Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
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