“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, etcetera— 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. 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. I picked up a book, and I noticed he had another—one that was normally locked away—beneath it. I caught a glimpse of the cover. I was not exceptionally educated, but I knew the book was of an erotic nature. I am sure I flushed to the roots of my hair. I said nothing and neither did my master.
I focused on the novel rather than the scandalous book. He was restless and kept interrupting me. I was tempted to open the other book if for no other reason than to shake his doldrums. 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.
When I left him, he was staring into the hearth as if it had answers to unspoken questions. The book he had been looking at tempted me and I gave into the impulse of taking it and tucking it under my arm. I could disavow intent if he caught me and merely say I must have picked up the wrong book.
But he never noticed.
In my room, behind a closed door, a candle burning for light, I opened the binding.
To say I was shocked would not begin to suffice! The book had little text and the few words described positions, sexual positions!
My breath seemed frozen as the winter earth. But my blood heated like an imminent volcano.
Surely Mr Rochester had never contorted his body in such ways. And surely he had never demanded a woman do such demeaning things!
The book heretofore had been under lock and key, so the master had clearly removed it from behind the glass. He had to have been looking at it. I wondered if he meant for me to find it. Surely not! No man of his stature would hope his governess found such a book. I ignored the whispers that told me Thornfield Hall’s master was comprised of much uncharted depth.
I closed the book with shaking fingers, and slid the volume into a drawer.
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 was trying valiantly—nay, vainly—not to think of the images that had seared my eyes. But it was impossible. I could not help my wild imaginings! I especially pictured myself with a foot on a bench while a man—and not any man would do, it had to be my very own master—stuck his appendage between my legs. Another sketch had an appeal, that of a woman on her back with her legs parted while a man inserted an implement inside her, impaling her. The expression on her face was not one of pain, but of ecstasy.
It had not been my habit to explore myself, but tonight my inhibitions had been stolen away. I pulled up my nightgown and began to touch, to pinch, to poke. I found certain things that felt pleasurable and few that did not.
I continued longer and longer until my vision seemed like shards of glass, forever splintering. I felt replete and suddenly exhausted.
I hardly know whether I had slept or not after this; 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.
“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 story, the smoke—the smell of fire which had conducted 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 anyone.”
He went. I watched the light withdraw. He passed up the gallery very softly, unclosed t
he 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?”
Jane Eyre Page 18