But regardless of what I did or said, Jane sat quietly, stoically, in the corner. It soon became clear that she would not be provoked this way. If I wanted a reaction, I must force an engagement. As my guests prattled on around me, I scoured my mind for every battle plan I had learned at Mr. Lincoln’s table, seeking perfect deception and surprise. At last, I landed on the great genius himself: William Shakespeare. Like Hamlet, I would prepare a play to catch my mark.
One evening, as if it had suddenly occurred to me, I suggested a game of charades. I did offhandedly suggest Jane join my party, but she, as I knew she would, chose to remain an observer, sitting quietly, reacting to nothing, yet watching us all with her uncompromising eye.
The first portrayal was my suggestion, and it was the easiest and the most daring: a marriage scene, with myself as the bridegroom and Blanche as the bride. I confess to a measure of mischief, knowing that the scene would excite Miss Ingram every bit as much as I intended to provoke Jane. The second scene was more obscure, but still I hoped that “Eliezer and Rebecca at the well” might open Jane’s mind to the possibility of love from an unexpected source. The opposing party did not correctly guess the scene, but I felt sure Jane had.
The third scene was guessed immediately and correctly as “Bridewell,” and that completed the theme. As I was being complimented on my acting, I loudly reminded Miss Ingram that she was now my wife, for we had been married an hour since. Secretly I watched Jane’s face in these moments, hoping that her reaction would reveal her thoughts. I had no doubt that she had seen and heard enough of Miss Ingram by then to know how inferior a specimen she was, that Thornfield-Hall would be a miserable place with Blanche as its mistress. And yet, Jane did not react.
What was I to do? Had I been wrong to think that in her heart Jane returned my interest, that I had charmed and intrigued her the same way she had me?
I will admit that it required a sleepless night before I understood how unfeeling I had been. How could I fairly have expected her to speak her mind in front of the whole company, this plain, polite little creature who held her emotions so thoroughly in check? Of course she would not have spoken. Clearly I needed both to increase the urgency for her, to drive her to confess, but also to do so in private. I set to thinking.
One morning, I managed to absent myself on the excuse of business in Millcote. The ladies were talking of going to Hay Common to visit the Gypsy camp, while I slipped upstairs to pay my usual visit to Bertha and Grace Poole, keen to assure myself there would be no more surprises while my guests were at Thornfield. Before I left, I begged of Grace some old ragged gowns and shawls of Bertha’s, which would suit me nicely, as Bertha was as tall and large as most grown men. I made a few more stops on the road to Millcote and then took a room at the inn. Though I entered that room as a landed gentleman, after a careful toilette I emerged and slipped down the back stairs, unnoticed, as an elderly Gypsy woman.
That evening I appeared at Thornfield’s kitchen door, got up in my disguise. The performance was not difficult for me, after my theater days at Trinity College, where I was inevitably cast as the ugly character, the witch, or the depraved person. One of the village women hired as cook’s assistant for the duration stared at me unblinking. It was no trick to fool her, for she was not so very used to seeing the master of the house, but when Leah came to the door as well and tried to shoo me away, I knew I would succeed. “I only want to visit the guests who are here,” I croaked at her. “I only want to tell a fortune or two.”
“They are busy in their own pursuits; they have no need for the likes of you,” she responded, moving to close the door against me. (There was a strange freedom, I found, in being treated thus—it had been many years since I had felt what it was like to be an inferior, not a master.)
But I pushed myself into the kitchen, hobbled to the chimney corner, and sat down before anyone could stop me. “I need to rest myself,” I wheezed. “I have come a long way on this dark night.”
The kitchen workers crowded around me, full of conjecture. “Can she really tell fortunes?” one said. “I’d ’ave mine told,” said another. “Get on with ’er,” said another. “She only wants to scope the place for the plate there might be.”
“This foretelling must be spoken and heard. Your guests will be pleased with what I have to say,” I said
In a moment Mrs. Fairfax entered to see what the disturbance was. She bent to me, and briefly I worried she would see through the disguise, but she did not. Poor Mrs. Fairfax, she knew only how to be kind, and she could not think of a way to dislodge me from my position; but just then Sam returned with the news that the guests would indeed see the Gypsy in the drawing room.
“Oh no,” I said. “Not in a cluster like a vulgar herd. Each one should have her own chance in a private room, for I may say things they won’t want shared.” I told him to bring only the young and single ladies.
Sam left again and soon returned with word that the ladies would see me, one by one, in the library, as I had demanded. I made a great show of indignation at the treatment I had received and also a show of confusion over the location of the library.
I knew Miss Ingram would be the first to appear, for she would not want anyone else to have the first look at the old Gypsy. As she entered the room, I motioned to a chair in front of me and begged “milady” to sit down. I set my face in shadow, for although even Mrs. Fairfax had not known me, I could not risk being found out.
“Let me see your palm,” I said in my rasping voice. She opened her hand for me but flinched as I reached for it. She would not let me touch it.
“Do you fear me, miss?”
Her face remained rigid. “Of course not!”
“You have great hopes for marriage. To be mistress of this great house,” I said.
“That may already be well-known,” she snapped.
I peered closely into her hand, as if examining her palm. “You are an equestrian, are you not? And you are proud—”
“And that is known as well. If that is all you have to say, you are certainly nothing but a charlatan.”
I leaned closer to her, and she moved back in her chair. “You are interested in this place—this Thornfield. You have already made inquiries, I suspect; do you approve of the rent-rolls?” That stopped her, and before she could think what to say, I added, “You think they should be raised.” That latter was a guess on my part, but she seemed so disturbed that I knew I had hit my mark.
“You are satisfied with those numbers?” I prodded.
“You tell me,” she demanded. “Yours is not to question; it is to answer.”
I shrugged. “You think they should be larger. You have been mulling ideas of your own, changes you plan to make as soon as you are mistress.”
She was about to reply, but I cut her off.
“But you do not know the debts to the place, I think. You do not know that he is a gambler and has already gambled away half his fortune.”
Her face was suddenly still.
“Did you not know he went to Millcote this morning to arrange for the sale of more land to pay his debts? And his property in Jamaica is gone.”
“I did not know—”