Thornfield Hall Page 12

  Bertha’s episode of insanity had already ruffled the waters of the calm millpond of life at Thornfield Hall. The next event caused shockwaves that brought profound changes to all our lives. Mr Rochester wrote to say he would be arriving at the end of the summer and that he would have a companion with him.

  I stopped reading his letter at that point and made a short sharp prayer. ‘Dear Lord, please do not let it be another madwoman,’ was the gist of my request. ‘I have coped with one but two such individuals in the same house… That is too much to ask!’ I protested to an indifferent heaven. I read the rest of his letter with trepidation. It was such a relief when I learned in the next paragraph that our visitor was to be a child. A little girl of about seven years old. She was to come and live with us. I was in ecstasy. It would be so lovely to have a child around stuffy old Thornfield Hall. To hear her chatter in the corridors, to bake treats for her and to have the care of her pretty dresses. She would bring such joy to the house. I’ve never met a child yet that did not smile and laugh more than it complained. If only I could say the same for adults.

  The news made me think of my own baby girl. She was still a baby to me. As I thought about her I realized she would be fifteen now. If she’d lived she’d be an adult. I did not like to think of her as growing up and leaving me and marrying and having children. I decided to keep her in my heart as the angelic-faced baby she was. In this way she would avoid all the pain of childbirth and the great toil and the many heartaches that are the lot of women.

  The little girl was called Adele, a ward of Mr Rochester’s. Everyone said she must be Mr Rochester’s bastard child, begotten on some French dancer. I did not care. The way I look at it, when there are no parents, a child should be loved and cared for by the nearest body who is handy, willing and able to carry out the task. I was handy and I was willing and able.

  I searched the attic for something to furnish a room for her and found nothing that would delight a little girl. The Rochesters had produced nothing but sons for generations. The only toys stored up there were hobby horses, swords and drums. There was not a doll to be seen. Bertha and Grace came to my aid; they made a bedspread and curtains of pretty patchwork with a design of bluebirds so that her room would look welcoming for her.

  I need not have worried about supplying Adele with pretty things. When she arrived with Mr Rochester she brought with her trunks full of beautiful dresses and a maid to look after them. The unpacking revealed frilled dresses, velvet capes and a whole colony of dolls. Her wardrobe surpassed many a grown woman’s trousseau. I hoped that such exquisite garments concealed tucks and extra fabric so they could be let out and lengthened as the child grew. There was no way we could replace them from the limited resources available to us. Yorkshire has many things to be proud of but French chic is not one of them. We would be hard put to satisfy someone as fussy as Adele proved to be. In the morning she could not come down for her breakfast until her hair had been curled to her satisfaction.

  The child and the maid, Sophie, both spoke French but not English. We had to do much pointing and miming but we managed. Adele was a bright little thing and within a few weeks she knew how to ask for what she wanted and to misunderstand completely when anything unpleasant was on the agenda. I admit that she completely stole my heart.

  Before he left Mr Rochester charged me with finding Adele a governess who would teach the child English and give her enough education to enable her to go to school one day. It went without saying that Adele was to be kept in ignorance of the lady on the third floor. Madness would be frightening for the child. Once I got to know Adele I realized that the deception would not be too difficult a task. She was a child who noticed only what was of interest to her. If she could not wear it, eat it or play with it she ignored it.

  Mr Rochester was very emphatic that the existence of his inconvenient lodger be kept concealed from the governess. According to my master, ‘No self-respecting governess would stay in an establishment that housed a madwoman.’ Mr Rochester was adamant in this opinion. I wanted to remind him that I had to share the house with such a woman and ask if he thought I was short of self-respect. It seemed wiser to restrain myself from making such a sharp remark. He could be a very tetchy man at times.

  I tried to convince him how much Bertha had improved. I wanted to tell him about her sewing, her attendance at church and the docile way she behaved most of the time. He would not listen. He waved his hands in the air to waft my words away from his ears. He would not visit. He never even admitted that her name was Bertha. ‘That woman,’ he called her and accused her of wickedness beyond compare. ‘When the fit is on her,’ he said, ‘there is no limit to the evil acts she is capable of.’

