Thornfield Hall (7 page)

“With your usual acuteness you have come straight to the point,” says Monsieur Rochester to Jane—and I feel myself cold in
there, in the tropical plant that would like to suffocate me with its long spears of prickly grass. Papa will marry? And soon? I hold my breath, as the panther likes to do before sighing out when we go by. “Very soon, my—that is, Miss Eyre: and you'll remember, Jane, the first time I, or rumor, plainly intimated to you that it was my intention to put my old bachelor's neck into the sacred noose, to enter into the holy state of matrimony—to take Miss Ingram to my bosom, in short (she's an extensive armful: but that's not the point—one can't have too much of such a very excellent thing as my beautiful Blanche)….”

I believe that Jane looked away for some reason at this point, and Monsieur Rochester, desiring to recapture her attention, leaned after her so that his words were lost to me. I heard only “you and little Adèle had better trot forthwith,” followed later by “Adèle must go to school, and you, Miss Eyre, must get a new situation.”

“Yes, sir, I will advertise immediately,” came the governess's reply.

There was emotion in the air—there could scarcely not have been, with Papa announcing his intentions—but it was of myself, it goes without saying, that I thought with anguish and despair. I climbed from the back of the bamboo and held my nose to prevent my sneezes at the dust that flew in my face. My back and legs were scratched, and I began to hear myself sob as I ran over soft earth and then into the far end of the laurel walk, near the house I thought I would never love when first I came to Thornfield and which I now never want to leave. How can Papa send me away to school, when Maman will come here after my letter arrives in Italy, sent on to her by Jenny in Paris? How can he lose me as if I am no more to him than the little papillon spaniel, the lapdog Mademoiselle Blanche brings with her everywhere, even to Mr. Rochester's demesne, for she loves the dog a deal more than she
loves Papa, that is for sure. How can he banish me, who sent for me to live with him at Thornfield?

Of Miss Eyre I did not think at all.

 

It is early in the morning, and I have not slept all night. I
feel pride at my presence of mind, that on the way back to the house I dried my eyes and looked up at the great black windows of the Hall, assuring myself that it is my destiny to remain here, that one day Papa will love me all the time, and not just, as now, when his fancy takes him or he wishes to please Miss Eyre. Papa will be mine—and he will be Maman's also, when he tires of playing with a child and needs the mystery of a woman's love.

I went to the rose garden and picked the roses, as I had told Madame Fairfax I was going to do. There was no dew on them: the day had been dry and the evening dryer still, and as I took the thorns from my fingers, I did not shed tears. There was an eager, frightening feeling in the air, such as comes with the storms my poor friend Antoinette used to love watching, from her aerie high on the roof. The sky had grown very dark, and the last part of my return to the side door of the Hall I ran, in case the panther who lives in the bamboo down by the sunken fence had followed me all the way up to the rose garden.

I was afraid all night in my small
lit carré
and very awake. I knew I must act to stop this
mariage
between Papa and the “armful” he describes as Mademoiselle Blanche. Yet I have heard his voice, his manner of speaking, down by the horse chestnut tree, to Miss Eyre. He would speak in this way to Maman, before they would go to her
chambre à coucher
together—and sometimes he would pick her up in his arms and carry her in there. Then the door closed and the key turned in the lock. Why does Monsieur
Rochester speak to the governess in this way? Does Papa not love Mademoiselle Blanche after all?

Whatever the answer may be—and Papa loves to tease; perhaps he imagines Jane hopelessly
amoureuse
of her employer and he makes fun of her, which I know is not kind—wherever the answer may lie, Papa has said he will marry as soon as possible; and as soon as possible Maman shall come here and put an end to this nonsense.

It is early, and the storm has raged all night, so I run out into the garden and feel the wet grass under my feet. I go down the laurel walk, as if I can find Monsieur Rochester and the lovesick governess still there, she weeping from a broken heart and he extolling the perfections of his future bride.

