Thornfield Hall (20 page)

We had ten days of peace after Mr Rochester went to the Eshtons. Miss Eyre was very quiet, busy with a painting that seemed to occupy all her spare time. Adele was happy spending her afternoons with Sophie in the garden when it was fine or inside with her dolls when it was not. She ate her supper with me and Miss Eyre in my room so I had some opportunities to spoil her, ordering Mary to cook food I thought she would like. After her meal Adele would give me a formal curtsy and a kiss on each cheek before departing for bed. I was left to spend an hour of stilted conversation with Miss Eyre in my room. We both had secrets to conceal but I was confident I had guessed
hers. She was sick with love for Mr Rochester. I profoundly hoped she had discovered neither the secret I kept from her nor the suspicion I harboured that Bertha was married to Mr Rochester.

Cut off from the talk in the servants' hall, I relied on Leah to keep me up to date with the ebb and flow of feeling among the other servants. The only real development concerned Sophie, Adele's maid. In spite of the language difficulties Sophie was welcome in the servants' hall. Leah informed me with a sly smile that Sam, the footman, was spending a lot of time with Sophie. ‘Teaching her English, he says.' Sophie was a pretty girl with a gift for making the best of herself.

Mr Rochester had supplied Adele with a handsome new doll from Paris with a luminous wax complexion and blonde ringlets. Miss Eyre did not seem to understand about dolls. I suspect she had not been allowed one as a child. Her reaction had been to warn Adele not to take it too close to the fire for fear it would melt. Adele, duly warned, kept away from the hearth but was distressed by the scantiness of the doll's clothes. She was sure it felt the cold. I secretly conveyed this urgent need for clothing to the third floor. Bertha took it up with enthusiasm. Behind the locked door to the stairway our sewing afternoons began again to take place. Soon we were busy making tiny garments. We raided the storage rooms for scraps of brocade and velvet from old curtains and cushions. Bertha proved as gifted at making dolls' clothes as she had been at making the flowers for the Christmas decorations.

The first outfit for Adele's newest doll consisted of a matching dress, cape and bonnet in purple velvet. The doll was also supplied with a complete set of underwear including four lace-trimmed petticoats. When these items found their way into Adele's hands she was in ecstasy.

With her sharp eye for material advantage Adele soon discovered that she had other dolls with gaps in their wardrobes. A doll would be smuggled up to the third floor to be measured. Later a little pile of clothes would be left outside her door one night and by some miracle they would fit perfectly. We told Adele there was a special group of fairies that did the work and she obliged us by pretending to believe. I do not think she was fooled by the fiction, but, being a pragmatic girl she indulged us to make sure the clothes kept coming.

One by one the dolls were smuggled up to have their measurements taken and their features noted. Grace nudged me to watch Bertha as she tenderly undressed and measured a baby doll and then gently dressed it again. This done she hugged it to her breast and gave a distant smile. It was strange to see her big hands around such a tiny body, but more notable was the expression of ineffable serenity on her face.

‘I was sure she'd had a baby. Perhaps we should have got her a doll when she was really bad,' said Grace. ‘Hugging something can console people. It seems to take away a bit of the pain.'

A happy few days we had. Miss Eyre was too busy to notice that Adele's dolls had almost as many changes of clothing as their owner did. She was deep in her own project; she was painting something and a very secret something it was. She would slide it away the minute I came into the room. I thought it might be a portrait of the master. Leah, who had managed to sneak a look, put me straight on that. ‘It's a lady. With a lot of black hair and a very cross face.' It sounded like the description I had given of Blanche Ingram, though I had not mentioned her bad temper

A letter from Mr Rochester disturbed our peaceful interlude. He wrote to say he was returning in three days' time and that he would be bringing a large house party with him. This news immediately cured Miss Eyre of her dejection and gave me the shock of the century; he had never invited people to a house party at Thornfield Hall. As a bachelor he was constantly invited to other people's houses; he seldom felt the need to return their hospitality. I quailed at the thought of the organization involved and set off at once to put matters in hand. Three days was not very long.

We servants sprang into action like a well-oiled machine. The hunt dinner and the Christmas ball had given us valuable practice. We all knew what to do or where to find someone who could do it. I blessed Monsieur Alphonse for his strict training of our local boys. The only novice was Miss Eyre and I kept her busy in the pantry making sweets and jellies. She was a dab hand at delicacies. Adele, bless her, did not have time for lessons; she had to check her dresses and practise her party pieces. She was sure she would be needed in the ‘salon' to entertain the guests.

The list of guests contained mainly those who had attended the Christmas party some years back, the one where Mr Rochester paid Miss Blanche some extravagant compliments. This repetition in the guest list is inevitable in the country, where there is such a small supply of suitable people to invite. The only real change was that old Lord Ingram had died and his son, Theodore, was now Baron Ingram of Ingram Park. The futures of the Honourable Blanche and Mary looked gloomy. The new young peer was reputed to have run up many debts on the strength of his future inheritance; the estate was entailed
to him. Now that he had come into his fortune his creditors were circling their prey. If they decided to pounce there would be little actual cash left to provide his sisters with marriage settlements.

