Chapter XV
Mr. Rochester did, on a future occasion, explain it.
It was one afternoon, when he chanced to meet me and Adele in the grounds, and while she played with Pilot and her shuttlecock, he asked me to walk up and down a long beech avenue within sight of her.43
He then said that she was the daughter of a French opera dancer, Celine Varens, toward whom he once cherished what he called a "grande passion"cv This passion Celine had professed to return with even superior ardor. He thought himself her idol, ugly as he was; he believed, as he said, that she preferred his "taille d'athlete"cw to the elegance of the Apollo Belvidere.
"And, Miss Eyre, so much was I flattered by this preference of the Gallic sylph for her British gnome, that I installed her in a hotel;cx gave her a complete establishment of servants, a carriage, cashmeres, diamonds, dentelles,cy &c. In short, I began the process of ruining myself in the received style--like any other spoony.cz I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trod the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten centre. I had-as I deserve to have--the fate of all other spoonies. Happening to call one evening, when Celine did not expect me, I found her out; but it was a warm night, and I was tired with strolling through Paris, so I sat down in her boudoir; happy to breathe the air consecrated so lately by her presence. No--I exaggerate; I never thought there was any consecrating virtue about her; it was rather a sort of pastile perfume she had left--a scent of musk and amber, than an odor of sanctity. I was just beginning to stifle with the fumes of conservatory flowers and sprinkled essences, when I bethought myself to open the window and step out on to the balcony. It was moonlight, and gas-light besides, and very still and serene. The balcony was furnished with a chair or two; I sat down, took out a cigar--I will take one now, if you will excuse me."
Here ensued a pause, filled up by the producing and lighting of a cigar; having placed it to his lips, and breathed a trail of Havana incense on the freezing and sunless air, he went on.
"I liked bonbons, too, in those days, Miss Eyre, and I was croquant--(overlook the barbarism) croquantda chocolate comfits, and smoking alternately, watching, meantime, the equipages that rolled along the fashionable street toward the neighboring opera-house, when, in an elegant close carriage, drawn by a beautiful pair of English horses, and distinctly seen in the brillant city-night, I recognized the 'voiture'db I had had given Celine. She was returning; of course my heart thumped with impatience against the iron rails I leaned upon. The carriage stopped, as I had expected, at the hotel door; my flame (that is the very word for an opera inamorata) alighted; though muffled in a cloak--an unnecessary incumbrance, by-the-by, on so warm a June evening--I knew her instantly, by her little foot, seen peeping from the skirt of her dress, as she skipped from the carriage-step. Bending over the balcony, I was about to murmur 'Mon ange'dc--in a tone, of course, which should be audible to the ear of love alone--when a figure jumped from the carriage after her, cloaked also; but that was a spurred heel which had rung on the pavement, and that was a hatted head which now passed under the arched porte cocheredd of the hotel.
"You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not; I need not ask you; because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet to experience; your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall waken it. You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the flood, nor hear the breakers boil at their base. But I tell you--and you may mark my words--you will come some day to a craggy pass of the channel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise; either you will be dashed to atoms on crag-points, or lifted up and borne on by some master wave into a calmer current--as I am now.
"I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world under this frost. I like Thornfield; its antiquity; its retirement; its old crow-trees and thorn-trees; its gray facade, and lines of dark windows reflecting that metal welkin;de and yet how long have I abhorred the very thought of it; shunned it like a great plague-house! How I do still abhor--"
He ground his teeth and was silent; he arrested his step and struck his boot against the hard ground. Some hated thought seemed to have him in its grip, and to hold him so tightly that he could not advance.
We were ascending the avenue when he thus paused; the hall was before us. Lifting his eye to its battlements, he cast over them a glare such as I never saw before or since. Pain, shame, ire--impatience, disgust, detestation--seemed momentarily to hold a quivering conflict in the large pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrow. Wild was the wrestle which should be paramount; but another feeling rose and triumphed; something hard and cynical, self-willed and resolute; it settled his passion and petrified his countenance. He went on.
"During the moment I was silent, Miss Eyre, I was arranging a point with my destiny. She stood there, by that beech-trunk--a hag like one of those who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres. 'You like Thornfield?' she said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the air a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the house-front, between the upper and lower rows of windows. 'Like it if you can! Like it if you dare!'
" 'I will like it,' said I. 'I dare like it'; and" (he subjoined moodily) "I will keep my word; I will break obstacles to happiness, to goodness--yes, goodness. I wish to be a better man than I have been; than I am; as Job's leviathan broke the spear, the dart, and the habergeon, hinderances which others count as iron and brass, I will esteem but straw and rotten wood."44
Adele here ran before him with her shuttlecock. "Away!" he cried harshly; "keep at a distance, child; or go in to Sophie!" Continuing then to pursue his walk in silence, I ventured to recall him to the point whence he had abruptly diverged.
