cheeks, a straight nose, and small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall,
stately, and finely developed in figure; I felt it a misfortune that I
was so little, so pale, and had features so irregular and so marked.
And why had I these aspirations and these regrets? It would be
difficult to say: I could not then distinctly say it to myself; yet
I had a reason, and a logical, natural reason too. However, when I had
brushed my hair very smooth, and put on my black frock- which,
Quakerlike as it was, at least had the merit of fitting to a nicety-
and adjusted my clean white tucker, I thought I should do
respectably enough to appear before Mrs. Fairfax, and that my new
pupil would not at least recoil from me with antipathy. Having
opened my chamber window, and seen that I left all things straight and
neat on the toilet table, I ventured forth.
Traversing the long and matted gallery, I descended the slippery
steps of oak; then I gained the hall: I halted there a minute; I
looked at some pictures on the walls (one, I remember, represented a
grim man in a cuirass, and one a lady with powdered hair and a pearl
necklace), at a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock
whose case was of oak curiously carved, and ebon black with time and
rubbing. Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me; but then
I was so little accustomed to grandeur. The hall-door, which was
half of glass, stood open; I stepped over the threshold. It was a fine
autumn morning; the early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and
still green fields; advancing on to the lawn, I looked up and surveyed
the front of the mansion. It was three storeys high, of proportions
not vast, though considerable: a gentleman's manor-house, not a
nobleman's seat: battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look.
Its grey front stood out well from the background of a rookery,
whose cawing tenants were now on the wing: they flew over the lawn and
grounds to alight in a great meadow, from which these were separated
by a sunk fence, and where an array of mighty old thorn trees, strong,
knotty, and broad as oaks, at once explained the etymology of the
mansion's designation. Farther off were hills: not so lofty as those
round Lowood, nor so craggy, nor so like barriers of separation from
the living world; but yet quiet and lonely hills enough, and seeming
to embrace Thornfield with a seclusion I had not expected to find
existent so near the stirring locality of Millcote. A little hamlet,
whose roofs were blent with trees, straggled up the side of one of
these hills; the church of the district stood nearer Thornfield: its
old tower-top looked over a knoll between the house and gates.
I was yet enjoying the calm prospect and pleasant fresh air, yet
listening with delight to the cawing of the rooks, yet surveying the
wide, hoary front of the hall, and thinking what a great place it
was for one lonely little dame like Mrs. Fairfax to inhabit, when that
lady appeared at the door.
'What! out already?' said she. 'I see you are an early riser.' I
went up to her, and was received with an affable kiss and shake of the
hand.
'How do you like Thornfield?' she asked. I told her I liked it very
much.
'Yes,' she said, 'it is a pretty place; but I fear it will be
getting out of order, unless Mr. Rochester should take it into his
head to come and reside here permanently; or, at least, visit it
rather oftener: great houses and fine grounds require the presence
of the proprietor.'
'Mr. Rochester!' I exclaimed. 'Who is he?'
'The owner of Thornfield,' she responded quietly. 'Did you not know
he was called Rochester?'
Of course I did not- I had never heard of him before; but the old
lady seemed to regard his existence as a universally understood
fact, with which everybody must be acquainted by instinct.
'I thought,' I continued, 'Thornfield belonged to you.'
'To me? Bless you, child; what an idea! To me! I am only the
housekeeper- the manager. To be sure I am distantly related to the
Rochesters by the mother's side, or at least my husband was; he was
a clergyman, incumbent of Hay- that little village yonder on the hill-
and that church near the gates was his. The present Mr. Rochester's
mother was a Fairfax, second cousin to my husband: but I never presume
on the connection- in fact, it is nothing to me; I consider myself
quite in the light of an ordinary housekeeper: my employer is always
civil, and I expect nothing more.'
'And the little girl- my pupil!'
'She is Mr. Rochester's ward; he commissioned me to find a
believe. Here she comes, with her "bonne," as she calls her nurse.'
The enigma then was explained: this affable and kind little widow
was no great dame; but a dependant like myself. I did not like her the
worse for that; on the contrary, I felt better pleased than ever.
The equality between her and me was real; not the mere result of
condescension on her part: so much the better- my position was all the
freer.
As I was meditating on this discovery, a little girl, followed by
her attendant, came running up the lawn. I looked at my pupil, who did
not at first appear to notice me: she was quite a child, perhaps seven
or eight years old, slightly built, with a pale, small-featured
face, and a redundancy of hair falling in curls to her waist.
'Good morning, Miss Adela,' said Mrs. Fairfax. 'Come and speak to
the lady who is to teach you, and to make you a clever woman some
day.' She approached.
'C'est la ma gouvernante!' said she, pointing to me, and addressing
her nurse; who answered-
'Mais oui, certainement.'
'Are they foreigners?' I inquired, amazed at hearing the French
language.
'The nurse is a foreigner, and Adela was born on the Continent;
and, I believe, never left it till within six months ago. When she
first came here she could speak no English; now she can make shift
to talk it a little: I don't understand her, she mixes it so with
French; but you will make out her meaning very well, I daresay.'
Fortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a
French lady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with
Madame Pierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last
seven years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily- applying
myself to take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as
possible the pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain
degree of readiness and correctness in the language, and was not
likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela. She came and
shook hands with me when she heard that I was her governess; and as
I led her in to breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her
own tongue: she replied briefly at first, but after we were seated
at the table, and she had examined me some ten minutes with her
large hazel eyes, she suddenly commenced chattering fluently.
