Thornfield Hall Read online

  As I expected convalescence and discomfort made Mr Rochester even more imperious and unpredictable than usual. He did his best to ignore us when I introduced Jane to him so I found myself making fatuous remarks to fill in the silence. Jane, on the other hand, showed surprising coolness and composure. What a relief it was when he ordered tea to be brought! Once tea was served Adele took charge of the proceedings, asking about her present and leading Miss Eyre round the room by the hand to show her all the delightful ornaments.

  I retreated to a sofa with my knitting and watched from the corner of my eye. As I expected, Mr Rochester decided to interrogate his new governess. He sent Adele to play with Pilot and bent his formidable attention on Miss Eyre. She withstood it very well, responding without embarrassment to his orders. Some of the things they said, in all apparent seriousness, about little men in green were beyond me but I spoke up to support Jane when he asked who had recommended her. I told him that she had advertised and that I had answered. Her references were from people of standing in a town over a hundred miles away. He seemed content and did not take it amiss that she had no connections in the immediate neighbourhood.

  My master decided to put Jane through her paces. He sent her to the piano but her playing did not impress him. He demanded to see her paintings and seemed to find them interesting. Suddenly it was nine o’clock and he was rebuking her for letting Adele stay up so late. When we left I was not sure that Jane had passed whatever test it was that he had set for her.

  Later that evening Jane came to my room to quiz me about Mr Rochester; she thought him very changeable and abrupt. I fudged my answers, though I did let it drop that Mr Rochester was the younger son and that he had broken with his family and gone abroad. In the end she accepted my vague talk of family troubles and the gloominess of Thornfield Hall as reasons for his infrequent visits and abrupt departures. I refused to be pressed further on the subject. It went against the grain to be so niggardly with the truth to Jane but my bible oath stood between me and telling her what she really wanted to know.

  To my relief Mr Rochester did not send word that he found Miss Eyre unsatisfactory and that I should immediately look for a replacement. Indeed there were signs that he approved of her. One evening when he was entertaining he sent for her drawings to show the dinner guests. After his visitors had left, he summoned Adele and Miss Eyre; Adele’s long-delayed present had arrived from Paris. Soon afterwards he rang for me to join them. Whether my presence was required to entertain Adele or to act as chaperone I cannot be sure. Mr Rochester had not previously shown much regard for the proprieties.

  I enjoyed watching Adele explore the contents of her parcel. In silent concentration she peeled away the silvery tissue paper and inspected each item with the seriousness of a connoisseur. Short bursts of talk from Mr Rochester travelled across the rich Turkey carpet to the alcove where I sat. Mr Rochester was so voluble I thought he must have taken too much wine but my attention was focused on Adele. At the bottom of her box was a pink silk frock of such exquisiteness it could have come only from Paris. Her little face lit up in ecstasy. Her expression told me it was imperative that the dress be tried on and I nodded my approval. She scampered off, her feet pattering her out of the room, taking her to Sophie and some serious time at her toilette.

  Without other occupation my attention was drawn to the conversation taking place between Mr Rochester and Miss Eyre. His desire to dominate showed in his posture; he stood with his arm leaning against the mantelpiece while Jane was seated directly in front of him. The subject of their conversation was not clear to me but it was evidently of a weighty nature. Whatever it was they discussed, it was apparent she would not let him bully her. He commanded her to speak and she stayed dumb. I would not have dared to defy him so openly. When he had persuaded her to speak I distinctly heard her inform him in no uncertain manner that he was both ‘human’ and ‘fallible’. True though the words are of all of us I would not dare to say them to my master’s face. He would engulf me in an avalanche of thunderous rage. Miss Eyre, however, escaped censure. Perhaps as a result of the few respectful ‘sirs’ she sprinkled among her answers.

  Adele, in her pink dress, arrived like spring after a cold winter. She twirled and curtsied and gave her thanks with style and polish, an unconscious contrast to Jane’s monochrome solemnity.

