简.爱 英文版 Jane Eyre
夏洛蒂.勃朗特 Charlotte Bronte
CHAPTER XV Page 1
Mr. Rochester did, on a future occasion, explain it. It was oneafternoon, when he chanced to meet me and Adele in the grounds:and while she played with Pilot and her shuttlecock, he asked meto walk up and down a long beech avenue within sight of her.
He then said that she was the daughter of a French opera-dancer,Celine Varens, towards whom he had once cherished what he calleda "grande passion. " This passion Celine had professed to returnwith even superior ardour. He thought himself her idol, ugly ashe was: he believed, as he said, that she preferred his "tailled'athlete" to the elegance of the Apollo Belvidere.
"And, Miss Eyre, so much was I flattered by this preference ofthe Gallic sylph for her British gnome, that I installed her in anhotel; gave her a complete establishment of servants, a carriage,cashmeres, diamonds, dentelles, &c. In short, I began the processof ruining myself in the received style, like any other spoony. Ihad not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shameand destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness notto deviate an inch from the beaten centre. I had -- as I deservedto have -- the fate of all other spoonies. Happening to call oneevening when Celine did not expect me, I found her out; but it wasa warm night, and I was tired with strolling through Paris, so Isat down in her boudoir; happy to breathe the air consecrated solately by her presence. No, -- I exaggerate; I never thought therewas any consecrating virtue about her: it was rather a sort ofpastille perfume she had left; a scent of musk and amber, than anodour of sanctity. I was just beginning to stifle with the fumesof conservatory flowers and sprinkled essences, when I bethoughtmyself to open the window and step out on to the balcony. It wasmoonlight and gaslight besides, and very still and serene. Thebalcony was furnished with a chair or two; I sat down, and tookout a cigar, -- I will take one now, if you will excuse me. "
Here ensued a pause, filled up by the producing and lightingof a cigar; having placed it to his lips and breathed a trailof Havannah incense on the freezing and sunless air, he went on -
"I liked bonbons too in those days, Miss Eyre, and I was croquant-- (overlook the barbarism) -- croquant chocolate comfits, andsmoking alternately, watching meantime the equipages that rolledalong the fashionable streets towards the neighbouring opera-house,when in an elegant close carriage drawn by a beautiful pair ofEnglish horses, and distinctly seen in the brilliant city-night,I recognised the 'voiture' I had given Celine. She was returning:of course my heart thumped with impatience against the iron railsI leant upon. The carriage stopped, as I had expected, at thehotel door; my flame (that is the very word for an opera inamorata)alighted: though muffed in a cloak -- an unnecessary encumbrance,by-the-bye, on so warm a June evening -- I knew her instantly byher little foot, seen peeping from the skirt of her dress, as sheskipped from the carriage-step. Bending over the balcony, I wasabout to murmur 'Mon ange' -- in a tone, of course, which shouldbe audible to the ear of love alone -- when a figure jumped fromthe carriage after her; cloaked also; but that was a spurred heelwhich had rung on the pavement, and that was a hatted head whichnow passed under the arched porte cochere of the hotel.
"You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: Ineed not ask you; because you never felt love. You have bothsentiments yet to experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yetto be given which shall waken it. You think all existence lapsesin as quiet a flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slidaway. Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears, you neithersee the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the flood, norhear the breakers boil at their base. But I tell you -- and youmay mark my words -- you will come some day to a craggy pass in thechannel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up intowhirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed toatoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-waveinto a calmer current -- as I am now.
"I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternnessand stillness of the world under this frost. I like Thornfield,its antiquity, its retirement, its old crow-trees and thorn-trees,its grey facade, and lines of dark windows reflecting that metalwelkin: and yet how long have I abhorred the very thought of it,shunned it like a great plague-house? How I do still abhor -"
He ground his teeth and was silent: he arrested his step and struckhis boot against the hard ground. Some hated thought seemed tohave him in its grip, and to hold him so tightly that he could notadvance.