But of course they are not there. I look around me, at the destruction brought by the storm. And I run indoors once more, up to the bright room with its chintz curtains and coverings, where I am more glad than I thought I would be to find Jane asleep in her narrow bed. “The chestnut tree at the bottom of the orchard has been struck by lightning in the night,” I tell Jane, clambering into bed beside her and pulling at her brown hair. “Half of the tree is split away, mademoiselle. Come and see!”

 

The roses in the
grande chambre
that was made ready for the
bride of Papa stand brown in the pretty vase, the curtains are drawn, and the fire in the grate stays unlit. For Mademoiselle Blanche will not come now, nor her mother who looks down her nose at the little French bastard of Monsieur Rochester, nor the young men and the girls with their dowries and their big skirts and their way of ogling Papa once Blanche is out of the room.

At the very last minute the visit was canceled. Cook is standing
at the great range, and a haunch of venison comes out, to be basted, while John fetches port from the cellar for the mixture Maman would refuse if she was here and push away with an exclamation of disgust, the sauce they call Cumberland. Leah staggers under the weight of the potatoes that must roast in the oven, now that they are boiled, and as they are floury and gray when she heaves them to the long trestle table, I think longingly of Maman once again: for she would not have permitted
pommes de terre
of this nature in the house. Jenny would make a gratin, to accompany the leg of mutton Maman liked to serve when there was company on a Sunday, in the rue Vaugirard. To the thinly sliced potatoes Jenny would add cream, and a little cheese, the Gruyère from Switzerland, and a pinch of nutmeg. (But then, when I think of the nutmeg, I am reminded of my friend now imprisoned forever—so I must imagine—behind the cruel door Grace guards day and night on the third story of Thornfield Hall.) I have lost my mother and my
nouvelle amie
both; and to keep myself from weeping before the whole kitchen staff, I have to lift an onion from the table and pretend to cut it for the other sauce Maman would never approve, the onion sauce as thick and white and filled with flour as everything else they eat in this strange Yorkshire. Even so, the onion is seized from me by Cook, and I am left to wipe my eyes on Leah's apron. The fact is, as I have to tell myself when further reprimanded by Mary and told to leave the kitchen and go find Mademoiselle Eyre to continue with my lessons, I am in my heart happy that the Ingram party has not come. Surely Papa will not wed a guest who refuses to attend the welcome party arranged in her honor? And—even if the rumor is true, that it is Papa who has called off the whole affair—then I cannot grieve long for his lack of
politesse
. He has seen he must not marry Mademoiselle Blanche: I am delighted that he has, even at the very last minute, come to his senses in this respect.

I skip to the far side of the immense kitchen at Thornfield and occupy myself with Bella the scullery maid there, as she shreds a mound of spinach still muddy from the garden. For Madame Fairfax has thrown open the window that separates the basement passage at Thornfield from the steamy room, lit by a great skylight, where Cook and her minions prepare the meals. She leans in, as she does daily, to give or countermand orders, the ribbons on her freshly starched bonnet tied tightly under her chin, so that her face resembles a scone, or another of the buns and floury marvels pulled out of the oven on a baking tray before the hour for tea. I am not in favor with Madame Fairfax, as I know well. She is pale and stares at me and Miss Eyre as we leave the schoolroom and depart on another journey with Monsieur Rochester, to Whitcross or Millcote, in search, it seems, of another reason for Monsieur Rochester to spend money on silks and satins for Miss Eyre, and for him also to tease me with his tales of going to the moon—for that is where he will go to live with Jane, so he says, and when I repeat this to Madame F, she shakes her head and looks grave indeed.