"Did you leave the balcony, sir," I asked, "when Mademoiselle Varens entered?"
I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question; but, on the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he turned his eyes toward me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow.
"Oh, I had forgotten Celine! Well, to resume. When I saw my charmer thus come in accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake of jealousy, rising on undulating coils from the moonlit balcony, glided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two minutes to my heart's core.45 Strange!" he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the point. "Strange that I should choose you for the confidant of all this, young lady; passing strange that you should listen to me quietly, as if it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera-mistresses to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you! But the last singularity explains the first, as I intimated once before; you, with your gravity, considerateness, and caution, were made to be the recipient of secrets. Besides, I know what sort of a mind I have placed in communication with my own--I know it is one not liable to take infection; it is a peculiar mind; it is a unique one. Happily, I do not mean to harm it; but if I did, it would not take harm from me. The more you and I converse, the better; for while I cannot blight you, you may refresh me." After this digression he proceeded.
"I remained in the balcony. 'They will come to her boudoir no doubt,' thought I; 'let me prepare an ambush.' So putting my hand in through the open window, I drew the curtain over it, leaving only an opening through which I could take observations; then I closed the casement, all but a chink just wide enough to furnish an outlet to 'lovers' whispered vows'; then I stole back to my chair; and as I resumed it the pair came in. My eye was quickly at the aperture. Celine's chambermaid entered, lighted a lamp, left it on the table, and withdrew. The couple were thus revealed to me clearly; both removed their cloaks, and there was 'the Varens' shining in satin and jewels--my gifts of course--and there was her companion in an officer's uniform; and I knew him for a young ro
uedf of a vicomte--a brainless and vicious youth whom I had sometimes met in society, and had never thought of hating because I despised him so absolutely. On recognizing him, the fang of the snake--jealousy--was instantly broken; because at the same moment my love for Celine sunk under an extinguisher. A woman who could betray me for such a rival was not worth contending for; she deserved only scorn; less, however, than I, who had been her dupe.
"They began to talk; their conversation eased me completely; frivolous, mercenary, heartless, and senseless, it was rather calculated to weary than enrage a listener. A card of mine lay on the table; this being perceived, brought my name under discussion. Neither of them possessed energy or wit to belabor me soundly; but they insulted me as coarsely as they could in their little way; especially Celine; who even waxed rather brilliant on my personal defects--deformities she termed them. Now it had been her custom to launch out into fervent admiration of what she called my 'beaute male';dg wherein she differed diametrically from you, who told me point-blank at the second interview, that you did not think me handsome. The contrast struck me at the time, and--"
Adele here came running up again.
"Monsieur, John has just been to say that your agent has called and wishes to see you."
"Ah! in that case I must abridge. Opening the window, I walked in upon them; liberated Celine from my protection; gave her notice to vacate her hotel; offered her a purse for immediate exigencies; disregarded screams, hysterics, prayers, protestations, convulsions; made an appointment with the vicomte for a meeting at the Bois de Boulogne. Next morning I had the pleasure of encountering him; left a bullet in one of his poor, etiolated arms, feeble as the wing of a chicken in the pip,dh and then thought I had done with the whole crew. But, unluckily, the Varens, six months before, had given me this fillette,di Adele, who, she affirmed, was my daughter; and perhaps she may be, though I see no proofs of such grim paternity written in her countenance; Pilot is more like me than she. Some years after I had broken with the mother, she abandoned her child and ran away to Italy with a musician or singer. I acknowledged no natural claim on Adele's part to be supported by me--nor do I now acknowledge any, for I am not her father--but hearing that she was quite destitute, I e'en took the poor thing out of the slime and mud of Paris, and transplanted it here, to grow up clean in the wholesome soil of an English country garden. Mrs. Fairfax found you to train it; but now you know that it is the illegitimate offspring of a French opera girl, you will perhaps think differently of your post and protegee; you will be coming to me some day with notice that you have found another place--that you beg me to look out for a new governess, &c.--eh?"
"No--Adele is not answerable for either her mother's faults or yours; I have a regard for her, and now that I know she is, in a sense, parentless--forsaken by her mother and disowned by you, sir--I shall cling closer to her than before. How could I possibly prefer the spoiled pet of a wealthy family, who would hate her governess as a nuisance, to a lonely little orphan, who leans towards her as a friend?"
"Oh, that is the light in which you view it! Well, I must go in now, and you too; it darkens."
But I stayed out a few minutes longer with Adele and Pilot--ran a race with her, and played a game of battledore and shuttlecock. When we went in and I had removed her bonnet and coat, I took her on my knee, kept her there an hour, allowing her to prattle as she liked, not rebuking even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to stray when much noticed, and which betrayed in her a superficiality of character, inherited probably from her mother, hardly congenial to an English mind. Still she had her merits; and I was disposed to appreciate all that was good in her to the utmost. I sought in her countenance and features a likeness to Mr. Rochester, but found none; no trait, no turn of expression, announced relationship. It was a pity; if she could but have been proved to resemble him, he would have thought more of her.
