Page 48 of John Eyre

He could think of no good reason why Mr. Poole would have been in Mrs. Rochester’s bedchamber last night.

Seeming to sense John’s scrutiny, Mr. Poole looked up from his work. “Morning, Mr. Eyre,” he said, inclining his head. The window behind him had been stripped of its curtains, exposing a paint-chipped white frame. Sunlight glinted through the cloudy glass.

“Good morning.” John wondered how much, if anything, Mr. Poole would admit to of last night’s events. “What’s happened here?”

Mr. Poole hammered a nail through the window frame and into the casing. The glass rattled. “Only that old fireplace. It will smoke on occasion. Mrs. Rochester was abed when it started to blow. Alfred’s giving it a good cleaning.”

The kneeling footman grunted as he scrubbed inside the chimney.

“Is that all? A smoking chimney?” John cast a pointed glance at the hammer poised in Mr. Poole’s hand.

“A broken latch,” Mr. Poole said.

“Why not simply mend it?”

Mr. Poole continuing nailing the window shut. “The mistress says this’ll do for the rest of the winter.”

John was quiet for a moment before remarking, “A strange series of events last night.”

“Aye. The mistress had quite a time of it, though none of us learned of the trouble until this morning.”

“You didn’t hear anything at the time?”

Mr. Poole again lifted his gaze to John’s face. This time, John fancied he saw a certain alertness lurking at the back of the man’s eyes. “You can’t hear a smoking chimney.”

“No, but if Mrs. Rochester was in distress, she might have called for help.”

“The mistress isn’t distressed by much.” Carefully positioning the final nail, Mr. Poole hammered it home. The window frame shook with the force of his blow.

John stood there a while longer, amazed by the man’s self-possession. He really seemed to have no consciousness of guilt. Perhaps he truly was innocent?

Having finished hammering, Mr. Poole reached up to check the bolts at the top of the window. As he did so, his right sleeve slipped back several inches onto his outstretched arm, revealing a brief glimpse of a heavy bandage at his wrist.

John gave him a sharp look. “Are you hurt?”

Lowering his arms, Mr. Poole hastily tugged his sleeve back into place. “An accident at the forge. Nothing to speak of.”

An accident at the forge?

John’s breath stopped. Had Mr. Poole burned himself during the fire? “Does Mrs. Rochester know?”

“Indeed, sir,” Mr. Poole said. “It was she who wrapped it up in this bandage.”

A rush of outrage took John unaware.

He no longer doubted Mr. Poole’s involvement in last night’s events. First, there had been the evil laugh in the hall outside John’s room. Then there had been the way that Mrs. Rochester had hastened to the third floor in the aftermath of the fire. And now this.

Had Mrs. Rochester really bandaged the very wound that Mr. Poole had incurred in the fire? A fire that he was somehow responsible for? Doubtless she had her reasons, but at the moment John couldn’t imagine what those reasons could be.

At length, he withdrew from Mrs. Rochester’s room and made his way to the nursery to fetch Stephen and Peter.

The remainder of the morning progressed as on any other day, with nothing happening to interrupt the boys’ studies. John nevertheless anticipated a sudden appearance by Mrs. Rochester at the library door, or by Mr. Fairfax, come to tell John that the mistress had summoned him to the drawing room.

A foolish expectation.

Nobody came to the library door. Indeed, the morning passed into the afternoon and evening much as it always did. There was no sight nor sound of Mrs. Rochester. Thornfield stood quiet as the grave, its inhabitants giving no indication of the tumultuous events of the night before.

At dinner John joined Mr. Fairfax in his small parlor where he was once again regaled with the story of the smoking fireplace and the broken window latch. John scarcely heard a word of it. He was too absorbed with puzzling over the character of Mr. Poole.