Chapter 15
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Mr. Rochester did, on a future occasion, explain it. It was oernoon, when he ced to meet me and Adèle in the grounds: and while she played with Pilot and her shuttlecock, he asked me to walk up and down a long beech avehin sight of her.He then said that she was the daughter of a French opera-dancer, e Varens, towards whom he had once cherished what he called a “grande passion.” This passion e had professed to return with even superior ardour. He thought himself her idol, ugly as he was: he believed, as he said, that she preferred his “taille d’athlète” to the elegance of the Apollo Belvidere.
“And, Miss Eyre, so much was I flattered by this preference of the Gallic sylph for her British ghat I installed her in an hotel; gave her a plete establishment of servants, a carriage, cashmeres, diamonds, dentelles, & short, I began the process of ruining myself in the received style, like any other spoony. I had not, it seems, the inality to chalk out a new road to shame aru, but trode the old track with stupid exaess not to deviate an inch from the beatere. I had—as I deserved to have—the fate of all other spoonies. Happening to call one evening when e did not expect me, I found her out; but it was a warm night, and I was tired with strolling through Paris, so I sat down in her boudoir; happy to breathe the air secrated so lately by her preseno,—I exaggerate; I hought there was any secrating virtue about her: it was rather a sort of pastille perfume she had left; a st of musk and amber, than an odour of sanctity. I was just beginning to stifle with the fumes of servatory flowers and sprinkled essences, when I bethought myself to open the window and step out on to the baly. It was moonlight and gaslight besides, and very still and serehe baly was furnished with a chair or two; I sat down, and took out a cigar,—I will take one now, if you will excuse me.”
Here ensued a pause, filled up by the produg and lighting of a cigar; having placed it to his lips and breathed a trail of Havannah inse on the freezing and sunless air, he went on—
“I liked bonbons too in those days, Miss Eyre, and I was croquant— (overlook the barbarism)—croquant chocolate fits, and smoking alternately, watg meahe equipages that rolled along the fashioreets towards the neighb opera-house, when in a close carriage drawn by a beautiful pair of English horses, and distinctly seen in the brilliant city-night, I reised the ‘voiture’ I had given e. She was returning: of course my heart thumped with impatience against the iron rails I leant upon. The carriage stopped, as I had expected, at the hotel door; my flame (that is the very word for an opera inamorata) alighted: though muffed in a cloak—an unnecessary encumbrance, by-the-bye, on so warm a June evening—I knew her instantly by her little foot, seen peeping from the skirt of her dress, as she skipped from the carriage-step. Bending over the baly, I was about to murmur ‘Mon ange’—in a tone, of course, which should be audible to the ear of love alone—when a figure jumped from the carriage after her; cloaked also; but that urred heel which had rung on the pavement, and that was a hatted head whiow passed uhe arched porte cochère of the hotel.
“You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt love. You have both ses yet to experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall waken it. You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears, you her see the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the flood, nor hear the breakers boil at their base. But I tell you—and you may mark my words—you will e some day to a craggy pass in the el, where the whole of life’s stream will be br<mark></mark>oken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current—as I am now.
“I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world uhis frost. I like Thornfield, its antiquity, its retirement, its old crow-trees and thorn-trees, its grey facade, and lines of dark windows refleg that metal welkin: a how long have I abhorred the very thought of it, shu like a great plague-house? How I do still abhor —”
He ground his teeth and was silent: he arrested his step and struck his boot against the hard ground. Some hated thought seemed to have him in its grip, and to hold him so tightly that he could not advance.
We were asding the avenue whehus paused; the hall was before us. Lifting his eye to its battlements, he cast over them a glare such as I never saw before or since. Pain, shame, ire, impatience, disgust, detestation, seemed momentarily to hold a quivering fli the large pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrow. Wild was the wrestle which should be paramount; but another feeling rose and triumphed: something hard and ical: self-willed and resolute: it settled his passion arified his tenance: he went on—
“During the moment I was silent, Miss Eyre, I was arranging a point with my destiny. She stood there, by that beech-trunk—a hag like one of those eared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres. ‘You like Thornfield?’ she said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the air a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the house-front, between the upper and lower row of windows, ‘Like it if you ! Like it if you dare!’
“‘I will like it,’ said I; ‘I dare like it;’ and” (he subjoined moodily) “I will keep my word; I will break obstacles to happiness, to goodness—yes, goodness. I wish to be a better man than I have been, than I am; as Job’s leviathan broke the spear, the dart, and the habergeon, hindrances which others t as iron and brass, I will esteem but straw and rotten wood.”
Adèle here ran before him with her shuttlecock. “Away!” he cried harshly; “keep at a distance, child; o in to Sophie!” tinuing then to pursue his walk in silence, I veo recall him to the point whence he had abruptly diverged—
“Did you leave the baly, sir,” I asked, “when Mdlle. Vareered?”
