Jane Slayre (17 page)

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"Is Mr. Rochester an exacting, fastidious sort of man?"

"Not particularly so; but he has a gentleman's tastes and habits, and he expects to have things managed in conformity to them."

"Do you like him? Is he generally liked?" I didn't want to run into a new version of Mr. Bokorhurst any more than I wanted to belong to another family of vampyres.

"Oh, yes, the family has always been respected here. Almost all the land in this neighbourhood, as far as you can see, has belonged to the Rochesters time out of mind."

"Well, but, leaving his land out of the question, do you like him? Is he liked for himself?"

"I have no cause to do otherwise than like him. I believe he is considered a just and liberal landlord by his tenants, but he has never lived much amongst them."

"But has he no peculiarities?" Drinking blood? Digging up corpses? Perhaps losing his fingers in the soup? "What, in short, is his character?"

"Unimpeachable, I suppose." She didn't answer readily. Perhaps something was there, something to give her pause? "He is rather peculiar, perhaps. He has travelled a great deal and seen a great deal of the world, I should think. I daresay he is clever, but I've never had much conversation with him."

"In what way is he peculiar?" I hoped
peculiar
had a different meaning to Mrs. Fairfax than it did to me. I had known something of peculiar, indeed, but my experience was limited. There could be all kinds of peculiar I hadn't even yet imagined.

"I don't know. It is not easy to describe--nothing striking, but you feel it when he speaks to you. You cannot be always sure whether he is in jest or earnest, whether he is pleased or the contrary. You don't thoroughly understand him, in short--at least, I don't. But it is of no consequence. He is a very good master."

A very good master with an unreadable disposition. There was nothing unnatural in that, as far as I could tell. This was all the account I got from Mrs. Fairfax of her employer and mine.

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When we left the dining room, she proposed to show me over the rest of the house. I followed her upstairs and downstairs, admiring as I went, for all was well arranged and handsome. The large front chambers I thought especially grand, and some of the third-story rooms, though dark and low, were interesting from their air of antiquity. The furniture once appropriated to the lower apartments had from time to time been removed here, as fashions changed, and the imperfect light entering by their narrow casements showed bedsteads of a hundred years old.

Chests with strange carvings of palms and cherubs' heads, rows of venerable chairs, stools still more antiquated, on whose cushioned tops were yet apparent traces of half-effaced embroideries, wrought by fingers that for two generations had been coffin dust. All these relics gave to the third story of Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past, a shrine of memory. I liked the hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats, in the day, but I by no means coveted a night's repose on one of those wide and heavy beds.

"Do the servants sleep in these rooms?" I asked.

"No, they occupy a range of smaller apartments to the back. No one ever sleeps here. One would almost say that, if there were a ghost at Thornfield Hall, this would be its haunt."

"Ah, do you believe in ghosts, then?" I smiled. Perhaps she knew something of the supernatural after all.

"None that I ever heard of," returned Mrs. Fairfax, smiling back.

"Nor any traditions of one? No legends or ghost stories?"

"I believe not. And yet it is said the Rochesters have been rather a violent than a quiet race in their time. Perhaps, though, that is the reason they rest tranquilly in their graves now. On to the leads," she said. "Will you come and see the view from thence?"

I followed up a narrow staircase to the attics, thence by a ladder and through a trapdoor to the roof of the hall. I was now on a level with the crow colony and could see into their nests. Leaning over the battlements and looking far down, I surveyed the grounds laid out like a map: the lawn closely girdling the grey base of the mansion;

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the field, wide as a park, dotted with its ancient timber; the wood, dark and divided by a path visibly overgrown; the church at the gates, the road, the tranquil hills; the horizon bounded by an azure sky. No feature in the scene was extraordinary, but all was pleasing.

When I turned from it and passed back to the trapdoor, I could scarcely see my way down the ladder. The attic seemed black as a vault compared with that sunlit scene of grove, pasture, and green hill over which I had been gazing with delight.

