perspective of flatness,
triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper:
but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of
fire, and the character that bends but does not break—at once
supple and stable, tractable and consistent—I am ever tender and
true.”
“Had you ever experience of such a
character, sir? Did you ever love such an one?”
“I love it now.”
“But before me: if I, indeed, in any
respect come up to your difficult standard?”
“I never met your likeness. Jane, you
please me, and you master me—you seem to submit, and I like the
sense of pliancy you impart; and while I am twining the soft,
silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up my arm to my
heart. I am influenced—conquered; and the influence is sweeter
than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery
beyond any triumph I can win. Why do you smile, Jane? What
does that inexplicable, that uncanny turn of countenance mean?”
“I was thinking, sir (you will excuse
the idea; it was involuntary), I was thinking of Hercules and
Samson with their charmers—”
“You were, you little elfish—”
“Hush, sir! You don’t talk very wisely
just now; any more than those gentlemen acted very wisely.
However, had they been married, they would no doubt by their
severity as husbands have made up for their softness as suitors;
and so will you, I fear. I wonder how you will answer me a year
hence, should I ask a favour it does not suit your convenience
or pleasure to grant.”
“Ask me something now, Jane,—the least
thing: I desire to be entreated—”
“Indeed I will, sir; I have my petition
all ready.”
“Speak! But if you look up and smile
with that countenance, I shall swear concession before I know to
what, and that will make a fool of me.”
“Not at all, sir; I ask only this:
don’t send for the jewels, and don’t crown me with roses: you
might as well put a border of gold lace round that plain pocket
handkerchief you have there.”
“I might as well ‘gild refined gold.’
I know it: your request is granted then—for the time. I will
remand the order I despatched to my banker. But you have not
yet asked for anything; you have prayed a gift to be withdrawn:
try again.”
“Well then, sir, have the goodness to
gratify my curiosity, which is much piqued on one point.”
He looked disturbed. “What? what?” he
said hastily. “Curiosity is a dangerous petition: it is well I
have not taken a vow to accord every request—”
“But there can be no danger in
complying with this, sir.”
“Utter it, Jane: but I wish that
instead of a mere inquiry into, perhaps, a secret, it was a wish
for half my estate.”
“Now, King Ahasuerus! What do I want
with half your estate? Do you think I am a Jew-usurer, seeking
good investment in land? I would much rather have all your
confidence. You will not exclude me from your confidence if you
admit me to your heart?”
“You are welcome to all my confidence
that is worth having, Jane; but for God’s sake, don’t desire a
useless burden! Don’t long for poison—don’t turn out a
downright Eve on my hands!”
“Why not, sir? You have just been
telling me how much you liked to be conquered, and how pleasant
over-persuasion is to you. Don’t you think I had better take
advantage of the confession, and begin and coax and entreat—even
cry and be sulky if necessary—for the sake of a mere essay of my
power?”
“I dare you to any such experiment.
Encroach, presume, and the game is up.”
“Is it, sir? You soon give in. How
stern you look now! Your eyebrows have become as thick as my
finger, and your forehead resembles what, in some very
astonishing poetry, I once saw styled, ‘a blue-piled
thunderloft.’ That will be your married look, sir, I suppose?”
“If that will be your married
look, I, as a Christian, will soon give up the notion of
consorting with a mere sprite or salamander. But what had you
to ask, thing,—out with it?”
“There, you are less than civil now;
and I like rudeness a great deal better than flattery. I had
rather be a thing than an angel. This is what I have to
ask,—Why did you take such pains to make me believe you wished
to marry Miss Ingram?”
“Is that all? Thank God it is no
worse!” And now he unknit his black brows; looked down, smiling
at me, and stroked my hair, as if well pleased at seeing a
danger averted. “I think I may confess,” he continued, “even
although I should make you a little indignant, Jane—and I have
seen what a fire-spirit you can be when you are indignant. You
glowed in the cool moonlight last night, when you mutinied
against fate, and claimed your rank as my equal. Janet,
by-the-bye, it was you who made me the offer.”