I hoped my master would be more discreet in his behaviour this time. Miss Blanche was twenty-five now and still unwed. Her triumphant London season was a long way behind her. Her opportunities dwindled as her years accumulated. I guessed that, given half a chance, she would snap her jaws tight round my master. Once again I was concerned for my own future. If the Honourable Blanche became mistress of Thornfield my livelihood depended on her whims and temper. I was saving to buy a pair of cottages, one to live in and one to rent out. In this way I hoped to have an income to support me in my old age. With luck I could avoid cold and hunger; my life, however, would be very meagre compared with my present circumstances. Like most honest working people I dreaded the thought of being forced into the workhouse. The world can be very unkind to old women.

THE HOUSE PARTY

1832

I
T WAS ONE OF THOSE MILD SERENE DAYS TOWARD
the end of March or the beginning of April when the guests arrived for the house party. My first glimpse dashed any hope that my master would be more discreet with the Honourable Miss Ingram. While the other ladies were content to travel in the two open carriages Miss Blanche rode her horse. Her purple riding habit swept the ground and her veil streamed behind her. By her side rode Mr Rochester on his black horse, Mesrour, while his dog, Pilot, bounded ahead. They made a splendid sight; it was hard to imagine a more flagrant way of announcing their interest in each other.

Even among the flurry of arriving guests with their many maids and footmen I noticed Martha. Again she travelled under the guise of the Honourable Blanche's maid, but it was a very different Martha this time. She had lost all her bounce and swagger. There were black rings under her eyes and her cheeks had caved in as if she had lost teeth. The grim set of her lips suggested she was holding back tears all the time. Since my conscience bothered me about the girl I set Leah to find out
at servants' meal times what was wrong and report back to me. Custom condemned me to entertaining the upper servants in my room.

I had many other calls upon my time in the evenings so I asked Mr Rochester if Miss Eyre could accompany Adele to the drawing room after dinner; the child was desperate to meet the ladies. Since Mr Rochester had no wife or female relative to act as hostess, it was the custom for there to be a female servant of some status present when there were lady guests, so they could call on her if need be. Mr Rochester gave my suggestion a warm reception; he thought it such a good idea that he warned me he would drag Miss Eyre to the drawing room if she resisted. I showed Jane where she could slip quietly in and advised her to dress in her best costume. Adele did not need such advice. She arrived in style, her hair curled, her petticoats rustling and her immaculate pink dress decorated with a rose.

The footmen and the maids brought us regular reports of what was happening in the drawing room. Mr Rochester was flirting outrageously with Miss Blanche and she was lapping up his attentions. With her brother, the new baronet, she had spent a happy half hour abusing governesses in general while poor Miss Eyre sat within earshot. Now she was singing a duet with the master and very fine singers they both were. Now they were planning charades and we had to ransack the third floor for costumes and props. I scampered as fast as my legs would carry me to keep the visiting servants away from Grace and Bertha's end of the third floor.

Word came down that the answer to the charade was Brideswell. Mr Rochester played the groom and Miss Blanche acted as the bride. They were married in dumb show. Was he determined to ruin her? Or was he making such a spectacle of his courtship that the alliance would be inevitable? The prospect
of matrimony had made him flee abroad before. This time even he would not have the brass neck to turn tail. The expectations of his neighbours would force him to lead his dusky bride up the aisle.

As the days went by I still had no real inkling of why my master behaved as indiscreetly as he did. I did not believe he loved Miss Ingram or cherished her for herself. She was a puppet in some kind of show. I might have felt sorry for her if she had not been such a nasty, vain and shallow person. After the duets and the flirting and the charades Mr Rochester had still one last trick to play on his guests. He pretended to be out on business but returned secretly. He had disguised himself as an old gypsy woman who had come to tell the ladies' fortunes. Or rather the fortunes of the young and single ladies. He did not waste his time on that awful old battle-axe the Dowager Baroness Ingram.

The bold Miss Blanche volunteered to be first to brave an interview with the gypsy. ‘What a drama she made of it! You'd have thought she was going to wrestle a bear,' said Sam, who had been in charge of the negotiations between the ladies and the gypsy. ‘And when she came out! You should have seen the gob on her!' he guffawed. We all cackled with laughter. The haughty Miss Honourable driven into a bad case of the sulks by a gypsy.

Sam revealed that the gypsy – or rather Mr Rochester – had at the end specifically asked him to go for Miss Eyre to have her fortune told. Sam was full of approval for Jane's behaviour. ‘She didn't make a performance of it. I offered to stay out in corridor in case she was scared. Not her. She sent me back to the kitchen to get on with my work.' What words were exchanged during that interview we never learnt.

While Mr Rochester was dressed up as a gypsy even the staff thought he was away on business in Millcote. In his absence – as we thought – a Mr Mason arrived and claimed to be an old
friend of the master's from Kingston, Jamaica. As is the custom we admitted the visitor, who joined the others in the drawing room. Once the pantomime of fortune-telling was over, our master welcomed the new arrival and showed him to a bedroom near his own. The arrival of this visitor from Jamaica changed everything, but we did not know it at the time. The revelations he set in motion reduced the posturing of the gentry in the drawing room to a mere shadow play. It was on the floors above and below them the real drama was played out.

In the morning the unexpected guest had gone. Gratitude was my first thought; one less mouth to feed. I am a little deaf so I had slept through the disturbance in the night. Sam whispered that he had been involved. He gave me a nod and a wink and a ‘tell you later'. To be honest I was too busy catering for the house party to have time to think about anything else. We were working from five thirty in the morning to eleven or twelve at night. We had little time for gossip and tended to sleep well. The house party was over before I discovered there had been strange comings and goings in the night, horses saddled, a post chaise summoned to wait outside the gate as dawn broke.