bush.'
'Because I have less confidence in my deserts than Adele has: she
can prefer the claim of old acquaintance, and the right too of custom;
for she says you have always been in the habit of giving her
playthings; but if I had to make out a case I should be puzzled, since
I am a stranger, and have done nothing to entitle me to an
acknowledgment.'
'Oh, don't fall back on over-modesty! I have examined Adele, and
find you have taken great pains with her: she is not bright, she has
no talents; yet in a short time she has made much improvement.'
'Sir, you have now given me my "cadeau"; I am obliged to you: it is
the meed teachers most covet-praise of their pupils' progress.'
'Humph!' said Mr. Rochester, and he took his tea in silence.
'Come to the fire,' said the master, when the tray was taken
away, and Mrs. Fairfax had settled into a corner with her knitting;
while Adele was leading me by the hand round the room, showing me
the beautiful books and ornaments on the consoles and chiffonnieres.
We obeyed, as in duty bound; Adele wanted to take a seat on my knee,
but she was ordered to amuse herself with Pilot.
'You have been resident in my house three months?'
'Yes, sir.'
'And you came from-?'
'Ah! a charitable concern. How long were you there?'
'Eight years.'
'Eight years! you must be tenacious of life. I thought half the
time in such a place would have done up any constitution! No wonder
you have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had
got that sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I
thought unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand
whether you had bewitched my horse: I am not sure yet. Who are your
parents?'
'I have none.'
'Nor ever had, I suppose: do you remember them?'
'No.'
'I thought not. And so you were waiting for your people when you
sat on that stile?'
'For whom, sir?'
'For the men in green: it was a proper moonlight evening for
them. Did I break through one of your rings, that you spread that
damned ice on the causeway?'
I shook my head. 'The men in green all forsook England a hundred
years ago,' said I, speaking as seriously as he had done. 'And not
even in Hay Lane, or the fields about it, could you find a trace of
them. I don't think either summer or harvest, or winter moon, will
ever shine on their revels more.'
Mrs. Fairfax had dropped her knitting, and, with raised eyebrows,
seemed wondering what sort of talk this was.
'Well,' resumed Mr. Rochester, 'if you disown parents, you must
have some sort of kinsfolk: uncles and aunts?'
'No; none that I ever saw.'
'And your home?'
'I have none.'
'Where do your brothers and sisters live?'
'I have no brothers or sisters.'
'Who recommended you to come here?'
'I advertised, and Mrs. Fairfax answered my advertisement.'
'Yes,' said the good lady, who now knew what ground we were upon,
'and I am daily thankful for the choice Providence led me to make.
Miss Eyre has been an invaluable companion to me, and a kind and
careful teacher to Adele.'
'Don't trouble yourself to give her a character,' returned Mr.
Rochester: 'eulogiums will not bias me; I shall judge for myself.
She began by felling my horse.'
'Sir?' said Mrs. Fairfax.
'I have to thank her for this sprain.'
The widow looked bewildered.
'Miss Eyre, have you ever lived in a town?'
'No, sir.'
'Have you seen much society?'
'None but the pupils and teachers of Lowood, and now the inmates of
Thornfield.'
'Have you read much?'
'Only such books as came in my way; and they have not been numerous
or very learned.'
'You have lived the life of a nun: no doubt you are well drilled in
religious forms;- Brocklehurst, who I understand directs Lowood, is
a parson, is he not?'
'Yes, sir.'
'And you girls probably worshipped him, as a convent full of
religieuses would worship their director.'
'Oh, no.'
'You are very cool! No! What! a novice not worship her priest! That
sounds blasphemous.'
'I disliked Mr. Brocklehurst; and I was not alone in the feeling.
He is a harsh man; at once pompous and meddling; he cut off our
hair; and for economy's sake bought us bad needles and thread, with
which we could hardly sew.'
'That was very false economy,' remarked Mrs. Fairfax, who now again
caught the drift of the dialogue.
'And was that the head and front of his offending?' demanded Mr.
Rochester.
'He starved us when he had the sole superintendence of the
provision department, before the committee was appointed; and he bored
us with long lectures once a week, and with evening readings from
books of his own inditing, about sudden deaths and judgments, which
made us afraid to go to bed.'
'What age were you when you went to Lowood?'
'About ten.'
'And you stayed there eight years: you are now, then, eighteen?'
I assented.
'Arithmetic, you see, is useful; without its aid, I should hardly
have been able to guess your age. It is a point difficult to fix where
the features and countenance are so much at variance as in your
case. And now what did you learn at Lowood? Can you play?'
'A little.'
'Of course: that is the established answer. Go into the library-
I mean, if you please.- (Excuse my tone of command; I am used to
say, "Do this," and it is done: I cannot alter my customary habits for
one new inmate.)- Go, then, into the library; take a candle with
you; leave the door open; sit down to the piano, and play a tune.'
I departed, obeying his directions.
'Enough!' he called out in a few minutes. 'You play a little, I
see; like any other English school-girl; perhaps rather better than
some, but not well.'
I closed the piano and returned. Mr. Rochester continued-
'Adele showed me some sketches this morning, which she said were
yours. I don't know whether they were entirely of your doing; probably
a master aided you?'
'No, indeed!' I interjected.
'Ah! that pricks pride. Well, fetch me your portfolio, if you can
vouch for its contents being original; but don't pass your word unless
you are certain: I can recognise patchwork.'
'Then I will say nothing, and you shall judge for yourself, sir.'
