Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
continued to consort in solemn conferences, where they nodded their two
turbans at each other, and held up their four hands in confronting
gestures of surprise, or mystery, or horror, according to the theme on
which their gossip ran, like a pair of magnified puppets. Mild Mrs.
Dent talked with good-natured Mrs. Eshton; and the two sometimes
bestowed a courteous word or smile on me. Sir George Lynn, Colonel
Dent, and Mr. Eshton discussed politics, or county affairs, or justice
business. Lord Ingram flirted with Amy Eshton; Louisa played and sang
to and with one of the Messrs. Lynn; and Mary Ingram listened languidly
to the gallant speeches of the other. Sometimes all, as with one
consent, suspended their by-play to observe and listen to the principal
actors: for, after all, Mr. Rochester and—because closely connected
with him—Miss Ingram were the life and soul of the party. If he was
absent from the room an hour, a perceptible dulness seemed to steal
over the spirits of his guests; and his re-entrance was sure to give a
fresh impulse to the vivacity of conversation.
The want of his animating influence appeared to be peculiarly felt one
day that he had been summoned to Millcote on business, and was not
likely to return till late. The afternoon was wet: a walk the party had
proposed to take to see a gipsy camp, lately pitched on a common beyond
Hay, was consequently deferred. Some of the gentlemen were gone to the
stables: the younger ones, together with the younger ladies, were
playing billiards in the billiard-room. The dowagers Ingram and Lynn
sought solace in a quiet game at cards. Blanche Ingram, after having
repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and
Mrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some
sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a
novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a
sofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious
hours of absence. The room and the house were silent: only now and then
the merriment of the billiard-players was heard from above.
It was verging on dusk, and the clock had already given warning of the
hour to dress for dinner, when little Adèle, who knelt by me in the
drawing-room window-seat, suddenly exclaimed—
“Voilà Monsieur Rochester, qui revient!”
I turned, and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa: the others,
too, looked up from their several occupations; for at the same time a
crunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became audible
on the wet gravel. A post-chaise was approaching.
“What can possess him to come home in that style?” said Miss Ingram.
“He rode Mesrour (the black horse), did he not, when he went out? and
Pilot was with him:—what has he done with the animals?”
As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments so
near the window, that I was obliged to bend back almost to the breaking
of my spine: in her eagerness she did not observe me at first, but when
she did, she curled her lip and moved to another casement. The
post-chaise stopped; the driver rang the door-bell, and a gentleman
alighted attired in travelling garb; but it was not Mr. Rochester; it
was a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger.
“How provoking!” exclaimed Miss Ingram: “you tiresome monkey!”
(apostrophising Adèle), “who perched you up in the window to give false
intelligence?” and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I were in
fault.
Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the new-comer entered.
He bowed to Lady Ingram, as deeming her the eldest lady present.
“It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam,” said he, “when my
friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home; but I arrive from a very long
journey, and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate
acquaintance as to instal myself here till he returns.”
His manner was polite; his accent, in speaking, struck me as being
somewhat unusual,—not precisely foreign, but still not altogether
English: his age might be about Mr. Rochester’s,—between thirty and
forty; his complexion was singularly sallow: otherwise he was a
fine-looking man, at first sight especially. On closer examination, you
detected something in his face that displeased, or rather that failed
to please. His features were regular, but too relaxed: his eye was
large and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a tame, vacant
life—at least so I thought.
The sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party. It was not till
after dinner that I saw him again: he then seemed quite at his ease.
But I liked his physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as
being at the same time unsettled and inanimate. His eye wandered, and
had no meaning in its wandering: this gave him an odd look, such as I
never remembered to have seen. For a handsome and not an
unamiable-looking man, he repelled me exceedingly: there was no power
in that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape: no firmness in that
aquiline nose and small cherry mouth; there was no thought on the low,
even forehead; no command in that blank, brown eye.
As I sat in my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of the
girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him—for he occupied an
arm-chair drawn close to the fire, and kept shrinking still nearer, as
if he were cold, I compared him with Mr. Rochester. I think (with
deference be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater between
a sleek gander and a fierce falcon: between a meek sheep and the
rough-coated keen-eyed dog, its guardian.
He had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an old friend. A curious friendship
theirs must have been: a pointed illustration, indeed, of the old adage
that “extremes meet.”
Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times
scraps of their conversation across the room. At first I could not make
much sense of what I heard; for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Mary
Ingram, who sat nearer to me, confused the fragmentary sentences that
reached me at intervals. These last were discussing the stranger; they
both called him “a beautiful man.” Louisa said he was “a love of a
creature,” and she “adored him;” and Mary instanced his “pretty little
mouth, and nice nose,” as her ideal of the charming.
“And what a sweet-tempered forehead he has!” cried Louisa,—“so
smooth—none of those frowning irregularities I dislike so much; and
such a placid eye and smile!”