  So he packed his bags. Before he left me to cope with what he regarded as a dangerous lunatic and an inconvenient foreign orphan child I asked for a substantial increase in the allowance for expenses. Adele and her maid would not be cheap to maintain and there was a potential governess to be paid and catered for. Mr Rochester did not argue or protest. I have noticed how easy it is for rich men to be generous. He wrote a note for his agent to give me what I asked for, pulled on his gloves and picked up his riding crop. When he was mounted on Mesrour and ready to leave he called out to me, ‘Get a governess. The brat is going to school as soon as she speaks English.’ He touched Mesrour with his heels and set off. ‘Don’t forget. A governess.’

  As is my custom when I have problems to sort out I went up to the third floor and sought advice from Grace. She sat by the fire and smoked her pipe while Bertha put the finishing touches to some embroidery.

  ‘A governess! To be kept in the dark. That’ll spoil things for us. There’ll be no more cosy evening chats for us round the fire here. You’ll have to sit in your room with her and make conversation. You will have to be on your best behaviour. No more drinking porter.’ Grace cackled with laughter at the thought. It was true that I had developed a taste for her favourite drink.

  ‘Get a really inexperienced one,’ she advised me. ‘Some girl straight out of school who doesn’t know how things are done in the gentry’s houses. Then we can sort of mould her into our ways. Keep her away from the back stairs. That shouldn’t be difficult. Governesses are so touchy about their position they want to use the main staircase all the time, like family. Confine her to the school room of a morning. Get her to walk in the garden in the afternoon so we can have our sewing sessions. I know! Pretend there’s a ghost on the top floor. Every old house has a ghost. Listen to this.’ She gave a strange hollow laugh that had much menace and no humour in it.

  The ghoulish laughter echoed round the walls. It sounded so strange that Bertha leapt up and fled to her room. ‘That’s right, Bertha,’ said Grace. ‘That was just a practice. We are going to use it as a warning sound. When you hear that noise, you go to your room, shut the door and wait for me.’

  I did not rush to find a governess; I was enjoying the company of little Adele. She shared her meals with me in my room. In truth I spoiled the child while I had the opportunity to do so. Grace’s advice about finding an inexperienced tutor seemed a good idea to me. I looked in the advertisements in the Yorkshire Herald. There were two possible governesses who had advertised. I wrote to them asking for their references and testimonials. They both replied. One lady of twenty-five had been a governess in four different households. She listed the names of the people she had worked for; too many for my purposes. The other governess had never even left her first school. She had been both pupil and teacher in the same establishment, Lowood School. For appearance’s sake I wrote for her references though in truth I was determined to employ her. Naivety was her greatest qualification as far as I was concerned. And that is how Jane Eyre came to Thornfield Hall.

  She arrived very quietly in October, sort of slid in one night. Unlike Adele she brought very little with her and what she brought was black or grey or white. A real Quaker’s wardrobe compared with the froth and pink frills that had spilled out of the child�
�s trunks. I gave Miss Eyre the room next to mine; it seemed both sensible and kind to keep her close to me. It was agreed that she and Adele should eat with me in my room. This arrangement meant I could continue to have the pleasure of Adele’s company and could keep an eye on how she was getting on with her new governess. I was not going to repeat the mistake I had made with Mrs Morgan. I was going to supervise this new member of staff very closely at first. The governess appeared to be both pleasant and respectable. I wanted to be sure she was also kind and understanding with the child.

  Miss Eyre, as I always think of her, was a sweet creature: very small with a slight figure. I do not believe she had ever been properly fed or kept warm; I intended to remedy that. I felt very motherly towards her and at times I wondered how from being a woman who had lost her daughter I now had two motherless girls in my care. In her first three months at Thornfield Hall Jane gained flesh and her face filled out. You could never call her pretty but she became attractive as any young person in good health always is.

