Page 7 of John Eyre

“Not entirely. There’s Millcote, of course. And Hay—a village beyond that hill, not but two miles away from here.”

John squinted into the distance. Mist swirled over the hills and atop the meadow, making it difficult to see. “No neighbors?”

“A few of them on the other side of Millcote. The Eshtons and the Ingrams. But I don’t expect you’ll meet them. The Eshtons have gone to London for the winter, and the Ingrams are lately in mourning. They receive no visitors.” Mr. Fairfax escorted John back into the house. “Mrs. Rochester is still in mourning herself. She prefers a quiet life now. It wouldn’t be suitable to be entertaining. She won’t even permit the vicar to call when she’s in residence.”

If the vicar was anything like the Reverend Mr. Brocklehurst, John didn’t blame her. The man had no idea of how to comfort a grieving individual. His God was an unforgiving one—a God of fire and brimstone, with no love or Christian charity about him.

“You’re not likely to meet him,” Mr. Fairfax said. “Not here at Thornfield. But there are services at the church in Hay should you care to attend.”

John didn’t care to, personally. He hadn’t been lying when he told Mr. Brocklehurst that he’d lost his faith. It was hard to nurture any sort of belief in the wake of Helen’s loss. At the same time, he knew his duty. “If Mrs. Rochester desires it, I will accompany the boys.”

“The boys?” Mr. Fairfax shut and bolted the front door. “Goodness me. The boys are in no fit state to attend church. Mrs. Rochester would never hear of it.”

John felt a flicker of unease. No fit state? Were the children ill?

As he was meditating on the question, a creak sounded on the oak staircase. John stopped where he stood in the hall and looked up. The hairs rose on the back of his neck.

Two little boys descended the steps hand in hand. They were small and startlingly thin, with heads that seemed large in proportion to their bodies, and dark, sunken eyes surrounded by deep shadows. Their black hair was shorn close to their scalps, and what skin was visible outside of their clothes had the appearance of wax—pale and bloodless.

“Here they are,” Mr. Fairfax said. “Boys! Come and meet the gentleman who is to be your tutor.”

John studied the boys as they came into the hall, schooling his features into what he hoped was an expression of benign greeting. He prayed his face didn’t betray his alarm, for the two children were alarming to look at. A pair of animated corpses with empty staring eyes. A young woman in a black stuff dress and white apron followed behind them, urging them forward. Their nurse, John presumed.

“This is Stephen,” Mr. Fairfax said. “And his brother, Peter.”

“Good morning, boys,” John said. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

The children stopped in front of him, still holding hands, their sunken eyes cast downward. Their nurse whispered a reassurance to them in muted French.

A sudden thought occurred to John. He turned to Mr. Fairfax. “Are they foreigners?”

“Their nurse, Sophie, is French, and Stephen and Peter were born on the Continent, I believe, though heaven knows precisely where. Mrs. Rochester adopted them during her travels. It’s she who gave them their names, after Saint Stephen and Saint Peter. The poor mites. They’ve had a trial in getting here. Mrs. Rochester says they took ill on the voyage, but she’s confident they’ll regain their health once treated to good food and a little sunshine.”

A little sunshine?

The children looked as though they’d never been exposed to sun in their lives.

John turned his attention back to them, wondering how the devil he was meant to communicate. He had a smattering of French and Italian, but couldn’t converse in either language with any degree of fluency. “Do they speak any English?”

“Forgive me, Mr. Eyre,” Mr. Fairfax said, “I thought I’d mentioned it. Stephen and Peter do not speak at all.”

Letters from Miss Bertha Mason to Miss Blanche Ingram.

Hotel des Anglais

Cairo, Egypt

Monday, 13 June 1842

Dearest Blanche, —

Forgive my long delay in replying. I have only just this morning arrived in Cairo and found a whole stack of your letters awaiting me. You will think me a bad correspondent. I assure you I’m not. Only a very tired lady who has spent far too much time of late on crowded conveyances and not enough of it seated in front of a writing desk.

What a journey I have had! There is so much to tell you that I don’t know where to begin. First, the weather: do you remember those summers so long ago when we would strip down to our shifts and bathe in Mr. Eshton’s pond? The heat of those days is nothing to the blazing sun of Egypt. It’s so indescribably hot here, my dear, that it’s all I can do to breathe. But I love it for all that, which I suspect owes more to my current state than any tolerance for the temperature.

At last I’m free to travel as I will! You alone will not take such a proclamation as being indecorous. You know what I suffered living under Mama and Papa’s thumb, and then again when I was obliged to mourn them. Their loss will always be a great pain to me, but I can’t help but be thankful for it now I’m in full control of my fortune and my destiny.

I say full control—what I mean is, as much control as I can exercise given the constant meddling of our family attorney, Mr. Hughes. You would think that a year and a half on the Continent in the wake of losing my parents would have been enough to satisfy his ideas of propriety. All those months spent in mourning, and the tedious ones that followed after, visiting European museums and taking tea, as bored and restless as ever I was in England.