Mr. Rochester, it seems, by the surgeon’s orders, went to bed early

that night; nor did he rise soon next morning. When he did come down,

it was to attend to business: his agent and some of his tenants were

arrived, and waiting to speak with him.



Adèle and I had now to vacate the library: it would be in daily

requisition as a reception-room for callers. A fire was lit in an

apartment upstairs, and there I carried our books, and arranged it for

the future schoolroom. I discerned in the course of the morning that

Thornfield Hall was a changed place: no longer silent as a church, it

echoed every hour or two to a knock at the door, or a clang of the

bell; steps, too, often traversed the hall, and new voices spoke in

different keys below; a rill from the outer world was flowing through

it; it had a master: for my part, I liked it better.



Adèle was not easy to teach that day; she could not apply: she kept

running to the door and looking over the banisters to see if she could

get a glimpse of Mr. Rochester; then she coined pretexts to go

downstairs, in order, as I shrewdly suspected, to visit the library,

where I knew she was not wanted; then, when I got a little angry, and

made her sit still, she continued to talk incessantly of her “ami,

Monsieur Edouard Fairfax _de_ Rochester,” as she dubbed him (I had not

before heard his prenomens), and to conjecture what presents he had

brought her: for it appears he had intimated the night before, that

when his luggage came from Millcote, there would be found amongst it a

little box in whose contents she had an interest.



“Et cela doit signifier,” said she, “qu’il y aura là dedans un cadeau

pour moi, et peut-être pour vous aussi, mademoiselle. Monsieur a parlé

de vous: il m’a demandé le nom de ma gouvernante, et si elle n’était

pas une petite personne, assez mince et un peu pâle. J’ai dit qu’oui:

car c’est vrai, n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle?”



I and my pupil dined as usual in Mrs. Fairfax’s parlour; the afternoon

was wild and snowy, and we passed it in the schoolroom. At dark I

allowed Adèle to put away books and work, and to run downstairs; for,

from the comparative silence below, and from the cessation of appeals

to the door-bell, I conjectured that Mr. Rochester was now at liberty.

Left alone, I walked to the window; but nothing was to be seen thence:

twilight and snowflakes together thickened the air, and hid the very

shrubs on the lawn. I let down the curtain and went back to the

fireside.



In the clear embers I was tracing a view, not unlike a picture I

remembered to have seen of the castle of Heidelberg, on the Rhine, when

Mrs. Fairfax came in, breaking up by her entrance the fiery mosaic I

had been piercing together, and scattering too some heavy unwelcome

thoughts that were beginning to throng on my solitude.



“Mr. Rochester would be glad if you and your pupil would take tea with

him in the drawing-room this evening,” said she: “he has been so much

engaged all day that he could not ask to see you before.”



“When is his tea-time?” I inquired.



“Oh, at six o’clock: he keeps early hours in the country. You had

better change your frock now; I will go with you and fasten it. Here is

a candle.”



“Is it necessary to change my frock?”



“Yes, you had better: I always dress for the evening when Mr. Rochester

is here.”



This additional ceremony seemed somewhat stately; however, I repaired

to my room, and, with Mrs. Fairfax’s aid, replaced my black stuff dress

by one of black silk; the best and the only additional one I had,

except one of light grey, which, in my Lowood notions of the toilette,

I thought too fine to be worn, except on first-rate occasions.



“You want a brooch,” said Mrs. Fairfax. I had a single little pearl

ornament which Miss Temple gave me as a parting keepsake: I put it on,

and then we went downstairs. Unused as I was to strangers, it was

rather a trial to appear thus formally summoned in Mr. Rochester’s

presence. I let Mrs. Fairfax precede me into the dining-room, and kept

in her shade as we crossed that apartment; and, passing the arch, whose

curtain was now dropped, entered the elegant recess beyond.



Two wax candles stood lighted on the table, and two on the mantelpiece;

basking in the light and heat of a superb fire, lay Pilot—Adèle knelt

near him. Half reclined on a couch appeared Mr. Rochester, his foot

supported by the cushion; he was looking at Adèle and the dog: the fire

shone full on his face. I knew my traveller with his broad and jetty

eyebrows; his square forehead, made squarer by the horizontal sweep of

his black hair. I recognised his decisive nose, more remarkable for

character than beauty; his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler;

his grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were very grim, and no

mistake. His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonised in

squareness with his physiognomy: I suppose it was a good figure in the

athletic sense of the term—broad chested and thin flanked, though

neither tall nor graceful.



Mr. Rochester must have been aware of the entrance of Mrs. Fairfax and

myself; but it appeared he was not in the mood to notice us, for he

never lifted his head as we approached.