“Of course I did. But to the point if
you please, sir—Miss Ingram?”
“Well, I feigned courtship of Miss
Ingram, because I wished to render you as madly in love with me
as I was with you; and I knew jealousy would be the best ally I
could call in for the furtherance of that end.”
“Excellent! Now you are small—not one
whit bigger than the end of my little finger. It was a burning
shame and a scandalous disgrace to act in that way. Did you
think nothing of Miss Ingram’s feelings, sir?”
“Her feelings are concentrated in
one—pride; and that needs humbling. Were you jealous, Jane?”
“Never mind, Mr. Rochester: it is in no
way interesting to you to know that. Answer me truly once
more. Do you think Miss Ingram will not suffer from your
dishonest coquetry? Won’t she feel forsaken and deserted?”
“Impossible!—when I told you how she,
on the contrary, deserted me: the idea of my insolvency cooled,
or rather extinguished, her flame in a moment.”
“You have a curious, designing mind,
Mr. Rochester. I am afraid your principles on some points are
eccentric.”
“My principles were never trained,
Jane: they may have grown a little awry for want of attention.”
“Once again, seriously; may I enjoy the
great good that has been vouchsafed to me, without fearing that
any one else is suffering the bitter pain I myself felt a while
ago?”
“That you may, my good little girl:
there is not another being in the world has the same pure love
for me as yourself—for I lay that pleasant unction to my soul,
Jane, a belief in your affection.”
I turned my lips to the hand that lay
on my shoulder. I loved him very much—more than I could trust
myself to say—more than words had power to express.
“Ask something more,” he said
presently; “it is my delight to be entreated, and to yield.”
I was again ready with my request.
“Communicate your intentions to Mrs. Fairfax, sir: she saw me
with you last night in the hall, and she was shocked. Give her
some explanation before I see her again. It pains me to be
misjudged by so good a woman.”
“Go to your room, and put on your
bonnet,” he replied. “I mean you to accompany me to Millcote
this morning; and while you prepare for the drive, I will
enlighten the old lady’s understanding. Did she think, Janet,
you had given the world for love, and considered it well lost?”
“I believe she thought I had forgotten
my station, and yours, sir.”
“Station! station!—your station is in
my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you, now or
hereafter.—Go.”
I was soon dressed; and when I heard
Mr. Rochester quit Mrs. Fairfax’s parlour, I hurried down to
it. The old lady, had been reading her morning portion of
Scripture—the Lesson for the day; her Bible lay open before her,
and her spectacles were upon it. Her occupation, suspended by
Mr. Rochester’s announcement, seemed now forgotten: her eyes,
fixed on the blank wall opposite, expressed the surprise of a
quiet mind stirred by unwonted tidings. Seeing me, she roused
herself: she made a sort of effort to smile, and framed a few
words of congratulation; but the smile expired, and the sentence
was abandoned unfinished. She put up her spectacles, shut the
Bible, and pushed her chair back from the table.
“I feel so astonished,” she began, “I
hardly know what to say to you, Miss Eyre. I have surely not
been dreaming, have I? Sometimes I half fall asleep when I am
sitting alone and fancy things that have never happened. It has
seemed to me more than once when I have been in a doze, that my
dear husband, who died fifteen years since, has come in and sat
down beside me; and that I have even heard him call me by my
name, Alice, as he used to do. Now, can you tell me whether it
is actually true that Mr. Rochester has asked you to marry him?
Don’t laugh at me. But I really thought he came in here five
minutes ago, and said that in a month you would be his wife.”
“He has said the same thing to me,” I
replied.
“He has! Do you believe him? Have you
accepted him?”
“Yes.”
She looked at me bewildered. “I could
never have thought it. He is a proud man: all the Rochesters
were proud: and his father, at least, liked money. He, too, has
always been called careful. He means to marry you?”
“He tells me so.”
