Thornfield Hall (19 page)

Jane Eyre struggled violently at my last words, and as a reminder of my superior strength and of her coming fate, I pushed her right out of the window again, her feet kicking helplessly inside the room but unable to touch the floor. “Adèle was sent away to boarding school after you and the rest of us departed Thornfield,” I finished up my narrative, “so of course nobody knew that it was I who had locked Antoinette out on the roof and Adèle who thought she had been responsible for the poor woman's fall. Oh, I confess I wasn't always at my most kindhearted with the mad wife of Cousin Edward: sometimes, just for the sport of it, I'd taunt her with fresh chickens or bring the whip down on her back. But the French child Adèle, if she witnessed any of this, was too heavily doped on the potions I gave her to notice or make sense of my actions. She wept for the Creole, I know, and believed she had shut her out there to die on the roof, foolish girl.

“When the time came, and talk of the failed wedding between yourself and the master had died down, I traveled south from Doune Castle, where I was currently employed, and went to Adèle's boarding school to fetch her to Thornfield Hall. She was overjoyed, naturally, to be returning to her ‘
cher
Papa'—but when I told her she had been disowned by Mr. Rochester and that she had nothing in the world to thank him for, she grew very quiet
and sad, and it was simple, after a dose of the sleeping powder, to persuade the child that her circus wings would carry her high into the attics and that together we would experiment with the magic magnifying glass she used to boast that an old witch had given her in Paris.

“Gaining access to the upper floors was not difficult. The remaining servants thought, when they saw the old housekeeper and the child, that belongings left behind at the time of the disappointment Mr. Rochester suffered over his marriage plan with you were now to be collected. We went up unchallenged: I held the glass up to the July sun, just under the eaves where my lovely Bertha had been so long incarcerated, and the blaze was quick to start. Grace Poole, now half mad herself, lived up there like a gypsy, and old pieces of sacking, along with some of the first Mrs. Rochester's clothes, lay scattered about and caught like tinder. When the roof of the attic started to fall in, I pushed Grace into Antoinette's red dress—horribly soiled and ripped, it hung still in the passage beyond the cell—and then I took her up onto the tower and told her to jump—‘The game's up, and the master will have you in jail, Grace,' I said, so she fell to her death, as drunk as I had ever known her, you can be sure. As for Adèle, she had run downstairs—to be caught by the flames, I hoped, for a brisk wind had got up by the west wing, and I had to reassure myself that Mr. Rochester would be out riding at this hour and not in the library, where he would suffer burns.

“As it turned out, I was mistaken there: my cousin Edward Fairfax Rochester was indeed at home—and he ran at speed up to the attic. His one idea was to rescue his first love, Antoinette. You see, Jane, she was all he cared for, in the end. And when he saw the figure standing there on the battlements, he ran to save the woman he thought was his mad wife—but it was too late. As for Adèle, as you know, she leaped to her safety—and I, too, was safe in know
ing that if she told her story, no one would believe the tale of flying, the magic glass, and the rest.

“Now, my dear Miss Eyre,” I concluded—and as if this were all it now took to save her, I pulled a pen from the key chain about my neck and fished the sheet of paper with her “confession” from my skirts.

“All I did,” I said in triumph as the wretch took the pen in her trembling fingers, as if she believed it really would save her from her fate, “all I did was attempt to ensure that the coast was clear at last for Mr. Rochester's marriage to the heiress Blanche Ingram. I had to make it all safe for the announcement of the wedding plans. But the announcement never came, and he turned to you.”

“No!” came the cry from Jane as she dangled fifty feet above the driveway to Thornfield Hall. “No, I will not sign whatever you do to me. Never!”

And as my grip slackened at the sound of horses' hooves on the long drive under the trees—and as I saw a coach appear far down the road by the lodge and my captive fell back sobbing and shaking onto the floor of the room, I knew there was only one thing left to do.

 

The Rochester family coach had passed by the lodge at the
gateway to the estate of Thornfield Hall—and had stopped there a minute or so, for the lodgekeeper's wife to run out with tears in her eyes to greet Miss Adèle, thought lost abroad and now safely brought home—and then proceeded at a slow pace up the drive. The horses were tired from their long journey from Liverpool; the ferry bringing Mr. Rochester and his daughter from France had docked nearly two hours late, and the coachman, with the battlements and chimneys of the Hall now in sight, sat back at the reins with his eyes half closed, in anticipation of the hot grog Mary would prepare for him in the kitchen.

