Jane Eyre : Une autobiographie

CHAPITRE XX. / CHAPTER XXI

I had forgotten to draw my curtain the night the full moon flooded my room, its silver light rousing me from sleep just before I could pull the shade. Before I could move, a savage, shrill scream tore the silence of Thornfield Hall in two, echoing from the third storey. I heard a scuffle overhead, a man’s voice shouting “Rochester! For God’s sake, come!” three times, then a heavy fall, and sudden quiet. The household panicked: guests poured into the gallery, crying out for answers, until Rochester appeared with a candle, brushing the disturbance off as a servant’s nightmare to calm the crowd, sending them back to their rooms. I had heard Mason’s voice, though, and knew his story was a lie. I dressed quickly, waiting by my window for hours as the moon set, until I heard a soft tap at my door.

Rochester led me up the dark stairs to the locked third storey, fetched a sponge and volatile salts from my room, and unlocked a small black door. Inside, Grace Poole muttered in an inner chamber, and he pulled back the curtain of a large bed to reveal Richard Mason, bleeding from deep bite wounds to his arm and shoulder, half-conscious in a chair. He left me alone with the wounded man for two hours, forbidding me to speak to him on pain of death. I tended to Mason’s wounds, sponging away the trickling blood, listening fearfully for Grace Poole to burst in, terrified of the “murderess” separated from me only by a thin door. The shifting candlelight made the apostles carved into the cabinet opposite seem to move, Judas’s face seeming to gather life and threaten to reveal the arch-traitor himself. The only sounds were the occasional creak of a step, a low snarl from Grace Poole’s room, and Mason’s pained groans, and I twisted myself into knots wondering what crime could live incarnate in Thornfield, neither expelled nor subdued by its master. When I said I had been afraid Grace would come out, Rochester laughed and said he would not have left a lamb—his pet lamb—unguarded so near a wolf’s den. As the candle guttered out and dawn streaked the east, Rochester returned with a surgeon named Carter, who confirmed the wounds were made by teeth, not a knife. Mason admitted Grace had bitten him like a tigress when Rochester tried to take a knife from her. Rochester warned Mason that even one careless word could unintentionally deprive him of happiness forever, then gave Mason a crimson cordial to strengthen him, had me fetch clean clothes and a heavy fur cloak for the cold journey, then led the group out through the side passage to a waiting post-chaise. Mason begged Rochester to take care of Grace before the carriage pulled away, and Rochester barred the heavy yard gates behind it, his face tight with unspoken dread.

He invited me into the adjacent orchard to escape the house’s suffocating air, picked me a half-blown rose from the first bush, and teased me about being afraid left alone with Mason. Alluding to the hidden danger that lurked in Thornfield’s walls, he said his life felt like standing on a volcano crust that could crack and spew fire at any moment, then posed a hypothetical moral question: if a man who had made a grave, life-ruining error in his youth, one that tainted all his existence, found a good, pure woman who could restore his soul, would he be justified in breaking a mere social custom to bind himself to her forever? I answered that a sinner’s reformation should never rest on a fellow creature, that he should look higher for strength. He started to say he had found his “instrument” for reform, then cut himself off, laughing sarcastically, and teased me about his rumored affection for the buxom, haughty Miss Ingram, asking me to sit up with him the night before his wedding to listen to him talk about his bride. I agreed, and he left me, telling the household Mason had departed before sunrise.

For a week prior, I had been haunted by recurring dreams of an infant, a warning Bessie Leaven had given me as a child: dreams of children foretold family trouble. The premonition proved true when Robert Leaven, the Reed family’s old coachman, arrived at Thornfield in deep mourning, bearing news that my cousin John Reed had died by suicide after squandering his health and fortune, and the shock had caused his mother, Mrs. Reed, to suffer a stroke, repeatedly calling for Jane in her delirium. I asked Rochester for two weeks of leave, and after a tense exchange where he teased me about traveling a hundred miles alone, offered me fair wages, and arranged for Adèle to be sent to school and a new governess position to be found for me when I returned, he agreed to my departure. Our farewell was stiff and formal, and I left early the next morning before Rochester was up, traveling back to Gateshead.

I was met at the lodge by Bessie, now married with three children, who welcomed me warmly before accompanying me up to the hall. My cousins Eliza and Georgiana received me with cold, condescending formality: Eliza, severe and ascetic, barely acknowledged me, while Georgiana, plump and vain, obsessed with London society, measured me from head to foot with thinly veiled contempt. I was unmoved, my focus fixed on my dying aunt. I passed the time sketching, drawing a portrait of Rochester from memory that Eliza inquired about and Georgiana called an ugly man, then offered to sketch their portraits to warm their attitude. Georgiana, pleased, told me of her London romances, while Eliza remained cold, focused on her routine of prayer, embroidery for the new church altar, and plans to enter a strict religious order after her mother’s death, cutting Georgiana off completely for her idle ways.