I wondered what they were going to do the next evening for a change of entertainment was proposed and they spoke of playing charades. All that day they had been engaged in riding about the countryside around Thornfield and they returned that evening, wishing for amusement. The servants were called down, the dining-room tables wheeled away and chairs placed in a semicircle in the drawing-room. While Mr. Rochester and the other gentlemen directed these alterations, the ladies were running up and down stairs ringing for their maids. Mrs. Fairfax was summoned to give information respecting the resources of the house in shawls, dresses, and draperies of any kind, and wardrobes of the third storey were ransacked for their contents.
Meantime, Mr. Rochester had again summoned the ladies round him, and was selecting certain of their number to be of his party. “Miss Ingram is mine, of course,” said he and afterwards he looked at me and said, “Will you play?”
I shook my head and he did not insist, which I rather feared he might.
He and his party now disappeared to ready themselves for the first game. One of the gentlemen left in the room, Mr. Eshton, observing me, seemed to propose that I should be asked to join them, but Lady Ingram instantly negatived the notion.
“No,” I heard her say, “she looks too stupid for any game of the sort.”
Ere long a bell tinkled, and Mr. Rochester and his party entered once more. Adele (who had insisted on being one of her guardian’s party), bounded forward, scattering round her the contents of a basket of flowers she carried on her arm. Then appeared the magnificent figure of Miss Ingram, clad in white, a long veil on her head and a wreath of roses round her brow. By her side walked Mr. Rochester and together they drew near the table. They knelt while Mrs. Dent and Louisa Eshton, dressed also in white, took up their stations behind them. A ceremony followed in dumb show, which was easily recognised as the pantomime of a marriage. At its termination, Colonel Dent and his party consulted in whispers for two minutes, then the Colonel called out: “Bride!”
Mr. Rochester bowed, and I completely lost interest in the whole thing. I shrank back into the corner in which I was sitting and took to my book. I could not bear to see the two of them together or watch Miss Ingram throw herself at Mr. Rochester so completely. The game went on but I took no more notice and nor did I make a sound for the rest of the evening.
The next day it was verging on dusk and the clock had already given warning of the hour to dress for dinner, when little Adele, who knelt by me in the drawing-room window-seat, suddenly exclaimed
“Voile, Monsieur Rochester, qui revient!”
Mr. Rochester had been away on business all day and left his guests to themselves at Thornfield. While the others had seemed to relish a period of relaxation, Miss Ingram had been restless.
I turned at Adele’s words and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa. The others, too, looked up from their several occupations and the crunching of wheels and splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became audible on the wet gravel. A post-chaise was approaching.
“What can possess him to come home in that style?” said Miss Ingram. “He rode Mesrour when he went out and Pilot was with him—what has he done with the animals?”
As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments so near the window where I was sitting that I was obliged to bend back almost to the breaking of my spine. In her eagerness she did not observe me at first, but when she did, she curled her lip and moved to another casement. We watched the post-chaise stop and a gentleman alighted attired in travelling garb, but it was not Mr. Rochester.
“How provoking!” exclaimed Miss Ingram. “You tiresome monkey!” (apostrophising Adele), “Who perched you up in the window to give false intelligence?” and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I were in fault.
Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the newcomer entered.
“It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam,” said he. “My friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home, but I arrive from a very long journey and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate acquaintance as to install myself here till he returns.”
His manner was polite, but his accent in speaking struck me as being somewhat unusual, not precisely foreign, but still not altogether English. His age might be about Mr. Rochester’s and his complexion was singularly sallow, otherwise he was a fine-looking man.
The sound of the dressing-bell then dispersed the party and it was not till after dinner that I saw him again when he then seemed quite at his ease. However, there was something about him on second-inspection that repelled me exceedingly. As I sat in my usual nook, I looked at him in the arm-chair opposite from me, drawn close to the fire as if he were cold, and compared him with Mr. Rochester. I think the contrast could not be much greater between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon, between a meek sheep and the rough-coated keen-eyed dog, its guardian. He had spoken of Mr. Rochester as an old friend. A curious friendship theirs must have been.
Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times scraps of their conversation across the room. At first I could not make much sense of what I heard, but I presently gathered that the new-comer was called Mr. Mason. I learned that he was but just arrived in England from some hot country which was the reason, doubtless, his face was so sallow and he sat so near the hearth. Presently the words Jamaica, Kingston, and Spanish Town indicated the West Indies as his residence and it was with no little surprise I gathered, ere long, that he had there first seen and become acquainted with Mr. Rochester.
I was pondering this when an incident, and a somewhat unexpected one, broke the thread of my musings. Mr. Mason, shivering as some one chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to be put on the fire which had burnt out its flame. The footman who brought the coal, in going out, stopped near Mr. Eshton’s chair and said something to him in a low voice, of which I heard only the words, “old woman . . . quite troublesome.”
“Tell her she shall be put in the stocks if she does not take herself off,” replied the magistrate.