“Here is Miss Eyre, sir,” said Mrs. Fairfax, in her quiet way. He

bowed, still not taking his eyes from the group of the dog and child.



“Let Miss Eyre be seated,” said he: and there was something in the

forced stiff bow, in the impatient yet formal tone, which seemed

further to express, “What the deuce is it to me whether Miss Eyre be

there or not? At this moment I am not disposed to accost her.”



I sat down quite disembarrassed. A reception of finished politeness

would probably have confused me: I could not have returned or repaid it

by answering grace and elegance on my part; but harsh caprice laid me

under no obligation; on the contrary, a decent quiescence, under the

freak of manner, gave me the advantage. Besides, the eccentricity of

the proceeding was piquant: I felt interested to see how he would go

on.



He went on as a statue would, that is, he neither spoke nor moved. Mrs.

Fairfax seemed to think it necessary that some one should be amiable,

and she began to talk. Kindly, as usual—and, as usual, rather trite—she

condoled with him on the pressure of business he had had all day; on

the annoyance it must have been to him with that painful sprain: then

she commended his patience and perseverance in going through with it.



“Madam, I should like some tea,” was the sole rejoinder she got. She

hastened to ring the bell; and when the tray came, she proceeded to

arrange the cups, spoons, &c., with assiduous celerity. I and Adèle

went to the table; but the master did not leave his couch.



“Will you hand Mr. Rochester’s cup?” said Mrs. Fairfax to me; “Adèle

might perhaps spill it.”



I did as requested. As he took the cup from my hand, Adèle, thinking

the moment propitious for making a request in my favour, cried out—



“N’est-ce pas, monsieur, qu’il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre

dans votre petit coffre?”



“Who talks of cadeaux?” said he gruffly. “Did you expect a present,

Miss Eyre? Are you fond of presents?” and he searched my face with eyes

that I saw were dark, irate, and piercing.



“I hardly know, sir; I have little experience of them: they are

generally thought pleasant things.”



“Generally thought? But what do _you_ think?”



“I should be obliged to take time, sir, before I could give you an

answer worthy of your acceptance: a present has many faces to it, has

it not? and one should consider all, before pronouncing an opinion as

to its nature.”



“Miss Eyre, you are not so unsophisticated as Adèle: she demands a

‘cadeau,’ clamorously, the moment she sees me: you beat about the

bush.”



“Because I have less confidence in my deserts than Adèle 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 Adèle, 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 Adèle

was leading me by the hand round the room, showing me the beautiful

books and ornaments on the consoles and chiffonnières. We obeyed, as in

duty bound; Adèle 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—?”



“From Lowood school, in ——shire.”



“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 Adèle.”



“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—



“Adèle 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. Adèle 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 Adèle;—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 Adèle sit up

so long? Take her to bed.”



Adèle 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 Adèle 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 harass him,

and make his spirits unequal.”



“What about?”



“Family troubles, for one thing.”



“But he has no family.”



“Not now, but he has had—or, at least, relatives. He lost his elder

brother a few years since.”



“His _elder_ brother?”



“Yes. The present Mr. Rochester has not been very long in possession of

the property; only about nine years.”



“Nine years is a tolerable time. Was he so very fond of his brother as

to be still inconsolable for his loss?”



“Why, no—perhaps not. I believe there were some misunderstandings

between them. Mr. Rowland Rochester was not quite just to Mr. Edward;

and perhaps he prejudiced his father against him. The old gentleman was

fond of money, and anxious to keep the family estate together. He did

not like to diminish the property by division, and yet he was anxious

that Mr. Edward should have wealth, too, to keep up the consequence of

the name; and, soon after he was of age, some steps were taken that

were not quite fair, and made a great deal of mischief. Old Mr.

Rochester and Mr. Rowland combined to bring Mr. Edward into what he

considered a painful position, for the sake of making his fortune: what

the precise nature of that position was I never clearly knew, but his

spirit could not brook what he had to suffer in it. He is not very

forgiving: he broke with his family, and now for many years he has led

an unsettled kind of life. I don’t think he has ever been resident at

Thornfield for a fortnight together, since the death of his brother

without a will left him master of the estate; and, indeed, no wonder he

shuns the old place.”



“Why should he shun it?”



“Perhaps he thinks it gloomy.”



The answer was evasive. I should have liked something clearer; but Mrs.

Fairfax either could not, or would not, give me more explicit

information of the origin and nature of Mr. Rochester’s trials. She

averred they were a mystery to herself, and that what she knew was

chiefly from conjecture. It was evident, indeed, that she wished me to

drop the subject, which I did accordingly.