Chapter 14

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    For several subsequent days I saw little of Mr. Rochester. In the ms he seemed mugaged with business, and, iernoolemen from Millcote or the neighbourhood called, and sometimes stayed to dih 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 e back till late at night.

    During this interval, even Adèle was seldom sent for to his presence, and all my acquaintah him was fio an occasional rentre in the hall, oairs, or in the gallery, when he would sometimes pass me haughtily and coldly, just aowledging my presence by a distant nod or a cool glance, and sometimes bow and smile with gentlemanlike affability. His ges 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 disected with me.

    One day he had had pany to dinner, and had sent for my portfolio; in order, doubtless, to exhibit its tents: the gentleme away early, to attend a public meeting at Millcote, as Mrs. Fairfax informed me; but the night bei and i, Mr. Rochester did not apany 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 , and having ascertaihat 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 disarra—we desded, Adèle w whether the petit coffre was at length e; for, owing to some mistake, its arrival had hitherto been delayed. She was gratified: there it stood, a little carton, oable wheered 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 er, you genuine daughter of Paris, and amuse yourself with disembowelling it,” said the deep and rather sarcastic voir. Rochester, proceeding from the depths of an immense easy-chair at the fireside. “And mind,” he tinued, “don’t bother me with aails of the anatomical process, or any notice of the dition of the entrails: let your operation be ducted in sileiens-toi tranquille, enfant; prends-tu?”

    Adèle seemed scarcely to he 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 iatiplation.

    “Is Miss Eyre there?” now demahe master, half rising from his seat to look round to the door, near which I still stood.

    “Ah! well, e forward; be seated here.” He drew a chair near his own. “I am not fond of the prattle of children,” he tinued; “for, old bachelor as I am, I have no pleasant associations ected 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 dowly where I placed it—if you please, that is. found these civilities! I tinually fet them. Nor do I particularly affect simple-minded old ladies. By- the-bye, I must have mine in mind; it won’t do to  her; she is a Fairfax, or wed to one; and blood is said to be thicker than water.”

    He rang, ached 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 goodo 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 tents of her “boite;” p 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 ot see you without disturbing my position in this fortable 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 rid 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 m; 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-hewures, and in his great, dark eyes; for he had great, dark eyes, and very fine eyes, too—not without a certain ge in their depths sometimes, which, if it was not softness, reminded you, at least, of that feeling.

    He had been looking two mi 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 ventionally 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 e; 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 piergly 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 ao a question about appearahat tastes mostly differ; and that beauty is of little sequence, or something of that sort.”

    “You ought to have replied no such thing. Beauty of little sequence, indeed! And so, under pretence of softening the previous e, of stroking and soothio 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 ans, but an abrupt deficy 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 iurher you are a philanthropist?”

    “There again! Aick of the penknife, when she preteo 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 sce;” and he poio the prominences which are said to indicate that faculty, and which, fortunately for him, were suffitly spicuous; 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 k or two still, and with oient 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 ao make to his queer question: how could I tell whether he was capable of beiransformed?

    “You looked very much puzzled, Miss Eyre; and though you are not pretty any more than I am handsome, yet a puzzled air bees you; besides, it is ve, for it keeps those searg 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 unicative to-night.”

    With this annou 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 mahere was so muscious pride in his port; so much ease in his demeanour; such a look of plete indiffereo his owernal appearance; so haughty a relian the power of other qualities, intrinsic or adventitious, to atone for the laere personal attractiveness, that, in looking at him, one iably shared the indifference, and, even in a blind, imperfect sense, put faith in the fidence.

    “I am disposed to be gregarious and unicative to-night,” he repeated, “and that is why I sent for you: the fire and the delier were not suffit pany for me; nor would Pilot have been, for none of these  talk. Adèle is a degree better, but still far below the mark; Mrs. Fairfax ditto; you, I am persuaded,  suit me if you will: you puzzled me the first evening I invited you down here. I have almost fotten you siher ideas have driven yours from my head; but to-night I am resolved to be at ease; to dismiss what importunes, and recall leases. 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 plat or submissive smile either.

    “Speak,” he urged.

    “What about, sir?”

    “Whatever you like. I leave both the choice of subjed the manner of treating it eo yourself.”

    Accly 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 sistent. I put my request in an absurd, almost i 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” (correg himself), “I claim only such superiority as must result from twenty years’ differen age and a tury’s advan experiehis is legitimate, et j’y tiens, as Adèle would say; and it is by virtue of this superiority, and this alohat I desire you to have the goodo talk to me a little now, and divert my thoughts, which are galled with dwelling on one point—kering as a rusty nail.”

    He had deigned an explanation, almost an apology, and I did not feel insensible to his dession, and would not seem so.

