36 Cont. Jane Eyre Read By Stephanie Poppins

This is S.

D.

Hudson Magic Jane Eyre Chapter 36 Continued Another field crossed,

A lane threaded,

And there were the courtyard walls,

The back offices,

The house itself,

The rookery still hid,

Thornfield Hall.

My first view of it shall be in front,

I determined,

Where its bold battlements will strike the eye nobly at once,

And where I can single out my master's very window.

Perhaps he will be standing at it.

He rises early.

Perhaps he's now walking in the orchard,

Or on the pavement in front.

Could I but see him,

But a moment.

Surely in that case I should not be so mad as to run to him.

I cannot tell,

I'm not certain,

And if I did,

What then?

God bless him,

What then?

Who would be hurt by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me?

I rave,

Perhaps at this moment he's watching the sun over the Pyrenees,

Or on the tideless seas of the south.

I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard,

Turned its angle.

There was a gate just there,

Opening into the meadow between two stone pillars,

Crowned by stone balls.

From behind one pillar I could peep round quietly at the forefront of the mansion.

I advanced my head with precaution,

Desirous to ascertain if any bedroom window blinds were yet drawn up.

Battlements,

Windows,

Long front,

All from this sheltered station were at my command.

The crows sailing overhead,

Perhaps,

Watched me while I took this survey.

I wonder what they thought.

They must have considered I was very grateful and timid at first,

And that gradually I grew very bold and reckless.

A peep,

And then a long stare,

And then a departure from my niche,

And a straying out into the meadow,

And a sudden stop full in front of the great mansion,

And a protracted,

Hard gaze towards it.

What affectation of diffidence was this at first?

They might have demanded.

What stupid regardlessness now?

Hear an illustration,

Reader.

A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank.

He wishes to catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her.

He steals softly over the grass,

Careful to make no sound.

He pauses,

Fancying she has stirred.

He withdraws.

Not for worlds would he be seen.

All is still.

He again advances.

He bends over her.

A light veil rests on her features.

He lifts it,

Bends lower.

Now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty,

Warm,

Blooming and lovely in rest.

How hurried was their first glance,

But how they fix.

How he starts.

How he suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not a moment since touch with his finger.

How he calls aloud a name and drops his burden and gazes on it wildly.

He thus grasps and cries and gazes,

Because he no longer fears to awaken by any sound he can utter,

By any movement he can make.

He thought his love slept sweetly,

But he finds she is stone dead.

I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house,

And I saw a blackened ruin.

No need to cowl behind a gatepost indeed,

To peep up at a chamber lattice,

Fearing life was astir behind them.

No need to listen for doors opening,

To fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel walk.

The lawns,

The grounds,

Were trodden and waste,

The portal yawned void.

The front was as I had once seen it in a dream,

But a shell-like wall,

Very high and very fragile looking,

Perforated with painless windows.

No roof,

No battlements,

No chimneys.

All had crashed in.

And there was the silence of death about it,

The solitude of a lonesome wild.

No wonder that letters addressed to people here have never received an answer,

As well dispatch epistles to a vault in a church aisle.

The grim blackness of the stones,

Told by what fate the hall had fallen,

By conflagration,

But how kindled.

What story belonged to this disaster?

What loss besides mortar and marble and woodwork had followed upon it?

Had life been wrecked as well as property?

If so,

Whose?

Dreadful question,

There was no one here to answer it,

Not even dumb sign,

Mute token.

In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated interior,

I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late occurrence.

Winter snows,

I thought,

Had drifted through that void arch,

Winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements.

Fall amidst the drenched piles of rubbish.

Spring had cherished vegetation.

Grass and wheat grew there,

And between the stones and fallen rafters.

And oh,

Where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck?

In what land?

Under what auspices?

My eye involuntarily wandered to the grey church tower near the gates,

And I asked,

Is he with Dema de Rochester,

Sharing the shelter of this narrow marble house?

Some answer must be had to these questions.

I could find it nowhere but at the inn,

And thither ere long I returned.

The host himself brought my breakfast into the parlour.

I requested him to shut the door and sit down.

I had some questions to ask him.

But when he complied,

I scarcely knew how to begin.

Such horror had I of the possible answers.

And yet the spectacle of desolation I'd just left repaired me in a measure for a tale of misery.

The host was a respectable-looking middle-aged man.

You know Thornfield Hall,

Of course,

I managed to say at last.

Yes,

Mum,

I lived there once.

Did you?

Not in my time,

I thought.

You were a stranger to me.

I was the late Mr.

Rochester's butler,

He added.

The late?

I seemed to have received with full force the blow I had been trying to evade.

The late?

I gasped.

Is he dead?

I mean the present gentleman,

Mr.

Edward's father,

He explained.

I breathed again,

My blood resumed its flow.

Fully assured by these words that Mr.

Edward,

My Mr.