She surveyed my whole person: in her
eyes I read that they had there found no charm powerful enough
to solve the enigma.
“It passes me!” she continued; “but no
doubt, it is true since you say so. How it will answer, I
cannot tell: I really don’t know. Equality of position and
fortune is often advisable in such cases; and there are twenty
years of difference in your ages. He might almost be your
father.”
“No, indeed, Mrs. Fairfax!” exclaimed
I, nettled; “he is nothing like my father! No one, who saw us
together, would suppose it for an instant. Mr. Rochester looks
as young, and is as young, as some men at five-and-twenty.”
“Is it really for love he is going to
marry you?” she asked.
I was so hurt by her coldness and
scepticism, that the tears rose to my eyes.
“I am sorry to grieve you,” pursued the
widow; “but you are so young, and so little acquainted with men,
I wished to put you on your guard. It is an old saying that
‘all is not gold that glitters;’ and in this case I do fear
there will be something found to be different to what either you
or I expect.”
“Why?—am I a monster?” I said: “is it
impossible that Mr. Rochester should have a sincere affection
for me?”
“No: you are very well; and much
improved of late; and Mr. Rochester, I daresay, is fond of you.
I have always noticed that you were a sort of pet of his. There
are times when, for your sake, I have been a little uneasy at
his marked preference, and have wished to put you on your guard:
but I did not like to suggest even the possibility of wrong. I
knew such an idea would shock, perhaps offend you; and you were
so discreet, and so thoroughly modest and sensible, I hoped you
might be trusted to protect yourself. Last night I cannot tell
you what I suffered when I sought all over the house, and could
find you nowhere, nor the master either; and then, at twelve
o’clock, saw you come in with him.”
“Well, never mind that now,” I
interrupted impatiently; “it is enough that all was right.”
“I hope all will be right in the end,”
she said: “but believe me, you cannot be too careful. Try and
keep Mr. Rochester at a distance: distrust yourself as well as
him. Gentlemen in his station are not accustomed to marry their
governesses.”
I was growing truly irritated: happily,
Adèle ran in.
“Let me go,—let me go to Millcote too!”
she cried. “Mr. Rochester won’t: though there is so much room
in the new carriage. Beg him to let me go mademoiselle.”
“That I will, Adèle;” and I hastened
away with her, glad to quit my gloomy monitress. The carriage
was ready: they were bringing it round to the front, and my
master was pacing the pavement, Pilot following him backwards
and forwards.
“Adèle may accompany us, may she not,
sir?”
“I told her no. I’ll have no
brats!—I’ll have only you.”
“Do let her go, Mr. Rochester, if you
please: it would be better.”
“Not it: she will be a restraint.”
He was quite peremptory, both in look
and voice. The chill of Mrs. Fairfax’s warnings, and the damp
of her doubts were upon me: something of unsubstantiality and
uncertainty had beset my hopes. I half lost the sense of power
over him. I was about mechanically to obey him, without further
remonstrance; but as he helped me into the carriage, he looked
at my face.
“What is the matter?” he asked; “all
the sunshine is gone. Do you really wish the bairn to go? Will
it annoy you if she is left behind?”
“I would far rather she went, sir.”
“Then off for your bonnet, and back
like a flash of lightning!” cried he to Adèle.
She obeyed him with what speed she
might.
“After all, a single morning’s
interruption will not matter much,” said he, “when I mean
shortly to claim you—your thoughts, conversation, and
company—for life.”
Adèle, when lifted in, commenced
kissing me, by way of expressing her gratitude for my
intercession: she was instantly stowed away into a corner on the
other side of him. She then peeped round to where I sat; so
stern a neighbour was too restrictive to him, in his present
fractious mood, she dared whisper no observations, nor ask of
him any information.
“Let her come to me,” I entreated: “she
will, perhaps, trouble you, sir: there is plenty of room on this
side.”
He handed her over as if she had been a
lapdog. “I’ll send her to school yet,” he said, but now he was
smiling.
Adèle heard him, and asked if she was
to go to school “sans mademoiselle?”