    “I am willing to amuse you, if I , sir—quite willing; but I ot introduce a topic, because how do I know what will i you? Ask me questions, and I will do my best to ahem.”

    “Then, in the first place, do you agree with me that I have a right to be a little masterful, abrupt, perhaps exag, sometimes, on the grounds I stated, namely, that I am old enough to be your father, and that I have battled through a varied experieh many men of many nations, and roamed over half the globe, while you have lived quietly with o 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 and 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 and. Will you?”

    I smiled: I thought to myself Mr. Rochester IS peculiar—he seems tet that he pays me ￡30 per annum for receiving his orders.

    “The smile is very well,” said he, catg 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 fotten the salary! Well then, on that merary ground, will you agree to let me hector a little?”

    “No, sir, not on that ground; but, on the ground that you did fet it, and that you care whether or not a depe is fortab<mark></mark>le in his dependency, I agree heartily.”

    “And will you sent to dispeh a great many ventional 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 trary, affectation, or ess, or stupid, coarse-minded misapprehension of one’s meaning are the usual rewards of dour. 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  of yours: Nature did it. And then, after all, I go too fast in my clusions: for what I yet know, you may be er than the rest; you may have intolerable defects to terbalance 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 plate within my own <big>..</big>breast, which might well call my sneers and sures 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 peaind, your  sce, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a memory without blot or ination 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 tur to fetid puddle. I was your equal at eighteen—quite your equal. Nature meao 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 mu your eye (beware, by-the-bye, what you express with that an; 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 circumstahan to my natural bent, I am a trite onplace sinner, haeyed in all the poor petty dissipations with which the rid worthless try to put on life. Do you wohat I avow this to you? Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary fidant of your acquaintances’ secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have dohat 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 s of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less f and encing because it is very unobtrusive in its maions.”

    “How do you know?—how  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 degeed. Now, when any vicious simpletoes my disgust by his paltry ribaldry, I ot flatter myself that I am better than he: I am forced to fess 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 degee still more, sir.”

    “Possibly: yet why should I, if I  get sweet, fresh pleasure? And I may get it as sweet and fresh as the wild hohe bee gathers on the moor.”

    “It will sting—it will taste bitter, sir.”

    “How do you know?—you ried 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 nht to preae, 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 errht remorse, and you pronounced remorse the poison of existence.”

    “And who talks of error now? I scarcely think the notion that flittered ay 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 es 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 entrao 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 throween a guide and a seducer?”

    “I judged by your tenance, 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 graessage in the world: for the rest, you are not my sce-keeper, so don’t make yourself uneasy. Here, e 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 tinued, again addressing me, “I have received the pilgrim—a disguised deity, as I verify believe. Already it has done me good: my heart was a sort of el; it will now be a shrine.”

    “To speak truth, sir, I don’t uand you at all: I ot keep up the versation, because it has got out of my depth. Only ohing, I know: you said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that yretted your own imperfe;—ohing I  prehend: you intimated that to have a sullied memory erpetual ba seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to bee what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and as, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recolles, to whiight 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 iions, which I believe durable as flint. Certainly, my associates and pursuits shall be other than they have been.”

    “Aer?”

    “Aer—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 ot be, sir, if they require a atute to legalise them.”

    “They are, Miss Eyre, though they absolutely require a atute: unheard-of binations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules.”

    “That sounds a dangerous maxim, sir; because one  see at ohat it is liable to abuse.”

    “Seious 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 nate a power with which the divine and perfect alone  be safely intrusted.”

    “ower?”

    “That of saying of any strange, unsaned line of a,—‘Let it be right.’”

    “‘Let it be right’—the very words: you have pronouhem.”

    “May it be right then,” I said, as I rose, deeming it useless to tinue a discourse which was all darko me; and, besides, sensible that the character of my interlocutor was beyond my peion; at least, beyond its present reach; and feeling the uainty, the vague sense of insecurity, which apanies a vi 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  laugh very merrily: believe me, you are not naturally austere, any more than I am naturally vicious. The Lowood straint still gs to you somewhat; trolling your features, muffling your voice, arig 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 ventional 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 struine, 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 e Varens, as she used to appear on the boards at the rising of— But never mind that. However, my te feelings are about to receive a shock: such is my prese; s<var></var>tay now, to see whether it will be realised.”

    Ere long, Adèle’s little foot was heard tripping across the hall. She eransformed 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 stogs 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 k his feet, exclaiming—

    “Monsieur, je vous remercie mille fois de votre bonté;” then rising, she added, “C’est e cela que maman faisait, -ce pas, monsieur?”

    “Pre-cise-ly!” was the answer; “and, ‘e 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 whe sprang; having found that it was of a sort whiothing but gold dust could manure, I have but half 藏书网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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