We were ascending the avenue when he thus paused; the hall was beforeus. Lifting his eye to its battlements, he cast over them a glaresuch as I never saw before or since. Pain, shame, ire, impatience,disgust, detestation, seemed momentarily to hold a quivering conflictin the large pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrow. Wild was thewrestle which should be paramount; but another feeling rose andtriumphed: something hard and cynical: self-willed and resolute:it settled his passion and petrified his countenance: he went on -
"During the moment I was silent, Miss Eyre, I was arranging a pointwith my destiny. She stood there, by that beech-trunk -- a haglike one of those who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres.'You like Thornfield?' she said, lifting her finger; and then shewrote in the air a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics allalong the house-front, between the upper and lower row of windows,'Like it if you can! Like it if you dare!'
"'I will like it, ' said I; 'I dare like it;' and" (he subjoinedmoodily) "I will keep my word; I will break obstacles to happiness,to goodness -- yes, goodness. I wish to be a better man than Ihave been, than I am; as Job's leviathan broke the spear, the dart,and the habergeon, hindrances which others count as iron and brass,I will esteem but straw and rotten wood. "
Adele here ran before him with her shuttlecock. "Away!" he criedharshly; "keep at a distance, child; or go in to Sophie!" Continuingthen to pursue his walk in silence, I ventured to recallhim to the point whence he had abruptly diverged -
"Did you leave the balcony, sir, " I asked, "when Mdlle. Varensentered?"
I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question,but, on the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, heturned his eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off hisbrow. "Oh, I had forgotten Celine! Well, to resume. When I sawmy charmer thus come in accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed tohear a hiss, and the green snake of jealousy, rising on undulatingcoils from the moonlit balcony, glided within my waistcoat, and ateits way in two minutes to my heart's core. Strange!" he exclaimed,suddenly starting again from the point. "Strange that I shouldchoose you for the confidant of all this, young lady; passingstrange that you should listen to me quietly, as if it were the mostusual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of hisopera-mistresses to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you! But thelast singularity explains the first, as I intimated once before:you, with your gravity, considerateness, and caution were made tobe the recipient of secrets. Besides, I know what sort of a mindI have placed in communication with my own: I know it is one notliable to take infection: it is a peculiar mind: it is a uniqueone. Happily I do not mean to harm it: but, if I did, it wouldnot take harm from me. The more you and I converse, the better;for while I cannot blight you, you may refresh me. " Afterthis digression he proceeded -
"I remained in the balcony. 'They will come to her boudoir, nodoubt, ' thought I: 'let me prepare an ambush. ' So putting my handin through the open window, I drew the curtain over it, leaving onlyan opening through which I could take observations; then I closedthe casement, all but a chink just wide enough to furnish an outletto lovers' whispered vows: then I stole back to my chair; and asI resumed it the pair came in. My eye was quickly at the aperture.Celine's chamber-maid entered, lit a lamp, left it on the table,and withdrew. The couple were thus revealed to me clearly: bothremoved their cloaks, and there was 'the Varens, ' shining in satinand jewels, -- my gifts of course, -- and there was her companionin an officer's uniform; and I knew him for a young roue of avicomte -- a brainless and vicious youth whom I had sometimes metin society, and had never thought of hating because I despised himso absolutely. On recognising him, the fang of the snake Jealousywas instantly broken; because at the same moment my love for Celinesank under an extinguisher. A woman who could betray me for sucha rival was not worth contending for; she deserved only scorn;less, however, than I, who had been her dupe.
"They began to talk; their conversation eased me completely: frivolous,mercenary, heartless, and senseless, it was rather calculated toweary than enrage a listener. A card of mine lay on the table;this being perceived, brought my name under discussion. Neitherof them possessed energy or wit to belabour me soundly, but theyinsulted me as coarsely as they could in their little way: especiallyCeline, who even waxed rather brilliant on my personal defects --deformities she termed them. Now it had been her custom to launchout into fervent admiration of what she called my 'beaute male:'wherein she differed diametrically from you, who told me point-blank,at the second interview, that you did not think me handsome. Thecontrast struck me at the time and -- "
Adele here came running up again.
