Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (63 page)

“No, ma’am — oh, no!  No one is living there.  I suppose you are a stranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happened last autumn, — Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about harvest-time.  A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity of valuable property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture could be saved.  The fire broke out at dead of night, and before the engines arrived from Millcote, the building was one mass of flame.  It was a terrible spectacle: I witnessed it myself.”

“At dead of night!” I muttered.  Yes, that was ever the hour of fatality at Thornfield.  “Was it known how it originated?” I demanded.

“They guessed, ma’am: they guessed.  Indeed, I should say it was ascertained beyond a doubt.  You are not perhaps aware,” he continued, edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking low, “that there was a lady — a — a lunatic, kept in the house?”

“I have heard something of it.”

“She was kept in very close confinement, ma’am: people even for some years was not absolutely certain of her existence.  No one saw her: they only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall; and who or what she was it was difficult to conjecture.  They said Mr. Edward had brought her from abroad, and some believed she had been his mistress.  But a queer thing happened a year since — a very queer thing.”

I feared now to hear my own story.  I endeavoured to recall him to the main fact.

“And this lady?”

“This lady, ma’am,” he answered, “turned out to be Mr. Rochester’s wife!  The discovery was brought about in the strangest way.  There was a young lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell in — ”

“But the fire,” I suggested.

“I’m coming to that, ma’am — that Mr. Edward fell in love with.  The servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was: he was after her continually.  They used to watch him — servants will, you know, ma’am — and he set store on her past everything: for all, nobody but him thought her so very handsome.  She was a little small thing, they say, almost like a child.  I never saw her myself; but I’ve heard Leah, the house-maid, tell of her.  Leah liked her well enough.  Mr. Rochester was about forty, and this governess not twenty; and you see, when gentlemen of his age fall in love with girls, they are often like as if they were bewitched.  Well, he would marry her.”

“You shall tell me this part of the story another time,” I said; “but now I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about the fire.  Was it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had any hand in it?”

“You’ve hit it, ma’am: it’s quite certain that it was her, and nobody but her, that set it going.  She had a woman to take care of her called Mrs. Poole — an able woman in her line, and very trustworthy, but for one fault — a fault common to a deal of them nurses and matrons — she
kept a private bottle of gin by her
, and now and then took a drop over-much.  It is excusable, for she had a hard life of it: but still it was dangerous; for when Mrs. Poole was fast asleep after the gin and water, the mad lady, who was as cunning as a witch, would take the keys out of her pocket, let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the house, doing any wild mischief that came into her head.  They say she had nearly burnt her husband in his bed once: but I don’t know about that.  However, on this night, she set fire first to the hangings of the room next her own, and then she got down to a lower storey, and made her way to the chamber that had been the governess’s — (she was like as if she knew somehow how matters had gone on, and had a spite at her) — and she kindled the bed there; but there was nobody sleeping in it, fortunately.  The governess had run away two months before; and for all Mr. Rochester sought her as if she had been the most precious thing he had in the world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew savage — quite savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but he got dangerous after he lost her.  He would be alone, too.  He sent Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but he did it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and she deserved it — she was a very good woman.  Miss Adèle, a ward he had, was put to school.  He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry, and shut himself up like a hermit at the Hall.”

“What! did he not leave England?”

“Leave England?  Bless you, no!  He would not cross the door-stones of the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost about the grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses — which it is my opinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he was before that midge of a governess crossed him, you never saw, ma’am.  He was not a man given to wine, or cards, or racing, as some are, and he was not so very handsome; but he had a courage and a will of his own, if ever man had.  I knew him from a boy, you see: and for my part, I have often wished that Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she came to Thornfield Hall.”

“Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?”

“Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was burning above and below, and got the servants out of their beds and helped them down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell.  And then they called out to him that she was on the roof, where she was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and shouting out till they could hear her a mile off: I saw her and heard her with my own eyes.  She was a big woman, and had long black hair: we could see it streaming against the flames as she stood.  I witnessed, and several more witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend through the sky-light on to the roof; we heard him call ‘Bertha!’  We saw him approach her; and then, ma’am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement.”

“Dead?”

“Dead!  Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were scattered.”

“Good God!”

“You may well say so, ma’am: it was frightful!”

He shuddered.

“And afterwards?” I urged.

“Well, ma’am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground: there are only some bits of walls standing now.”

“Were any other lives lost?”

“No — perhaps it would have been better if there had.”

“What do you mean?”

“Poor Mr. Edward!” he ejaculated, “I little thought ever to have seen it!  Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his first marriage secret, and wanting to take another wife while he had one living: but I pity him, for my part.”

“You said he was alive?” I exclaimed.

“Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better be dead.”

“Why?  How?”  My blood was again running cold.  “Where is he?” I demanded.  “Is he in England?”

“Ay — ay — he’s in England; he can’t get out of England, I fancy — he’s a fixture now.”

What agony was this!  And the man seemed resolved to protract it.

“He is stone-blind,” he said at last.  “Yes, he is stone-blind, is Mr. Edward.”

I had dreaded worse.  I had dreaded he was mad.  I summoned strength to ask what had caused this calamity.

