"Adele may accompany us, may she not, sir?"
"I told her no. I'll have no brats!--I'll have only you."
"Do let her go, Mr. Rochester, if you please: it would be better."
"Not it: she will be a restraint."
He was quite peremptory, both in look and voice. The chill of Mrs.
Fairfax's warnings, and the damp of her doubts were upon me:
something of unsubstantiality and uncertainty had beset my hopes. I
half lost the sense of power over him. I was about mechanically to
obey him, without further remonstrance; but as he helped me into the
carriage, he looked at my face.
"What is the matter?" he asked; "all the sunshine is gone. Do you
really wish the bairn to go? Will it annoy you if she is left
behind?"
"I would far rather she went, sir."
"Then off for your bonnet, and back like a flash of lightning!"
cried he to Adele.
She obeyed him with what speed she might.
"After all, a single morning's interruption will not matter much,"
said he, "when I mean shortly to claim you--your thoughts,
conversation, and company--for life."
Adele, when lifted in, commenced kissing me, by way of expressing
her gratitude for my intercession: she was instantly stowed away
into a corner on the other side of him. She then peeped round to
where I sat; so stern a neighbour was too restrictive to him, in his
present fractious mood, she dared whisper no observations, nor ask
of him any information.
"Let her come to me," I entreated: "she will, perhaps, trouble you,
sir: there is plenty of room on this side."
He handed her over as if she had been a lapdog. "I'll send her to
school yet," he said, but now he was smiling.
Adele heard him, and asked if she was to go to school "sans
mademoiselle?"
"Yes," he replied, "absolutely sans mademoiselle; for I am to take
mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of
the white valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall
live with me there, and only me."
"She will have nothing to eat: you will starve her," observed
Adele.
"I shall gather manna for her morning and night: the plains and
hillsides in the moon are bleached with manna, Adele."
"She will want to warm herself: what will she do for a fire?"
"Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I'll
carry her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater."