“That may already be well-known,” she snapped.
I peered closely into her hand, as if examining her palm. “You are an equestrian, are you not? And you are proud—”
“And that is known as well. If that is all you have to say, you are certainly nothing but a charlatan.”
I leaned closer to her, and she moved back in her chair. “You are interested in this place—this Thornfield. You have already made inquiries, I suspect; do you approve of the rent-rolls?” That stopped her, and before she could think what to say, I added, “You think they should be raised.” That latter was a guess on my part, but she seemed so disturbed that I knew I had hit my mark.
“You are satisfied with those numbers?” I prodded.
“You tell me,” she demanded. “Yours is not to question; it is to answer.”
I shrugged. “You think they should be larger. You have been mulling ideas of your own, changes you plan to make as soon as you are mistress.”
She was about to reply, but I cut her off.
“But you do not know the debts to the place, I think. You do not know that he is a gambler and has already gambled away half his fortune.”
Her face was suddenly still.
“Did you not know he went to Millcote this morning to arrange for the sale of more land to pay his debts? And his property in Jamaica is gone.”
“I did not know—”
“Oh yes. There is much you do not know.”
She started to rise, but I held her back by saying, “Do you not want to know who he will marry? It is not you. No, it is someone with far greater riches and truer beauty than you will ever know.”
At that she rose with a start. “You are an ugly old hag! How could you know what will proceed? The future is unknown to all.”
“It is not unknown to me,” I replied, and she fled from the room.
Next came the three young ladies: Mary Ingram and Louisa and Amy Eshton, giggling and shrieking from embarrassment and fear. They had refused to see me except in a group. “Welcome, and sit down,” I said, and waited for additional chairs to be pulled into place.
“You thought it would be fun to tease the old Gypsy, did you not?” I said when they were all seated.
Miss Mary Ingram spoke up. “What did you tell my sister?”
“Do you think I should tell her secrets? Would you like me to tell her yours?”
“Then tell my fortune.”
I leaned back into my chair, the shadows better covering my face. “First, I will tell something of your past. Yes, indeed, you and your sister and brother tortured your governesses until they left in despair: calling them names, throwing books into the air, scattering crumbs of biscuit around the nursery.”
The Eshton girls sat openmouthed, and Mary Ingram winced, as if I had physically attacked her.
“Tell me: are those the actions of proper children?” I asked. Then, recalling every family story I had heard around the dinner table, I told a tale or two on each girl: how Louisa had tried to climb a tree and was too afraid to climb back down, how Mary had been thrown from a horse at the age of twelve and had refused to ride ever since, how Amy had secretly learned to cook eggs and had surprised her mother by making breakfast for her mother’s birthday just last year. And I described their homes and their favorite lockets and the books they preferred to read. Through it all, they sat amazed that an old Gypsy could have seen so closely into their lives.
“What about the future?” Mary asked softly when I had finished.
“Ah,” I croaked, “the future is far more difficult, for it has not yet been written in stone, as the past has. You cannot erase the past, but you can change the future.”
“Will my sister marry Mr. Rochester?” Mary asked suddenly.
“Your sister does not love Mr. Rochester. She will not marry him.”
The three sat silent in astonishment.
“I told that lady many things,” I added, “and some of it she did not want to hear.” But I didn’t want to send them back with sour faces, so I gave them beautiful, obedient children; stately homes; lovely gowns and exquisite jewelry—all the things I imagined young girls dream of, and I even whispered into each delicate ear the name of a young man in their group whom I was sure held her interest. I sent them away giggling.
After they left, Sam returned to usher me out, as all the young ladies had seen me.
“All?” I said. “All?” Sam nodded, not understanding whom I was after. “There is one more, is there not?”
“Ah, well. But she is not a lady,” he insisted.
“No? What is she, then?”
“She is just the governess—a kind person indeed, but—”
“She is a lady, young man, and I will see her.”
“She is a private person. She may not come.”
“You may tell her I will not leave until she comes.”
He hurried away, and as he went, I adjusted my disguise, and gripped tightly the arms of my chair. Now came the true test.
Miss Ingram had come in imperious and defiant; the three girls had come shy and a little afraid; but my Jane came in curious and, as ever, composed. I pretended to read as she entered and ignored her at first, to see how she would act in private with a person by all accounts her social inferior. I was pleased, but not surprised, to see her wait as calmly and respectfully as she did for me in my normal guise. “Well, and you want your fortune told?” I asked her.
“I don’t care about it, Mother,” she said; “you may please yourself: but I ought to warn you, I have no faith.”
I suppressed a smile. This was my Jane, all right.
“Why don’t you tremble?” I asked.
“I’m not cold,” she responded.
“Why don’t you turn pale?”
“I am not sick.”
“Why don’t you consult my art?”
“I’m not silly.”
I chuckled, for I had guessed well her responses. I pulled out a pipe and lit it slowly, and gazed for a time into the fire, letting her observe me all the while. Then I said, “You are cold; you are sick; and you are silly.”
