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Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere
but at the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned. The host himself
brought my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the
door and sit down: I had some questions to ask him. But when he
complied, I scarcely knew how to begin; such horror had I of the
possible answers. And yet the spectacle of desolation I had just
left prepared me in a measure for a tale of misery. The host was a
respectable-looking, middle-aged man.
'You know Thornfield Hall, of course?' I managed to say at last.
'Yes, ma'am; I lived there once.'
'Did you?' Not in my time, I thought: you are a stranger to me.
'I was the late Mr. Rochester's butler,' he added.
The late! I seem to have received, with full force, the blow I
had been trying to evade.
'The late!' I gasped. 'Is he dead?'
'I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward's father,' he
explained. I breathed again: my blood resumed its flow. Fully
assured by these words that Mr. Edward- my Mr. Rochester (God bless
him, wherever he was!)- was at least alive: was, in short, 'the
present gentleman.' Gladdening words! It seemed I could hear all
that was to come- whatever the disclosures might be- with
comparative tranquillity. Since he was not in the grave, I could bear,
I thought, to learn that he was at the Antipodes.
'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