Rochester,

Was at least alive,

Was in short,

The present gentleman.

Gladdening words.

It seemed I could hear all that was to come,

Whatever the disclosures might be,

With comparative tranquillity.

Since he was not in the grave,

I could bear,

I thought,

To learn he was at the Antipodes.

Is Mr.

Rochester living in Thornfield Hall now?

I asked,

Knowing of course what the answer would be,

But yet desirous of deferring the direct question as to where he really was.

No,

Mum,

Oh no,

No one's living there.

I suppose you're a stranger in these parts,

Or you would have heard what happened last autumn.

Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin.

It was burnt down about harvest time.

A dreadful calamity.

Such an immense quantity of valuable property destroyed.

Hardly any of the furniture could be saved.

The fire broke out dead at night,

And before the engines arrived for Millcote,

The building was a mass of flame.

It was a terrible spectacle.

I witnessed it myself.

At dead of night,

I muttered.

Yes,

That was ever the hour of fatality at Thornfield.

Was it known how it originated?

I demanded.

I guessed,

Mum,

I guessed.

Indeed,

I should say it was ascertained beyond a doubt.

You're not perhaps aware,

He considered,

Edging his chair a little nearer the table and speaking low,

There was a lady here,

A lunatic kept in the house.

I have learned something of it.

She was kept in very close confinement,

Ma.

People even for some years was not absolutely certain of her existence.

No one saw her.

They knew only by rumours such a person was at the Hall,

And who or what she was,

It was difficult to conjecture.

They said Mr.

Edward had brought her from abroad,

And some believe she'd been his mistress.

But a queer thing happened a year since,

A very queer thing.

I feared now to hear my own story,

And endeavoured to recall him to the main fact.

And this lady?

This lady,

Mum,

He answered,

Turned out to be Mr.

Rochester's wife.

The discovery was brought about in the strangest way.

There was a young lady,

A governess of the Hall,

That Mr.

Rochester fell in but the fire,

I suggested impatiently.

I'm coming to that,

Mum,

That Mr.

Edward fell in love with.

The servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was.

He was after her continually.

They used to watch him.

Servants will,

You know,

Mum.

And he set store on her past everything.

For all,

Nobody but him thought her so very handsome.

She was a small little thing,

They say,

Almost like a child.

I never saw her myself,

But I've heard Leah,

The housemaid,

Tell of her.

Leah liked her well enough.

Mr.

Rochester was about 40,

And this governess not 20.

And you see,

When gentlemen of his age fall in love with girls,

They're often like as if they were bewitched.

Well,

He would marry her.

You should tell me this part of the story another time,

I said,

But now I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about the fire.

Was it suspected this lunatic Mrs.

Rochester had any hand in it?

You've hit it,

Mum.

It's quite certain it was her and nobody else that set it going.

She had a woman to take care of her called Mrs.

Poole,

An able woman in her line and very trustworthy.

But for one fault,

A fault common to deal with them nurses and matrons,

She kept a private bottle of gin by her,

And now and then took a drop over too much.

It is excusable.

She had a hard life of it.

But it still was dangerous for when Mrs.

Poole was fast asleep after the gin and water,

The mad lady,

Who was as cunning as a witch,

Would take her keys out of her pocket,

Let herself out of her chamber and go roaming about the house doing any wild mischief that came into her head.

They say she'd nearly burnt her husband in his bed once,

But I don't know about that.

However,

On this night,

She set fire first to the hangings of the room next to her own.

Then she got down to a lower story and made her way to the chamber that had been the governess's.

She was like as if she knew somehow that matters had gone on and had us spite at her.

Then she kindled the bed there.

There was nobody sleeping in it,

Fortunately.

The governess had run away two months before,

And for all Mr.

Rochester sought her as if she'd been the most precious thing he had in the world,

He never could hear a word of her.

Then he grew savage,

Quite savage on his disappointment.

He never was a wild man,

But he got dangerous after he lost her.

He would be alone too.

He sent Mrs.

Fairfax,

The housekeeper,

Away to her friends at a distance,

But he did it handsomely for he settled an annuity on her for life,

And she deserved it.

She was a very good woman.

Miss Adele,

A ward he had,

Was put to school.

He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry and shut himself up like a hermit at the hall.

What?

Did he not leave England?

Leave England?

Bless you know.

He would not cross the doorstones of the house except at night,

When he walked like a ghost about the grounds,

In and out the orchard as if he'd lost his senses,

Which it is my opinion he had.

For more spirited,

Bolder,

Keener gentleman than he was before the midge of a governess crossed him,

You'd never saw mum.

He was not a man given to wine or cards,

Or racing as some are,

And he was not so very handsome,

But he had a courage and a will of his own if ever a man had.

I knew him from a boy,

You see,

And for my part I wish Miss Adele had been sunk in the sea before she ever came to Thornfield Hall.