beheld a great black and white long-haired dog, just like the Gytrash of the lane. It was so like it that I went forward and said –
‘Pilot,’ and the thing got up and came to me and snuffed me. I caressed him, and he wagged his great tail; but he looked an eerie creature to be alone with, and I could not tell whence he had come. I rang the bell, for I wanted a candle; and I wanted, too, to get an account of this visitant. Leah entered.
‘What dog is this?’
‘He came with master.’
‘With whom?’
‘With master – Mr Rochester – he is just arrived.’
‘Indeed! And is Mrs Fairfax with him?’
‘Yes, and Miss Adela; they are in the dining-room, and John is gone for a surgeon, for master has had an accident. His horse fell, and his ankle is sprained.’
‘Did the horse fall in Hay Lane?’
‘Yes, coming down-hill; it slipped on some ice.’
‘Ah! Bring me a candle, will you, Leah?’
Leah brought it. She entered, followed by Mrs Fairfax, who repeated the news, adding that Mr Carter, the surgeon, was come, and was now with Mr Rochester. Then she hurried out to give orders about tea, and I went upstairs to take off my things.
CHAPTER XIII
Mr Rochester, it seems, by the surgeon’s orders, went to bed early that night; nor did he rise soon next morning. When he did come down, it was to attend to business. His agent and some of his tenants were arrived, and waiting to speak with him.
Adèle and I had now to vacate the library: it would be in daily requisition as a reception-room for callers. A fire was lit in an apartment upstairs, and there I carried our books, and arranged it for the future schoolroom. I discerned in the course of the morning that Thornfield Hall was a changed place. No longer silent as a church, it echoed every hour or two to a knock at the door or a clang of the bell. Steps, too, often traversed the hall, and new voices spoke in different keys below. A rill from the outer world was flowing through it. It had a master; for my part, I liked it better.
Adèle was not easy to teach that day; she could not apply. She kept running to the door and looking over the banisters to see if she could get a glimpse of Mr Rochester. Then she coined pretexts to go downstairs, in order, as I shrewdly suspected, to visit the library, where I knew she was not wanted. Then, when I got a little angry, and made her sit still, she continued to talk incessantly of her ‘ami, Monsieur Edouard Fairfax de Rochester,’ as she dubbed him (I had not before heard his prenomens),1 and to conjecture what presents he had brought her; for it appears he had intimated the night before that, when his luggage came from Millcote, there would be found amongst it a little box in whose contents she had an interest.
‘Et cela doit signifier,’ said she, ‘qu’il y aura, là dedans un cadeau pour moi, et peut-être pour vous aussi, mademoiselle. Monsieur a parlé de vous: il m’a demandé le nom de ma gouvernante, et si elle n’était pas une petite personne, assez mince et un peu pale. J’ai dit qu’oui: car c’est vrai, n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle?’2
I and my pupil dined as usual in Mrs Fairfax’s parlour. The afternoon was wild and snowy, and we passed it in the schoolroom. At dark, I allowed Adèle to put away books and work, and to run downstairs: for, from the comparative silence below, and from the cessation of appeals to the door-bell, I conjectured that Mr Rochester was now at liberty. Left alone, I walked to the window; but nothing was to be seen thence. Twilight and snowflakes together thickened the air, and hid the very shrubs on the lawn. I let down the curtain and went back to the fireside.
In the clear embers I was tracing a view, not unlike a picture I remembered to have seen of the castle of Heidelberg, on the Rhine,3 when Mrs Fairfax came in, breaking up by her entrance the fiery mosaic I had been piecing together, and scattering,4 too, some heavy unwelcome thoughts that were beginning to throng on my solitude.
‘Mr Rochester would be glad if you and your pupil would take tea with him in the drawing-room this evening,’ said she. ‘He has been so much engaged all day that he could not ask to