Jane Slayre (16 page)

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calming haven of small dimensions furnished in ordinary, modern style.

When Mrs. Fairfax had bidden me a kind good-night and I had fastened my door, I took time to gaze leisurely around. The lively aspect of my little room chased off the eerie impression made by the wide hall, the dark and spacious staircase, and that long, cold gallery. The impulse of gratitude swelled in my heart, and I knelt down at the bedside and offered up thanks where thanks were due. At once weary and content, I slept soon and soundly. When I awoke, it was broad day.

The chamber looked such a bright place to me as the sun shone in between the gay blue chintz window curtains, showing papered walls and a carpeted floor, so unlike the bare planks and stained plaster of Lowood that my spirits rose at the view. I thought it a sign that a fairer era of life was beginning for me, one that was to have its flowers and pleasures as well as its thorns and toils.

I rose and dressed with care, obliged to be plain for I had no article of attire that was not made with extreme simplicity. Sometimes, I regretted that I was not handsomer. I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed in figure. I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and had features so unremarkable. However, when I had brushed my hair smooth and put on my black frock--which, Quaker-like as it was, at least had the merit of fitting to a nicety--and adjusted my clean white tucker, I thought I should do respectably enough to appear before Mrs. Fairfax, and that my new pupil would not recoil from me with antipathy. Having opened my chamber window and seen that I left all things straight and neat on the toilet table, I ventured forth.

I paused on the oak staircase. No feeling of apprehension or fear came over me as had the previous night. Perhaps it had merely been nerves, uncertainty of the unknown. I looked at some pictures on the walls, at a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock whose case was curiously carved and black with time and rubbing.

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Everything appeared stately to me, but then I was little accustomed to grandeur.

The hall door, which was half of glass, stood open. I stepped over the threshold. It was a fine autumn morning. The early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green fields. I walked out to the lawn, looked up, and surveyed the front of the mansion. It was larger than it seemed last night, three stories high, of proportions not vast, though considerable, a gentleman's manor house, not a nobleman's seat. Battlements around the top gave it a picturesque look. Its grey front stood out well from the background of a rookery, whose cawing tenants were now on the wing. They flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in a great meadow, from which these were separated by a sunk fence. An array of mighty old thorn trees--strong, knotty, and broad as oaks--at once explained the source of the mansion's name.

Farther off were hills, not so lofty as those around Lowood, but yet quiet and lonely hills that seemed to embrace Thornfield with a seclusion I had not expected to find so near the stirring locality of Millcote. A hamlet, whose roofs blended with trees, straggled up the side of one of these hills. The church of the district stood nearer Thornfield. Its old tower looked over a knoll between the house and the gates.

I enjoyed the calm prospect and sunshine, the pleasant fresh air, and even the cawing of the rooks. The beauty of a sunny day had never failed to stir my soul, so deprived had I been of them in my earliest years.

"What, out already?" Mrs. Fairfax peeked out the door to greet me. "I see you are an early riser."

"Yes," I answered, still looking over the aspects of the house and thinking how well it suited Mrs. Fairfax. I finished my surveying, went up to her, and was received with an affable kiss and shake of the hand. I was pleased to see that Mrs. Fairfax was unafraid to step out into the sunshine. I could rule out any chance that she was a

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vampyre, and her cheerful disposition made it seem equally unlikely that she was a zombie.

"How do you like Thornfield?"

"Very much," I answered, completely at ease.

"Yes, it is a pretty place. But I fear it will be getting out of order unless Mr. Rochester should take it into his head to come and reside here permanently, or at least visit it rather oftener. Great houses and fine grounds require the presence of the proprietor."

"Mr. Rochester? Who is he?"

"The owner of Thornfield," she responded quietly. "Did you not know he was called Rochester?"

Of course I did not. I had never heard of him, but the old lady seemed to regard his existence as a universally understood fact, with which everybody must be acquainted by instinct.

"I assumed that Thornfield belonged to you."

"To me? Bless you, child, what an idea! To me! I am only the housekeeper--the manager. To be sure I am distantly related to the Rochesters by the mother's side, or at least my husband was. The present Mr. Rochester's mother was a Fairfax and second cousin to my husband, but I never presume on the connection. In fact, it is nothing to me. I consider myself quite in the light of an ordinary housekeeper. My employer is always civil, and I expect nothing more."

"And the little girl, my pupil?" At last I thought it was best to ask questions and know what I had got into at the risk of being impolite. A civil employer was a good sign, though vampyres could be civil when they wished.

"She is Mr. Rochester's ward. He commissioned me to find a governess for her, and so I have. Ah, and here she comes, with her 'bonne,' as she calls her nurse."

The enigma was then explained: this affable and kind little widow was no great dame, but a dependant like me. I did not like her the worse for that. On the contrary, I felt better pleased than

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ever. The equality between us was real and not the mere result of condescension on her part.

As I was meditating on this discovery, a little girl, followed by her attendant, came running up the lawn. She was quite a child, perhaps seven or eight years old, slightly built, with a pale, small-featured face and a redundancy of hair falling in curls to her waist.

"Good morning, Miss Adele," said Mrs. Fairfax. "Come and speak to the lady who is to teach you, and to make you a clever woman someday."

The child approached and pointed to me, addressing her nurse.
"C'est la ma gouvernante!"

"Mais oui, certainement."

"Are they foreigners?" I inquired, amazed at hearing French.