I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question, but, on the trary, waking out of his scowling abstra, he turned his eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow. “Oh, I had fotten e! Well, to resume. When I saw my charmer thus e in apanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake of jealousy, rising on undulating coils from the moonlit baly, glided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two mio my heart’s core. Strange!” he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the point. “Strahat I should choose you for the fidant of all this, young lady; passing strahat you should listen to me quietly, as if it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera-mistresses to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you! But the last singularity explains the first, as I intimated once before: you, with yravity, siderateness, and caution were made to be the recipient of secrets. Besides, I know what sort of a mind I have placed in unication with my own: I know it is o liable to take iion: it is a peculiar mind: it is a unique one. Happily I do not mean to harm it: but, if I did, it would not take harm from me. The more you and I verse, the better; for while I ot blight you, you may refresh me.” After this digression he proceeded—
“I remained in the baly. ‘They will e to her boudoir, no doubt,’ thought I: ‘let me prepare an ambush.’ So putting my hand in through the open window, I drew the curtai, leaving only an opening through which I could take observations; then I closed the casement, all but a k just wide enough to furnish an outlet to lovers’ whispered vows: then I stole bay chair; and as I resumed it the pair came in. My eye was quickly at the aperture. e’s chamber-maid entered, lit a lamp, left it oable, and withdrew. The couple were thus revealed to me clearly: both removed their cloaks, and there was ‘the Varens,’ shining in satin and jewels,—my gifts of course,—and there was her panion in an officer’s uniform; and I knew him for a young roue of a vite—a brainless and vicious youth whom I had sometimes met in society, and had hought of hating because I despised him so absolutely. nising him, the fang of the snake Jealousy was instantly broken; because at the same moment my love for e sank under ainguisher. A woman who could betray me for such a rival was not worth tending for; she deserved only s; less, however, than I, who had been her dupe.
“They began to talk; their versation eased me pletely: frivolous, merary, heartless, and senseless, it was rather calculated to weary than enrage a listener. A card of mine lay oable; this being perceived, brought my name under discussioher of them possessed energy or wit to belabour me soundly, but they insulted me as coarsely as they could in their little way: especially e, who even waxed rather brilliant on my personal defects—deformities she termed them. Now it had been her to launch out into fervent admiration of what she called my ‘beauté male:’ wherein she differed diametrically from you, who told me point-blank, at the sed interview, that you did not think me handsome. The trast struck me at the time and—”
Adèle here came running up again.
“Monsieur, John has just been to say that yent has called and wishes to see you.”
“Ah! in that case I must abridge. Opening the window, I walked in upon them; liberated e from my prote; gave her notice to vacate her hotel; offered her a purse for immediate exigencies; disregarded screams, hysterics, prayers, protestations, vulsions; made an appoi with the vite for a meeting at the Bois de Boulogne. m I had the pleasure of entering him; left a bullet in one of his poor etiolated arms, feeble as the wing of a chi in the pip, and then thought I had doh the whole crew. But unluckily the Varens, six months before, had givehis 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 tenance: 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 musi or singer. I aowledged no natural claim on Adèle’s part to be supported by me, nor do I now aowledge 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 transpla here, to grow up in the wholesome soil of an English try garden. Mrs. Fairfax found you to train it; but now you know that it is the illegitimate offspring of a French irl, you will perhaps think differently of your post and protégée: you will be ing to me some day with notice that you have found another place—that you beg me to look out for a new governess, &c.—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 g closer to her than before. How could I possibly prefer the spoilt pet of a wealthy family, who would hate her governess as a nuisao 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 bo and coat, I took her on my knee; kept her there an hour, allowio prattle as she liked: not rebuking even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she t to stray when muoticed, and which betrayed in her a superficiality of character, ied probably from her mother, hardly genial to an English mind. Still she had her merits; and I was disposed to appreciate all that was good io the utmost. I sought in her tenand features a likeo Mr. Rochester, but found none: no trait, no turn of expression announced relationship. It ity: 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 robably nothing at all extraordinary in the substance of the narrative itself: a wealthy Englishman’s passion for a French dancer, areachery 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 i of expressing the present te of his mood, and his newly revived pleasure in the old hall and its environs. I meditated wly on this i; but gradually quitting it, as I found it for the present inexplicable, I turo the sideration of my master’s mao myself. The fidence 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: whe me uedly, the enter seemed wele; 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 ferences were sought as much for his pleasure as for my be.
I, ialked paratively little, but I heard him talk with relish. It was his nature to be unicative; he liked to open to a mind unacquainted with the wlimpses of its ses and ways (I do not mean its corrupt ses and wicked ways, but such as derived their i from the great scale on which they were acted, the strange y 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, artled 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. I felt at times as if he were my relation rather than my master: yet he was imperious sometimes still; but I did not mind that; I saw it was his way. So happy, so gratified did I bee with this new i added to life, that I ceased to pier kindred: my thin crest-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 presen a room was more cheering than the brightest fire. Yet I had not fotten his faults; indeed, I could not, for he brought them frequently before me. He roud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description: in my secret soul I khat his great kio me was balanced by unjust severity to many others. He was moody, too; unatably so; I more than once, whe 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 blaed his features. But 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 sour 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 enced. I thought there were excellent materials in him; though for the present they hung together someoiled and tangled. I ot deny that I grieved for his grief, whatever that was, and would have given much to assuage it.
