'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 Celine 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
Adele, 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
Adele'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 protegee: 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, etc.- Eh?'
'No: Adele 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 Adele 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.
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
