"Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?" I asked, knowing,
of course, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring
the direct question as to where he really was.
"No, ma'am--oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you are a
stranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happened last
autumn,--Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just
about harvest-time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity
of valuable property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture could
be saved. The fire broke out at dead of night, and before the
engines arrived from Millcote, the building was one mass of flame.
It was a terrible spectacle: I witnessed it myself."
"At dead of night!" I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour of
fatality at Thornfield. "Was it known how it originated?" I
demanded.
"They guessed, ma'am: they guessed. Indeed, I should say it was
ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware," he
continued, edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking
low, "that there was a lady--a--a lunatic, kept in the house?"
"I have heard something of it."
"She was kept in very close confinement, ma'am: people even for
some years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one saw
her: they only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall;
and who or what she was it was difficult to conjecture. They said
Mr. Edward had brought her from abroad, and some believed she had
been his mistress. But a queer thing happened a year since--a very
queer thing."
I feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him to
the main fact.
"And this lady?"
"This lady, ma'am," he answered, "turned out to be Mr. Rochester's
wife! The discovery was brought about in the strangest way. There
was a young lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell
in--"
"But the fire," I suggested.
"I'm coming to that, ma'am--that Mr. Edward fell in love with. The
servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was: he
was after her continually. They used to watch him--servants will,
you know, ma'am--and he set store on her past everything: for all,
nobody but him thought her so very handsome. She was a little small
thing, they say, almost like a child. I never saw her myself; but
I've heard Leah, the house-maid, tell of her. Leah liked her well
enough. Mr. Rochester was about forty, and this governess not
twenty; and you see, when gentlemen of his age fall in love with
girls, they are often like as if they were bewitched. Well, he
would marry her."