“Yes,” he replied, “absolutely sans
mademoiselle; for I am to take mademoiselle to the moon, and
there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among the
volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me there, and
only me.”
“She will have nothing to eat: you will
starve her,” observed Adèle.
“I shall gather manna for her morning
and night: the plains and hillsides in the moon are bleached
with manna, Adèle.”
“She will want to warm herself: what
will she do for a fire?”
“Fire rises out of the lunar mountains:
when she is cold, I’ll carry her up to a peak, and lay her down
on the edge of a crater.”
“Oh, qu’ elle y sera mal—peu
comfortable! And her clothes, they will wear out: how can she
get new ones?”
Mr. Rochester professed to be puzzled.
“Hem!” said he. “What would you do, Adèle? Cudgel your brains
for an expedient. How would a white or a pink cloud answer for
a gown, do you think? And one could cut a pretty enough scarf
out of a rainbow.”
“She is far better as she is,”
concluded Adèle, after musing some time: “besides, she would get
tired of living with only you in the moon. If I were
mademoiselle, I would never consent to go with you.”
“She has consented: she has pledged her
word.”
“But you can’t get her there; there is
no road to the moon: it is all air; and neither you nor she can
fly.”
“Adèle, look at that field.” We were
now outside Thornfield gates, and bowling lightly along the
smooth road to Millcote, where the dust was well laid by the
thunderstorm, and, where the low hedges and lofty timber trees
on each side glistened green and rain-refreshed.
“In that field, Adèle, I was walking
late one evening about a fortnight since—the evening of the day
you helped me to make hay in the orchard meadows; and, as I was
tired with raking swaths, I sat down to rest me on a stile; and
there I took out a little book and a pencil, and began to write
about a misfortune that befell me long ago, and a wish I had for
happy days to come: I was writing away very fast, though
daylight was fading from the leaf, when something came up the
path and stopped two yards off me. I looked at it. It was a
little thing with a veil of gossamer on its head. I beckoned it
to come near me; it stood soon at my knee. I never spoke to it,
and it never spoke to me, in words; but I read its eyes, and it
read mine; and our speechless colloquy was to this effect—
“It was a fairy, and come from
Elf-land, it said; and its errand was to make me happy: I must
go with it out of the common world to a lonely place—such as the
moon, for instance—and it nodded its head towards her horn,
rising over Hay-hill: it told me of the alabaster cave and
silver vale where we might live. I said I should like to go;
but reminded it, as you did me, that I had no wings to fly.
“‘Oh,’ returned the fairy, ‘that does
not signify! Here is a talisman will remove all difficulties;’
and she held out a pretty gold ring. ‘Put it,’ she said, ‘on
the fourth finger of my left hand, and I am yours, and you are
mine; and we shall leave earth, and make our own heaven
yonder.’ She nodded again at the moon. The ring, Adèle, is in
my breeches-pocket, under the disguise of a sovereign: but I
mean soon to change it to a ring again.”
“But what has mademoiselle to do with
it? I don’t care for the fairy: you said it was mademoiselle
you would take to the moon?”
“Mademoiselle is a fairy,” he said,
whispering mysteriously. Whereupon I told her not to mind his
badinage; and she, on her part, evinced a fund of genuine French
scepticism: denominating Mr. Rochester “un vrai menteur,” and
assuring him that she made no account whatever of his “contes de
fée,” and that “du reste, il n’y avait pas de fées, et quand
même il y en avait:” she was sure they would never appear to
him, nor ever give him rings, or offer to live with him in the
moon.
