第 十五 章 · Mr. Rochester did, on a future occasion, explain it. It was one

. Mr. Rochester did, on a future occasion, explain it. It was one

afternoon, when he chanced 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 avenue within sight of her.

He then said that she was the daughter of a French opera-dancer, Céline

Varens, towards whom he had once cherished what he called a “_grande

passion_.” This passion Céline 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 gnome, that I installed her in an hotel;

gave her a complete establishment of servants, a carriage, cashmeres,

diamonds, dentelles, &c. In short, I began the process of ruining

myself in the received style, like any other spoony. I had not, it

seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and

destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to

deviate an inch from the beaten centre. I had—as I deserved to have—the

fate of all other spoonies. Happening to call one evening when Céline

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 consecrated so lately by her presence. No,—I

exaggerate; I never thought there was any consecrating virtue about

her: it was rather a sort of pastille perfume she had left; a scent of

musk and amber, than an odour of sanctity. I was just beginning to

stifle with the fumes of conservatory flowers and sprinkled essences,

when I bethought myself to open the window and step out on to the

balcony. It was moonlight and gaslight besides, and very still and

serene. The balcony 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 producing and lighting of a

cigar; having placed it to his lips and breathed a trail of Havannah

incense 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 comfits, and

smoking alternately, watching meantime the equipages that rolled along

the fashionable streets towards the neighbouring opera-house, when in

an elegant close carriage drawn by a beautiful pair of English horses,

and distinctly seen in the brilliant city-night, I recognised the

‘voiture’ I had given Céline. 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 balcony, 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 was a spurred heel

which had rung on the pavement, and that was a hatted head which now

passed under the 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 sentiments 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 neither 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 come some day to a craggy

pass in the channel, where the whole of life’s stream will be broken up

into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to

atoms on crag 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 under this frost. I like Thornfield, its

antiquity, its retirement, its old crow-trees and thorn-trees, its grey

façade, and lines of dark windows reflecting that metal welkin: and yet

how long have I abhorred the very thought of it, shunned it 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 ascending the avenue when he thus 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 conflict in 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 cynical: self-willed and resolute: it settled his passion and

petrified his countenance: 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 who appeared 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 can! 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 count 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; or go in to Sophie!” Continuing

then to pursue his walk in silence, I ventured to recall him to the

point whence he had abruptly diverged—

“Did you leave the balcony, sir,” I asked, “when Mdlle. Varens

entered?”

I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question, but, on

the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he turned his

eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow. “Oh, I had

forgotten Céline! Well, to resume. When I saw my charmer thus come in

accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake

of jealousy, rising on undulating coils from the moonlit balcony,

glided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two minutes to my

heart’s core. Strange!” he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the

point. “Strange that I should choose you for the confidant of all this,

young lady; passing strange that 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 your gravity, considerateness, and caution were made

to be the recipient of secrets. Besides, I know what sort of a mind I

have placed in communication with my own: I know it is one not liable

to take infection: 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 converse, the better; for while I cannot blight you,

you may refresh me.” After this digression he proceeded—

“I remained in the balcony. ‘They will come to her boudoir, no doubt,’

thought I: ‘let me prepare an ambush.’ So putting my hand in through

the open window, I drew the curtain over it, leaving only an opening

through which I could take observations; then I closed the casement,

all but a chink just wide enough to furnish an outlet to lovers’

whispered vows: then I stole back to my chair; and as I resumed it the

pair came in. My eye was quickly at the aperture. Céline’s chamber-maid

entered, lit a lamp, left it on the table, 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 companion in an officer’s uniform; and I knew him for a

young roué of a vicomte—a brainless and vicious youth whom I had

sometimes met in society, and had never thought of hating because I

despised him so absolutely. On recognising him, the fang of the snake

Jealousy was instantly broken; because at the same moment my love for

Céline sank under an extinguisher. A woman who could betray me for such

a rival was not worth contending for; she deserved only scorn; less,

however, than I, who had been her dupe.

“They began to talk; their conversation eased me completely: frivolous,

mercenary, heartless, and senseless, it was rather calculated to weary

than enrage a listener. A card of mine lay on the table; this being

perceived, brought my name under discussion. Neither of them possessed

energy or wit to belabour me soundly, but they insulted me as coarsely

as they could in their little way: especially Céline, who even waxed

rather brilliant on my personal defects—deformities she termed them.

Now it had been her custom to launch out into fervent admiration of

what she called my ‘_beauté mâle_:’ wherein she differed diametrically

from you, who told me point-blank, at the second interview, that you

did not think me handsome. The contrast struck me at the time and—”

Adèle here came running up again.

“Monsieur, John has just been to say that your agent has called and

wishes to see you.”

“Ah! in that case I must abridge. Opening the window, I walked in upon

them; liberated Céline from my protection; gave her notice to vacate

her hotel; offered her a purse for immediate exigencies; disregarded

screams, hysterics, prayers, protestations, convulsions; made an

appointment with the vicomte for a meeting at the Bois de Boulogne.

