There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances…

Jane becomes a passive observer of Mr. Rochester’s social life, thinking that there’s nothing she can do to change its trajectory.

Merry days were these at Thornfield Hall; and busy days too: how different from the first three months of stillness, monotony, and solitude I had passed beneath its roof! All sad feelings seemed now driven from the house, all gloomy associations forgotten: there was life everywhere, movement all day long. You could not now traverse the gallery, once so hushed, nor enter the front chambers, once so tenantless, without encountering a smart lady’s maid, or a dandy valet.

One rainy afternoon, someone suggests “playing charades”, and it’s immediately obvious that the game was much different in this time than its modern form.

The servants were called in, the dining-room tables wheeled away, the lights otherwise disposed, the chairs placed in a semicircle opposite the arch. While Mr. Rochester and the other gentlemen directed these alterations, the ladies were running up and down stairs ringing for their maids. Mrs. Fairfax was summoned to give information respecting the resources of the house in shawls, dresses, draperies of any kind; and certain wardrobes of the third story were ransacked, and their contents, in the shape of brocaded and hooped petticoats, satin sacques, black modes, lace lappets, &c., were brought down in armfuls by the Abigails; then a selection was made, and such things as were chosen were carried to the boudoir within the drawing-room.

And then they form their parties, with Mr. Rochester naturally heading one.

He looked at me; I happened to be near him, as I had been fastening the clasp of Mrs. Dent’s bracelet, which had got loose.
“Will you play?” he asked. I shook my head. He did not insist, which I rather feared he would have done; he allowed me to return quietly to my usual seat.
He and his aids now withdrew behind the curtain; the other party, which was headed by Colonel Dent, sat down on the crescent of chairs. One of the gentlemen, Mr. Eshton, observing me, seemed to propose that I should be asked to join them; but Lady Ingram instantly negatived the notion.
“No,” I heard her say: “she looks too stupid for any game of the sort.”

Yeah, it quickly becomes apparent that the only decent (read: not classist) people here are the “untitled” ones – that is, the Dents (who presumably rose through the ranks of the military mostly unaided by connections) and the Eshtons, whose patriarch is the local magistrate.

Somebody, unseen, rang the bell merrily; and then Adèle (who had insisted on being one of her guardian’s party) bounded forward, scattering round her the contents of a basket of flowers she carried on her arm. Then appeared the magnificent figure of Miss Ingram, clad in white, a long veil on her head, and a wreath of roses round her brow; by her side walked Mr. Rochester, and together they drew near the table. They knelt, while Mrs. Dent and Louisa Eshton, dressed also in white, took up their stations behind them. A ceremony followed, in dumb show, in which it was easy to recognise the pantomime of a marriage. At its termination Colonel Dent and his party consulted in whispers for two minutes, then the Colonel called out, – “Bride!” Mr. Rochester bowed, and the curtain fell.
[…]
Seated on the carpet, by the side of this basin, was seen Mr. Rochester, costumed in shawls, with a turban on his head. His dark eyes and swarth skin and Paynim features suited the costume exactly: he looked the very model of an Eastern emir; an agent or a victim of the bowstring. Presently advanced into view Miss Ingram. She, too, was attired in Oriental fashion: a crimson scarf tied sash-like round her waist; an embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples; her beautifully-moulded arms bare, one of them up-raised in the act of supporting a pitcher, poised gracefully on her head. Both her cast of form and feature, her complexion and her general air, suggested the idea of some Isrealitish princess of the patriarchal days; and such was doubtless the character she intended to represent.
She approached the basin, and bent over it to fill her pitcher; she again lifted to her head. The personage on the well-brink now seemed to accost her; to make some request, – “She hasted, let down her pitcher on her hand and gave him to drink.” From the bosom of his robe he then produced a casket, opened it and showed magnificent bracelets and earrings; she acted astonishment and admiration; kneeling, he laid the treasure at her feet; incredulity and delight were expressed in her looks and gestures; the stranger fastened the bracelets on her arms, and the rings in her ears. It was Eliezer and Rebecca; the camels only were wanting.

This second scene is naturally a reference to a Bible story, in which Abraham’s servant went to seek a bride for Isaac, and he encounters Rebekah, who not only draws water for him, but offers to water his camels, as well. Suffice it to say that Miss Ingram doesn’t come across as someone who would even get a cup of water for a stranger, let alone tend to his beasts of burden.