'Ah!' cried she, in French, 'you speak my language as well as Mr.
Rochester does: I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can
Sophie. She will be glad: nobody here understands her: Madame
Fairfax is all English. Sophie is my nurse; she came with me over
the sea in a great ship with a chimney that smoked- how it did smoke!-
and I was sick, and so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester. Mr.
Rochester lay down on a sofa in a pretty room called the salon, and
Sophie and I had little beds in another place. I nearly fell out of
mine; it was like a shelf. And Mademoiselle- what is your name?'
'Eyre- Jane Eyre.'
'Aire? Bah! I cannot say it. Well, our ship stopped in the morning,
before it was quite daylight, at a great city- a huge city, with
very dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty clean
town I came from; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a
plank to the land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach,
which took us to a beautiful large house, larger than this and
finer, called an hotel. We stayed there nearly a week: I and Sophie
used to walk every day in a great green place full of trees, called
the Park; and there were many children there besides me, and a pond
with beautiful birds in it, that I fed with crumbs.'
'Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?' asked Mrs.
Fairfax.
I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent
tongue of Madame Pierrot.
'I wish,' continued the good lady, 'you would ask her a question or
two about her parents: I wonder if she remembers them?'
'Adele,' I inquired, 'with whom did you live when you were in
that pretty clean town you spoke of?'
'I lived long ago with mama; but she is gone to the Holy Virgin.
Mama used to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses. A great
many gentlemen and ladies came to see mama, and I used to dance before
them, or to sit on their knees and sing to them: I liked it. Shall I
let you hear me sing now?'
She had finished her breakfast, so I permitted her to give a
specimen of her accomplishments. Descending from her chair, she came
and placed herself on my knee; then, folding her little hands demurely
before her, shaking back her curls and lifting her eyes to the
ceiling, she commenced singing a song from some opera. It was the
strain of a forsaken lady, who, after bewailing the perfidy of her
lover, calls pride to her aid; desires her attendant to deck her in
her brightest jewels and richest robes, and resolves to meet the false
one that night at a ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety of her
demeanour, how little his desertion has affected her.
The subject seemed strangely chosen for an infant singer; but I
suppose the point of the exhibition lay in hearing the notes of love
and jealousy warbled with the lisp of childhood; and in very bad taste
that point was: at least I thought so.
Adele sang the canzonette tunefully enough, and with the naivete of
her age. This achieved, she jumped from my knee and said, 'Now,
Mademoiselle, I will repeat you some poetry.'
Assuming an attitude, she began 'La Ligue des Rats: fable de La
Fontaine.' She then declaimed the little piece with an attention to
punctuation and emphasis, a flexibility of voice and an
appropriateness of gesture, very unusual indeed at her age, and
which proved she had been carefully trained.
'Was it your mama who taught you that piece?' I asked.
'Yes, and she just used to say it in this way: "Qu'avez vous
donc? lui dit un de ces rats; parlez!" She made me lift my hand- so-
to remind me to raise my voice at the question. Now shall I dance
for you?'
'No, that will do: but after your mama went to the Holy Virgin,
as you say, with whom did you live then?'
'With Madame Frederic and her husband: she took care of me, but she
is nothing related to me. I think she is poor, for she had not so fine
a house as mama. I was not long there. Mr. Rochester asked me if I
would like to go and live with him in England, and I said yes; for I
knew Mr. Rochester before I knew Madame Frederic, and he was always
kind to me and gave me pretty dresses and toys: but you see he has not
kept his word, for he has brought me to England, and now he is gone
back again himself, and I never see him.'
After breakfast, Adele and I withdrew to the library, which room,
it appears, Mr. Rochester had directed should be used as the
schoolroom. Most of the books were locked up behind glass doors; but
there was one bookcase left open containing everything that could be
needed in the way of elementary works, and several volumes of light
literature, poetry, biography, travels, a few romances, etc. I suppose
he had considered that these were all the governess would require
for her private perusal; and, indeed, they contented me amply for
the present; compared with the scanty pickings I had now and then been
able to glean at Lowood, they seemed to offer an abundant harvest of
entertainment and information. In this room, too, there was a
cabinet piano, quite new and of superior tone; also an easel for
painting and a pair of globes.
I found my pupil sufficiently docile, though disinclined to
apply: she had not been used to regular occupation of any kind. I felt
it would be injudicious to confine her too much at first; so, when I
had talked to her a great deal, and got her to learn a little, and
when the morning had advanced to noon, I allowed her to return to
her nurse. I then proposed to occupy myself till dinner-time in
drawing some little sketches for her use.
As I was going upstairs to fetch my portfolio and pencils, Mrs.
Fairfax called to me: 'Your morning school-hours are over now, I
suppose,' said she. She was in a room the folding doors of which stood
open: I went in when she addressed me. It was a large, stately
apartment, with purple chairs and curtains, a Turkey carpet,
walnut-panelled walls, one vast window rich in stained glass, and a
lofty ceiling, nobly moulded. Mrs. Fairfax was dusting some vases of
fine purple spar, which stood on a sideboard.
'What a beautiful room!' I exclaimed, as I looked round; for I
had never before seen any half so imposing.
'Yes; this is the dining-room. I have just opened the window, to
let in a little air and sunshine; for everything gets so damp in
apartments that are seldom inhabited; the drawing-room yonder feels
like a vault.'
She pointed to a wide arch corresponding to the window, and hung
like it with a Tyrian-dyed curtain, now looped up. Mounting to it by
