“Was anybody stirring below when you went down, Jane?” enquired 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 anyone 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.” If I had not loved Mr Rochester already, I knew my heart would have cast off all doubt in that very moment. With the flower, he was thanking me, cherishing me.
“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 someone 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 forever 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.” In truth, I was more content than I had ever been. This moment with Mr Rochester seemed natural. How else could an evening such as the last otherwise end but with us together, bound by our shared secret?
“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 judgement 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 forever 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 anyone 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.”
“I should prefer to speak of you, sir.”
“Of me?”
“Of your desires. And my own.” The way he spoke of Miss Ingram—a match surely to be a political success—my chances to speak plainly were drawing to a close.
“You have me intrigued. Go on.”
“I took a book from your library.”
“Did you now? Which book did my little thief abscond with?”
“There are all manner of sketches in it.”
“What kind of sketches?”
For a moment, I hoped I could vanish, perhaps pull back the words I had boldly spoken. But I had taken a step down the path and I knew my master wouldn’t allow me to retreat. “The sketches are scandalous, sir.”
“What do they represent that you find so offensive?”
“Acts, sir.”
“Acts?”
“Personal ones between a man and woman.”
His brows were drawn together, but there was no real shock or outrage in his countenance. “And did you perhaps return the book at your first opportunity?”
“I felt it better to keep it secure until I could return it you so that you could lock it up as it should be.”
“Ah, so you did not burn the pages in the first available fire?”
“I did not. As I have already said I thought to return it directly to you. I have had no opportunity, so I kept it.”
“Kept it did you? Do you look at it from time to time?”
“Every night, sir.”
He hooked his hands behind his back. As for me, I folded mine primly in my
lap and glanced down at them.
“Every night,” he repeated. “I see. And these—sketches—do they intrigue you?”
“They do indeed.”
“And you wish further exploration?”
I kept my eyes downcast. “I have been exploring, sir.”
There was a terrible silence. “Exploring? A solo expedition, Jane, or with someone else?”
At his tone, I looked up. There was no doubt he was cross at the idea. I was forced to listen to him go on about his intended, while I was questioned so roughly? What standards were those? I stood. “A solo exploration, sir. Not that it is any of your concern.”
“I beg to differ, Miss Eyre. While you are my servant, your behaviour is of paramount import. I shall not have you reflect badly upon Thornfield.”
I came to my feet. “As if I would ever bring a scandal to your home!”
“What is it you want, Jane? To tempt me past reason? Well, my rose thorn, you have done so! Stealing books that are private, books that I keep locked up. Do not say you borrowed it. If you had borrowed it, it would have been returned.”
“Your charge is unfair!”
“And exploring yourself beneath my roof!”
At this I did colour, but I did not relent in my own defence. “What I do in the privacy of my evenings matters not to you!”
“It does, indeed. When you were in my drawer, Jane, did you find the phallus?”
Suddenly meeting his eyes was difficult, but I forced myself to. “Yes, sir, I did.”
“Do you know what it’s for?”
“I saw a picture that gives me an idea, yes.”
“And you are not afraid?”
“I am of strong mind and body, sir.”
“I have tastes, Jane.”
“So I imagined, sir.”
“The book you found, that is only the beginning.”
“Sir?”
“I believe that a woman should submit to her master.”
I scowled. “Of course.”
“In the bed chamber as well as out of it.”
“Of course it should be so.”
“I believe a woman should be chastised, corrected, and brought back into line when she falters.”
Jane Eyre Page 27