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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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.”
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“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
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
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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.