“Prove it.”
“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.” There, I had laid it out.
She did not take the bait. “You might say all that to almost anyone,” she replied.
“But would it be true of almost anyone? Find me another precisely placed as you are.”
“It would be easy to find you thousands,” she responded.
“You could scarcely find me one. If you knew it, you are peculiarly situated: very near happiness; yes; within reach of it.” What did I have to do to make her rise to my provocations? I promised her bliss in exchange for one movement. But she still would not act.
“I don’t understand enigmas,” she responded. “I never could guess a riddle in my life.” My sturdy Jane was not going to bend, was not going to give an inch, even to a poor old Gypsy.
“If you wish me to speak more plainly,” I challenged, “show me your palm.”
She handed me a shilling, which I stowed away as carefully as if it were worth a guinea, and I bent over the fine lines in her flesh, wishing that I were a real fortune-teller, who would know her heart line, and what it said of her. Cautiously I raised my eyes to her. “Destiny is not written there. It is in the face: on the forehead, about the eyes, in the eyes themselves.” Those eyes: how often had I wished to plumb their depths. “And in the lines of the mouth. Kneel, and lift up your head.” I came within half a yard of her, and stirred the fire, whose glare lit Jane’s face more fully, and more deeply cloaked my own.
I saw her watching me, and I waited for a while before saying, “I wonder with what feelings you came to me tonight. I wo
nder 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.”
She gave a little shrug, confessing nothing.
What was she made of, this Jane? “Then you have some secret hope,” I asked, “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 someday in a little house rented by myself.”
Alone. But independent. Was that truly all she hoped for? Solitary independence, devoid of love and family? Did she really not crave my love as I craved hers? “A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on,” I countered, “and sitting in that window seat (you see I know your habits)—”
“You have learned them from the servants,” she interrupted.
“Ah, you think yourself sharp,” I said. Could nothing stir a reaction? Then I had an idea: “Well—perhaps I have: to speak truth, I have an acquaintance with one of them—Mrs. Poole.” I watched her face closely, and she seemed indeed startled—more so, it proved to me that all her suspicions still lay on Grace’s shoulders, that she had learned nothing further of Bertha in my absence. I offered a few good words in poor Grace’s favor, she who had been serving me so well, but Jane was again unmoved.
We continued on like that, I trying to draw her out on the subject of courtship and marriage, she frustrating me at every turn, for she would not admit—even in relative secrecy—that she held any personal interest in her master’s attention to Miss Ingram. The harder I pushed, the more clever and evasive she became.
In the end, I broke before she did. Able to bear it no more, I made as close to a profession of love as I dared, lavishing praise on those qualities in her face and form I was growing to love so well—it was all I could do not to grasp her and pull her close. As her eyes studied mine, I felt myself falling into a kind of dream. If I could have kept that moment forever, I would have.
But I could not, and I gave up. She had won. “Rise, Miss Eyre: leave me; ‘the play is played out,’” I said, and, slowly, I began to uncover my face.
She stared as I did so, comprehending and uncomprehending. “Well, Jane,” I said to her, “do you know me?”
“Only take off the red cloak, sir, and then—”
Back suddenly to some semblance of our former stations, the confessions of the past half hour (such as they were) forgotten, she scolded me for talking nonsense and for trying to draw her into “nonsense” as well. But I knew there had been truth there. I asked her to forgive me, but she would not until she felt clear of her own conscience.
Yet when I asked her for news from the drawing room, hoping to hear my effects on the silly ladies earlier, she confessed instead that a stranger had come, a man from the West Indies named Mason, and—my God!—my heart froze. Not Gerald, true, but Richard Mason—just as bad! That fool, in my own home, talking with all those gossips—what might he have said by now? And what unspeakable events would come trailing after his revelations? It was a blow. Desperation clung to me, and I hardly had strength to stand, but Jane helped me to a chair and I urged her to sit beside me. I held her hand in both of mine and could do nothing more than wish for some quiet place where she and I could dwell forever away from all cares and all disasters.
“Can I help you, sir?” she asked after a time. “I’d give my life to serve you.” Ah—now she offers a glimmer of feeling! But my agitation over Richard was too great for me to seize on it. She continued: “Tell me what to do,—I’ll try, at least, to do it.”
For a moment I could think of nothing but Jane—and of Bertha, and of the need, above all else, to keep the knowledge of my shameful secret from destroying the happiness I could just glimpse on the horizon. Then, gathering my wits, I sent Jane into the dining room for a glass of wine and to spy on the group there assembled.
Jane returned shortly with word that the guests were all standing around the buffet cheerful and gay. God give me strength to face whatever comes next… “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,” she responded. She knew nothing of my sins, knew not why I asked. And yet, she stood by me unquestioning, her loyalty fierce in the face of ruin. I nearly smiled at the thought of little Jane, standing up to them all.
