He fretted, pished, and pshawed. “Very good,” I thought;“you may fume and fidget as you please:but this is the best plan to pursue with you,I am certain. I like you more than I can say;but I’ll not sink into a bathos of sentiment:and with this needle of repartee I’ll keep you from the edge of the gulf too;and, moreover, maintain by its pungent aid that distance between you and myself most conducive to our real mutual advantage.”
From less to more, I worked him up to considerable irritation;then, after he had retired, in dudgeon,quite to the other end of the room, I got up,and saying, “I wish you good-night, sir,” in my natural and wonted respectful manner,I slipped out by the side-door and got away.
The system thus entered on,I pursued during the whole season of probation;and with the best success. He was kept, to be sure,rather cross and crusty;but on the whole I could see he was excellently entertained,and that a lamb-like submission and turtle-dove sensibility,while fostering his despotism more,would have pleased his judgment,satisfied his common-sense,and even suited his taste less.
In other people’s presence I was, as formerly,deferential and quiet;any other line of conduct being uncalled for:it was only in the evening conferences I thus thwarted and afflicted him.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 service were “provoking puppet,” “malicious elf,” “sprite,” “changeling,” &c.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. Mrs. Fairfax, I saw, approved me: her anxiety on my account vanished; therefore I was certain I did well. Meantime, Mr. Rochester affirmed I was wearing him to skin and bone, and threatened awful vengeance for my present conduct at some period fast coming. I laughed in my sleeve at his menaces. “I can keep you in reasonable check now,” I reflected; “and I don’t doubt to be able to do it hereafter: if one expedient loses its virtue, another must be devised.”
Yet after all my task was not an easy one;often I would rather have pleased than teased him.My future husband was becoming to me my whole world;and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven.He stood between me and every thought of religion,as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun.I could not, in those days, see God for His creature:of whom I had made an idol.
CHAPTER XXV
The month of courtship had wasted:its very last hours were being numbered.There was no putting off the day that advanced—the bridal day;and all preparations for its arrival were complete._I_, at least, had nothing more to do:there were my trunks, packed, locked, corded,ranged in a row along the wall of my little chamber;to-morrow, at this time,they would be far on their road to London:and so should I (D.V.),—or rather, not I,but one Jane Rochester,a person whom as yet I knew not.The cards of address alone remained to nail on:they lay, four little squares, in the drawer. Mr.Rochester had himself written the direction, “Mrs.Rochester, —— Hotel, London,” on each:I could not persuade myself to affix them,or to have them affixed. Mrs. Rochester!She did not exist: she would not be born till to-morrow,some time after eight o’clock A.M.;and I would wait to be assured she had come into the world alive before I assigned to her all that property. It was enough that in yonder closet, opposite my dressing-table, garments said to be hers had already displaced my black stuff Lowood frock and straw bonnet: for not to me appertained that suit of wedding raiment; the pearl-coloured robe, the vapoury veil pendent from the usurped portmanteau. I shut the closet to conceal the strange, wraith-like apparel it contained; which, at this evening hour—nine o’clock—gave out certainly a most ghostly shimmer through the shadow of my apartment. “I will leave you by yourself, white dream,” I said. “I am feverish: I hear the wind blowing: I will go out of doors and feel it.”
It was not only the hurry of preparation that made me feverish;not only the anticipation of the great change—the new life which was to commence to-morrow: both these circumstances had their share, doubtless, in producing that restless, excited mood which hurried me forth at this late hour into the darkening grounds: but a third cause influenced my mind more than they.
I had at heart a strange and anxious thought.Something had happened which I could not comprehend;no one knew of or had seen the event but myself:it had taken place the preceding night. Mr.Rochester that night was absent from home;nor was he yet returned:business had called him to a small estate of two or three farms he possessed thirty miles off—business it was requisite he should settle in person, previous to his meditated departure from England. I waited now his return; eager to disburthen my mind, and to seek of him the solution of the enigma that perplexed me. Stay till he comes, reader; and, when I disclose my secret to him, you shall share the confidence.
I sought the orchard, driven to its shelter by the wind,which all day had blown strong and full from the south,without, however, bringing a speck of rain.Instead of subsiding as night drew on,it seemed to augment its rush and deepen its roar:the trees blew steadfastly one way,never writhing round,and scarcely tossing back their boughs once in an hour;so continuous was the strain bending their branchy heads northward—the clouds drifted from pole to pole, fast following, mass on mass: no glimpse of blue sky had been visible that July day.
It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind,delivering my trouble of mind to the measureless air-torrent thundering through space. Descending the laurel walk, I faced the wreck of the chestnut-tree; it stood up black and riven: the trunk, split down the centre, gasped ghastly. The cloven halves were not broken from each other, for the firm base and strong roots kept them unsundered below; though community of vitality was destroyed—the sap could flow no more: their great boughs on each side were dead, and next winter’s tempests would be sure to fell one or both to earth: as yet, however, they might be said to form one tree—a ruin, but an entire ruin.
“You did right to hold fast to each other,” I said:as if the monster-splinters were living things,and could hear me. “I think, scathed as you look,and charred and scorched,there must be a little sense of life in you yet,rising out of that adhesion at the faithful,honest roots: you will never have green leaves more—never more see birds making nests and singing idyls in your boughs; the time of pleasure and love is over with you: but you are not desolate: each of you has a comrade to sympathise with him in his decay.” As I looked up at them, the moon appeared momentarily in that part of the sky which filled their fissure; her disk was blood-red and half overcast; she seemed to throw on me one bewildered, dreary glance, and buried herself again instantly in the deep drift of cloud. The wind fell, for a second, round Thornfield; but far away over wood and water, poured a wild, melancholy wail: it was sad to listen to, and I ran off again.