Next morning I had the pleasure of encountering him; left a bullet in

one of his poor etiolated arms, feeble as the wing of a chicken in the

pip, and then thought I had done with the whole crew. But unluckily the

Varens, six months before, had given me this 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 countenance: 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 musician or singer. I

acknowledged no natural claim on Adèle’s part to be supported by me,

nor do I now acknowledge 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 transplanted it here, to grow up clean in the

wholesome soil of an English country garden. Mrs. Fairfax found you to

train it; but now you know that it is the illegitimate offspring of a

French opera-girl, you will perhaps think differently of your post and

protégée: you will be coming 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

cling closer to her than before. How could I possibly prefer the spoilt

pet of a wealthy family, who would hate her governess as a nuisance, to

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 bonnet and coat, I took her on my knee; kept

her there an hour, allowing her to prattle as she liked: not rebuking

even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to

stray when much noticed, and which betrayed in her a superficiality of

character, inherited probably from her mother, hardly congenial to an

English mind. Still she had her merits; and I was disposed to

appreciate all that was good in her to the utmost. I sought in her

countenance and features a likeness to Mr. Rochester, but found none:

no trait, no turn of expression announced relationship. It was a pity:

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 was probably nothing at all extraordinary in the substance

of the narrative itself: a wealthy Englishman’s passion for a French

dancer, and her treachery 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 in the

act of expressing the present contentment of his mood, and his newly

revived pleasure in the old hall and its environs. I meditated

wonderingly on this incident; but gradually quitting it, as I found it

for the present inexplicable, I turned to the consideration of my

master’s manner to myself. The confidence 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: when he met me unexpectedly, the encounter seemed

welcome; 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 conferences were sought as much

for his pleasure as for my benefit.

I, indeed, talked comparatively little, but I heard him talk with

relish. It was his nature to be communicative; he liked to open to a

mind unacquainted with the world glimpses of its scenes and ways (I do

not mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways, but such as derived their

interest from the great scale on which they were acted, the strange

novelty 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, never startled 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 become with this new interest

added to life, that I ceased to pine after kindred: my thin

crescent-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 presence in a room was more cheering than the

brightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults; indeed, I could

not, for he brought them frequently before me. He was proud, sardonic,

harsh to inferiority of every description: in my secret soul I knew

that his great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many

others. He was moody, too; unaccountably so; I more than once, when

sent 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 blackened 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 source in 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

encouraged. I thought there were excellent materials in him; though for

the present they hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled. I cannot

deny that I grieved for his grief, whatever that was, and would have

given much to assuage it.

Though I had now extinguished my candle 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 longer

than a fortnight at a time; and he has now been resident eight weeks.

If he does go, the change 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 candle 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, when the

kitchen-door chanced to be left open, not unfrequently found his way up

to the threshold of Mr. Rochester’s chamber: I had seen him lying there

myself in the mornings. The idea calmed me somewhat: I lay down.

Silence composes the nerves; and as an unbroken hush now reigned 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

incident 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

near the 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 unnatural sound was

reiterated: and I knew it came from behind the panels. My first impulse

was to rise and fasten the bolt; my next, 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 frock and a shawl; I withdrew the bolt and opened the

door with a trembling hand. There was a candle burning just outside,

and on the matting 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 and

left, to find whence these 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 turned:

the smoke had stupefied him. Not a moment could be lost: the very

sheets were kindling, I rushed to his basin 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 occupant, flew back to my own room,

brought my own water-jug, baptized the couch afresh, and, by God’s aid,

succeeded in extinguishing the flames which were devouring 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 candle.”

“In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?” he

demanded. “What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the

room besides you? Have you plotted to drown me?”

“I will fetch you a candle, sir; and, in Heaven’s name, get up.

Somebody has plotted something: you cannot too soon find out who and

what it is.”

“There! I am up now; but at your peril you fetch a candle yet: wait two

minutes till 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 candle which still remained in the gallery. He

took it from my hand, held it up, and surveyed the bed, all blackened

and scorched, the sheets drenched, the 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 ascending to the third storey; the

smoke,—the smell of fire which had conducted 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.

“What is it and who did it?” he asked

He listened very gravely; his face, as I went on, expressed more

concern than astonishment; he did not immediately speak when I had

concluded.

“Shall I call Mrs. Fairfax?” I asked.

“Mrs. Fairfax? No; what the deuce would you call her for? What can she

do? Let her sleep unmolested.”

“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; wrap it about you, and sit down

in the arm-chair: there,—I will put it on. Now place your feet on the

stool, to keep them out of the wet. I am going to leave you a few

minutes. I shall take the candle. Remain where you are till I return;

be as still as a mouse. I must pay a visit to the second 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 more gleamed 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 candle 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 forget whether you said you saw anything when you opened your

chamber door.”

“No, sir, only the candlestick on 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 reflect on the subject. Meantime, I am

glad that you are the only person, besides myself, acquainted with the

precise details of to-night’s incident. You are no talking fool: say

nothing about it. I will account 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 inconsistently 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

acknowledgment and good-will: not, in short, in that brief, dry

fashion. Why, you have saved my life!—snatched me from a horrible and

excruciating death! and you walk past me as if we were mutual

strangers! At least shake hands.”

He held out his hand; I gave him mine: he took it first in one, then in

both his own.

“You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a

debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been

tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation:

but you: it is different;—I feel your benefits 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 no debt, benefit, burden, obligation,

in the case.”

“I knew,” he continued, “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”—(again he stopped)—“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, good-night!”

Strange energy was in his voice, strange fire in his look.

“I am glad I happened to 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 never thought of sleep. Till morning dawned I

was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet 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 counteracting

breeze blew off land, and continually drove me back. Sense would resist

delirium: judgment would warn passion. Too feverish to rest, I rose as

soon as day dawned.