The hour spent at Millcote was a
somewhat harassing one to me. Mr. Rochester obliged me to go to
a certain silk warehouse: there I was ordered to choose
half-a-dozen dresses. I hated the business, I begged leave to
defer it: no—it should be gone through with now. By dint of
entreaties expressed in energetic whispers, I reduced the
half-dozen to two: these however, he vowed he would select
himself. With anxiety I watched his eye rove over the gay
stores: he fixed on a rich silk of the most brilliant amethyst
dye, and a superb pink satin. I told him in a new series of
whispers, that he might as well buy me a gold gown and a silver
bonnet at once: I should certainly never venture to wear his
choice. With infinite difficulty, for he was stubborn as a
stone, I persuaded him to make an exchange in favour of a sober
black satin and pearl-grey silk. “It might pass for the
present,” he said; “but he would yet see me glittering like a
parterre.”
Glad was I to get him out of the silk
warehouse, and then out of a jewellers shop: the more he bought
me, the more my cheek burned with a sense of annoyance and
degradation. As we re-entered the carriage, and I sat back
feverish and fagged, I remembered what, in the hurry of events,
dark and bright, I had wholly forgotten—the letter of my uncle,
John Eyre, to Mrs. Reed: his intention to adopt me and make me
his legatee. “It would, indeed, be a relief,” I thought, “if I
had ever so small an independency; I never can bear being
dressed like a doll by Mr. Rochester, or sitting like a second
Danae with the golden shower falling daily round me. I will
write to Madeira the moment I get home, and tell my uncle John I
am going to be married, and to whom: if I had but a prospect of
one day bringing Mr. Rochester an accession of fortune, I could
better endure to be kept by him now.” And somewhat relieved by
this idea (which I failed not to execute that day), I ventured
once more to meet my master’s and lover’s eye, which most
pertinaciously sought mine, though I averted both face and
gaze. He smiled; and I thought his smile was such as a sultan
might, in a blissful and fond moment, bestow on a slave his gold
and gems had enriched: I crushed his hand, which was ever
hunting mine, vigorously, and thrust it back to him red with the
passionate pressure.
“You need not look in that way,” I
said; “if you do, I’ll wear nothing but my old Lowood frocks to
the end of the chapter. I’ll be married in this lilac gingham:
you may make a dressing-gown for yourself out of the pearl-grey
silk, and an infinite series of waistcoats out of the black
satin.”
He chuckled; he rubbed his hands. “Oh,
it is rich to see and hear her?” he exclaimed. “Is she
original? Is she piquant? I would not exchange this one little
English girl for the Grand Turk’s whole seraglio, gazelle-eyes,
houri forms, and all!”
The Eastern allusion bit me again.
“I’ll not stand you an inch in the stead of a seraglio,” I said;
“so don’t consider me an equivalent for one. If you have a
fancy for anything in that line, away with you, sir, to the
bazaars of Stamboul without delay, and lay out in extensive
slave-purchases some of that spare cash you seem at a loss to
spend satisfactorily here.”
“And what will you do, Janet, while I
am bargaining for so many tons of flesh and such an assortment
of black eyes?”
“I’ll be preparing myself to go out as
a missionary to preach liberty to them that are enslaved—your
harem inmates amongst the rest. I’ll get admitted there, and
I’ll stir up mutiny; and you, three-tailed bashaw as you are,
sir, shall in a trice find yourself fettered amongst our hands:
nor will I, for one, consent to cut your bonds till you have
signed a charter, the most liberal that despot ever yet
conferred.”
“I would consent to be at your mercy,
Jane.”
“I would have no mercy, Mr. Rochester,
if you supplicated for it with an eye like that. While you
looked so, I should be certain that whatever charter you might
grant under coercion, your first act, when released, would be to
violate its conditions.”
“Why, Jane, what would you have? I
fear you will compel me to go through a private marriage
ceremony, besides that performed at the altar. You will
stipulate, I see, for peculiar terms—what will they be?”
“I only want an easy mind, sir; not
crushed by crowded obligations. Do you remember what you said
of Céline Varens?—of the diamonds, the cashmeres you gave her?
I will not be your English Céline Varens. I shall continue to
act as Adèle’s governess; by that I shall earn my board and
lodging, and thirty pounds a year besides. I’ll furnish my own
wardrobe out of that money, and you shall give me nothing but—”
“Well, but what?”