Mrs. Fairfax stayed behind a moment to fasten the trapdoor. I, by drift of groping, found the outlet from the attic and descended the narrow garret staircase. I lingered in the long passage to which this led, separating the front and back rooms of the third story. It was narrow, low, and dim, with only one little window at the far end, and looking, with its two rows of small black doors all shut, like a corridor in some Bluebeard's castle.

While I paced softly on, the last sound I expected to hear in so still a region, a laugh, struck my ear. It was a curious laugh: distinct, formal, without mirth. I stopped. The sound ceased, only for an instant. It began again, louder, for at first, though distinct, it was low. It erupted in a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in every lonely chamber, though it originated but in one, and I could have pointed out the door whence the accents issued.

"Mrs. Fairfax!" I called, for I now heard her descending the garret stairs. "Did you hear that loud laugh? Who is it?"

"Some of the servants, very likely. You haven't met them all, you know. Perhaps Grace Poole."

"Did you hear it?"

"Yes, plainly. I often hear her. She sews in one of these rooms. Sometimes Leah is with her. They are frequently noisy together."

The laugh was repeated in its low, syllabic tone and terminated in an odd murmur. This Grace Poole must be quite a character indeed. She sounded otherworldly. I was on my guard.

"Grace!" exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax. The door nearest me opened,

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and a servant came out, a woman of between thirty and forty. She was solid, red-haired, with a hard, plain face. Any apparition less romantic or less ghostly could scarcely be conceived. I was glad to see she existed in tangible form, but what form? Human or something else, I couldn't tell. "Too much noise, Grace. Remember directions."

Grace curtsied silently and went in. She was polite enough, I supposed. And common. If she were a vampyre, she would have had no reason not to eat the whole house in their sleep by now. She didn't have the grey pallor or slight form of a zombie. What else could she be? A question I would rather leave untested for the time.

"She is a person we have to sew and assist Leah in her house-maid's work," continued the widow, "not altogether unobjectionable in some points, but she does well enough. By the by, how have you got on with your new pupil this morning?"

The conversation, thus turned on Adele, continued until we reached the light and cheerful region below. Adele came running to meet us in the hall.

"Mesdames, vous êtes servies!"
she said.
"J'ai bien faim, moi!"

We found dinner ready and waiting for us in Mrs. Fairfax's room.

CHAPTER 15

THE PROMISE OF A smooth career, which my first calm introduction to Thornfield hall seemed to pledge, held out as I got to know my situation and my housemates better. Mrs. Fairfax was what she appeared, a placid-tempered, kind-natured woman, of competent education and average intelligence. My pupil was a lively child who had been spoiled and indulged, perhaps shown off on some occasions and left to her own devices on others.

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Now and then, while Adele played with her nurse, and Mrs. Fairfax made jellies in the storeroom, I walked the grounds and looked out afar over sequestered fields and I longed for a power of vision that might overpass my earthly limits. I thought of busy towns that I had heard of but never seen, and then I desired more practical experience than I possessed, more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of characters, than was here within my reach. I valued what was good in Mrs. Fairfax, and what was good in Adele, but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold.

Some might call me discontented. The restlessness was in my nature. At those times, my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third story, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind's eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it.

During my times in the attic corridor, alone with my thoughts, I frequently heard Grace Poole's laugh, the same peal, the same low, slow
ha! ha!
that when first heard had thrilled me. I sensed more to Grace Poole than I had learned on first impression. Perhaps that drew me to the dark spaces of the attic, a sense that some unnatural spirit roamed here, too. I'd ruled out vampyre and zombie, but I didn't know what else there could be. Bessie had told tales of demons, trolls, and ogres. Grace might yet be one of those. I only knew that my Slayre instinct warned me something was not right at Thornfield, and I'd learned to trust that instinct in the past.

