『ジェーン・エア：自伝』

第二十章 / 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.