Though I had inguished my dle 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 lohan a fht at a time; and he has now been reside weeks. If he does go, the ge will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem!”
I hardly know whether I had slept or not after this musing; 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 dle 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, whe-door ced to be left open, not unfrequently found his to the threshold of Mr. Rochester’s chamber: I had seen him lying there myself in the ms. The idea calmed me somewhat: I lay down. Silenposes the nerves; and as an unbroken hush nned 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 i 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 he 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<var></var> unnatural sound was reiterated: and I k came from behind the panels. My first impulse was to rise and fasten the bolt; my , 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 frod a shawl; I withdrew the bolt and opehe door with a trembling hand. There was a dle burning just outside, and oting 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 a, to find whehese 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 turhe smoke had stupefied him. Not a moment could be lost: the very sheets were kindling, I rushed to his bbbr></abbr>asin 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 oct, flew bay own room, brought my own water-jug, baptized the couch afresh, and, by God’s aid, succeeded iinguishing the flames which were dev 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 dle.”
“In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?” he demanded. “What have you doh me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the room besides you? Have you plotted to drown me?”
“I will fetch you a dle, sir; and, in Heaven’s name, get up. Somebody has plotted something: you ot too soon find out who and what it is.”
“There! I am up now; but at your peril you fetch a dle yet: wait two miill 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 dle which still remained in the gallery. He took it from my hand, held it up, and surveyed the bed, all blaed and scorched, the sheets drehe 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 asding to the third storey; the smoke,—the smell of fire which had ducted 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.
He listened very gravely; his face, as I went on, expressed more than astonishment; he did not immediately speak when I had cluded.
“Shall I call Mrs. Fairfax?” I asked.
“Mrs. Fairfax? No; what the deuce would you call her for? What she do? Let her sleep ued.”
“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; it about you, and sit down in the arm-chair: there,—I will put it on. Now place your feet oool, to keep them out of the wet. I am going to leave you a few minutes. I shall take the dle. Remain where you are till I return; be as still as a mouse. I must pay a visit to the sed storey. Don’t move, remember, or call any one.”
He went: I watched the light withdraw. He passed up the gallery very softly, unclosed the 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 mleamed 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 dle 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 fet whether you said you saw anything when you opened your chamber door.”
“No, sir, only the dlesti the ground.”
“But you heard an odd laugh? You have heard that laugh before, I should think, or something like it?”
“Yes, sir: there is a woman who sews here, called Grace Poole,—she laughs in that way. She is a singular person.”
“Just so. Grace Poole—you have guessed it. She is, as you say, singular—very. Well, I shall refle the subject. Meantime, I am glad that you are the only person, besides myself, acquainted with the precise details of to-night’s i. You are no talking fool: say nothing about it. I will at for this state of affairs” (pointing to the bed): “and now return to your own room. I shall do very well on the sofa in the library for the rest of the night. It is near four:- in two hours the servants will be up.”
“Good-night, then, sir,” said I, departing.
He seemed surprised—very insistently so, as he had just told me to go.
“What!” he exclaimed, “are you quitting me already, and in that way?”
“You said I might go, sir.”
“But not without taking leave; not without a word or two of aowledgment and good-will: not, in short, in that brief, dry fashion. Why, you have saved my life!—snatched me from a horrible and excruciatih! and you ast me as if we were mutual strangers! At least shake hands.”
He held out his hand; I gave him mine: he took it first ihem in both his own.
“You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a debt. I ot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable to me in the character of creditor for su obligation: but you: it is different;—I feel your bes no burden, Jane.”
He paused; gazed at me: words almost visible trembled on his lips,—but his voice was checked.
“Good-night again, sir. There is , be, burden, obligation, in the case.”
“I knew,” he tinued, “you would do me good in some way, at some time;—I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not”—(agaiopped)—“did not” (he proceeded hastily) “strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, goodnight!”
Strange energy was in his voice, strange fire in his look.
“I am glad I happeo be awake,” I said: and then I was going.
“What! you will go?”
“I am cold, sir.”
“Cold? Yes,—and standing in a pool! Go, then, Jane; go!” But he still retained my hand, and I could not free it. I bethought myself of an expedient.
“I think I hear Mrs. Fairfax move, sir,” said I.
“Well, leave me:” he relaxed his fingers, and I was gone.
I regained my couch, but hought of sleep. Till m dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but u sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a freshening gale, wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards the bourne: but I could not reach it, even in fancy—a terag breeze blew off land, and tinually drove me back. Sense would resist delirium: judgment would assion. Too feverish to rest, I rose as soon as day dawned.
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