The divining party again laid their heads together; apparently they could not agree about the word or syllable this scene illustrated. Colonel Dent, their spokesman, demanded “the tableau of the Whole”; whereupon the curtain again descended.
On its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was disclosed; the rest being concealed by a screen, hung with some sort of dark and coarse drapery. The marble basin was removed; in its place stood a deal table and a kitchen chair: these objects were visible by a very dim light proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax candles being all extinguished.
Amidst this sordid scene sat a man with his clenched hands resting on his knees, and his eyes bent on the ground. I knew Mr. Rochester; though the begrimed face, the disordered dress (his coat hanging loose from one arm, as if it had been almost torn from his back in a scuffle), the desperate and scowling countenance, the rough, bristling hair might well have disguised him. As he moved a chain clanked; to his wrists were attached fetters.
“Bridewell!” exclaimed Colonel Dent, and the charade was solved.

This is in reference to Bridewell Prison in London, which was in its last days as an institution when this was written, but Bridewell had become so synonymous with “prison” by then that numerous British colonies (or former colonies) named prisons “Bridewell”, too.

“Do you know,” said she, “that, of the three characters, I liked you in the last best? Oh, had you but lived a few years earlier, what a gallant gentleman-highwayman you would have made!”
“Is all the soot washed from my face?” he asked, turning it towards her.
“Alas, yes; more’s the pity! Nothing could be more becoming to your complexion than that ruffian’s rouge.”
“You would like a hero of the road, then?”
“An English hero of the road would be the next best thing to an Italian bandit; and that could only be surpassed by a Levantine pirate.”
“Well, whatever I am, remember you are my wife; we were married an hour since, in the presence of all these witnesses.” She giggled, and her colour rose.

Because romanticizing outlaws is an old and noble tradition!

But with their performance done, Jane has nothing more to do than consider how Mr. Rochester and Miss Ingram interact, much to her consternation.

I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Me. Rochester; I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me – because I might pass hours in his presence and he would never once turn his eyes in my direction – because I saw all his attentions appropriated to a great lady, who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes; who, if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object too mean to merit observation, I could not unlove him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady – because I read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her – because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride, irresistible.
There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances; though much to create despair. Much, too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy; if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Ingram’s. But I was not jealous; or very rarely; – the nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that word. Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to incite the feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine: she was a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature; nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original: she used to repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her. Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had concerning Adèle: pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her; sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with coldness and acrimony. Other eyes besides mine watched these manifestations of character – watched them closely, keenly, shrewdly. Yes: the future bridegroom, Mr. Rochester himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance: and it was from this sagacity – this guardedness of his – this perfect, clear consciousness of his fair one’s defects – this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her, that my ever-torturing pain arose.
I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons; because her rank and connexions suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure. This was the point – this was where the nerve was touched and teased – this was where the fever was sustained and fed: She could not charm him.
If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, turned to the wall, and (figuratively) have died to them. If Miss Ingram had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, kindness, sense, I should have one vital struggle with two tigers – jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired her – acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper would then have been my admiration – the more truly tranquil my quiescence. But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Ingram’s efforts at fascinating Mr. Rochester; to witness their repeated failure – herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure – to witness this, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.
Because, when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded. Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Rochester’s breast and fell harmless at his feet, might , I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart – have called love into his stern eye and softness into his sardonic face; or, better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have been won.
“Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw so near to him?” I asked myself. “Surely she cannot truly like him, or not like him with true affection. If she did, she need not coin her smiles so lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture airs so elaborate, graces so multitudinous. It seems to me that she might, by merely sitting quietly at his side, saying little and looking less, get nigher his heart. I have see in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but than it came of itself, it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it – to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace – and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam. How will she manage to please him when they are married? I do not think she will manage it; and yet it might be managed and his wife might, I verily believe, be the very happiest woman the sun shines on.”

She can clearly see that they’re unsuited for each other in terms of temperament, and she’s only jealous of her because she gets to spend so much time with Mr. Rochester, but she can only cringe at Miss Ingram’s attempts at flirting.

I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr. Rochester’s project of marrying for interest and connexions. It surprised me when I first discovered that such was his intention; I had thought him a man unlikely to be influenced by motives so commonplace in his choice of wife; but the longer I considered the position, education, &c., of the parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming either him or Miss Ingram, for acting in conformity to ideas and principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their childhood. All their class held these principles; I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom. It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only such wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the advantages to the husband’s own happiness, offered by this plan, convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite ignorant; otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I wished to act.
But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to my master: I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once kept a sharp look-out. It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of his character; to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing both to form an equitable judgment. Now I saw no bad. The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid. And as for the vague something – was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression? – that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver, and seen it gape; that something I at intervals beheld still, and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare – to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets, and analyse their nature.

And of course, Jane was right to be frightened by that darkness she sensed in Mr. Rochester, but naturally, she’d focus more on his positive aspects when she fears to lose him. But this conversation about marrying for connections rather than love brings up with it the fact that such loveless marriages frequently lead to infidelity…and the fact that Jane, whom Mr. Rochester seems to prefer, but has no connections, will more likely end up his mistress at this rate.