It was not till after I had withdrawn to my own chamber for the night, that I steadily reviewed the tale Mr. Rochester had told me. As he had said, there was probably nothing at all extraordinary in the substance of the narrative itself; a wealthy English-man's passion for a French dancer, and her treachery to him, were every-day matters enough, no doubt, in society; but there was something decidedly strange in the paroxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized him, when he was in the act of expressing the present contentment of his mood, and his newly-revived pleasure in the old hall and its environs. I meditated wonderingly on this incident; but gradually quitting it, as I found it for the present inexplicable, I turned to the consideration of my master's manner to myself. The confidence he had thought fit to repose in me seemed a tribute to my discretion; I regarded and accepted it as such. His deportment had now for some weeks been more uniform toward me than at first. I never seemed in his way; he did not take fits of chilling hauteur; when he met me unexpectedly the encounter seemed welcome; he had always a word and sometimes a smile for me; when summoned by formal invitation to his presence, I was honored by a cordiality of reception that made me feel I really possessed the power to amuse him, and that these evening conferences were sought as much for his pleasure as for my benefit.
I, indeed, talked comparatively little; but I heard him talk with relish. It was his nature to be communicative; he liked to open to a mind unacquainted with the world, glimpses of its scenes and ways (I do not mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways, but such as derived their interest from the great scale on which they were acted, the strange novelty by which they were characterized); and I had a keen delight in receiving the new ideas he offered, in imagining the new pictures he portrayed, and following him in thought through the new regions he disclosed, never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion.
The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint; the friendly frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to him. I felt, at times, as if he were my relation, rather than my master; yet he was imperious sometimes still, but I did not mind that--I saw it was his way. So happy, so gratified, did I become with this new interest added to life, that I ceased to pine after kindred. My thin-crescent-destiny seemed to enlarge; the blanks of existence were filled up; my bodily health improved; I gathered flesh and strength.
And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No, reader. Gratitude, and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I best liked to see. His presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults; indeed, I could not, for he brought them frequently before me. He was proud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description. In my secret soul I knew that his great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to others. He was moody, too, unaccountably so. I more than once, when sent for to read to him, found him sitting in his library alone, with his head bent on his folded arms; and when he looked up, a morose, almost a malignant, scowl blackened his features. But I believe that his moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of morality (I say former, for now he seemed corrected of them) had their source in some cruel cross of fate. I believed he was naturally a man of better tendencies, higher principles, and purer tastes than such as circumstances had developed, education instilled, or destiny encouraged. I thought there were excellent materials in him, though, for the present, they hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled. I cannot deny that I grieved for his grief, whatever that was, and would have given much to assuage it.
Though I had now extinguished my candle and was laid down in bed, I could not sleep, for thinking of his look when he paused in the avenue, and told how his destiny had risen up before him and dared him to be happy at Thornfield.
"Why not?" I asked myself. "What alienates him from the house? Will he leave it again soon? Mrs. Fairfax said he seldom stayed here longer than a fortnight at a time, and he has now been resident eight weeks. If he does go the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent, spring, summer, and autumn, how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem!"
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sp; I hardly know whether I had slept or not after this musing; at any rate I started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and lugubrious, which sounded, I thought, just above me. I wished I had kept my candle burning. The night was drearily dark; my spirits were depressed. I rose and sat up in bed, listening. The sound was hushed.
I tried again to sleep; but my heart beat anxiously; my inward tranquility was broken. The clock, far down in the hall, struck two. Just then it seemed my chamber-door was touched, as if fingers had swept the panels in groping a way along the dark gallery outside. I said, "Who is there?" Nothing answered. I was chilled with fear.
All at once I remembered that it might be Pilot; who, when the kitchen-door chanced to be left open, not unfrequently found his way up to the threshold of Mr. Rochester's chamber. I had seen him lying there myself in the mornings. The idea calmed me somewhat; I laid down. Silence composes the nerves, and as an unbroken hush now reigned again through the whole house, I began to feel the return of slumber. But it was not fated that I should sleep that night. A dream had scarcely approached my ear, when it fled affrighted, scared by a marrow-freezing incident enough.
This was a demoniac laugh; low, suppressed, and deep, muttered, as it seemed, at the very key-hole of my chamber-door. The head of my bed was near the door, and I thought, at first, the goblin-laughter stood at my bed-side, or, rather, crouched by my pillow. But I rose, looked round, and could see nothing; while, as I still gazed, the unnatural sound was reiterated, and I knew it came from behind the panels. My first impulse was to rise and fasten the bolt; my next, again to cry out, "Who is there?"