“It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a way, ma’am: he wouldn’t leave the house till every one else was out before him.  As he came down the great staircase at last, after Mrs. Rochester had flung herself from the battlements, there was a great crash — all fell.  He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, but sadly hurt: a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him partly; but one eye was knocked out, and one hand so crushed that Mr. Carter, the surgeon, had to amputate it directly.  The other eye inflamed: he lost the sight of that also.  He is now helpless, indeed — blind and a cripple.”

“Where is he?  Where does he now live?”

“At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles off: quite a desolate spot.”

“Who is with him?”

“Old John and his wife: he would have none else.  He is quite broken down, they say.”

“Have you any sort of conveyance?”

“We have a chaise, ma’am, a very handsome chaise.”

“Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive me to Ferndean before dark this day, I’ll pay both you and him twice the hire you usually demand.”

CHAPTER XXXVII

The manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity, moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in a wood.  I had heard of it before.  Mr. Rochester often spoke of it, and sometimes went there.  His father had purchased the estate for the sake of the game covers.  He would have let the house, but could find no tenant, in consequence of its ineligible and insalubrious site.  Ferndean then remained uninhabited and unfurnished, with the exception of some two or three rooms fitted up for the accommodation of the squire when he went there in the season to shoot.

To this house I came just ere dark on an evening marked by the characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small penetrating rain.  The last mile I performed on foot, having dismissed the chaise and driver with the double remuneration I had promised.  Even when within a very short distance of the manor-house, you could see nothing of it, so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood about it.  Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where to enter, and passing through them, I found myself at once in the twilight of close-ranked trees.  There was a grass-grown track descending the forest aisle between hoar and knotty shafts and under branched arches.  I followed it, expecting soon to reach the dwelling; but it stretched on and on, it would far and farther: no sign of habitation or grounds was visible.

I thought I had taken a wrong direction and lost my way.  The darkness of natural as well as of sylvan dusk gathered over me.  I looked round in search of another road.  There was none: all was interwoven stem, columnar trunk, dense summer foliage — no opening anywhere.

I proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little; presently I beheld a railing, then the house — scarce, by this dim light, distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its decaying walls.  Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a semicircle.  There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of the forest.  The house presented two pointed gables in its front; the windows were latticed and narrow: the front door was narrow too, one step led up to it.  The whole looked, as the host of the Rochester Arms had said, “quite a desolate spot.”  It was as still as a church on a week-day: the pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound audible in its vicinage.

“Can there be life here?” I asked.

Yes, life of some kind there was; for I heard a movement — that narrow front-door was unclosing, and some shape was about to issue from the grange.

It opened slowly: a figure came out into the twilight and stood on the step; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to feel whether it rained.  Dusk as it was, I had recognised him — it was my master, Edward Fairfax Rochester, and no other.

I stayed my step, almost my breath, and stood to watch him — to examine him, myself unseen, and alas! to him invisible.  It was a sudden meeting, and one in which rapture was kept well in check by pain.  I had no difficulty in restraining my voice from exclamation, my step from hasty advance.

His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever: his port was still erect, his hair was still raven black; nor were his features altered or sunk: not in one year’s space, by any sorrow, could his athletic strength be quelled or his vigorous prime blighted.  But in his countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding — that reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous to approach in his sullen woe.  The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson.

And, reader, do you think I feared him in his blind ferocity? — if you do, you little know me.  A soft hope blest with my sorrow that soon I should dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and on those lips so sternly sealed beneath it: but not yet.  I would not accost him yet.

He descended the one step, and advanced slowly and gropingly towards the grass-plat.  Where was his daring stride now?  Then he paused, as if he knew not which way to turn.  He lifted his hand and opened his eyelids; gazed blank, and with a straining effort, on the sky, and toward the amphitheatre of trees: one saw that all to him was void darkness.  He stretched his right hand (the left arm, the mutilated one, he kept hidden in his bosom); he seemed to wish by touch to gain an idea of what lay around him: he met but vacancy still; for the trees were some yards off where he stood.  He relinquished the endeavour, folded his arms, and stood quiet and mute in the rain, now falling fast on his uncovered head.  At this moment John approached him from some quarter.

“Will you take my arm, sir?” he said; “there is a heavy shower coming on: had you not better go in?”

“Let me alone,” was the answer.

John withdrew without having observed me.  Mr. Rochester now tried to walk about: vainly, — all was too uncertain.  He groped his way back to the house, and, re-entering it, closed the door.

I now drew near and knocked: John’s wife opened for me.  “Mary,” I said, “how are you?”

She started as if she had seen a ghost: I calmed her.  To her hurried “Is it really you, miss, come at this late hour to this lonely place?”  I answered by taking her hand; and then I followed her into the kitchen, where John now sat by a good fire.  I explained to them, in few words, that I had heard all which had happened since I left Thornfield, and that I was come to see Mr. Rochester.  I asked John to go down to the turn-pike-house, where I had dismissed the chaise, and bring my trunk, which I had left there: and then, while I removed my bonnet and shawl, I questioned Mary as to whether I could be accommodated at the Manor House for the night; and finding that arrangements to that effect, though difficult, would not be impossible, I informed her I should stay.  Just at this moment the parlour-bell rang.