"The nurse is a foreigner, and Adele was born on the Continent. I believe she never left it until some months ago. When she first came here, she could speak no English. Now she can make shift to talk it a little. I don't understand her. She mixes it so with French. But you will make out her meaning very well, I daresay."

Fortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a French lady, and I was not likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adele. She came and shook hands with me.

As I led her in to breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue. She replied briefly at first. After we were seated at the table, and she had examined me some ten minutes with her large hazel eyes, she suddenly commenced chattering fluently.

"Ah!" she said in French. "You speak my language as well as Mr. Rochester does. I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can Sophie, my nurse. She will be glad. Nobody here understands her. Madame Fairfax is all English. Sophie came with me, over the sea in a great ship with a chimney that smoked--how it did smoke!--and I was sick, and so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester. And, Mademoiselle--what is your name?"

"Slayre--Jane Slayre."

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"Slaire? Bah! I cannot say it. Well, our ship stopped in the morning, before daylight, at a great city, and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach!"

"Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?" asked Mrs. Fairfax.

"Oh, indeed." I understood her well.

"I wish," continued the good lady, "you would ask her a question or two about her parents. I wonder if she remembers them?"

"Adele," I inquired, "with whom did you live when you were in that pretty, clean town you spoke of?"

"I lived long ago with Mama, but she is gone to the holy Virgin. Mama used to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses. A great many gentlemen and ladies came to see Mama, and I used to dance before them, or to sit on their knees and sing to them. I liked it. Shall I let you hear me sing now?"

She had finished her breakfast, so I permitted her to display her accomplishments. She placed herself on my knee. Folding her little hands demurely before her, shaking back her curls and lifting her eyes to the ceiling, she commenced a song from some opera about a jilted lover. The subject seemed strangely chosen for an infant singer, and in bad taste. I wondered at her mother teaching her such songs. Adele sang well enough, apparently oblivious of the nature of her song, then she jumped down from my knee, curtsied prettily, and declared that next she would read me some poetry.

" 'La Ligue des Rats,' fable de La Fontaine,"
she announced. She then declaimed the little piece with an attention to punctuation and emphasis, a flexibility of voice and an appropriateness of gesture, unusual indeed at her age, which proved she had carefully been trained.

"Was it your mama who taught you that piece?" I asked.

"Yes, and she just used to say it in this way:
'Qu'avez vous donc? Lui dit un de ces rats; parlez!'
She made me lift my hand--so--to remind me to raise my voice at the question. Now shall I dance for you?"

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"No, that will do." I laughed at her readiness to exhibit. "But after your mama went to the Holy Virgin, as you say, with whom did you live then?"

"With Madame Frederic and her husband. She took care of me, but she is nothing related to me. I think she is poor, for she had not so fine a house as Mama. I was not long there. Mr. Rochester asked me if I would like to go and live with him in England, and I said yes, for I knew Mr. Rochester before I knew Madame Frederic. He was always kind to me and gave me pretty dresses and toys. But you see he has not kept his word, for he has brought me to England, and now he is gone back again himself, and I never see him."

I passed this information on to Mrs. Fairfax, who simply nodded. She offered no illumination into Adele's relationship to Mr. Rochester, and I suspected she was not quite certain of it herself. I became more curious about my absent master.

CHAPTER 14

AFTER BREAKFAST, ADELE AND I withdrew to the library, which room, it appears, Mr. Rochester had directed should be used as the schoolroom. Most of the books were locked up behind glass doors, but one bookcase left open contained everything that could be needed in the way of elementary works, and several volumes of light literature, poetry, biography, travels, and a few romances. I suppose he had considered that these were all the governess would require for her private perusal, and indeed they contented me amply for the present. Compared with the scanty pickings I had now and then been able to glean at Lowood, they seemed to offer an abundance of entertainment and information. This room, too,

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had a cabinet piano, quite new and of superior tone, an easel for painting and a pair of globes.

I found my pupil sufficiently docile, though disinclined to apply. She had not been used to regular occupation of any kind. I felt it would be injudicious to confine her too much at first. I had talked to her a great deal and got her to learn a little, but when the morning advanced to noon I allowed her to return to her nurse. I then proposed to occupy myself until dinnertime in drawing some little sketches for her use.

"Your morning school hours are over now, I suppose," Mrs. Fairfax said, stopping me on my way to get my pencils and portfolio.

Through two open folding doors, I entered the room she was dusting. The large, stately apartment had purple chairs and curtains, a Turkey carpet, walnut-paneled walls, one vast window rich in slanted glass, and a lofty ceiling, nobly molded.

"What a beautiful room!" I exclaimed. I had never seen anything like it, so exotic and fine.

"Yes, this is the dining room. I have just opened the window to let in a little air and sunshine, for everything gets so damp in apartments that are seldom inhabited. The drawing room yonder feels like a vault."

She pointed to a wide arch corresponding to the window, a connecting room. I crossed over and looked at it. The pretty drawing room had white carpets, a ceiling of snowy moldings of white grapes and vine leaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast crimson couches and ottomans.

"In what order you keep these rooms, Mrs. Fairfax!" I said, impressed with her housekeeping. "No dust, no canvas coverings. Except that the air feels chilly, one would think they were inhabited daily."

"Why, Miss Slayre, though Mr. Rochester's visits here are rare, they are always sudden and unexpected. It puts him out to find everything swathed up, and to have the house in an uproar on his arrival. Generally, I think it best to keep the rooms in readiness."