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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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236 you please: it would be better.’ ‘Not it: she will be a restraint.’ He was quite peremptory, both in look and voice. The chill of Mrs. Fairfax’s warnings, and the damp of her doubts were upon me: something of unsubstantiality and uncertainty had beset my hopes. I half lost the sense of power over him. I was about mechanically to obey him, without further remonstrance; but as he helped me into the carriage, he looked at my face. ‘What is the matter?’ he asked; ‘all the sunshine is gone. Do you really wish the bairn to go? Will it annoy you if she is left behind?’ ‘I would far rather she went, sir.’ ‘Then off for your bonnet, and back like a flash of lightning!’ cried he to Adele. She obeyed him with what speed she might. ‘After all, a single morning’s interruption will not matter much,’ said he, ‘when I mean shortly to claim you-your thoughts, conversation, and companyfor life.’ Adele, when lifted in, commenced kissing me, by way of expressing her gratitude for my intercession: she was instantly stowed away into a corner on the other side of him. She then peeped round to where I sat; so stern a neighbour was too restrictive; to him, in his present fractious mood, she dared whisper no observations, nor ask of him any information. ‘Let her come to me,’ I entreated: ‘she will, perhaps, trouble you, sir: there is plenty of room on this side.’ He handed her over as if she had been a lapdog. ‘I’ll send her to school yet,’ he said, but now he was smiling. Adele heard him, and asked if she was to go to school ‘sans mademoiselle?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘absolutely sans mademoiselle; for I am to take mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me there, and only me.’ ‘She will have nothing to eat: you will starve her,’ observed Adele. ‘I shall gather manna for her morning and night: the plains and hillsides in the moon are bleached with manna, Adele.’ ‘She will want to warm herself: what will she do for a fire?’ ‘Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I’ll carry her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater.’ ‘Oh, qu’elle y sera mal-peu comfortable! And her clothes, they will wear out: how can she get new ones?’ Mr. Rochester professed to be puzzled. ‘Hem!’ said he. ‘What would you do, Adele? Cudgel your brains for an expedient. How would a white or a pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think? And one could cut a pretty enough scarf out of a rainbow.’ ‘She is far better as she is,’ concluded Adele, after musing some time: ‘besides, she would get tired of living with only you in the moon. If I were mademoiselle, I |
