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.




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