“But if I were to go to them, and they only looked at me coldly, and whispered sneeringly amongst each other, and then dropt off and left me one by one, would you go with them?”
She looked straight at me: “I rather think not, sir; I should have more pleasure in staying with you.”
“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.”
Friend. That was more than I had heard from her before, though less than I had allowed myself to dream. But I could not dwell: there was no time to waste. Richard could even now be speaking the words that might bring my world crumbling to my feet. Much as I would have loved to hide away forever with Jane, I urged her to return to the dining room and secretly summon Richard to me.
Chapter 15
Richard Mason at Thornfield-Hall—what is he doing here? Had he, too, been approached by the so-called Gerald Rochester? What, indeed, did he know of Bertha’s child and its fate?
“I’ve come to see my sister,” Richard announced as he entered, surveying the room as if expecting to see Bertha there. “Where is she?” he demanded.
I shook my head. “You can’t see her now. Not at this hour.”
“You keep her in a prison, no doubt! Where is she? I shall go on my own—”
“You will tell me about her son, is what you will do.”
That stopped him.
“Richard, what do you know of his provenance?” I spoke gently, for I did not want to provoke him into silence.
Indeed, he took a step or two toward me, his face darkening. “Your brother…your brother…seduced her.”
I caught my breath on that. So it was true. “And she was…thirteen?”
“A child. A beautiful child.”
“And the infant? What was done with the infant?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him. I only came to see my sister. I’ll wager you have put her into an asylum—against her wishes and my father’s. Against your promises.” He spat this last word at me.
“She is not in an asylum. She is safe and well cared for.”
“Where?”
“What was done with the infant? Who took him? Tell me that and I will tell you of your sister.”
He sighed, still looking aimlessly about the room. “My parents had friends who moved to America,” he said finally. “After the end of the slave trade in the islands, some people moved to the American South, thinking slavery would last longer there. I was only a child, and I don’t know any more than that. But that is nothing to do with me: Tell me of my sister!”
I searched his face, wondering if I could trust him. Still, he had a right, I thought. He had many other flaws, but he truly loved his sister. “She is in care, here, in this house, not in an asylum.”
“Here? Well then, Fairfax, you must take me to her now!”
“No.” Despite that he frowned at me like a petulant boy, I went on: “Not now. She has always been worse at night; you know that. I will take you in the morning, I promise. She is safe in an upstairs apartment. Now, tell me: Were they married? Bertha and Rowland?”
“She was a child!”
“With your father’s permission she could have married. Rowland would have been a good catch for her. Better than I.”
He shrugged. “Rowland didn’t want her, I suppose. I’m sure I don’t know.”
“But somehow you learned of it?”
He looked away. “Oh, you know,” he said vaguely, “a child hears things.”
“What kinds of things?” I pressed. He was not telling me all
of it, I was sure.
“Your brother seduced my sister—is that not bad enough?” he said with renewed vigor. “Does there need to be more? When do I see my sister? Is she truly here in this house?”
“You will see her in the morning,” I said, reassuring him as best I could. I was not convinced that he had come to terms with the severity of her case, nor with how difficult and unpredictable she had become. “Come, now,” I added, trying to change his mood. “Have a drink with me, and tell me what brings you all the way to England.”
He watched as I poured us each a glass of rum. “Yes,” I said ruefully. “It’s not quite grog, sad to say. But it will have to do.”
We both drank in silence for a few moments. “Do you still live in Madeira?” I asked him.
“I do,” he said. “Wine is a better crop than sugar. Grapes are far easier to grow.”
“Ah,” I responded, “that does not surprise me. And”—I looked at his glass and mine—“is it wine now that you drink?”
“Mostly. Are you familiar with Madeiran wines?”
We switched to wine after the rum, and to nostalgic conversation, reminiscing about the balls we had attended, about his father and Valley View, about the sad state of affairs in Jamaica now. It was almost as it had once been between us, the easy friendship when I had first arrived in Spanish Town, except that he occasionally raised again the issue of his sister. But each time I calmly assured him I would take him to her in the morning.
It had become late, and I ushered him up the staircase to bed. The others had already retired, and, filled with wine and spirits, we bade each other a pleasant good-night.
* * *
But as I retreated to my room, my mind seized again on the appalling news: it was true, then, about Bertha and Rowland. Of course, at thirteen, she could have been infatuated with my dashing brother, but would Rowland actually have taken advantage of her in that way? All elements of my soul resisted the image of the two of them entwined. I still simply could not believe that there wasn’t a terrible misunderstanding. But then I thought back to that conversation on our first night in Spanish Town, and Bertha’s assertions about Rowland. She had mentioned the portrait of my mother, the one that I had found hanging over my brother’s bed at Thornfield—that, I realized, must once have hung over the bed, my bed, in Spanish Town, where Bertha had seen it with her own eyes.
Mr. Rochester Page 35