Jane Eyre (69 page)

“Indeed!”

“Mr Oliver pays for two.”

“Does he?”

“He means to give the whole school a treat at Christmas.”

“I know.”

“Was it your suggestion?”

“No.”

“Whose, then?”

“His daughter’s, I think.”

“It is like her. She is so good-natured.”

“Yes.”

Again came the blank of a pause, the clock struck eight strokes. It enflamed him; he uncrossed his legs, sat erect, turned to me.

“Leave your book a moment, and come a little nearer the fire,” he said.

Wondering, and of my wonder finding no end, I complied.

“Half an hour ago,” he pursued, “I spoke of my impatience to hear the sequel of a tale, on reflection, I find the matter will be better managed by my assuming the narrator’s part, and converting you into a listener. Before commencing, it is but fair to warn you that the story will sound somewhat hackneyed in your ears, but stale details often regain a degree of freshness when they pass through new lips. For the rest, whether trite or novel, it is short.

“Twenty years ago, a poor curate—never mind his name at this moment—fell in love with a rich man’s daughter; she fell in love with him, and married him, against the advice of all her friends, who consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before two years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by side under one slab.  I have seen their grave. It formed part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in Yorkshire. They left a daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap—cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in tonight. Charity carried the friendless thing to the house of its rich maternal relations. It was reared by an aunt-in-law, called—I come to names now—Mrs Reed of Gateshead. You start—did you hear a noise? I daresay it is only a rat scrambling along the rafters of the adjoining schoolroom, it was a barn before I had it repaired and altered, and barns are generally haunted by rats. To proceed. Mrs Reed kept the orphan ten years, whether it was happy or not with her, I cannot say, never having been told, but at the end of that time she transferred it to a place you know—being no other than Lowood School, where you so long resided yourself. It seems her career there was very honourable, from a pupil, she became a teacher, like yourself—really it strikes me there are parallel points in her history and yours—she left it to be a governess, there, again, your fates were analogous; she undertook the education of the ward of a certain Mr Rochester.”

“Mr Rivers!” I interrupted.

“I can guess your feelings,” he said, “but restrain them for a while. I have nearly finished; hear me to the end. Of Mr Rochester’s character I know nothing, but the one fact that he professed to offer honourable marriage to this young girl, and that at the very altar she discovered he had a wife yet alive, though a lunatic. What his subsequent conduct and proposals were is a matter of pure conjecture, but when an event transpired which rendered inquiry after the governess necessary, it was discovered she was gone—no one could tell when, where, or how. She had left Thornfield Hall in the night, every research after her course had been vain. The country had been scoured far and wide, no vestige of information could be gathered respecting her. Yet that she should be found is become a matter of serious urgency, advertisements have been put in all the papers. I myself have received a letter from one Mr Briggs, a solicitor, communicating the details I have just imparted. Is it not an odd tale?”

“Just tell me this,” said I, “and since you know so much, you surely can tell it me—what of Mr Rochester? How and where is he? What is he doing? Is he well?”

“I am ignorant of all concerning Mr Rochester. The letter never mentions him but to narrate the fraudulent and illegal attempt I have adverted to. You should rather ask the name of the governess—the nature of the event which requires her appearance.”

“Did no one go to Thornfield Hall, then? Did no one see Mr Rochester?”

“I suppose not.”

“But they wrote to him?”

“Of course.”

“And what did he say? Who has his letters?”

“Mr Briggs intimates that the answer to his application was not from Mr Rochester, but from a lady, it is signed ‘Alice Fairfax.’”

I felt cold and dismayed, my worst fears then were probably true. He had in all probability left England and rushed in reckless desperation to some former haunt on the Continent. And what opiate for his severe sufferings—what object for his strong passions—had he sought there? I dared not answer the question. Oh, my poor master—once almost my husband—whom I had often called “my dear Edward!”

“He must have been a bad man,” observed Mr Rivers.

“You don’t know him—don’t pronounce an opinion upon him,” I said, with warmth.

“Very well,” he answered quietly, “and indeed my head is otherwise occupied than with him, I have my tale to finish. Since you won’t ask the governess’s name, I must tell it of my own accord. Stay! I have it here—it is always more satisfactory to see important points written down, fairly committed to black and white.”

And the pocket-book was again deliberately produced, opened, sought through; from one of its compartments was extracted a shabby slip of paper, hastily torn off, I recognised in its texture and its stains of ultra-marine, and lake, and vermillion, the ravished margin of the portrait-cover. He got up, held it close to my eyes, and I read, traced in Indian ink, in my own handwriting, the words “Jane Eyre”—the work doubtless of some moment of abstraction.

“Briggs wrote to me of a Jane Eyre,” he said, “the advertisements demanded a Jane Eyre, I knew a Jane Elliott. I confess I had my suspicions, but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once resolved into certainty. You own the name and renounce the
alias
?”

“Yes—yes, but where is Mr Briggs? He perhaps knows more of Mr Rochester than you do.”

“Briggs is in London. I should doubt his knowing anything at all about Mr Rochester. It is not in Mr Rochester he is interested. Meantime, you forget essential points in pursuing trifles, you do not enquire why Mr Briggs sought after you—what he wanted with you.”

“Well, what did he want?”

“Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr Eyre of Madeira, is dead, that he has left you all his property, and that you are now rich—merely that—nothing more.”

“I!—rich?”

“Yes, you, rich—quite an heiress.”

Silence succeeded.

“You must prove your identity of course,” resumed St. John presently, “a step which will offer no difficulties; you can then enter on immediate possession. Your fortune is vested in the English funds; Briggs has the will and the necessary documents.”