I know that Madame F understands that all Papa's gestures are for me. He pleases the governess in order to bring me happiness: he promises me dresses that will far outshine hers, because,
naturellement,
the dresses will come from Paris. If I miss lessons because Papa speaks with Jane, he speaks with her for that purpose: that I may enjoy my life here at Thornfield Hall. Madame Fairfax is
jalouse,
I daresay, of the preference for me over all others that her employer has recently shown. And if Miss Eyre looks at him like a moon-struck heifer in the barn where Jack takes me from time to time to milk the cows and pat their shiny black noses—then it is
tant pis
for her. She, too, will perforce understand the nature of Papa's love for his family, when Maman comes and our little circle is complete.

As if to prove that all the luck is with me now, Madame F sin
gles me out for a smile as she looks in through the hatch window into the kitchen. Bella has to nudge me—Bella who mutters as she plunges the tough, mud-encrusted spinach into water that runs in cold from a great pipe leading to the water pond on the moor. Everyone knows that Bella is lacking something in her head; and she is no taller than I am, as we stand together by the big stone sink. She has one eye that is always closed, poor Bella, and she has to skew right around to try to tell me that the housekeeper, who controls all our lives here at Thornfield, wishes to speak to me straightaway.

Everyone stares as I go to the inner window, and Madame F says I must follow her upstairs, no dawdling about it. But as she speaks the stern words, I see she favors me, just as Papa does these days. And because of their affection for me, Adèle is popular in Thornfield Hall. “Come now,” Madame F says; and when we are up in the boudoir, she gives me a mug of the sweet pink drink she says is made from the rose hips that come plump and red on the rosebushes in the garden, when the flowers have died. As I sip, she sits me on a low velvet pouffe, of a grassy green that I think goes very well with the pantalettes I like to wear. She hands me a letter. My heart gives a violent leap when I see that it is from Jenny Colon—she who has not written for so many months, she who knows the whereabouts of Maman. “Your Parisian friend has written to me, as you see,” says Madame Fairfax, and her voice is gentle. “She informs me that Madame Varens will come here this month. You will be pleased to see your mother, little Adèle, I have no doubt.”

This time I cannot keep the hot tears from streaming down my face. I do not listen to Madame Fairfax as she goes on. Maman comes here; the bad part of the fairy tale has come to an end; we shall live happily ever after, Maman, Papa, and I.

“So you will be able to continue your life in Paris when your
Maman has taken you back there,” says Madame F—but I do not hear her at all when she says this over and over, for the room is filled with the bright light of my happiness, and I no longer care if the plain Yorkshire sky outside the window has as many animal-shaped clouds as a Noah's ark in an infant's dream. And, for all the strictness she has shown me in the past, I now feel only love for Madame Fairfax, and I promise myself I will be
une sage petite fille
and do whatever the good housekeeper asks of me.

For what Madame Fairfax does not yet know is that Maman comes to this great château to marry Papa. He knows she comes, and he has canceled the betrothal party with Mademoiselle Ingram for that reason. They will marry in the chapel, and I shall wear the organdy that is the color of the peaches in Papa's greenhouse up beyond the kitchen garden.

We shall all live together at Thornfield. And Miss Eyre may stay to continue my education—if Maman approves it, that is to say.

Grace

H
ere's the story of how a good plan can
misfire—a plan, that is, that would have made Grace Poole rich and would have rid the master of his problem, if nature had been allowed to take its course.

This is what took place: I went down to the master's room this morning and told him his wife was gone again—gone and not coming back this time by the looks of it—and good riddance to her as far as you're concerned, I wanted to say, though it didn't pay me to do so.

It was early, for gentry at any rate, with Leah still cooking the breakfast for Mrs. F. “Oh, I'll just take a little porridge, and no cream whatever you do,” the silly old woman says, and then I catch her guzzling the preserved plums in the master's silver box on the sideboard. “Oh, Leah, the cambric pillowcases weren't properly ironed yesterday—surely that nincompoop of a maid can learn how to use a steam iron?
I don't want Miss Ingram with damp or creased dresses.” And so on and on, while I'm waiting right up in the eaves for the plain stuff Mrs. R gets given, and me along with her. “No, you cannot cook for yourself up there,” Mr. R says when I ask for a small pantry—surely it wouldn't be too much, and then I could boil or roast in the room the master calls “Grace's room,” though God knows it's not mine to dispose of or even leave. “We don't want fire up there,” Mr. R says. And he looks away in that end-of-the-world way he has, as if being master of all isn't enough to keep him cheerful most of the time.