I brought the portfolio from the library.
'Approach the table,' said he; and I wheeled it to his couch. Adele
and Mrs. Fairfax drew near to see the pictures.
'No crowding,' said Mr. Rochester: 'take the drawings from my
hand as I finish with them; but don't push your faces up to mine.'
He deliberately scrutinised each sketch and painting. Three he laid
aside; the others, when he had examined them, he swept from him.
'Take them off to the other table, Mrs. Fairfax,' said he, 'and
look at them with Adele;- you' (glancing at me) 'resume your seat, and
answer my questions. I perceive those pictures were done by one
hand: was that hand yours?'
'Yes.'
'And when did you find time to do them? They have taken much
time, and some thought.'
'I did them in the last two vacations I spent at Lowood, when I had
no other occupation.'
'Where did you get your copies?'
'Out of my head.'
'That head I see now on your shoulders?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Has it other furniture of the same kind within?'
'I should think it may have: I should hope- better.'
He spread the pictures before him, and again surveyed them
alternately.
While he is so occupied, I will tell you, reader, what they are:
and first, I must premise that they are nothing wonderful. The
subjects had, indeed, risen vividly on my mind. As I saw them with the
spiritual eye, before I attempted to embody them, they were
striking; but my hand would not second my fancy, and in each case it
had wrought out but a pale portrait of the thing I had conceived.
These pictures were in water-colours. The first represented
clouds low and livid, rolling over a swollen sea: all the distance was
in eclipse; so, too, was the foreground; or rather, the nearest
billows, for there was no land. One gleam of light lifted into
relief a half-submerged mast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and
large, with wings flecked with foam; its beak held a gold bracelet set
with gems, that I had touched with as brilliant tints as my palette
could yield, and as glittering distinctness as my pencil could impart.
Sinking below the bird and mast, a drowned corpse glanced through
the green water; a fair arm was the only limb clearly visible,
whence the bracelet had been washed or torn.
The second picture contained for foreground only the dim peak of
a hill, with grass and some leaves slanting as if by a breeze.
Beyond and above spread an expanse of sky, dark blue as at twilight:
rising into the sky was a woman's shape to the bust, portrayed in
tints as dusk and soft as I could combine. The dim forehead was
crowned with a star; the lineaments below were seen as through the
suffusion of vapour; the eyes shone dark and wild; the hair streamed
shadowy, like a beamless cloud torn by storm or by electric travail.
On the neck lay a pale reflection like moonlight; the same faint
lustre touched the train of thin clouds from which rose and bowed this
vision of the Evening Star.
The third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter
sky: a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close
serried, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose, in the
foreground, a head,- a colossal head, inclined towards the iceberg,
and resting against it. Two thin hands, joined under the forehead, and
supporting it, drew up before the lower features a sable veil; a
brow quite bloodless, white as bone, and an eye hollow and fixed,
blank of meaning but for the glassiness of despair, alone were
visible. Above the temples, amidst wreathed turban folds of black
drapery, vague in its character and consistency as cloud, gleamed a
ring of white flame, gemmed with sparkles of a more lurid tinge.
This pale crescent was 'the likeness of a kingly crown'; what it
diademed was 'the shape which shape had none.'
'Were you happy when you painted these pictures?' asked Mr.
Rochester presently.
'I was absorbed, sir: yes, and I was happy. To paint them, in
short, was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known.'
'That is not saying much. Your pleasures, by your own account, have
been few; but I daresay you did exist in a kind of artist's
dreamland while you blent and arranged these strange tints. Did you
sit at them long each day?'
'I had nothing else to do, because it was the vacation, and I sat
at them from morning till noon, and from noon till night: the length
of the midsummer days favoured my inclination to apply.'
'And you felt self-satisfied with the result of your ardent
labours?'
'Far from it. I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and
my handiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was
quite powerless to realise.'
'Not quite: you have secured the shadow of your thought; but no
more, probably. You had not enough of the artist's skill and science
to give it full being: yet the drawings are, for a school-girl,
peculiar. As to the thoughts, they are elfish. These eyes in the
Evening Star you must have seen in a dream. How could you make them
look so clear, and yet not at all brilliant? for the planet above
quells their rays. And what meaning is that in their solemn depth? And
who taught you to paint wind? There is a high gale in that sky, and on
this hill-top. Where did you see Latmos? For that is Latmos. There!
put the drawings away!'
I had scarce tied the strings of the portfolio, when, looking at
his watch, he said abruptly-
'It is nine o'clock: what are you about, Miss Eyre, to let Adele
sit up so long? Take her to bed!'
Adele went to kiss him before quitting the room: he endured the
caress, but scarcely seemed to relish it more than Pilot would have
done, nor so much.
'I wish you all good-night, now,' said he, making a movement of the
hand towards the door, in token that he was tired of our company,
and wished to dismiss us. Mrs. Fairfax folded up her knitting: I
took my portfolio: we curtseyed to him, received a frigid bow in
return, and so withdrew.
'You said Mr. Rochester was not strikingly peculiar, Mrs. Fairfax,'
I observed, when I rejoined her in her room, after putting Adele to
bed.
'Well, is he?'
'I think so: he is very changeful and abrupt.'
'True: no doubt he may appear so to a stranger, but I am so
accustomed to his manner, I never think of it; and then, if he has
peculiarities of temper, allowance should be made.'
'Why?'
'Partly because it is his nature- and we can none of us help our
nature; and partly because he has painful thoughts, no doubt, to
