nothing of such a hand as that; almost without lines:3 besides, what is in a palm? Destiny is not written there.’
‘I believe you,’ said I.
‘No,’ she continued, ‘it is in the face: on the forehead, about the eyes, in the eyes themselves, in the lines of the mouth. Kneel, and lift up your head.’
‘Ah! now you are coming to reality,’ I said, as I obeyed her. ‘I shall begin to put some faith in you presently.’
I knelt within half a yard of her. She stirred the fire, so that a ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal: the glare, however, as she sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow: mine, it illumined.
‘I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night,’ she said, when she had examined me a while. ‘I wonder what thoughts are busy in your heart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the fine people flitting before you like shapes in a magic-lantern:4 just as little sympathetic communion passing between you and them as if they were really mere shadows of human forms, and not the actual substance.’
‘I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes, but seldom sad.’
‘Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you with whispers of the future?’
‘Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my earnings to set up a school some day in a little house rented by myself.’
‘A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on: and sitting in that window-seat (you see I know your habits)—’
‘You have learned them from the servants.’
‘Ah! you think yourself sharp. Well, perhaps I have: to speak truth, I have an acquaintance with one of them, Mrs Poole—’
I started to my feet when I heard the name.
‘You have – have you?’ thought I; ‘there is diablerie5 in the business after all, then!’
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ continued the strange being; ‘she’s a safe hand is Mrs Poole: close and quiet; anyone may repose confidence in her. But, as I was saying: sitting in that window-seat, do you think of nothing but your future school? Have you no present interest in any of the company who occupy the sofas and chairs before you? Is there not one face you study? one figure whose movements you follow with at least curiosity?’
‘I like to observe all the faces, and all the figures.’
‘But do you never single one from the rest – or it may be, two?’
‘I do frequently; when the gestures or looks of a pair seem telling a tale: it amuses me to watch them.’
‘What tale do you like best to hear?’
‘Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme – courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe – marriage.’
‘And do you like that monotonous theme?’
‘Positively, I don’t care about it: it is nothing to me.’
‘Nothing to you? When a lady, young and full of life and health, charming with beauty and endowed with the gifts of rank and fortune, sits and smiles in the eyes of a gentleman you—’
‘I what?’
‘You know – and perhaps think well of.’
‘I don’t know the gentlemen here. I have scarcely interchanged a syllable with one of them; and as to thinking well of them, I consider some respectable, and stately, and middle-aged; and others young, dashing, handsome, and lively: but certainly they are all at liberty to be the recipients of whose smiles they please, without my feeling disposed to consider the transaction of any moment to me.’
‘You don’t know the gentlemen here? You have not exchanged a syllable with one of them? Will you say that of the master of the house!’
‘He is not at home.’
‘A profound remark! A most ingenious quibble! He went to Millcote this morning, and will be back here to-night or to-morrow: does that circumstance exclude him from the list of your acquaintance – blot him, as it were, out of existence?’
‘No; but I can scarcely see what Mr Rochester has to do with the theme you had introduced.’
‘I was talking of ladies smiling in the eyes of gentlemen; and of late so many smiles have been shed into Mr Rochester’s eyes that they overflow like two cups filled above the brim: have you never remarked that?’
‘Mr Rochester has a right to enjoy the society of his guests.’
‘No question about his right: but have you never observed that, of all the tales told here about matrimony, Mr Rochester has been favoured with the most lively and the most continuous?’