So today I had to wait, till Leah had come up with the gruel and set it down, bad-tempered in all her ways as ever, on the table in “Grace's room,” the room with windows so high up in the eaves you can't look out at Thornfield land or see whether it's snow or rain today.

“What is it, Grace?” my mistress—if that's what you'd call her, the wretched Creole the master brought back here from the sugar estates his father had (“It's all tobacco now, Cousin Fairfax,” I heard him say some years back, but if you ask me, they're still slaves just like we are here at Thornfield Hall)—the poor white woman calls out to me as she always does. “What is it, Grace? Are they my fruits, pineapple and mango and lime? Is there a hibiscus blossom on the tray? Am I home at last?”

You can't help feeling sorry for this wife the master has made a prisoner of, but on a cold, dark morning it just grates on my nerves to have the woman he calls his “Antoinette” crying for all those exotic things she'll never taste again. And now she's locked up in her cell every hour of the night and day, after the fright we had with her lately. Yet it's true, her escaping like that did give me the idea of making my fortune at last, from the crazy creature I've watched over so long. “No, Bertha,” says I, “it's the gruel. And
there's an apple here. From the orchard where you used to like to go walking when you first came to Thornfield—remember?”

Then she falls silent, and this is very probably the last exchange we'll have—unless Mrs. F comes up and I tell the madwoman to stop her babbling. If it gets so bad the master has to be called for, he'll “recommend a cold bath.” Oh, that makes Mrs. R holler, all right, and cruel it is, too, with the prisoner bundled down to the yard where they hose the horses and given a fair beating with a spray of icy water at full throttle. I've seen Mr. R leave the house when this punishment is going on, and I don't blame him. I'd leave myself, if I could. “It's not because of you I stay here,” I say to the poor lunatic when she clings to me and cries for a hug or some other proof of affection. “There's nowhere for me to go,” and I ram the point home. And then I know she knows I see Thornfield Hall as just as much of a prison as she does. We belong to a master who'd happily see us dead—that I tell her sometimes, too. And then she cries as if her heart would burst open.

Today it was all going to be different. Mr. R's “fiancée,” as they call her in the servants' hall (where John and Mary are too stuck up to let me eat with them), was expected today. Her second visit in just a matter of weeks. She was due to be the new mistress of the Hall, the queen of his heart, so they say.

And the only one who knows an impediment to the marriage of Miss Blanche Ingram and Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester (“impediment” is a fine word, and it was Bertha's brother, Mr. Mason, who first taught it to me) is Grace Poole.

We were in the room with the high windows, Mr. Richard Mason and I, on the occasion of his last visit to Thornfield. I know he comes here to get money from the master, and I soon set myself to learn his tricks. “You and I, we're the only ones who know the secret,” the gentleman from the West Indies says to
me, after pouring me a glass of Tokay he's brought up from the cellars, cool as cucumber. “You'll like this better than that evil porter you tope, Grace,” says Mr. Mason, and he gives a high-pitched laugh that almost wakes Bertha—though I'd given her enough laudanum to keep her still at least a day or two. “Mrs. F would never tell the world the shame of my sister's confined state,” Bertha's brother goes on, “and the decline of her mental powers; dear Mrs. Fairfax would not care to be kin to a man like Edward, who could reduce his lawfully wedded wife to little more than an animal.”

As Mr. Mason said the words “lawfully wedded wife,” I saw his meaning. If the master so much as began to believe he could remarry, then the blackmail would begin in earnest. Mr. Mason would end up a rich man. Why he imagines I wouldn't go in for this game, too, I cannot say. I didn't count, I suppose: I was just Grace Poole.

