explained. I breathed again: my blood resumed its flow. Fully
assured by these words that Mr. Edward- my Mr. Rochester (God bless
him, wherever he was!)- was at least alive: was, in short, 'the
present gentleman.' Gladdening words! It seemed I could hear all
that was to come- whatever the disclosures might be- with
comparative tranquillity. Since he was not in the grave, I could bear,
I thought, to learn that he was at the Antipodes.
'Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?' I asked, knowing,
of course, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring the
direct question as to where he really was.
'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 housemaid, 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 Adele, 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 skylight 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.'
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CHAPTER XXXVII
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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 wound 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 blent 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.