And then, to my great relief, Mr. Henry Lynn summoned them to the other
side of the room, to settle some point about the deferred excursion to
Hay Common.
I was now able to concentrate my attention on the group by the fire,
and I presently gathered that the new-comer was called Mr. Mason; then
I learned that he was but just arrived in England, and that he came
from some hot country: which was the reason, doubtless, his face was so
sallow, and that he sat so near the hearth, and wore a surtout in the
house. Presently the words Jamaica, Kingston, Spanish Town, indicated
the West Indies as his residence; and it was with no little surprise I
gathered, ere long, that he had there first seen and become acquainted
with Mr. Rochester. He spoke of his friend’s dislike of the burning
heats, the hurricanes, and rainy seasons of that region. I knew Mr.
Rochester had been a traveller: Mrs. Fairfax had said so; but I thought
the continent of Europe had bounded his wanderings; till now I had
never heard a hint given of visits to more distant shores.
I was pondering these things, when an incident, and a somewhat
unexpected one, broke the thread of my musings. Mr. Mason, shivering as
some one chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to be put on the
fire, which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of cinder still
shone hot and red. The footman who brought the coal, in going out,
stopped near Mr. Eshton’s chair, and said something to him in a low
voice, of which I heard only the words, “old woman,”—“quite
troublesome.”
“Tell her she shall be put in the stocks if she does not take herself
off,” replied the magistrate.
“No—stop!” interrupted Colonel Dent. “Don’t send her away, Eshton; we
might turn the thing to account; better consult the ladies.” And
speaking aloud, he continued—“Ladies, you talked of going to Hay Common
to visit the gipsy camp; Sam here says that one of the old Mother
Bunches is in the servants’ hall at this moment, and insists upon being
brought in before ‘the quality,’ to tell them their fortunes. Would you
like to see her?”
“Surely, colonel,” cried Lady Ingram, “you would not encourage such a
low impostor? Dismiss her, by all means, at once!”
“But I cannot persuade her to go away, my lady,” said the footman; “nor
can any of the servants: Mrs. Fairfax is with her just now, entreating
her to be gone; but she has taken a chair in the chimney-corner, and
says nothing shall stir her from it till she gets leave to come in
here.”
“What does she want?” asked Mrs. Eshton.
“‘To tell the gentry their fortunes,’ she says, ma’am; and she swears
she must and will do it.”
“What is she like?” inquired the Misses Eshton, in a breath.
“A shockingly ugly old creature, miss; almost as black as a crock.”
“Why, she’s a real sorceress!” cried Frederick Lynn. “Let us have her
in, of course.”
“To be sure,” rejoined his brother; “it would be a thousand pities to
throw away such a chance of fun.”
“My dear boys, what are you thinking about?” exclaimed Mrs. Lynn.
“I cannot possibly countenance any such inconsistent proceeding,”
chimed in the Dowager Ingram.
“Indeed, mama, but you can—and will,” pronounced the haughty voice of
Blanche, as she turned round on the piano-stool; where till now she had
sat silent, apparently examining sundry sheets of music. “I have a
curiosity to hear my fortune told: therefore, Sam, order the beldame
forward.”
“My darling Blanche! recollect—”
“I do—I recollect all you can suggest; and I must have my will—quick,
Sam!”
“Yes—yes—yes!” cried all the juveniles, both ladies and gentlemen. “Let
her come—it will be excellent sport!”
The footman still lingered. “She looks such a rough one,” said he.
“Go!” ejaculated Miss Ingram, and the man went.
Excitement instantly seized the whole party: a running fire of raillery
and jests was proceeding when Sam returned.
“She won’t come now,” said he. “She says it’s not her mission to appear
before the ‘vulgar herd’ (them’s her words). I must show her into a
room by herself, and then those who wish to consult her must go to her
one by one.”
“You see now, my queenly Blanche,” began Lady Ingram, “she encroaches.
Be advised, my angel girl—and—”
“Show her into the library, of course,” cut in the “angel girl.” “It is
not my mission to listen to her before the vulgar herd either: I mean
to have her all to myself. Is there a fire in the library?”
“Yes, ma’am—but she looks such a tinkler.”
“Cease that chatter, blockhead! and do my bidding.”
Again Sam vanished; and mystery, animation, expectation rose to full
flow once more.
“She’s ready now,” said the footman, as he reappeared. “She wishes to
know who will be her first visitor.”
“I think I had better just look in upon her before any of the ladies
go,” said Colonel Dent.
“Tell her, Sam, a gentleman is coming.”
Sam went and returned.
“She says, sir, that she’ll have no gentlemen; they need not trouble
themselves to come near her; nor,” he added, with difficulty
suppressing a titter, “any ladies either, except the young, and
single.”
“By Jove, she has taste!” exclaimed Henry Lynn.
Miss Ingram rose solemnly: “I go first,” she said, in a tone which
might have befitted the leader of a forlorn hope, mounting a breach in
the van of his men.