Here was a new card turned up! It is a fine thing, reader, to be lifted in a moment from indigence to wealth—a very fine thing, but not a matter one can comprehend, or consequently enjoy, all at once. And then there are other chances in life far more thrilling and rapture-giving,
this
is solid, an affair of the actual world, nothing ideal about it, all its associations are solid and sober, and its manifestations are the same. One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune; one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow.

Besides, the words Legacy, Bequest, go side by side with the words, Death, Funeral. My uncle I had heard was dead—my only relative. Ever since being made aware of his existence, I had cherished the hope of one day seeing him, now, I never should. And then this money came only to me, not to me and a rejoicing family, but to my isolated self. It was a grand boon doubtless and independence would be glorious—yes, I felt that—that thought swelled my heart.

“You unbend your forehead at last,” said Mr Rivers. “I thought Medusa had looked at you, and that you were turning to stone. Perhaps now you will ask how much you are worth?”

“How much am I worth?”

“Oh, a trifle! Nothing of course to speak of—twenty thousand pounds, I think they say—but what is that?”

“Twenty thousand pounds?”

Here was a new stunner—I had been calculating on four or five thousand. This news actually took my breath for a moment. Mr St. John, whom I had never heard laugh before, laughed now.

“Well,” said he, “if you had committed a murder, and I had told you your crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast.”

“It is a large sum—don’t you think there is a mistake?”

“No mistake at all.”

“Perhaps you have read the figures wrong—it may be two thousand!”

“It is written in letters, not figures—twenty thousand.”

I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions for a hundred. Mr Rivers rose now and put his cloak on.

“If it were not such a very wild night,” he said, “I would send Hannah down to keep you company. You look too desperately miserable to be left alone. But Hannah, poor woman! could not stride the drifts so well as I, her legs are not quite so long, so I must e’en leave you to your sorrows. Good-night.”

He was lifting the latch, a sudden thought occurred to me. “Stop one minute!” I cried.

“Well?”

“It puzzles me to know why Mr Briggs wrote to you about me, or how he knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the-way place, had the power to aid in my discovery.”

“Oh! I am a clergyman,” he said, “and the clergy are often appealed to about odd matters.” Again the latch rattled.

“No, that does not satisfy me!” I exclaimed, and indeed there was something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever.

“It is a very strange piece of business,” I added, “I must know more about it.”

“Another time.”

“No. Tonight! Tonight!” and as he turned from the door, I placed myself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed.

“You certainly shall not go till you have told me all,” I said.

“I would rather not just now.”

“You shall!—you must!”

“I would rather Diana or Mary informed you.”

Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a culmination, gratified it must be, and that without delay and I told him so.

“But I apprised you that I was a hard man,” said he, “difficult to persuade.”

“And I am a hard woman—impossible to put off.”

“And then,” he pursued, “I am cold, no fervour infects me.”

“Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice. The blaze there has thawed all the snow from your cloak; by the same token, it has streamed on to my floor, and made it like a trampled street. As you hope ever to be forgiven, Mr Rivers, the high crime and misdemeanour of spoiling a sanded kitchen, tell me what I wish to know.”

“Well, then,” he said, “I yield. If not to your earnestness, to your perseverance, as stone is worn by continual dropping. Besides, you must know some day—as well now as later. Your name is Jane Eyre?”

“Of course, that was all settled before.”

“You are not, perhaps, aware that I am your namesake? That I was christened St. John Eyre Rivers?”

“No, indeed! I remember now seeing the letter E. comprised in your initials written in books you have at different times lent me, but I never asked for what name it stood. But what then? Surely—”

I stopped, I could not trust myself to entertain, much less to express, the thought that rushed upon me—that embodied itself—that, in a second, stood out a strong, solid probability. Circumstances knit themselves, fitted themselves, shot into order, the chain that had been lying hitherto a formless lump of links was drawn out straight—every ring was perfect, the connection complete. I knew, by instinct, how the matter stood, before St. John had said another word, but I cannot expect the reader to have the same intuitive perception, so I must repeat his explanation.

“My mother’s name was Eyre. She had two brothers, one a clergyman, who married Miss Jane Reed, of Gateshead, the other, John Eyre, Esq., merchant, late of Funchal, Madeira. Mr Briggs, being Mr Eyre’s solicitor, wrote to us last August to inform us of our uncle’s death, and to say that he had left his property to his brother the clergyman’s orphan daughter, overlooking us, in consequence of a quarrel, never forgiven, between him and my father. He wrote again a few weeks since, to intimate that the heiress was lost, and asking if we knew anything of her. A name casually written on a slip of paper has enabled me to find her out. You know the rest.” Again he was going, but I set my back against the door.

“Do let me speak,” I said, “let me have one moment to draw breath and reflect.” I paused—he stood before me, hat in hand, looking composed enough. I resumed, “Your mother was my father’s sister?”

“Yes.”

“My aunt, consequently?”

He bowed.

“My uncle John was your uncle John? You, Diana, and Mary are his sister’s children, as I am his brother’s child?”

“Undeniably.”

“You three, then, are my cousins, half our blood on each side flows from the same source?”

“We are cousins, yes.”

I surveyed him. It seemed I had found a brother, one I could be proud of—one I could love and two sisters, whose qualities were such, that, when I knew them but as mere strangers, they had inspired me with genuine affection and admiration. The two girls, on whom, kneeling down on the wet ground, and looking through the low, latticed window of Moor House kitchen, I had gazed with so bitter a mixture of interest and despair, were my near kinswomen and the young and stately gentleman who had found me almost dying at his threshold was my blood relation. Glorious discovery to a lonely wretch! This was wealth indeed!—wealth to the heart!—a mine of pure, genial affections. This was a blessing, bright, vivid, and exhilarating;—not like the ponderous gift of gold, rich and welcome enough in its way, but sobering from its weight. I now clapped my hands in sudden joy—my pulse bounded, my veins thrilled.