Anyhow, another day, when Mr. Rochester has been out on business all day (and as a result, the guests are bored out of their minds), they perk up at the approach of a carriage, but instead of Mr. Rochester, it’s a stranger (or at least one who’s a stranger to the rest of the party).

Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the new-comer entered. He bowed to Lady Ingram, as deeming her the eldest lady present.
“It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam,” said he; “when my friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home; but I arrive from a very long journey, and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate acquaintance as to instal myself here till he returns.”
His manner was polite; his accent, in speaking, struck me as being somewhat unusual, – not precisely foreign, but still not altogether English; his age might be about Mr. Rochester’s, – between thirty and forty; his complexion was singularly sallow; otherwise he was a fine-looking man, at first sight especially. On closer examination you detected something in his face that displeased; or rather, that failed to please. His features were regular, but too relaxed; his eye was large and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a tame, vacant life – at least so I thought.
[…]
As I sat in my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of the girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him – for he occupied an arm-chair, drawn close to the fire, and kept shrinking still nearer, as if he were cold – I compared him to Mr. Rochester. I think (with deference be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon: between a meek sheep and the rough-coated keen-eyed dog, its guardian.

Eventually, she gathers that he hails from the West Indies (aka the Caribbean), and his name is Mr. Mason.

And this is when the racism starts to really rear its head. In this time period, it was perfectly normal to refer to the Romani people by what is now understood as a racial slur, and the prevalence of that slur remains to this day, largely because it’s not widely known as a slur at all, just what the Romani are called (it’s all over Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame). So I don’t blame people who use it casually (seeing as I only became aware of it in the last five years or so), but I will be replacing it when it comes up.

I was pondering these things, when an incident, and a somewhat unexpected one, broke the thread of my musings. Mr. Mason, shivering as some one chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to put on the fire, which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of cinder still shone hot and red. The footman who brought the coal, in going out, stopped near Mr. Eshton’s chair, and said something to him in a low voice, of which I heard only the words, “old woman,” – “quite troublesome.”
“Tell her she shall be put in the stocks if she does not take herself off,” replied the magistrate.
“No – stop!” interrupted Colonel Dent. “Don’t send her away, Eshton; we might turn the thing to account; better consult the ladies.” And speaking aloud, he continued, “Ladies, you talked of going to Hay Common to visit the [Romani] camp; Sam, here, says that one of the old Mother Bunches is in the servants’ hall at this moment, and insists upon being brought in before ‘the quality,’ to tell them their fortunes. Would you like to see her?”

Naturally, the older people object to the proposal, but seeing as the young folk have been bored all day, they’re eager to give a fortune-teller a shot. Said fortune-teller insists on having a room to herself, and entry to her domain one by one.

“I think I had better just look in upon her before any of the ladies go,” said Colonel Dent.
“Tell her, Sam, a gentleman is coming.”
Sam went and returned.
“She says sir, that she’ll have no gentlemen; they need not trouble themselves to come near her: nor,” he added, with difficulty suppressing a titter, “any ladies either, except the young and single.”
“By Jove, she has taste!” exclaimed Henry Lynn.

With this, Blanche proclaims her intent to go first.

The minutes passed very slowly: fifteen were counted before the library-door again opened. Miss Ingram returned to us through the arch.
Would she laugh? Would she take it as a joke? All eyes met her with a glance of curiosity, and she met all eyes with one rebuff of coldness: she looked neither flurried not merry; she walked stiffly to her seat, and took it in silence.

She claims that she doesn’t take the fortune-teller seriously, but she is irritable after the encounter, and seems to have heard something that bothered her.

Eventually, the other young ladies just go in all at once, and they seem much more convinced of the fortune-teller’s talent.

“I’m sure she is something not right!” they cried one and all. “She told us such things! She knows all about us!” and they sank breathless into various seats the gentlemen hastened to bring them.
Pressed for further explanation they declared she had told them of things they had said and done when they were mere children; described books and ornaments they had in their boudoirs at home; keepsakes that different relations had presented to them, They affirmed that she had even divined their thoughts, and had whispered in the ear of each the name of the person she liked best in the world, and informed them of what they most wished for.

Of course, these varied responses pique Jane’s interest, too.

“If you please, miss, the [woman] declared that there is another young single lady in the room who has not been to her yet, and she swears she will not go until she has seen all. I thought it must be you: there is no one else for it. What shall I tell her?”
“Oh, I will go by all means,” I answered; and I was glad of the unexpected opportunity to gratify my much-excited curiosity. I slipped out of the room, unobserved by any eye – for the company were gathered in one mass about the trembling trio just returned – and I closed the door quietly behind me.

Until next time…