Well, the week of the confirmation of Miss Blanche Ingram as official fiancée to Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester came, and it saw a great upheaval and bustling at Thornfield. This time, as we all knew at the Hall, the master had to declare his intentions; he'd put those diamonds back in the safe too often, as Cook and Leah agree. Mary, Mr. R's devoted servant, was at sixes and sevens over the bed linen and the hip baths, and with John shouting at the lads down in the lower regions to stoke the boiler up high and Mrs. F speaking coldly to that sharp-eyed little minx Leah, it was a busy scene at Thornfield and no mistaking.

But Mr. Richard Mason, as I noticed and I was all the happier for it, had missed the cue entirely. No sign of a telegram, no figure just off the coach at Whitcross walking up the drive with gold written all over his face. No voice at the bottom of the stairs to the attic, soft and cooing like the wood pigeons that fly about the woods on the far hill of the Ingram estates. “Grace, are you there?”
I'd think I heard it sometimes—but as the days passed, I began to see that the road was open to me alone. And I began to form my plan.

 

Bertha was in one of her heavy sleeps when I took her from
the trundle bed. She sometimes wakes and thinks she's in her marital couch, on honeymoon in those accursed spice islands she paid the master to take her away from. Then, when she sees the narrow iron bedstead and the high, sloping walls without so much as a chink of light, she groans and rolls over. On this occasion I made sure she rolled right into the net—or hammock, if you like: I came across it in the attic where the playthings of Master Edward and his late, lamented brother were stored once they grew too old to have a use for them.

She looked like something from that exotic place I thought I'd never see—Bequia, sounded like its name. “Grace, you'd love the Windward Islands”—so poor Bertha would croon sometimes, and tell me of the nutmegs and breadfruit a Captain Cook had planted there, on an island I like the sound of, along with plants with fronds and spiky leaves such as Mr. R's new bride would give her eyes for, in the new greenhouses down by the water garden at Thornfield. “Let me tell you about the trade winds, Grace.”

Today, lying in that bright hammock on the floor of the attic room she's been in more years than anyone could care to count, the wife of Mr. Rochester looked like something that's turned from a butterfly back to a caterpillar, and I couldn't help wishing I didn't have to do this to her—though she knew nothing, thanks to Quincey's drops, of her destination or her future life. I muttered a few words to her, as if it would give her some comfort, as I dragged her down the stone spiral stairs (I knew that Mrs. F had gone all the way to Sheffield, visiting her niece, and this I considered was the best part of my good luck today).

While I was muttering on—and thinking who was the madwoman here now, I heard Leah's footsteps running heavy as always up the small staircase you can reach only by going behind the tapestry—the ghost's stairs, we call it—to the third story of the house. She'd already cleared the gruel tray. I hadn't bargained for this. And I wished I hadn't enjoyed the gin the way I had last night, for I was sweating like a pig by the time I'd pushed poor Bertha into the log cupboard outside the room Mrs. F calls her
boodwah.
It was a long way down, from the log store through the skylight into the tower room below—but I'd opened the creaking joists of the skylight the day before and placed a pile of old rugs on the floor, for poor Bertha to drop on.

After all, we want her alive and not dead. And from the tower room I could drag her onto the cart and climb on behind, like when John goes into Whitcross on an errand. I was muffled up and hooded. It's a risk, but it's one I was ready to take. On a day like this, with the arrival of a new bride for the master, Bertha was worth her weight in the proverbial lucre.