  Adele was thrilled to have someone who spoke her own language, who could sort out the occasional difficulty over food so that we knew when Adele said ‘pain’ she meant bread and we should stop offering her porridge or kippers. Miss Eyre never over-worked Adele but she had no real sympathy for the more theatrical side of the child’s nature. She disapproved of Adele’s concern with her appearance, thinking it frivolous and flighty. Her ambition was that Adele should become as sober, hardworking and serious as she herself was. I guessed her own childhood had been harsh and joyless, but that was no reason why Adele’s should be so. When I was given the opportunity I joined the child in playing with dolls and conspired with cook to give her treats to eat. When the child had a cold I begged a morning off for her. It was granted with reluctance. Miss Eyre intended that Adele should have as much practice in English as possible so that she could go to school. I, on the other hand, wanted to delay the child’s departure as long as possible.

  The little Miss Innocent Governess that I thought I had engaged was not as malleable as I’d hoped; she concealed a central core of tempered steel. Her little mouth would set in an inflexible line and her requests were so polite and reasonable that it was impossible to refuse her for long without seeming ill-natured and difficult. One of her first requests was to be shown the entire house. I was reluctant to oblige her. I fobbed her off with excuses but she soon found a way to persuade me. She needed to know the layout of the house, she explained, ‘in case Adele wanders off or plays hide and seek. I need to know where to look.’ There was no putting her off. I managed to give Grace plenty of warning so she could keep Bertha close and have no fire in the sitting room that day.

  I took Miss Eyre round the dining room, the library, the hall and through the bedrooms on the next floor. She still wasn’t satisfied and asked to see the third floor if you please. I took her into the first of Grace and Bertha’s rooms. We had put tapestries round the walls and they were draped so as to conceal the connecting door into Bertha’s room. We did not stay there long. Once I had Miss Eyre back in the corridor I waved vaguely along its length and told her the rooms beyond were always locked; they were storerooms. I told her that this part of the house was thought to be haunted. She gave me a sharp look as if to say she didn’t believe me. Next thing I knew she had found the stairs to the attic and had climbed the ladder out on to the roof. Once there she took deep breaths and gazed out at the moors beyond the lawns and the great meadow with its thorny trees and bushes. It was my first inkling that she was a fiend for fresh air.

  Adele preferred to take her afternoon walk in the company of her maid. That left Miss Eyre free to wander the lanes and fields on her own. When the weather was bad and Adele took refuge near the fire with her dolls Miss Eyre chose from sheer awkwardness to take her exercise indoors and to prowl up and down the third-floor corridor like a caged animal. She would pace backwards and forwards for an hour at a time, keeping Grace and Bertha confined in silence to their room. I could not understand her restlessness.

  ‘Men,’ Grace diagnosed with her characteristic sniff. I gave her a look of disbelief.

  ‘What men? You mean Old John. Or young John even. Perhaps the young blacksmith!’ We giggled at the thought.

  ‘No. Not one man in particular, but men in general. Think about it. An all girls’ school, all female teachers. I bet the only man she’s ever met was a weedy curate or an elderly man of the cloth. No disrespect to your late lamented, Alice. She’s just discovered that the world contains men. It’s got her juices going.’

  I think Grace was right about the cause of Jane’s restlessness, for it disappeared when Mr Rochester arrived. Until then it caused us considerable inconvenience. I kept telling Jane that the corridor was haunted, that strange sounds were heard at night but she was not to be deterred. When she was walking the corridor our happy chatty afternoons of sewing had to stop. We prayed for fine weather so that she might take her exercise outdoors.

  Not only did I lose my afternoons of cheerful conversation but my evenings also were blighted. After Adele had gone to bed Jane would spend an hour or two with me in my room, as is the custom for upper servants; her status prevented her from spending her evenings in the servants’ hall. This was a great trial for me as Miss Eyre was not only keen on fresh air and exercise but also incurably inquisitive about Thornfield Hall, its inhabitants and its history. I am by nature honest and straightforward in my dealings with people but I was charged specifically by my master to keep the presence of Bertha hidden from her.