"Monsieur, John has just been to say that your agent has calledand wishes to see you. "
"Ah! in that case I must abridge. Opening the window, I walkedin upon them; liberated Celine from my protection; gave her noticeto vacate her hotel; offered her a purse for immediate exigencies;disregarded screams, hysterics, prayers, protestations, convulsions;made an appointment with the vicomte for a meeting at the Bois deBoulogne. Next morning I had the pleasure of encountering him; lefta bullet in one of his poor etiolated arms, feeble as the wing ofa chicken in the pip, and then thought I had done with the wholecrew. But unluckily the Varens, six months before, had given methis filette Adele, who, she affirmed, was my daughter; and perhapsshe may be, though I see no proofs of such grim paternity writtenin her countenance: Pilot is more like me than she. Some yearsafter I had broken with the mother, she abandoned her child, andran away to Italy with a musician or singer. I acknowledged nonatural claim on Adele's part to be supported by me, nor do I nowacknowledge any, for I am not her father; but hearing that she wasquite destitute, I e'en took the poor thing out of the slime andmud of Paris, and transplanted it here, to grow up clean in thewholesome soil of an English country garden. Mrs. Fairfax foundyou to train it; but now you know that it is the illegitimateoffspring of a French opera- girl, you will perhaps think differentlyof your post and protegee: you will be coming to me some day withnotice that you have found another place -- that you beg me to lookout for a new governess, &c. -- Eh?"
"No: Adele is not answerable for either her mother's faults oryours: I have a regard for her; and now that I know she is, in asense, parentless -- forsaken by her mother and disowned by you, sir-- I shall cling closer to her than before. How could I possiblyprefer the spoilt pet of a wealthy family, who would hate her governessas a nuisance, to a lonely little orphan, who leans towards her asa friend?"
"Oh, that is the light in which you view it! Well, I must go innow; and you too: it darkens. "
But I stayed out a few minutes longer with Adele and Pilot -- rana race with her, and played a game of battledore and shuttlecock.When we went in, and I had removed her bonnet and coat, I took heron my knee; kept her there an hour, allowing her to prattle as sheliked: not rebuking even some little freedoms and trivialities intowhich she was apt to stray when much noticed, and which betrayedin her a superficiality of character, inherited probably from hermother, hardly congenial to an English mind. Still she had hermerits; and I was disposed to appreciate all that was good in herto the utmost. I sought in her countenance and features a likenessto Mr. Rochester, but found none: no trait, no turn of expressionannounced relationship. It was a pity: if she could but have beenproved to resemble him, he would have thought more of her.
It was not till after I had withdrawn to my own chamber for thenight, that I steadily reviewed the tale Mr. Rochester had told me.As he had said, there was probably nothing at all extraordinaryin the substance of the narrative itself: a wealthy Englishman'spassion for a French dancer, and her treachery to him, were everydaymatters enough, no doubt, in society; but there was something decidedlystrange in the paroxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized himwhen he was in the act of expressing the present contentment ofhis mood, and his newly revived pleasure in the old hall and itsenvirons. I meditated wonderingly on this incident; but graduallyquitting it, as I found it for the present inexplicable, I turned tothe consideration of my master's manner to myself. The confidencehe had thought fit to repose in me seemed a tribute to my discretion: Iregarded and accepted it as such. His deportment had now for someweeks been more uniform towards me than at the first. I never seemedin his way; he did not take fits of chilling hauteur: when he metme unexpectedly, the encounter seemed welcome; he had always a wordand sometimes a smile for me: when summoned by formal invitationto his presence, I was honoured by a cordiality of reception thatmade me feel I really possessed the power to amuse him, and thatthese evening conferences were sought as much for his pleasure asfor my benefit.