I listened to Grace while I paced, her eccentric murmurs even more strange than her laugh. Sometimes I saw her. She would come out of her room with a basin or a plate or a tray in her hand, go down to the kitchen, and shortly return, generally (oh, romantic reader, forgive me for telling the plain truth!) bearing a pot of porter. I made some attempts to draw her into conversation, but she seemed a person of few words.

The other members of the household--John and his wife; Leah, the housemaid; and Sophie, the French nurse--were decent people,

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but in no respect remarkable. Possibly I'd built some imaginary excitement around Grace Poole just to keep me from boredom.

October, November, December, passed away. One afternoon in January, Mrs. Fairfax had begged a holiday for Adele because she had a cold, and I allowed her a rest from her studies. It was a fine, calm day, though very cold. Mrs. Fairfax had just written a letter that needed posting, so I put on my bonnet and cloak and volunteered to carry it to hay. The distance, two miles, would be a pleasant winter-afternoon walk. Having seen Adele comfortably seated by Mrs. Fairfax's parlour fireside, and given her a wax doll to play with and a storybook for change of amusement, I kissed her and set out.

The ground was hard, the air still, the road lonely. I walked fast until I got warm, then I walked slowly to look for birds and other wildlife that might be out on the cool afternoon. The church bell tolled three as I passed under the belfry. I was a mile from Thorn-field, in an empty lane. Far and wide, on each side, there were only fields, where no cattle now browsed.

This lane inclined uphill all the way to hay; having reached the middle, I sat down on a stile, which led into a field. Gathering my mantle about me, and sheltering my hands in my muff, I did not feel the full force of the cold, though a sheet of ice covering the causeway where a brook had overflowed proved the temperature was below freezing. From my seat, I could look down on Thornfield. The grey and battlemented hall was the principal object in the vale below me. I wondered if Grace Poole even now walked the leads, and if she could turn into a winged dragon or some other fantastical creature and fly around the house at night. Might I catch a glimpse of her, there, in silhouette hovering over the trees? No, it was only a crow.

I lingered longer than I should, until the sun went down amongst the trees and sank crimson and clear behind them. On the hilltop above me sat the rising moon, nearly full, pale yet as a cloud, but brightening momentarily. I looked towards hay, half lost in trees and yet a mile distant.

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A rude noise broke the evening's peace, a positive tramp, tramp, a metallic clatter. The din was on the causeway. A horse was coming. The windings of the lane yet hid it, but it approached. I was about to get up and start on my way, but I sat still to let the rider pass. I was young, but I had already seen much to inspire superstition, and all sorts of fancies bright and dark tenanted my mind. The memories of nursery stories were there amongst other rubbish, and I knew too well that sometimes stories of fantastical monsters turned out to be quite real.

Perhaps because I was thinking of my childhood and monsters, a queer feeling coiled in my belly, a sort of nervousness the likes of which I hadn't known in years, since leaving Gateshead. Apprehensive, I shot to my feet and I looked from left to right. Indeed, a group of travellers were making their way on foot from the very same direction as the horse, but only just coming into my line of vision. They must have been walking some way ahead of the horse, for I heard the clapping of hooves in the near distance yet as the voices of the group came into earshot. Instinct warned me to duck into a row of bushes so as not to be seen.

"He's coming on fast, Jim. What's the plan?" one man said to another. They were right in front of me now. Through the branches I could make out three sets of feet. If they sniffed the air, they might pick up my scent. Fortunately, the chill of the night probably helped dull their senses, for I had no doubt what they were: vampyres. That queer little feeling might have been an appropriate warning after all.

"We could do the poor injured-traveller bit," one, perhaps Jim, suggested. "You could sit on the stile just there and feign an injury. When he stops, the two of us can jump out and accost him. Voy-a-la, dinner for three."

"It's voilà, you louse. From the French, literally to 'see there.'
Vwa-la.
Very easy. Repeat after me."

I supposed it was Jim who broke out in a guffaw. "Well, la-ti-da, Perfesser. Are we here for a grammar lesson, or to get us some grub?"