  At first the silly girl had thought I was the owner of Thornfield Hall. That shows how innocent she was of the ways of the world. Then she wanted to know all about the real owner, Mr Rochester. No one likes to draw a portrait of their employer; one either flatters or complains. There were too many barriers for us to hold a proper conversation: the presence of Bertha, my suspicion that Mr Rochester was married to her and the fact that I was desperately longing for my evening glass of porter.

  Miss Eyre was a formidable inquisitor. When she interrogated me about the character of Mr Rochester I felt like one of Mr Rowland’s moths or butterflies, impaled on a pin so that I could be studied through a magnifying glass, and poked with tweezers. To avoid answering her questions without lying or breaking my promise I took to reading my bible and to knitting. I reasoned that Miss Eyre’s upbringing would not allow her to interrupt someone who was reading the bible. As I clicked away with the needles I had to endure the discomfort of seeing Miss Eyre mentally dismiss me as a stupid old woman.

  After some evenings of bible-reading and Miss Eyre my need for real conversation became desperate. I longed to discard my mask and engage in a free and open exchange of ideas, news and gossip with no dark places of concealment. Grace, as usual, came up with a solution. She suggested we meet in my housekeeper’s room after Miss Eyre had retired to bed. She would bring Bertha with her; they would come in their nightgowns, ready for bed.

  As my excuse for staying behind after Jane I told her I was responsible for the locking of the doors and the checking of the windows. It was, I insisted, much too important a job to leave to anyone else. I would light the governess’s candle and watch as she climbed the main staircase while Grace and Bertha crept down the back stairs with their candles. We would congregate in my room for a chat and a glass of porter.

  In this way we managed the last three months of the year. We grew quite comfortable in our routine in spite of the strain of keeping secret Bertha’s presence on the third floor. Then in January Mr Rochester arrived; he heralded a year of tumultuous events.

  A YEAR OF TUMULTUOUS EVENTS

  1832

  I AM NOT NORMALLY SUPERSTITIOUS BUT THIS NEW Year had an unfortunate start. Mr Rochester’s arrival was blighted by some kind of fall from his horse. His ankle was badly sprained and he was forced to rest the injured joint. He took to the chaise longue by the fire in the library. Jane had been using the room to give Adele her lessons. Governess and pupil had
to move out. I had a fire lit in an apartment upstairs which they could use as a school room. I doubted Adele would give much attention to her books; there was a man within reach. She would be in an agony of impatience to be in his presence so she could practise her winning ways on him.

  All day the house was busy with callers for Mr Rochester. When it grew dark and started to snow, the visitors ceased. Mr Rochester sent to ask me about Adele. There was no point in my telling him what a charming child she was; gushing about children would be anathema to him. Instead I reminded him about the new governess and was told to bring Miss Eyre and Adele to take tea with him in the dining room at six o’clock.

  I was keen that Jane should make a good impression on our employer as I wanted to keep her. In spite of her occasional pacing of the third-floor corridor, she was exactly the naive and inexperienced governess I had hoped for. Naivety and inexperience, however, do have their drawbacks. On this occasion I had to explain everything to Jane as if she were a child. She had to be told to change her dress; the dull black stuff one she wore was completely unsuitable for an upper servant who was summoned to appear in a gentleman’s dining room.

  I offered to fasten Jane’s dress so that I could go with her to her room and make sure she put on something more appropriate than her glum everyday wear. When I looked in her wardrobe I saw she was not exactly spoilt for choice. I tried to persuade her to wear the grey dress but she was adamant it was only for a very special occasion such as a wedding. For a young girl she could be very determined at times. We were left with the black silk dress. I am very fond of black silk. I wear it myself – all the time. Black is a very serviceable colour and silk gives it a lustre and a texture that makes it more flattering than the matt black of mourning. But I am a white-haired widow, a housekeeper past forty, while Jane is scarcely eighteen and as far as I know not in mourning for anyone. I could not understand why she chose clothes that were so gloomy. Eventually I persuaded her to wear a brooch to lighten the effect and with that I had to be satisfied. Once dressed, she followed behind me to the dining room like a tiny fluttering shadow. There we found Mr Rochester resting his injured foot while his dog, Pilot, basked in front of a handsome fire.