"Half-an-hour ago," he pursued, "I spoke of my impatience to hear
the sequel of a tale: on reflection, I find the matter will be
better managed by my assuming the narrator's part, and converting
you into a listener. Before commencing, it is but fair to warn you
that the story will sound somewhat hackneyed in your ears; but stale
details often regain a degree of freshness when they pass through
new lips. For the rest, whether trite or novel, it is short.
"Twenty years ago, a poor curate--never mind his name at this
moment--fell in love with a rich man's daughter; she fell in love
with him, and married him, against the advice of all her friends,
who consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before
two years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly
side by side under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed
part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim,
soot-black old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in -
shire.) They left a daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity
received in her lap--cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck
fast in to-night. Charity carried the friendless thing to the house
of its rich maternal relations; it was reared by an aunt-in-law,
called (I come to names now) Mrs. Reed of Gateshead. You start--did
you hear a noise? I daresay it is only a rat scrambling along the
rafters of the adjoining schoolroom: it was a barn before I had it
repaired and altered, and barns are generally haunted by rats.--To
proceed. Mrs. Reed kept the orphan ten years: whether it was happy
or not with her, I cannot say, never having been told; but at the
end of that time she transferred it to a place you know--being no
other than Lowood School, where you so long resided yourself. It
seems her career there was very honourable: from a pupil, she
became a teacher, like yourself--really it strikes me there are
parallel points in her history and yours--she left it to be a
governess: there, again, your fates were analogous; she undertook
the education of the ward of a certain Mr. Rochester."
"Mr. Rivers!" I interrupted.
"I can guess your feelings," he said, "but restrain them for a
while: I have nearly finished; hear me to the end. Of Mr.
Rochester's character I know nothing, but the one fact that he
professed to offer honourable marriage to this young girl, and that
at the very altar she discovered he had a wife yet alive, though a
lunatic. What his subsequent conduct and proposals were is a matter
of pure conjecture; but when an event transpired which rendered
inquiry after the governess necessary, it was discovered she was
gone--no one could tell when, where, or how. She had left
Thornfield Hall in the night; every research after her course had
been vain: the country had been scoured far and wide; no vestige of
information could be gathered respecting her. Yet that she should
be found is become a matter of serious urgency: advertisements have
been put in all the papers; I myself have received a letter from one
Mr. Briggs, a solicitor, communicating the details I have just
imparted. Is it not an odd tale?"