I was yet enjoying the calm prospect and pleasant fresh air, yet listening with delight to the cawing of the rooks, yet surveying the wide, hoary front of the hall, and thinking
what a great place it was for one lonely little dame like Mrs. Fairfax to inhabit, when that lady appeared at the door.
'What! out already?' said she. 'I see you are an early riser.'
I went up to her, and was received with an affable kiss and shake of the hand.
'How do you like Thornfield?' she asked. I told her I liked it very much.
'Yes,' she said, 'it is a pretty place; but I fear it will be getting out of order, unless Mr. Rochester should take it into his head to come and reside here permanently; or, at least, visit it rather oftener: great houses and fine grounds require the presence of the proprietor.'
'Mr. Rochester!' I exclaimed. 'Who is he?'
'The owner of Thornfield,' she responded quietly. 'Did you not know he was called Rochester?'
Of course I did not—I had never heard of him before; but the old lady seemed to regard his existence as a universally understood fact, with which everybody must be acquainted
by instinct.
'I thought,' I continued, 'Thornfield belonged to you.'
'To me? Bless you, child; what an idea! To me! I am only the housekeeper—the manager. To be sure I am distantly related to the Rochesters by the mother's side, or at least
my husband was; he was a clergyman, incumbent of Hay—that little village yonder on the hill—and that church near the gates was his.
The present Mr. Rochester's mother was
a Fairfax, and second cousin to my husband: but I never presume on the connection—in fact, it is nothing to me; I consider myself quite in the light of an ordinary housekeeper: my employer is always civil, and I expect nothing more.'
'And the little girl—my pupil!'
'She is Mr. Rochester's ward; he commissioned me to find a governess for her. He intended to have her brought up in—shire, I believe. Here she comes, with her 'bonne,'
as she calls her nurse.' The enigma then was explained: this affable and kind little widow was no great dame; but a dependant like myself.
I did not like her the worse for that; on the contrary, I felt better pleased than ever. The equality between her and me was real; not the mere result of condescension on her part: so much the better—my position was all the freer.As I was meditating on this discovery, a little girl, followed by her attendant, came running up the lawn.
I looked at my pupil, who did not at first appear to notice me: she was quite a child, perhaps seven or eight years old, slightly
built, with a pale, small-featured face, and a redundancy of hair falling in curls to her waist.
'Good morning, Miss Adela,' said Mrs. Fairfax. 'Come and speak to the lady who is to teach you, and to make you a clever woman some day.' She approached.
'C'est le ma gouverante!' said she, pointing to me, and addressing her nurse; who answered
'Mais oui, certainement.'
'Are they foreigners?' I inquired, amazed at hearing the French language.
'The nurse is a foreigner, and Adela was born on the Continent; and, I believe, never left it till within six months ago. When she first came here she could speak no English; now she can make shift to talk it a little: I don't understand
her, she mixes it so with French; but you will make out her meaning very well, I dare say.'
Fortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a French lady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with Madame Pierrot as often as I could, and
had besides, during the last seven years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily—applying myself to take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as possible the pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain degree of readiness and correctness in the language, and was not likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela.
She came and shook hand with me when she heard that I was her governess; and as I led her in to breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue: she replied briefly
at first, but after we were seated at the table, and she had examined me some ten minutes with her large hazel eyes, she suddenly commenced chattering fluently.
'Ah!' cried she, in French, 'you speak my language as well as Mr. Rochester does: I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can Sophie. She will be glad: nobody here understands
her: Madame Fairfax is all English.Sophie is my nurse; she came with me over the sea in a great ship with a chimney that smoked—how it did smoke!—and I was sick, and so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester lay down on a sofa in a pretty room called the salon, and Sophie and I had little beds in another place.
I nearly fell out of mine; it was like a shelf. And Mademoiselle—what is your name?'
'Eyre—Jane Eyre.'
'Aire? Bah! I cannot say it. Well, our ship stopped in the morning, before it was quite daylight, at a great city—a huge city, with very dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the
pretty clean town I came from; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach, which took us to a beautiful large house, larger than this and finer, called an hotel. We stayed there nearly a week: I and Sophie used to walk every day in a great green place full of trees, called the Park; and there were many children there besides me, and a pond with beautiful birds in it, that I fed with crumbs.'
'Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?' asked
Mrs. Fairfax.I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent tongue of Madame Pierrot.
'I wish,' continued the good lady, 'you would ask her a question or two about her parents: I wonder if she remembers them?'
'Adele,' I inquired, 'with whom did you live when you were in that pretty clean town you spoke of?'
'I lived long ago with mama; but she is gone to the Holy Virgin. Mama used to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses. A great many gentlemen and ladies came to see
mama, and I used to dance before them, or to sit on their knees and sing to them: I liked it. Shall I let you hear me sing now?'
