Part 26 (1/2)
”I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world under this frost I like Thornfield, its antiquity, its retirerey facade, and lines of dark s reflecting that ht of it, shunned it like a great plague-house? How I do still abhor--”
He ground his teeth and was silent: he arrested his step and struck his boot against the hard ground Sorip, and to hold hihtly that he could not advance
We were ascending the avenue when he thus paused; the hall was before us
Lifting his eye to its battlelare such as I never saw before or since Pain, shaust, detestation, seee pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrow Wild was the wrestle which should be para hard and cynical: self-willed and resolute: it settled his passion and petrified his countenance: he went on--
”During thea point withlike one of those who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres 'You like Thornfield?' she said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the air athe house-front, between the upper and lower ros, 'Like it if you can! Like it if you dare!'
”'I will like it,' said I; 'I dare like it;' and” (he subjoined moodily) ”I will keep oodness--yes, goodness I wish to be a better man than I have been, than I am; as Job's leviathan broke the spear, the dart, and the habergeon, hindrances which others count as iron and brass, I will esteem but straw and rotten wood”
Adele here ran before him with her shuttlecock ”Away!” he cried harshly; ”keep at a distance, child; or go in to Sophie!” Continuing then to pursue his walk in silence, I ventured to recall hied--
”Did you leave the balcony, sir,” I asked, ”when Mdlle Varens entered?”
I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-ti abstraction, he turned his eyes towards me, and the shade seeotten Celine! Well, to resume When I saw my charmer thus come in accoreen snake of jealousy, rising on undulating coils frolided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two e!” he exclaie that I should choose you for the confidant of all this, young lady; passing strange that you should listen toin the world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera-irl like you! But the last singularity explains the first, as I intiravity, considerateness, and caution were made to be the recipient of secrets Besides, I knohat sort of a mind I have placed in communication with my own: I know it is one not liable to take infection: it is a peculiar mind: it is a unique one Happily I do not mean to harm it: but, if I did, it would not take harm from me The ht you, you ression he proceeded--
”I remained in the balcony 'They will coht I: 'let h the open , I drew the curtain over it, leaving only an opening through which I could take observations; then I closed the caseh to furnish an outlet to lovers' whispered vows: then I stole back to my chair; and as I resumed it the pair came in My eye was quickly at the aperture Celine's chamber-maid entered, lit a lamp, left it on the table, and withdrew The couple were thus revealed to me clearly: both removed their cloaks, and there was 'the Varens,'
shi+ning in satin and jewels,--ifts of course,--and there was her co roue of a vicomte--a brainless and vicious youth whoht of hating because I despised hi of the snake Jealousy was instantly broken; because at the sauisher A woman who could betrayfor; she deserved only scorn; less, however, than I, who had been her dupe
”They began to talk; their conversation eased me completely: frivolous, mercenary, heartless, and senseless, it was rather calculated to weary than enrage a listener A card of ht y or wit to belabour me soundly, but they insulted me as coarsely as they could in their little way: especially Celine, who even waxed rather brilliant on my personal defects--deformities she termed them Now it had been her custom to launch out into fervent admiration of what she called my '_beaute male_:' wherein she differed diametrically from you, who told me point-blank, at the second interview, that you did not think me handsome The contrast struck ain
”Monsieur, John has just been to say that your agent has called and wishes to see you”
”Ah! in that case Ithe alked in upon theave her notice to vacate her hotel; offered her a purse for iarded screams, hysterics, prayers, protestations, convulsions;at the Bois de Boulogne Nexthim; left a bullet in one of his poor etiolated arht I had done with the whole crew But unluckily the Varens, six iven hter; and perhaps she rim paternity written in her countenance: Pilot is more like me than she
Some years after I had broken with the mother, she abandoned her child, and ran away to Italy with a ed no natural claim on Adele's part to be supported by e any, for I a that she was quite destitute, I e'en took the poor thing out of the slirow up clean in the wholesoarden Mrs Fairfax found you to train it; but now you know that it is the illegitiirl, you will perhaps think differently of your post and protegee: you will be co to me some day with notice that you have found another place--that you beg overness, &c--Eh?”
”No: Adele is not answerable for either her ard for her; and now that I know she is, in a sense, parentless--forsaken by hercloser to her than before How could I possibly prefer the spoilt pet of a wealthy faoverness as a nuisance, to a lonely little orphan, who leans towards her as a friend?”
”Oh, that is the light in which you view it! Well, I o in now; and you too: it darkens”
But I stayed out a few er with Adele and Pilot--ran a race with her, and played a game of battledore and shuttlecock When ent in, and I had removed her bonnet and coat, I took her onher to prattle as she liked: not rebuking even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to stray when much noticed, and which betrayed in her a superficiality of character, inherited probably frolish mind Still she had her ood in her to the utht in her countenance and features a likeness to Mr Rochester, but found none: no trait, no turn of expression announced relationshi+p It was a pity: if she could but have been proved to reseht more of her
It was not till after I had withdrawn to ht, that I steadily reviewed the tale Mr Rochester had toldat all extraordinary in the substance of the narrative itself: a wealthy Englishman's passion for a French dancer, and her treachery to hih, no doubt, in society; but there was soe in the paroxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized hi the present contentment of his mood, and his newly revived pleasure in the old hall and its environs Iit, as I found it for the present inexplicable, I turned to the consideration of ht fit to repose in arded and accepted it as such His deportment had now for some weeks been more uniform towards me than at the first I never see hauteur: when he met me unexpectedly, the encounter seemed welcome; he had always a word and sometimes a smile for me: when summoned by formal invitation to his presence, I was honoured by a cordiality of reception that made me feel I really possessed the power to aht as much for his pleasure as for my benefit
I, indeed, talked comparatively little, but I heard him talk with relish
It was his nature to be communicative; he liked to open to a limpses of its scenes and ways (I do not mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways, but such as derived their interest froe novelty by which they were characterised); and I had a keen delight in receiving the new ideas he offered, in i hiions he disclosed, never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion
The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint: the friendly frankness, as correct as cordial, hich he treated me, drew me to him I felt at times as if he were my relation rather than my master: yet he was imperious sometimes still; but I did not ratified did I become with this new interest added to life, that I ceased to pine after kindred: e; the blanks of existence were filled up; th
And was Mr Rochester now ugly in ratitude, and enial, made his face the object I best liked to see; his presence in a roohtest fire Yet I had not forgotten his faults; indeed, I could not, for he brought them frequently before me He was proud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description: in reat kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many others He was moody, too; unaccountably so; I more than once, when sent for to read to hi in his library alone, with his head bent on his folded arnant, scowl blackened his features But I believed that his moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of morality (I say _former_, for now he seemed corrected of them) had their source in some cruel cross of fate I believed he was naturally a her principles, and purer tastes than such as circumstances had developed, education instilled, or destiny encouraged I thought there were excellent ether sorieved for his grief, whatever that was, and would have given uished my candle and was laid down in bed, I could not sleep for thinking of his look when he paused in the avenue, and told how his destiny had risen up before him, and dared him to be happy at Thornfield
”Why not?” I asked myself ”What alienates hiain soon? Mrs Fairfax said he seldoht at a tio, the change will be doleful Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshi+ne and fine days will seem!”