“When you go in,” said I, “tell your master that a person wishes to speak to him, but do not give my name.”

“I don’t think he will see you,” she answered; “he refuses everybody.”

When she returned, I inquired what he had said.  “You are to send in your name and your business,” she replied.  She then proceeded to fill a glass with water, and place it on a tray, together with candles.

“Is that what he rang for?” I asked.

“Yes: he always has candles brought in at dark, though he is blind.”

“Give the tray to me; I will carry it in.”

I took it from her hand: she pointed me out the parlour door.  The tray shook as I held it; the water spilt from the glass; my heart struck my ribs loud and fast.  Mary opened the door for me, and shut it behind me.

This parlour looked gloomy: a neglected handful of fire burnt low in the grate; and, leaning over it, with his head supported against the high, old-fashioned mantelpiece, appeared the blind tenant of the room.  His old dog, Pilot, lay on one side, removed out of the way, and coiled up as if afraid of being inadvertently trodden upon.  Pilot pricked up his ears when I came in: then he jumped up with a yelp and a whine, and bounded towards me: he almost knocked the tray from my hands.  I set it on the table; then patted him, and said softly, “Lie down!”  Mr. Rochester turned mechanically to
see
what the commotion was: but as he
saw
nothing, he returned and sighed.

“Give me the water, Mary,” he said.

I approached him with the now only half-filled glass; Pilot followed me, still excited.

“What is the matter?” he inquired.

“Down, Pilot!” I again said.  He checked the water on its way to his lips, and seemed to listen: he drank, and put the glass down.  “This is you, Mary, is it not?”

“Mary is in the kitchen,” I answered.

He put out his hand with a quick gesture, but not seeing where I stood, he did not touch me.  “Who is this?  Who is this?” he demanded, trying, as it seemed, to
see
with those sightless eyes — unavailing and distressing attempt!  “Answer me — speak again!” he ordered, imperiously and aloud.

“Will you have a little more water, sir?  I spilt half of what was in the glass,” I said.

“
Who
is it? 
What
is it?  Who speaks?”

“Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here.  I came only this evening,” I answered.

“Great God! — what delusion has come over me?  What sweet madness has seized me?”

“No delusion — no madness: your mind, sir, is too strong for delusion, your health too sound for frenzy.”

“And where is the speaker?  Is it only a voice?  Oh!  I
cannot
see, but I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst.  Whatever — whoever you are — be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live!”

He groped; I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both mine.

“Her very fingers!” he cried; “her small, slight fingers!  If so there must be more of her.”

The muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my shoulder — neck — waist — I was entwined and gathered to him.

“Is it Jane? 
What
is it?  This is her shape — this is her size — ”

“And this her voice,” I added.  “She is all here: her heart, too.  God bless you, sir!  I am glad to be so near you again.”

“Jane Eyre! — Jane Eyre,” was all he said.

“My dear master,” I answered, “I am Jane Eyre: I have found you out — I am come back to you.”

“In truth? — in the flesh?  My living Jane?”

“You touch me, sir, — you hold me, and fast enough: I am not cold like a corpse, nor vacant like air, am I?”

“My living darling!  These are certainly her limbs, and these her features; but I cannot be so blest, after all my misery.  It is a dream; such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once more to my heart, as I do now; and kissed her, as thus — and felt that she loved me, and trusted that she would not leave me.”

“Which I never will, sir, from this day.”

“Never will, says the vision?  But I always woke and found it an empty mockery; and I was desolate and abandoned — my life dark, lonely, hopeless — my soul athirst and forbidden to drink — my heart famished and never to be fed.  Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before you go — embrace me, Jane.”

“There, sir — and there!”’

I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes — I swept his hair from his brow, and kissed that too.  He suddenly seemed to arouse himself: the conviction of the reality of all this seized him.

“It is you — is it, Jane?  You are come back to me then?”

“I am.”

“And you do not lie dead in some ditch under some stream?  And you are not a pining outcast amongst strangers?”

“No, sir!  I am an independent woman now.”

“Independent!  What do you mean, Jane?”

“My uncle in Madeira is dead, and he left me five thousand pounds.”

“Ah! this is practical — this is real!” he cried: “I should never dream that.  Besides, there is that peculiar voice of hers, so animating and piquant, as well as soft: it cheers my withered heart; it puts life into it. — What, Janet!  Are you an independent woman?  A rich woman?”

“If you won’t let me live with you, I can build a house of my own close up to your door, and you may come and sit in my parlour when you want company of an evening.”

“But as you are rich, Jane, you have now, no doubt, friends who will look after you, and not suffer you to devote yourself to a blind lameter like me?”

“I told you I am independent, sir, as well as rich: I am my own mistress.”

“And you will stay with me?”

“Certainly — unless you object.  I will be your neighbour, your nurse, your housekeeper.  I find you lonely: I will be your companion — to read to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes and hands to you.  Cease to look so melancholy, my dear master; you shall not be left desolate, so long as I live.”