She had finished her breakfast, so I permitted her to give a specimen of her accomplishments. Descending from her
chair, she came and placed herself on my knee; then, folding her little hands demurely before her, shaking back her curls and lifting her eyes to the ceiling, she commenced singing a song from some opera. It was the strain of a forsaken lady, who, after bewailing the perfidy of her lover, calls pride to her aid; desires her attendant to deck her in her brightest jewels and richest robes, and resolves to meet the false one that night at a ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety of her
demeanour, how little his desertion has affected her.
The subject seemed strangely chosen for an infant singer; but I suppose the point of the exhibition lay in hearing the notes of love and jealousy warbled with the lisp of childhood; and in very bad taste that point was: at least I thought so.
Adele sang the canzonette tunefully enough, and with the naivete of her age. This achieved, she jumped from my knee and said, 'Now, Mademoiselle, I will repeat you some poetry.'
Assuming an attitude, she began, 'La Ligue des Rats: fable de La Fontaine.' She then declaimed the little piece with an attention to punctuation and emphasis, a flexibility of
voice and an appropriateness of gesture, very unusual indeed at her age, and which proved she had been carefully trained.
'Was it your mama who taught you that piece?' I asked.
'Yes, and she just used to say it in this way: 'Qu' avez vous donc? lui dit un de ces rats; parlez!' She made me lift my hand—so—to remind me to raise my voice at the question.
Now shall I dance for you?'
'No, that will do: but after your mama went to the Holy Virgin, as you say, with whom did you live then?'
'With Madame Frederic and her husband: she took care of me, but she is nothing related to me. I think she is poor, for she had not so fine a house as mama.I was not long there.
Mr. Rochester asked me if I would like to go and live with him in England, and I said yes; for I knew Mr. Rochester before I knew Madame Frederic, and he was always kind to
me and gave me pretty dresses and toys: but you see he has not kept his word, for he has brought me to England, and now he is gone back again himself, and I never see him.'
After breakfast, Adele and I withdrew to the library, which room, it appears, Mr. Rochester had directed should be used as the schoolroom.
Most of the books were locked up behind glass doors; but there was one bookcase left open containing everything that could be needed in the way of elementary works, and several volumes of light literature, poetry, biography, travels, a few romances, &c. I suppose he had considered that these were all the governess would require for her private perusal; and, indeed, they contented
me amply for the present; compared with the scanty pickings I had now and then been able to glean at Lowood, they seemed to offer an abundant harvest of entertainment and
information. In this room, too, there was a cabinet piano, quite new and of superior tone; also an easel for painting and a pair of globes.
I found my pupil sufficiently docile, though disinclined to apply: she had not been used to regular occupation of any kind. I felt it would be injudicious to confine her too much
at first; so, when I had talked to her a great deal, and got her to learn a little, and when the morning had advanced to noon, I allowed her to return to her nurse. I then proposed to occupy myself till dinner-time in drawing some little sketches for her use.
As I was going upstairs to fetch my portfolio and pencils, Mrs. Fairfax called to me: 'Your morning school-hours are over now, I suppose,' said she. She was in a room the
folding-doors of which stood open: I went in when she addressed me. It was a large, stately apartment, with purple chairs and curtains, a Turkey carpet, walnut-panelled walls, one vast window rich in slanted glass, and a lofty ceiling, nobly moulded. Mrs. Fairfax was dusting some vases of fine
purple spar, which stood on a sideboard.
'What a beautiful room!' I exclaimed, as I looked round; for I had never before seen any half so imposing.
'Yes; this is the dining-room.I have just opened the window, to let in a little air and sunshine; for everything gets so damp in apartments that are seldom inhabited; the drawing-room yonder feels like a vault.'
She pointed to a wide arch corresponding to the window, and hung like it with a Tyrian-dyed curtain, now looped up. Mounting to it by two broad steps, and looking through, I thought I caught a glimpse of a fairy place, so bright to my novice-eyes appeared the view beyond. Yet it was merely a very pretty drawing-room, and within it a boudoir, both spread with white carpets, on which seemed laid brilliant
garlands of flowers; both ceiled with snowy mouldings of white grapes and vine-leaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast crimson couches and ottomans; while the ornaments on the pale Pariain mantelpiece were of sparkling Bohemian glass, ruby red; and between the windows large mirrors repeated the general blending of snow and fire.
'In what order you keep these rooms, Mrs. Fairfax!' said I.
'No dust, no canvas coverings: except that the air feels chilly, one would think they were inhabited daily.'
'Why, Miss Eyre, though Mr. Rochester's visits here are rare, they are always sudden and unexpected; and as I observed that it put him out to find everything swathed up, and to have a bustle of arrangement on his arrival, I thought it best to keep the rooms in readiness.'
'Is Mr. Rochester an exacting, fastidious sort of man?'
'Not particularly so; but he has a gentleman's tastes and habits, and he expects to have things managed in conformity to them.'
'Do you like him? Is he generally liked?'
'Oh, yes; the family have always been respected here. Almost all the land in this neighbourhood, as far as you can see, has belonged to the Rochesters time out of mind.'
'Well, but, leaving his land out of the question, do you like him? Is he liked for himself?'