Jane Eyre (18 page)

It was very near, but not yet in sight, when, in addition to the tramp, tramp, I heard a rush under the hedge, and close down by the hazel stems glided a great dog, whose black and white colour made him a distinct object against the trees. It was exactly one form of Bessie’s Gytrash—a lion-like creature with long hair and a huge head. It passed me, however, quietly enough, not staying to look up, with strange pretercanine eyes, in my face, as I half expected it would. The horse followed—a tall steed, and on its back a rider. The man, the human being, broke the spell at once. Nothing ever rode the Gytrash, it was always alone and goblins, to my notions, though they might tenant the dumb carcasses of beasts, could scarce covet shelter in the commonplace human form. No Gytrash was this—only a traveller taking the short cut to Millcote. He passed, and I went on a few steps, and I turned, a sliding sound and an exclamation of “What the deuce is to do now?” and a clattering tumble, arrested my attention. Man and horse were down; they had slipped on the sheet of ice which glazed the causeway. The dog came bounding back, and seeing his master in a predicament, and hearing the horse groan, barked till the evening hills echoed the sound, which was deep in proportion to his magnitude. He snuffed round the prostrate group, and then he ran up to me. It was all he could do—there was no other help at hand to summon. I obeyed him, and walked down to the traveller, by this time struggling himself free of his steed. His efforts were so vigorous, I thought he could not be much hurt, but I asked him the question, “Are you injured, sir?”

I think he was swearing, but am not certain, however, he was pronouncing some formula which prevented him from replying to me directly.

“Can I do anything?” I asked again.

“You must just stand on one side,” he answered as he rose, first to his knees, and then to his feet. I did, whereupon began a heaving, stamping, clattering process, accompanied by a barking and baying which removed me effectually some yards’ distance, but I would not be driven quite away till I saw the event. This was finally fortunate. The horse was re-established, and the dog was silenced with a “Down, Pilot!” The traveller now, stooping, felt his foot and leg, as if trying whether they were sound, apparently something ailed them, for he halted to the stile whence I had just risen, and sat down.

I was in the mood for being useful, or at least officious, I think, for I now drew near him again.

“If you are hurt, and want help, sir, I can fetch someone either from Thornfield Hall or from Hay.”

“Thank you, I shall do. I have no broken bones—only a sprain,” and again he stood up and tried his foot, but the result extorted an involuntary “Ugh!”

Something of daylight still lingered, and the moon was waxing bright. I could see him plainly. His figure was enveloped in a riding cloak, fur collared and steel clasped. Its details were not apparent, but I traced the general points of middle height and considerable breadth of chest. He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow, his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now. He was past youth, but had not reached middle-age—perhaps he might be thirty-five. I felt no fear of him, and but little shyness. Had he been a handsome, heroic-looking young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus questioning him against his will, and offering my services unasked. I had hardly ever seen a handsome youth, never in my life spoken to one. I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination, but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape. I should have known instinctively that they neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is bright but antipathetic.

If even this stranger had smiled and been good-humoured to me when I addressed him, if he had put off my offer of assistance gaily and with thanks, I should have gone on my way and not felt any vocation to renew enquiries, but the frown, the roughness of the traveller, set me at my ease. I retained my station when he waved to me to go, and announced, “I cannot think of leaving you, sir, at so late an hour, in this solitary lane, till I see you are fit to mount your horse.”

He looked at me when I said this. He had hardly turned his eyes in my direction before.

“I should think you ought to be at home yourself,” said he, “if you have a home in this neighbourhood. Where do you come from?”

“From just below and I am not at all afraid of being out late when it is moonlight. I will run over to Hay for you with pleasure, if you wish it, indeed, I am going there to post a letter.”

“You live just below—do you mean at that house with the battlements?” pointing to Thornfield Hall, on which the moon cast a hoary gleam, bringing it out distinct and pale from the woods that, by contrast with the western sky, now seemed one mass of shadow.

“Yes, sir.”

“Whose house is it?”