  Mr Rochester spent the whole of the short month of February with us; he had never spent so long at Thornfield Hall before. He blamed the slow healing of his sprained ankle: I thought he had another motive. I’ve confessed that I found Adele enchanting and so I easily convinced myself that my master too had fallen under her spell. Why else would a short-tempered and irascible old bachelor summon a seven-year-old girl to his fireside every evening?

  Mr Rochester was nearly forty. He was at the time of life that men leave off sowing their wild oats and begin to wonder what memorials they will leave behind them. Most men of my master’s age and means were married and had families. They were looking to the future, thinking of their sons’ inheritance and their daughters’ dowries. My master had proved skittish about marriage. He had paid court to the Honourable Blanche, and then at the moment when all expected an engagement to be announced he had fled to the continent. Marriage might not be to his taste but he had a duty to provide an heir for the Rochester estate. Society expected it of him.

  The only child with any connection to Mr Rochester was Adele. I did not know the exact nature of that connection. Mr Rochester had told Jane about Adele’s background while walking round the garden. (His ankle must have recovered enough to permit such exercise.) He felt it right that Miss Eyre should know the child’s parentage in case she found it unacceptable to act as governess to the illegitimate child of a French singer. Jane was such a strict little thing he must have thought she might up sticks and gallop off in a huff of sanctimonious disapproval at Adele’s mother. Mr Rochester had insisted that he was not the father. Miss Eyre was quite emphatic about this. I veiled my eyes to hide my amusement as she told me. Sweet innocent that she was, she believed him. I don’t suppose she knew what people did that made them into mothers and fathers. To be fair to the girl, afterwards she took Adele on her knee and let her chatter away in a manner she did not normally permit.

  By contrast with Miss Eyre, all the county families and all the servants were convinced that Adele was Mr Rochester’s daughter. Not a legitimate daughter, to be sure, but the closest living thing he had to a blood relation. They had decided that her mother was some flibbertigibbet of a creature who had abandoned her and gone off to Italy. I began to dream of a future for the child. It did not take me long to transform her in my dreams from unacknowledged bastard to heiress to the Rochester thousands.

  In the evening when Adele and Jane were summoned to entertain Mr Rochester, and I accompanied them to act as chaperone, I studied my master’s behaviour carefully, looking for signs of softness and affection for the little girl. I looked in vain. True, he was less abrupt and imperious than he had been but I saw no special favour in his treatment of Adele. In spite of all her wiles he never sat her on his knee, or stroked her hair or told her stories.

  I began to wonder if my master might have a different reason for his prolonged stay at Thornfield Hall. Might the attraction be Miss Eyre? Was Adele summoned to his presence so that Miss Eyre might accompany her? It was not so much her person – though she was much improved from the half-starved waif who’d arrived in the autumn – it was more her ability to listen intelligently and to contribute sparingly to his conversation that appealed to him. He could spend an evening talking to Jane without breaching any of the strict conventions that govern the behaviour of men in the company of an unmarried woman. Jane teased, provoked and soothed him by turns but she never flirted with him. I watched with envy the easiness of their conversation and thought wryly of how I was currently deprived of my talks with Grace, my trusted companion. Jane and Mr Rochester spent their evenings in comfort by the fire in the library. I had to wait til
l the early hours of the morning when Grace and Bertha scampered down the freezing cold back stairs in their nightgowns.

  When Adele was busy with her dolls I started to eavesdrop on my master’s conversations with Jane. The proverb is right. Eavesdroppers hear no good about themselves. Between the two of them they decided that I was not merely unintelligent but I was definitively stupid; my thoughts were dominated by small children and knitting. My master did not hesitate to whisper it loud enough for me to hear. Apart from this slight to my amour propre their behaviour was impeccable. They were straightforward and friendly with each other. There were no compliments or coquetry, no lingering looks and languishing sighs. The parson could have joined them without causing a ripple in the subject matter of their conversation. Indeed they were much concerned with questions of what is right and what is wrong, and God’s law and man’s law. I studied Jane, her face glowing and her eyes alight, and I could feel some strong emotion like a captive bird beating its wings within the walls of the dining room in Thornfield Hall. I could see that Jane regarded her employer with more warmth than is usual from a paid servant.

