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 aerial 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 among other rubbish; and when they recurred, maturing youth added to them a vigor 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 color made him a distinct object against the trees. It was exactly one mask 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 common place 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 reestablished, 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-humored to me when I addressed him, if he had put off my offer of assistance gayly 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 neighborhood; 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 merinobt 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 endeavored 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 sprung 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.36
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 pollardbu 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 reentering Thornfield. To pass its threshold was to return to stagnation; to cross the silent hall, to ascend the darksome stair-case, 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 a 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 amid 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;37 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 backward and forward 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 gray 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 lighted only by the high-hung bronze lamp; a warm glow suffused both it and the lower steps of the oak stair-case. 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 mantel-piece; I had scarcely caught it, and scarcely become aware of a cheerful mingling of voices, among 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 rung 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 Adela—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 up stairs 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 lighted in an apartment up stairs, and there I carried our books, and arranged it for the future school-room. 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 down stairs, 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,bv Monsieur Édouard Fairfax de Rochester,” bw as she dubbed him (I had not before heard his preno mens), 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 among 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 pale. J’ai dit qu‘oui: car c’est vrai, n‘est-ce pas, mademoiselle?” bx
I and my pupil dined as usual in Mrs. Fairfax’s parlour; the afternoon was wild and snowy, and we passed it in the school room. At dark I allowed Adèle to put away books and work, and to run down stairs; 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 snow-flakes 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 remember 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 piecing together, and scatterin
g, 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 gray, which, in my Lowood notions of the toilet, 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 keep-sake; I put it on, and then we went down stairs. 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 mantel-piece; 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 recognized his decisive nose, more remarkable for character than beauty, his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler;by his grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were very grim, and no mistake. His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonized 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.
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