“Mr Rochester’s.”

“Do you know Mr Rochester?”

“No, I have never seen him.”

“He is not resident, then?”

“No.”

“Can you tell me where he is?”

“I cannot.”

“You are not a servant at the hall, of course. You are—” He stopped, ran his eye over my dress, which, as usual, was quite simple, a black merino cloak, a black beaver bonnet—neither of them half fine enough for a lady’s maid. He seemed puzzled to decide what I was. I helped him.

“I am the governess.”

“Ah, the governess!” he repeated, “deuce take me, if I had not forgotten! The governess!” and again my raiment underwent scrutiny. In two minutes he rose from the stile, his face expressed pain when he tried to move.

“I cannot commission you to fetch help,” he said, “but you may help me a little yourself, if you will be so kind.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have not an umbrella that I can use as a stick?”

“No.”

“Try to get hold of my horse’s bridle and lead him to me. You are not afraid?”

I should have been afraid to touch a horse when alone, but when told to do it, I was disposed to obey. I put down my muff on the stile, and went up to the tall steed. I endeavoured to catch the bridle, but it was a spirited thing, and would not let me come near its head. I made effort on effort, though in vain, meantime, I was mortally afraid of its trampling fore-feet. The traveller waited and watched for some time, and at last he laughed.

 “I see,” he said, “the mountain will never be brought to Mahomet, so all you can do is to aid Mahomet to go to the mountain. I must beg of you to come here.”

I came. “Excuse me,” he continued, “necessity compels me to make you useful.” He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, and leaning on me with some stress, limped to his horse. Having once caught the bridle, he mastered it directly and sprang to his saddle, grimacing grimly as he made the effort, for it wrenched his sprain.

“Now,” said he, releasing his under lip from a hard bite, “just hand me my whip—it lies there under the hedge.”

I sought it and found it.

He leant down towards me. I thought him to snatch the whip immediately in his anger, but he paused, having the bearing of a gentleman, despite his temper.

 “Thank you,” said he as he touched my cheek with his long finger. He swept down my cheekbone. The unexpected touch startled me, fevering my cooled skin. Manners dictated that I protest his touch as too familiar. But I did not. I remained there, even when he traced lower to capture my chin. I fear I could not move. I felt ensnared. A frantic beat hammered at my chest.

 “Now make haste with the letter to Hay, and return as fast as you can.”

 He released his grip. The contact had lasted but a scant few moments, and yet it seemed an eternity. Before I could form a word of rebuke, he took the whip and a  touch of a spurred heel made his horse first start and rear, and then bound away. The dog rushed in his traces; all three vanished.

“Like heath that, in the wilderness. The wild wind whirls away.”

I took up my muff and walked on. The incident had occurred and was gone for me, it
was
an incident of no moment, no romance, no interest in a sense—yet it marked with change one single hour of a monotonous life. My help had been needed and claimed. I had given it. I was pleased to have done something, trivial, transitory though the deed was, it was yet an active thing, and I was weary of an existence all passive. The new face, too, was like a new picture introduced to the gallery of memory and it was dissimilar to all the others hanging there. Firstly, because it was masculine and, secondly, because it was dark, strong, and stern. I had it still before me when I entered Hay, and slipped the letter into the post office; I saw it as I walked fast down-hill all the way home. When I came to the stile, I stopped a minute, looked round and listened, with an idea that a horse’s hoofs might ring on the causeway again, and that a rider in a cloak, and a Gytrash-like Newfoundland dog, might be again apparent. I saw only the hedge and a pollard willow before me, rising up still and straight to meet the moonbeams. I heard only the faintest waft of wind roaming fitful among the trees round Thornfield, a mile distant and when I glanced down in the direction of the murmur, my eye, traversing the hall-front, caught a light kindling in a window, it reminded me that I was late, and I hurried on.