“Your regard; and if I give you mine in
return, that debt will be quit.”
“Well, for cool native impudence and
pure innate pride, you haven’t your equal,” said he. We were
now approaching Thornfield. “Will it please you to dine with me
to-day?” he asked, as we re-entered the gates.
“No, thank you, sir.”
“And what for, ‘no, thank you?’ if one
may inquire.”
“I never have dined with you, sir: and
I see no reason why I should now: till—”
“Till what? You delight in
half-phrases.”
“Till I can’t help it.”
“Do you suppose I eat like an ogre or a
ghoul, that you dread being the companion of my repast?”
“I have formed no supposition on the
subject, sir; but I want to go on as usual for another month.”
“You will give up your governessing
slavery at once.”
“Indeed, begging your pardon, sir, I
shall not. I shall just go on with it as usual. I shall keep
out of your way all day, as I have been accustomed to do: you
may send for me in the evening, when you feel disposed to see
me, and I’ll come then; but at no other time.”
“I want a smoke, Jane, or a pinch of
snuff, to comfort me under all this, ‘pour me donner une
contenance,’ as Adèle would say; and unfortunately I have
neither my cigar-case, nor my snuff-box. But listen—whisper.
It is your time now, little tyrant, but it will be mine
presently; and when once I have fairly seized you, to have and
to hold, I’ll just—figuratively speaking—attach you to a chain
like this” (touching his watch-guard). “Yes, bonny wee thing,
I’ll wear you in my bosom, lest my jewel I should tyne.”
He said this as he helped me to alight
from the carriage, and while he afterwards lifted out Adèle, I
entered the house, and made good my retreat upstairs.
He duly summoned me to his presence in
the evening. I had prepared an occupation for him; for I was
determined not to spend the whole time in a tête-à-tête
conversation. I remembered his fine voice; I knew he liked to
sing—good singers generally do. I was no vocalist myself, and,
in his fastidious judgment, no musician, either; but I delighted
in listening when the performance was good. No sooner had
twilight, that hour of romance, began to lower her blue and
starry banner over the lattice, than I rose, opened the piano,
and entreated him, for the love of heaven, to give me a song.
He said I was a capricious witch, and that he would rather sing
another time; but I averred that no time was like the present.
“Did I like his voice?” he asked.
“Very much.” I was not fond of
pampering that susceptible vanity of his; but for once, and from
motives of expediency, I would e’en soothe and stimulate it.
“Then, Jane, you must play the
accompaniment.”
“Very well, sir, I will try.”
I did try, but was presently swept off
the stool and denominated “a little bungler.” Being pushed
unceremoniously to one side—which was precisely what I wished—he
usurped my place, and proceeded to accompany himself: for he
could play as well as sing. I hied me to the window-recess.
And while I sat there and looked out on the still trees and dim
lawn, to a sweet air was sung in mellow tones the following
strain:—
“The truest love that ever heart
Felt at its kindled core,
Did through each vein, in quickened start,
The tide of being pour.
Her coming was my hope each day,
Her parting was my pain;
The chance that did her steps delay
Was ice in every vein.
I dreamed it would be nameless
bliss,
As I loved, loved to be;
And to this object did I press
As blind as eagerly.
But wide as pathless was the space
That lay our lives between,
And dangerous as the foamy race
Of ocean-surges green.
And haunted as a robber-path
Through wilderness or wood;
For Might and Right, and Woe and Wrath,
Between our spirits stood.
I dangers dared; I hindrance
scorned;
I omens did defy:
Whatever menaced, harassed, warned,
I passed impetuous by.
On sped my rainbow, fast as light;
I flew as in a dream;
For glorious rose upon my sight
That child of Shower and Gleam.
Still bright on clouds of suffering
dim
Shines that soft, solemn joy;
Nor care I now, how dense and grim
Disasters gather nigh.