“No, stop!” interrupted Colonel Dent. “Don’t send her away, Eshton. Better consult the ladies.” And speaking aloud, he continued, “Ladies, you talked of going to Hay Common to visit the gipsy camp; Sam here says that one of the old Mother Bunches is in the servants’ hall at this moment and insists upon being brought in to tell fortunes. Would you like to see her?”
“Surely, colonel,” cried Lady Ingram, “you would not encourage such a low impostor? Dismiss her, by all means, at once!”
“But I cannot persuade her to go away, my lady,” said the footman. “Nor can any of the servants. Mrs. Fairfax is with her just now, entreating her to be gone, but she has taken a chair in the chimney-corner, and says nothing shall stir her from it till she gets leave to come in here.”
“What does she want?” asked Mrs. Eshton.
“To tell the gentry their fortunes, she says, ma’am.”
“What is she like?”
“A shockingly ugly old creature, almost as black as a crock.”
“Why, she’s a real sorceress!” cried Frederick Lynn. “Let us have her in, of course.”
“I cannot possibly countenance any such inconsistent proceeding,” chimed in the Dowager Ingram.
“Indeed, mama, but you can and will,” pronounced the haughty voice of Blanche. “I have a curiosity to hear my fortune told. Sam, order the beldame forward.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” cried all the juveniles, both ladies and gentlemen. “Let her come! It will be excellent sport!”
The footman still lingered. “She looks such a rough one,” said he.
“Go!” shouted Miss Ingram, and the man went.
Excitement instantly seized the whole party and a running fire of raillery and jests was proceeding when Sam returned.
“She won’t come now,” said he. “She says it’s not her mission to appear before the ‘vulgar herd’ (them’s her words). I must show her into a room by herself, and then those who wish to consult her must go to her one by one.”
“You see now, my queenly Blanche,” began Lady Ingram, “she encroaches. Be advised, my angel girl and—”
“Show her into the library, of course,” cut in the angel girl. “It is not my mission to listen to her before the vulgar herd either. I mean to have her all to myself. Is there a fire in the library?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do my bidding.”
Again Sam vanished and mystery, animation, expectation rose to full flow once more.
“She’s ready now,” said the footman, as he reappeared. “She wishes to know who will be her first visitor.”
“I think I had better just look in upon her before any of the ladies go,” said Colonel Dent. “Tell her, Sam, a gentleman is coming.”
Sam went and returned.
“She says, sir, that she’ll have no gentlemen. And no ladies either, except the young and single.”
“By Jove, she has taste!” exclaimed Henry Lynn.
Miss Ingram rose solemnly. “I go first,” she said.
“Oh, my best! Oh, my dearest! Pause and reflect!” was her mama’s cry, but she swept past her in stately silence, passed through the door which Colonel Dent held open and we heard her enter the library.
A comparative silence ensued and the minutes passed very slowly. Fifteen were counted before the library-door again opened and Miss Ingram returned to us through the arch. All eyes met her with a glance of eager curiosity and she met all eyes with one of rebuff and coldness. She looked neither flurried nor merry and she walked stiffly to her seat, taking it in silence.
“Well, Blanche?” said Lord Ingram.
“What did she say, sister?” asked Mary.
“What did you think? How do you feel?” demanded the Misses Eshton.
“Now, now, good people,” returned Miss Ingram, “don’t press upon me. Really you seem to believe we have a genuine witch in the house who is in close alliance with the old gentleman. I have seen a gipsy vagabond; she has practised in hackneyed fashion the science of palmistry and told me what such people usually tell. My whim is gratified and now I think Mr. Eshton will do well to put the hag in the stocks to-morrow morning, as he threatened.”
Miss Ingram took a book, leant back in her chair and declined further conversation. I watched her for nearly half-an-hour and during all that time she never turned a page. Her face grew darker, more dissatisfied and more sourly expressive of disappointment. She had obviously not heard anything to her advantage.
Meantime, Mary Ingram, Amy and Louisa Eshton, declared they dared not go alone and so they went all together. Their visit was not so still as Miss Ingram’s had been and we heard hysterical giggling and little shrieks proceeding from the library. In half an hour they burst back into the room, breathless.
“I am sure she is something not right!” they cried, one and all. “She told us such things! She knows all about us!” and they sank into the various seats the gentlemen hastened to bring them.
In the midst of the tumult, and while my eyes and ears were fully engaged in the scene before me, I heard a hem close at my elbow. I turned and saw Sam.
“If you please, miss, the gipsy declares that there is another young single lady in the room who has not been to her yet and she swears she will not go till she has seen all. I thought it must be you as there is no one else for it. What shall I tell her?”
“Oh, I will go by all means,” I answered, and I was glad of the unexpected opportunity to gratify my much-excited curiosity. I slipped out of the room, unobserved by any eye and closed the door quietly behind me.
“If you like, miss,” said Sam, “I’ll wait in the hall for you, and if she frightens you, just call and I’ll come in.”
“Do not worry Sam, return to the kitchen. I am not in the least afraid.”
Nor was I, but I was a good deal interested and excited.