  And why not? He was intelligent and widely travelled. Peremptory and changeable he might be, but he had vigour of the mind as well as the body and a rare way of speaking frankly to all. Infuriating he might be with his moods and his demands but when his lopsided smile flashed across his face and lit up his black eyes you could forgive him almost anything. Indeed I was half in love with him myself. Sternly I reminded myself about my age, my white hair and my knitting which in Mr Rochester’s mind condemned me to wear the dunce’s cap.

  The short month drew to a close and still Mr Rochester stayed on. I added a special warning to my list of duties. As well as keeping Bertha’s existence a secret from Miss Eyre I also had to warn her about the inadvisability of growing too attached to her employer. I was sure my words would be as welcome as a late frost.

  With the first tentative signs of spring our spirits lifted as the temperature climbed a few degrees. One evening we arranged that Grace and Bertha should come to my room after the rest of the household had gone to bed. We would share a bottle of porter and have a chat by the remains of the fire. Bertha settled herself down and set about stroking the cat; Grace puffed on her pipe. The conversation turned to Jane, who was proving more complex and troublesome than the innocent girl I had expected, especially in relation to Mr Rochester.

  ‘Poor cow!’ Grace can be very coarse at times. ‘All you can do is warn her. Gentry do not marry governesses. It does not happen.’

  ‘She knows the rules. Her education was very strict. I would not like to see the master break her heart.’ I glanced at Bertha. ‘He has broken enough of those.’ I thought also of the magnificent Blanche but I was not sure she had a heart.

  Grace showed little sympathy for broken hearts but she did have a suggestion. ‘He might make Jane his mistress. From governess to mistress is not an unusual step. There’s many a household chugs along happily with two mistresses and a schoolroom full of children.’

  ‘He shows none of the usual signs of a man in lust.’ I remembered the hunger in his eyes as he watched Blanche Ingram and her stolen flower whirl away from him in the corridor outside the dining room before the Christmas party. His behaviour to Jane might have been rude and peremptory but it had also been impeccable. He had done nothing to expose her to malicious speculation. Adele and I had been present at all their conversations.

  ‘Anyway Jane’s too virtuous to be a mistress,’ I told Grace. ‘She’s so innocent she wouldn’t know what to do.’

  ‘She could learn. He’d enjoy showing her.’ Grace sent her tongue round her lips with a lascivious smacking sound. This so amused her she slapped her own rump and gave her harsh laugh. Bertha jumped when she heard it and hastily put the cat down. The laugh was her signal to return to her room. Nothing could persuade her otherwise. Our conversation came to an abrupt end.

  As we made our way along the gallery towards the staircase to the third floor we saw smoke coming from under the door to Mr Rochester’s room. I panicked. What to do without giving away the fact of our secret meetings? Bertha’s presence on this floor would sound the death knell for us all. She must at all costs be kept from both Mr Rochester and Miss Eyre.

  Quick as a flash, Grace pushed Bertha towards the stairs, took my candle from me and gestured for me to go into my bedroom. I found I could not move my feet so she gave me a hefty push through the door. As I stumbled into my room I saw her set the candle on the floor outside Miss Eyre’s room and scratch at the door. Her fingers made the sound of an animal’s claws against the wood. I shut my door and listened as she ran in the direction of the third-floor stairs while giving her ghostly laugh. In this way she suggested a supernatural presence and warned Bertha to retreat to her room. I leant against the wall to Miss Eyre’s room, my ear pressed close. As I waited to hear the sound of her stirring from her bed my heart thumped in such a panic I thought it would leap straight out of my chest.