I care not in this moment sweet,
Though all I have rushed o’er
Should come on pinion, strong and fleet,
Proclaiming vengeance sore:
Though haughty Hate should strike
me down,
Right, bar approach to me,
And grinding Might, with furious frown,
Swear endless enmity.
My love has placed her little hand
With noble faith in mine,
And vowed that wedlock’s sacred band
Our nature shall entwine.
My love has sworn, with sealing
kiss,
With me to live—to die;
I have at last my nameless bliss.
As I love—loved am I!”
He rose and came towards me, and I saw
his face all kindled, and his full falcon-eye flashing, and
tenderness and passion in every lineament. I quailed
momentarily—then I rallied. Soft scene, daring demonstration, I
would not have; and I stood in peril of both: a weapon of
defence must be prepared—I whetted my tongue: as he reached me,
I asked with asperity, “whom he was going to marry now?”
“That was a strange question to be put
by his darling Jane.”
“Indeed! I considered it a very
natural and necessary one: he had talked of his future wife
dying with him. What did he mean by such a pagan idea? I
had no intention of dying with him—he might depend on that.”
“Oh, all he longed, all he prayed for,
was that I might live with him! Death was not for such as I.”
“Indeed it was: I had as good a right
to die when my time came as he had: but I should bide that time,
and not be hurried away in a suttee.”
“Would I forgive him for the selfish
idea, and prove my pardon by a reconciling kiss?”
“No: I would rather be excused.”
Here I heard myself apostrophised as a
“hard little thing;” and it was added, “any other woman would
have been melted to marrow at hearing such stanzas crooned in
her praise.”
I assured him I was naturally hard—very
flinty, and that he would often find me so; and that, moreover,
I was determined to show him divers rugged points in my
character before the ensuing four weeks elapsed: he should know
fully what sort of a bargain he had made, while there was yet
time to rescind it.
“Would I be quiet and talk rationally?”
“I would be quiet if he liked, and as
to talking rationally, I flattered myself I was doing that now.”
He fretted, pished, and pshawed. “Very
good,” I thought; “you may fume and fidget as you please: but
this is the best plan to pursue with you, I am certain. I like
you more than I can say; but I’ll not sink into a bathos of
sentiment: and with this needle of repartee I’ll keep you from
the edge of the gulf too; and, moreover, maintain by its pungent
aid that distance between you and myself most conducive to our
real mutual advantage.”
From less to more, I worked him up to
considerable irritation; then, after he had retired, in dudgeon,
quite to the other end of the room, I got up, and saying, “I
wish you good-night, sir,” in my natural and wonted respectful
manner, I slipped out by the side-door and got away.
The system thus entered on, I pursued
during the whole season of probation; and with the best
success. He was kept, to be sure, rather cross and crusty; but
on the whole I could see he was excellently entertained, and
that a lamb-like submission and turtle-dove sensibility, while
fostering his despotism more, would have pleased his judgment,
satisfied his common-sense, and even suited his taste less.
In other people’s presence I was, as
formerly, deferential and quiet; any other line of conduct being
uncalled for: it was only in the evening conferences I thus
thwarted and afflicted him. He continued to send for me
punctually the moment the clock struck seven; though when I
appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as “love”
and “darling” on his lips: the best words at my service were
“provoking puppet,” “malicious elf,” “sprite,” “changeling,”
&c. For caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of
the hand, a pinch on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe
tweak of the ear. It was all right: at present I decidedly
preferred these fierce favours to anything more tender. Mrs.
Fairfax, I saw, approved me: her anxiety on my account vanished;
therefore I was certain I did well. Meantime, Mr. Rochester
affirmed I was wearing him to skin and bone, and threatened
awful vengeance for my present conduct at some period fast
coming. I laughed in my sleeve at his menaces. “I can keep you
in reasonable check now,” I reflected; “and I don’t doubt to be
able to do it hereafter: if one expedient loses its virtue,
another must be devised.”
Yet after all my task was not an easy
one; often I would rather have pleased than teased him. My
future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than
the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and
every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man
and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for His
creature: of whom I had made an idol.
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