Chapter Text
I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.
(Mr. Rochester, Jane Eyre, Chapter XIV)
“You have a very bad disposition,” said she, “and one to this day I feel it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be patient and quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and violence, I can never comprehend.”
(Aunt Reed, Jane Eyre, Chapter XXI)
I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
(Sylvia Plath, 'Elm')
I.
“Do you never laugh, Miss Eyre?” he asks me. He does not wait for my answer. He tells me, like a regular Bluebeard, never to visit the third floor.
I nod my assent, making the corners of his mouth curl. Privately, I decide that I am his servant, not his wife, and will explore where I like.
+
I hover outside the door in my few free moments, like Romeo throwing stones at windows from beneath the balcony. I hear rustles and thuds and (here is my favourite bit) laughter. A woman’s voice, but somehow not a woman’s laugh: it is miles away from that empty drawing room titter that makes one think of fans and ringlets.
‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’
I count the exclamation points. I grow more and more curious. On one or two occasions, Grace Poole slips out; she does so with excellent efficiency, and I can never quite catch a glimpse of anything besides firelight in the sliver of open door. Maybe once, a fleck of shadow. Grace Poole has sullen, sunken eyes (I am not pretty but I thank God my eyes don’t look like hers) and her heavy glances fall on me like admonishments every time she catches me at it. I ignore them.
Mrs. Fairfax claims (when I ask) that it’s Grace Poole who does the laughing, but that woman’s never smiled a day in her life, let alone laughed. I’m not an utter fool.
+
Adele twirls and twirls in her pretty pink skirts. Her blonde curls bounce. I would like to tell her that when I was her age, I was stood in a line and had my hair hacked off. I amuse myself by imagining the perfect wrinkle of her nose, should she be served the foul mush we Lowood girls called breakfast. I tell her every fairy story I know, and make the goblins hideous enough to curl anyone’s toes in fright. She is all giggles and shrieks.
+
‘I think you must be too young to understand love’s keen sting, little Jane,’ my master says, apropos (as usual) of nothing. He likes to have me sit beside him before the fire once supper is through. The flames and I amuse him. Firelight and shadow add a certain something to his ugly face.
‘I think so, sir,’ I demurely oblige. I can tell this is the answer that he wants. He is quite easy for me to read. He watches me, waiting for the addendum he knows will come. He likes my slyness when I frost it in innocuous servants’ tones. It tickles his fancy to have me here, eighteen and miserably plain and poor but – a surprise! – so bright. Almost a worthy opponent.
Tonight, I’ll play along. ‘And you, sir?’
One day I will drown him in sirs. If I were him, I’d have tired of it already, but he likes it.
‘Oh, Jane.’ He reclines back into the dark. I look at his feet. Then at the dog, who (just between us) I like better. And think rather handsomer. He licks his paws. ‘Even a girl with as sound a mind as yours could never endure the stories of what I’ve known of love.’ A bitter laugh. He draws it out. I suspect he likes the sound of it in his own ears. ‘If one could call it love. In truth, alas, I have always been more prone to hungrier, wickeder things, things that come to haunt and ruin in time – but certainly such tales aren’t for your ears, my fairy child. Tilt your head to the left, will you? Yes, like that. Oh, Janet. Eyes like those – you must be some belle dame, some enchantress. One morning I will wake and you’ll have left us, back to your elfin grot and your harem of doomed princes. I swear – no, don’t move! Not just yet – that with those eyes you look right clean into my soul.’ A shudder. He’d make Hamlet cringe. ‘How it weighs heavy on my heart, to think what vile things you must behold there.’
‘I am hardly beautiful, sir,’ I reply, ‘and to my knowledge, cannot see into souls.’
And have no need to look into yours, I do not add. It is all perfectly plain on your face.
+
At night I hear fingernails skim across my door outside. Back and forth, back and forth. I hear steps, too. And breathing.
I stay tucked in bed, blankets to my chin. I wonder what would happen if I flung the door open wide and invited in my midnight stranger. We could play, perhaps, at St. Agnes’ Eve (though I make it a habit never to go to bed hungry, having already done so more times than I’d have chosen in my life). Do you play Porphyro at the keyhole, my stranger? And how far does the game go? Might you watch me undress? Sneak your way into my bed? It is an interesting notion.
Of course, Madeline thought it was all only dreaming.
I pride myself upon being a bit more discerning.
Back and forth, back and forth go your mystery fingertips.