I did not like re-entering Thornfield. To pass its threshold was to return to stagnation, to cross the silent hall, to ascend the darksome staircase, to seek my own lonely little room, and then to meet tranquil Mrs Fairfax, and spend the long winter evening with her, and her only, was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk—to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too still existence; of an existence whose very privileges of security and ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating. What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling life, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined! Yes, just as much good as it would do a man tired of sitting still in a ‘too easy chair’ to take a long walk, and just as natural was the wish to stir, under my circumstances, as it would be under his.

I lingered at the gates. I lingered on the lawn. I paced backwards and forwards on the pavement. The shutters of the glass door were closed. I could not see into the interior and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house—from the grey-hollow filled with rayless cells, as it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me—a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud, the moon ascending it in solemn march, her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith, midnight dark in its fathomless depth and measureless distance and for those trembling stars that followed her course; they made my heart tremble, my veins glow when I viewed them. Little things recall us to earth, the clock struck in the hall, that sufficed, I turned from moon and stars, opened a side-door, and went in.

The hall was not dark, nor yet was it lit, only by the high-hung bronze lamp. A warm glow suffused both it and the lower steps of the oak staircase. This ruddy shine issued from the great dining room, whose two-leaved door stood open, and showed a genial fire in the grate, glancing on marble hearth and brass fire-irons, and revealing purple draperies and polished furniture, in the most pleasant radiance. It revealed, too, a group near the mantelpiece. I had scarcely caught it, and scarcely become aware of a cheerful mingling of voices, amongst which I seemed to distinguish the tones of Adèle, when the door closed.

I hastened to Mrs Fairfax’s room, there was a fire there too, but no candle, and no Mrs Fairfax. Instead, all alone, sitting upright on the rug, and gazing with gravity at the blaze, I beheld a great black and white long-haired dog, just like the Gytrash of the lane. It was so like it that I went forward and said—“Pilot” and the thing got up and came to me and snuffed me. I caressed him, and he wagged his great tail, but he looked an eerie creature to be alone with, and I could not tell whence he had come. I rang the bell, for I wanted a candle and I wanted, too, to get an account of this visitant. Leah entered.

“What dog is this?”

“He came with master.”

“With whom?”

“With master—Mr Rochester—he is just arrived.”

“Indeed! And is Mrs Fairfax with him?”

“Yes, and Miss Adèle. They are in the dining room, and John is gone for a surgeon, for master has had an accident, his horse fell and his ankle is sprained.”

“Did the horse fall in Hay Lane?”

“Yes, coming down-hill. It slipped on some ice.”

“Ah! Bring me a candle will you Leah?”

Leah brought it. She entered, followed by Mrs Fairfax, who repeated the news, adding that Mr Carter the surgeon was come, and was now with Mr Rochester. Then she hurried out to give orders about tea, and I went upstairs to take off my things.

 Chapter Thirteen

Mr Rochester, it seems, by the surgeon’s orders, went to bed early that night, nor did he rise soon next morning. When he did come down, it was to attend to business. His agent and some of his tenants were arrived, and waiting to speak with him.

Adèle and I had now to vacate the library. It would be in daily requisition as a reception-room for callers. A fire was lit in an apartment upstairs, and there I carried our books, and arranged it for the future schoolroom. I discerned in the course of the morning that Thornfield Hall was a changed place—no longer silent as a church, it echoed every hour or two to a knock at the door, or a clang of the bell. Steps, too, often traversed the hall, and new voices spoke in different keys below, a rill from the outer world was flowing through it. It had a master and for my part, I liked it better.

Adèle was not easy to teach that day. She could not apply, she kept running to the door and looking over the banisters to see if she could get a glimpse of Mr Rochester. Then she coined pretexts to go downstairs, in order, as I shrewdly suspected, to visit the library, where I knew she was not wanted. Then, when I got a little angry, and made her sit still, she continued to talk incessantly of her “ami, Monsieur Edouard Fairfax
de
Rochester,” as she dubbed him—I had not before heard his prenomens—and to conjecture what presents he had brought her, for it appears he had intimated the night before, that when his luggage came from Millcote, there would be found amongst it a little box in whose contents she had an interest.