“You're out of breath, Leah,” I said to the lass when she came pounding down the hidden staircase onto the landing—and, to my horror, made for the log cupboard. No doubt Mary had told her Miss Blanche Ingram will be wanting a roaring fire in her room as soon as she comes in. A fire is permitted for the future mistress of Thornfield so long as she's bringing a good dowry and a few thousand acres of land, I said to myself—though what I was really thinking is what to do about Leah if she tried to enter that log cupboard outside Mrs. F's room. “I
observed
you last night, my girl,” I said, banking on the fact that Leah is a slut of the first order and I'd already seen her with the new stable lad a couple of times. It's well known that Mrs. Fairfax will not tolerate what she calls “improper behavior” at Thornfield; and when she
observes
it—a
word I knew would come in useful for me one day—then it's out on your ear whether the snow's coming down or not.

Leah turned and looked at me, then fled back down the stairs. I was free—free to take my prisoner to the hideaway I had set up for her, free to end my own life sentence in this cursed house, and free to make my proposition to the master and grow rich. I've lived long enough without a ray of light coming into my life, that's true enough, and there's plenty here can bear witness to it, from Leah to Mary and John, and even Mrs. F herself I've caught looking at me pityingly.

But today I knew for the first time my luck would change—and for the first time since I could remember, I'd say there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

The master didn't need any explaining to when I knocked on the door of his room bright and early. (We'd been “up” for hours, my poor crazy charge and me, but what does that count for when there's nowhere to go but around the room and back to bed again? At least today I'd had work to do, lugging the wretch down the stairs.) But—when you come to think of it—wouldn't it be enough to drive anyone mad, the way he shut her up there when she began to complain of cold and all manner of illnesses: “Get up, Antoinette,” Mr. R used to say in the old days when he still had some hope for the woman from Port of Spain. “Get up, or I'll make sure this is the last time you'll have the pleasure of my company!”

It was something like that he'd say, and it just made matters worse for the shivering woman in the dark room where he put her almost as soon as they came back from Jamaica and the honeymoon to those islands she liked to talk about, the islands with the nutmegs and the passionflowers she wore in her hair. “Get up, Antoinette….”

Now it was
his
turn to get up quickly and follow me up the
stairs. He knew there mustn't be a repeat of trouble on the day Miss Blanche comes, and her mother along with her, who never once looks you in the eye if you're a servant or a keeper—which is just what the master don't want them to know I am.

He followed me without saying a word. I know the man well enough to tell when his schemes going wrong will send him into one of his rages, and I reckoned he was holding on as hard as he could, not to explode with temper as we went up to the third story. It
would
be today—I did hear him mumble those words. He wants Miss Blanche's land, of course—and anything that gets in the way of money for Mr. R has to be stamped on pretty quickly. All the same, he knows I hold the secret—and the other one who would be interested to know that Mr. R was plotting bigamy was right across the world, a big, cold ocean away.

We walked into “Grace's Room” together, and I had to hold my sides to stop from laughing when I saw him screw up his eyes to get used to the poor light up there before going through to the cell where Antoinette has lived close on fifteen years. Was he going to start up again? It's as if the man can't be with a woman without going back to the days when they were lovers. “Antoinette, my darling, how are you today?” he said, just as I'd imagined he would. But he didn't stay that way for long—it's only when her brother Mr. Mason is here that he holds back, and today, as I knew he would, he started upbraiding his own evil fortune, before storming out of the attic rooms in a rage.

Today, as it happens, Bertha Mason—or Mrs. Rochester, whom no one is permitted to know exists—is a mile or so away in a hayloft prepared by myself to receive her. A bribe to the new stable lad did it—his father is the cowman on the outlying farm at Millcote—and lips will be sealed if anyone stumbles across a woman closed up in there with the hay. Mr. R is a tight-fisted employer, and the family is glad of the money I handed over, from
my savings. “There'll be more of it if you keep your mouth shut, Jack,” I said. By my reckoning, what I've handed over will keep them quiet no more than two weeks. But by then Mr. R would be paying—and he'd be doubling my money thereafter till I was ready to go. (I had a mind to go south, to where my sister lives, near the sea in Devon. She'd be glad enough to see me if I brought the gold I'm claiming—but all this belongs in the land of make-believe by now.)