I, indeed, talked comparatively little, but I heard him talk withrelish. It was his nature to be communicative; he liked to opento a mind unacquainted with the world glimpses of its scenes andways (I do not mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways, but suchas derived their interest from the great scale on which they wereacted, the strange novelty by which they were characterised);and I had a keen delight in receiving the new ideas he offered,in imagining the new pictures he portrayed, and following him inthought through the new regions he disclosed, never startled ortroubled by one noxious allusion.
The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint: the friendlyfrankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drewme to him. I felt at times as if he were my relation rather thanmy master: yet he was imperious sometimes still; but I did not mindthat; I saw it was his way. So happy, so gratified did I becomewith this new interest added to life, that I ceased to pine afterkindred: my thin crescent-destiny seemed to enlarge; the blanksof existence were filled up; my bodily health improved; I gatheredflesh and strength.
And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No, reader: gratitude,and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his facethe object I best liked to see; his presence in a room was morecheering than the brightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults;indeed, I could not, for he brought them frequently before me. Hewas proud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description:in my secret soul I knew that his great kindness to me was balancedby unjust severity to many others. He was moody, too; unaccountablyso; I more than once, when sent for to read to him, found him sittingin his library alone, with his head bent on his folded arms; and,when he looked up, a morose, almost a malignant, scowl blackenedhis features. But I believed that his moodiness, his harshness,and his former faults of morality (I say FORMER, for now he seemedcorrected of them) had their source in some cruel cross of fate.I believed he was naturally a man of better tendencies, higherprinciples, and purer tastes than such as circumstances had developed,education instilled, or destiny encouraged. I thought there wereexcellent materials in him; though for the present they hung togethersomewhat spoiled and tangled. I cannot deny that I grieved for hisgrief, whatever that was, and would have given much to assuage it.
Though I had now extinguished my candle and was laid down in bed,I could not sleep for thinking of his look when he paused in theavenue, and told how his destiny had risen up before him, and daredhim to be happy at Thornfield.
"Why not?" I asked myself. "What alienates him from the house?Will he leave it again soon? Mrs. Fairfax said he seldom stayedhere longer than a fortnight at a time; and he has now been residenteight weeks. If he does go, the change will be doleful. Supposehe should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshineand fine days will seem!"
I hardly know whether I had slept or not after this musing; at anyrate, I started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar andlugubrious, which sounded, I thought, just above me. I wished Ihad kept my candle burning: the night was drearily dark; my spiritswere depressed. I rose and sat up in bed, listening. The soundwas hushed.
I tried again to sleep; but my heart beat anxiously: my inwardtranquillity was broken. The clock, far down in the hall, struck two.Just then it seemed my chamber-door was touched; as if fingers hadswept the panels in groping a way along the dark gallery outside.I said, "Who is there?" Nothing answered. I was chilled withfear.
All at once I remembered that it might be Pilot, who, when thekitchen-door chanced to be left open, not unfrequently found hisway up to the threshold of Mr. Rochester's chamber: I had seen himlying there myself in the mornings. The idea calmed me somewhat:I lay down. Silence composes the nerves; and as an unbroken hushnow reigned again through the whole house, I began to feel the returnof slumber. But it was not fated that I should sleep that night.A dream had scarcely approached my ear, when it fled affrighted,scared by a marrow-freezing incident enough.
This was a demoniac laugh -- low, suppressed, and deep -- uttered,as it seemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber door. The head ofmy bed was near the door, and I thought at first the goblin-laugherstood at my bedside -- or rather, crouched by my pillow: but Irose, looked round, and could see nothing; while, as I still gazed,the unnatural sound was reiterated: and I knew it came from behindthe panels. My first impulse was to rise and fasten the bolt; mynext, again to cry out, "Who is there?"
Something gurgled and moaned. Ere long, steps retreated up thegallery towards the third-storey staircase: a door had lately beenmade to shut in that staircase; I heard it open and close, and allwas still.