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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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258 and still beckoning the gentlemen to follow him, which they did. We mounted the first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the third storey: the low, black door, opened by Mr. Rochester’s master-key, admitted us to the tapestried room, with its great bed and its pictorial cabinet. ‘You know this place, Mason,’ said our guide; ‘she bit and stabbed you here.’ He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door: this, too, he opened. In a room without a window, there burnt a fire guarded by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a chain. Grace Poole bent over the fire, apparently cooking something in a saucepan. In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face. ‘Good-morrow, Mrs. Poole!’ said Mr. Rochester. ‘How are you? and how is your charge to-day?’ ‘We’re tolerable, sir, I thank you,’ replied Grace, lifting the boiling mess carefully on to the hob: ‘rather snappish, but not ‘rageous.’ A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favourable report: the clothed hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind-feet. ‘Ah! sir, she sees you!’ exclaimed Grace: ‘you’d better not stay.’ ‘Only a few moments, Grace: you must allow me a few moments.’ ‘Take care then, sir!- for God’s sake, take care!’ The maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognised well that purple face,- those bloated features. Mrs. Poole advanced. ‘Keep out of the way,’ said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside: ‘she has no knife now, I suppose, and I’m on my guard!’ ‘One never knows what she has, sir: she is so cunning: it is not in mortal discretion to fathom her craft.’ ‘We had better leave her,’ whispered Mason. ‘Go to the devil!’ was his brother-in-law’s recommendation. ‘’Ware!’ cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously. Mr. Rochester flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek: they struggled. She was a big woman, in stature almost equalling her husband, and corpulent besides: she showed virile force in the contest-more than once she almost throttled him, athletic as he was. He could have settled her with a well-planted blow: but he would not strike: he would only wrestle. At last he |
