“Who is with him?”

“Old John and his wife:  he would have none else.  He is quite broken down, they say.”

“Have you any sort of conveyance?”

“We have a chaise, ma’am, a very handsome chaise.”

“Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive me to Ferndean before dark this day, I’ll pay both you and him twice the hire you usually demand.”

CHAPTER XXXVII

The manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity, moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in a wood.  I had heard of it before.  Mr. Rochester often spoke of it, and sometimes went there.  His father had purchased the estate for the sake of the game covers.  He would have let the house, but could find no tenant, in consequence of its ineligible and insalubrious site.  Ferndean then remained uninhabited and unfurnished, with the exception of some two or three rooms fitted up for the accommodation of the squire when he went there in the season to shoot.

To this house I came just ere dark on an evening marked by the characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small penetrating rain.  The last mile I performed on foot, having dismissed the chaise and driver with the double remuneration I had promised.  Even when within a very short distance of the manor-house, you could see nothing of it, so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood about it.  Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where to enter, and passing through them, I found myself at once in the twilight of close-ranked trees.  There was a grass-grown track descending the forest aisle between hoar and knotty shafts and under branched arches.  I followed it, expecting soon to reach the dwelling; but it stretched on and on, it would far and farther:  no sign of habitation or grounds was visible.

I thought I had taken a wrong direction and lost my way.  The darkness of natural as well as of sylvan dusk gathered over me.  I looked round in search of another road.  There was none:  all was interwoven stem, columnar trunk, dense summer foliage —­ no opening anywhere.

I proceeded:  at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little; presently I beheld a railing, then the house —­ scarce, by this dim light, distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its decaying walls.  Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a semicircle.  There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of the forest.  The house presented two pointed gables in its front; the windows were latticed and narrow:  the front door was narrow too, one step led up to it.  The whole looked, as the host of the Rochester Arms had said, “quite a desolate spot.”  It was as still as a church on a week-day:  the pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound audible in its vicinage.