"He continued to send for me punctually the moment the clock struck seven; though when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as 'love' and 'darling' on his lips: the best words at my disposal were 'provoking', 'malicious elf,' 'sprite', 'changeling', etc. For caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear. It was all right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to anything more tender."
Yet there is comedy, pure comedy in those scenes, though never sustained, and never wrought to the inevitable dramatic climax. Jane is delightful when she asks Rochester whether the frown on his forehead will be his "married look", and when she tells him to make a dressing-gown for himself out of the pearl-grey silk, "and an infinite series of waistcoats out of the black satin". _The Quarterly_ was much too hard on the earlier _cadeau_ scene, with Rochester and Jane and Adèle, which is admirable in its suggestion of Jane's shyness and precision.
_"'N'est-ce pas, Monsieur, qu'il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre, dans votre petit coffre?'"_
"'Who talks of _cadeaux_?' said he gruffly; 'did you expect a present, Miss Eyre? Are you fond of presents?' and he searched my face with eyes that I saw were dark, irate, and piercing.
"'I hardly know, sir; I have little experience of them; they are generally thought pleasant things.'"
Charlotte Brontë was on her own ground there. But you tremble when she leaves it; you shudder throughout the awful drawing-room comedy of Blanche Ingram. Blanche says to her mother: "Am I right, Baroness Ingram of Ingram Park?" And her mother says to Blanche, "My lily-flower, you are right now, as always." Blanche says to Rochester, "Signor Eduardo, are you in voice to-night?" and he, "Donna Bianca, if you command it, I will be." And Blanche says to the footman, "Cease that chatter, blockhead, and do my bidding."
That, Charlotte's worst lapse, is a very brief one, and the scene itself is unimportant. But what can be said of the crucial scene of the novel, the tremendous scene of passion and temptation? There _is_ passion in the scene before it, between Jane and Rochester on the afternoon of the wedding-day that brought no wedding.