Deliverance : an adaption of Jane Eyre

Chapter 3

There was no clamour from the top floor this night, and hoping this would start another period of relative quiet, saving my master the pain of being confronted with his agonizing situation day in, day out, I fell into a pleasant slumber.

But it was not to last, for I had a singularly unpleasant dream. It started out with myself lost on some kind of moor, driving rain soaking my coat, my dress and my bonnet, even my shoes; I was hungry, cold and in terrible agony of the soul, for I had left my master in the middle of the night and I knew would be suffering even as I was suffering myself. Contantly seeing his tortured face before me, feeling his desperate touch upon me, hearing him plead and beg incessantly, I wandered across those cold, wet hills and through soggy valleys for hours, without a hint of my destination and with a growing numbness of body and soul.

Just before I was going to drop with weariness, memories of my master put to rest for a few moments through pure exhaustion, I spied a little house with smoke coming out of the chimney. My last strength sufficed to reach the door, which was standing wide open; from inside, I could hear a baby cry, and I went in quickly to ask shelter of the child's parent.

But there was no-one in the house, except the wailing infant, lying at a safe distance from the blazing fire. Chilled to the bone, I picked up the little baby in its swaddling and sat down in front of the fire, rocking it back and forth until it gurgled contentedly and fell asleep. The fire was a blessing and I relished its warmth, nearly falling asleep myself; until the fire started to smoke unpleasantly, giving off a suffocating stench.

Alarmed by the harsh burn of the fire in my throat, I woke up.

To find myself in my pitch-dark bedroom, smoke tainting the air. A sense of fate crept over me, but it did not overwhelm me, on the contrary, it spurred me into action as nothing ever had before: this was the moment of truth, the moment in which I was destined to save my master from agony and death. Somehow I was certain the woman on the moor had been myself as well, having deserted my master and thereby condemned him to a terrible fate.

There was no time to dress, the air was already foul, the fumes could easily kill a sleeping man, and I did not know where the conflagration was centred; whether Mr Rochester's wife was still out there, roaming the halls in seething anger and mad strength, with just a burning candle as her weapon of revenge or armed with a knife or other dangerous object.

Picking up my ewer as a possible means of defence, but also for its precious content, I marched to my door and with a short prayer I unlocked and opened it, finding the hallway less clogged with smoke than I had feared. This suggested that the smoke originated from above my chamber, which meant the mad woman must have set fire to her own bed before moving downstairs, and I closed my door behind me carefully, listening for sounds.

There were none and strangely, I was not very much afraid, except for my master; I rushed to his room heedless of the danger of meeting his wife on my way there, but his door was still locked, there was no way his face could be mutilated, nor could his bedclothes be on fire. Still, he might yet burn in his bed if I couldn't get him to wake up, there would be no chance to douse him to wakefulness as I had done last time, I couldn't break down the door, he had to unlock it himself.

Heedless of drawing his wife with my racket, I pounded his door, cried out his name.

'For the love of God, Mr Rochester, wake up! The top floor is on fire, wake up!'

There was no reply from his room, but from all around me signs of life were heard. Mrs Fairfax burst into the hall in her dressing gown, hair messed up, face wild.

'Whatever is going on, Miss Eyre? Where is the fire? I smell some smoke, but I see nothing! Where is the master?'

'The fire is upstairs, right above my room, it's already filled up with smoke. The master may be stupefied by smoke, his room is directly below the flames, too. Do you have a key to his room?'