Adèle and her father had spoken earnestly and at length during their time together, and each now understood a new happiness, gleaned from mutual forgiveness. For Edward Rochester knew, at last, the loneliness and uncertainty suffered by the child he had summoned so imperiously to Thornfield Hall, and he had begged Adèle's forgiveness for his indifference to her in those crucial years. Adèle, in turn, was able to express her sorrow for Mr. Rochester, in his impossible marriage; had not she, too, loved the Creole and seen her become a stranger overnight? So a comfortable silence reigned in the coach, as the last familiar milestones on the road were passed.

It was Sam, the young lad who stood guard at the rear of the coach, who first saw the glow in the sky above Thornfield. He had been instructed to look right and left as they proceeded up the drive for signs of animals—in most cases, the fox—causing damage to the fencing on either side of the road. He was to report later if the rabbit trap, a rectangular hole in the road with two iron tracks placed over it for vehicles, contained an unusual number of rabbits and hedgehogs. It was unlikely, therefore, that Sam, whose eyes were trained at a low level, would note anything out of the ordinary in the sky. Only a breeze bearing grass pollen and causing him to throw back his head and sneeze led to the boy's view of the fire.

Adèle was the next to look out from the coach, and at first, believing that evening had already descended on this northern moor, and that the colors belonged to an early sunset, she let out a whoop of joy. “Look, Papa, a red sky! It will be fine tomorrow! Now, shall we go to Millcote Pond, or up on the moor to see if the plovers have nested? However busy you are, Papa, let us go, you and me and Jane!”

Before there was time for a warning to be issued to the passengers, John the coachman had heard young Sam's cry, and the horses were whipped to a gallop. But the drive at Thornfield was
over a mile long, and by the time the coach was halfway up the gradual climb and over the rabbit trap, the upper story of the Hall was well and truly alight. Now came the smell of burning and the sound of crackling flames as they consumed beams and plaster alike. The rosy glow high above turned to a deep orange and a vile smoke, choking breath and causing eyes to smart and weep, belched down toward the arriving party.

“Jane…Jane!” Mr. Rochester, who had seized the fresher of the two horses, galloped ahead and into the courtyard of Thornfield Hall. Adèle, leaping from the coach, ran after him. Visibility, becoming by the second less and less, vanished altogether with the first crash of falling masonry; but once the air had cleared slightly, the danger of standing directly below the blaze of the third story became more evident. For a woman could be seen there, standing by an open window, and to move or be seen, all of fifty feet below, might cause the figure to jump or to fall.

“Is it Jane?” came Mr. Rochester's anguished shout. “Jane! Do nothing until I come!”

But, as Adèle screamed in fear, the woman leaped from the window and landed amid the smoldering rubble in the courtyard of Thornfield Hall. And now, barely visible in the pall of smoke, the small, unassuming figure of Jane Eyre ran out of the house and down the steps and went straight to her. Before she could reach the body, she was caught roughly into the arms of Mr. Rochester—while Adèle, running across the courtyard, cried out in horror at the sight of the good housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, lying dead.

 

It was said later that the reason Thornfield Hall still stood
after the outbreak of one of the worst cases of arson the county had ever known was Mr. Rochester's having taken care to install a steel door between the third story and the rest of the house. The fire, for
all its energy and determination to consume the whole habitation, had not been able to penetrate the barrier put up by the proprietor of the Hall. Though whether, as some wags said, this door had been erected as a safeguard in the event of Mr. Rochester's second wife's going mad, it was never known.

As for Mr. Rochester and Jane, their second son was born shortly after Mr. Rochester's return from Paris. Charges against the proud father were dropped, once Adèle's testimony concerning the actions of Mrs. Fairfax and her cruelty toward Bertha Mason during her years of incarceration was heard. Jane's “confession,” written in the housekeeper's hand, was produced also as evidence of Mrs. Fairfax's insane and evil intent.

So the family at Thornfield Hall lived happily ever after; and Adèle, taken for her sixteenth birthday on a trip to London by her stepmother Jane, attended a performance of
Phèdre
in the Apollo Theatre there. The tragic heroine was played by the great Rachel—and when the performance was over, Adèle was able to introduce herself backstage as the daughter of the famous
danseuse de corde,
Céline Varens. This joyous meeting was followed by an invitation on the part of Rachel for Adèle to come and train as an actress with her in Paris in a year. This Adèle's parents, after lengthy discussion, permitted, on the understanding that Adèle's other studies were completed and approved by that time.