  It was a small reassurance to hear her door open. The candle flickering on the threshold must have enticed her out into the corridor to investigate. Once there she would see the smoke billowing under his door and go to rescue Mr Rochester. I heard her cries of ‘Wake! Wake!’ There followed a crashing sound and, at last, the reassuring sound of the baritone voice of my master swearing like a soldier on finding himself drowned in his bed. The muffled murmur of a conversation taking place in his bedroom travelled across the corridor to my anxious ear. I let out a great sigh of relief. The fire was out. They both lived and breathed. Then I heard a door open and bare feet slap along the corridor.

  I did not dare look out, but I was sure it was Mr Rochester on his way to the third storey to confront Grace and Bertha. The eerie silence that followed let me enjoy the illusion that Grace had everything under control. I heard Mr Rochester return and some time later Jane returned to her room. At last I felt able to undress and take myself to my bed.

  The blame fell, as we knew it would, on Bertha. It was Grace’s laugh that had revealed her presence near the scene. Mr Rochester had gone straight up to the third storey, sure that the culprit would be found up there. My confidence in Grace’s quick thinking was not misplaced. Grace, already in her nightdress, pretended she had been asleep. Bertha, in her white gown with her great mane of black hair loose, looked and acted every bit the lunatic. She turned snappish the minute she saw Mr Rochester. She growled and raged at him so he got no sense out of her.

  ‘She surprised even me,’ claimed Grace. ‘She acted every bit the mad wife. The best thing is, that’s exactly what it was – an act. As soon as he was out of earshot, she stopped. It warms my heart to think how much better she is. Most of the time, at least.’

  I questioned Jane at breakfast and she told me briefly her side of the story. She had thrown the water in the ewer and the basin over the flames on the bed hangings and cast the empty jug into the air so the crash of it shattering would rouse our master. For good measure she had fetched the water jug from her own room. She’d proved that she, like Grace, had a cool head in an emergency.

  After that she was very silent at breakfast, sitting with downcast eyes and pink cheeks. I thought her discomfort might be caused by the raucous laughter coming from the servants’ hall. Various coarse comments about how much of the master’s manhood Miss Eyre had seen when she had roused him from his bed travelled down the passageway. We all knew he never wore a nightshirt and slept naked as nature intended. Why not? He had us servants to wash the sheets.

  I consoled myself by reasoning that speculation on such a topic would be unthinkable to the innocent Miss Eyre. I doubted she would know the meaning of the words used. With her customary composure Jane set about her duties with Adele as usual, though later I learned that she had questioned Grace severely about the incident. She had found Grace helping to repair the damage caused by the fire but Grace blocked her at every turn.

  Mr Rochester gave it out that he had l
eft his candle burning and knocked it against the hangings in his sleep. Grace and I stuck to the authorized version of events; it was the truth after all, if not the whole truth. He ordered a door to be made at the foot of the stairs to the third storey and for it to be kept locked, making it clear to those of us in the secret that he blamed Bertha for the fire. Then he simply packed his bags and left.

  At dinner time I noticed that Jane could scarcely eat her food and blushed and started at every ring of the bell. In the evening I’d had to send Leah to remind her to come to my room for tea. When I went to draw the blinds I casually remarked that the weather was fine for Mr Rochester’s journey. Jane started as if I had taken a hot poker to her. To put her out of her agony I explained that Mr Rochester had left immediately after breakfast for the house party at the Leas, Mr Eshton’s place. I am sure she was dismayed and disappointed but she concealed it well, beneath her usual demure demeanour.

  Disciplined though she was, she could not resist asking me if there were ladies at the house party. I confess I laid it on pretty thick. The beautiful Honourable Blanche Ingram would be there. I gushed on about how accomplished she was and how much Mr Rochester admired her. It gave me no pleasure to take the light of happiness from Jane’s eyes and douse the flames of her burgeoning love. This was the lesson I’d failed to give Martha before I unloaded her onto the Ingrams. I did not intend to repeat my mistake with this naive governess, especially as I had handpicked her for her very innocence of the world. My uneasy conscience made me spell it out to her in the strongest possible terms that a gentleman does not marry a governess. He may make her his mistress but he will not marry her.