“I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for you to be adopted by your uncle,and placed in a state of ease and comfort, was what I could not endure. I wrote to him;I said I was sorry for his disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead:she had died of typhus fever at Lowood. Now act as you please:write and contradict my assertion—expose my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think,to be my torment: my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed which, but for you,I should never have been tempted to commit.”
“If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt,and to regard me with kindness and forgiveness——”
“You have a very bad disposition,” said she,“and one to this day I feel it impossible to understand:how for nine years you could be patient and quiescent under any treatment,and in the tenth break out all fire and violence, I can never comprehend.”
“My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but not vindictive. Many a time,as a little child, I should have been glad to love you if you would have let me;and I long earnestly to be reconciled to you now: kiss me, aunt.”
I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it.She said I oppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded water.As I laid her down—for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she drank—I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine:the feeble fingers shrank from my touch—the glazing eyes shunned my gaze.
“Love me, then, or hate me, as you will,” I said at last, “you have my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God’s, and be at peace.”
Poor, suffering woman!it was too late for her to make now the effort to change her habitual frame of mind: living,she had ever hated me—dying, she must hate me still.
The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed. I yet lingered half-an-hour longer,hoping to see some sign of amity: but she gave none. She was fast relapsing into stupor;nor did her mind again rally: at twelve o’clock that night she died.I was not present to close her eyes, nor were either of her daughters.They came to tell us the next morning that all was over. She was by that time laid out.Eliza and I went to look at her: Georgiana, who had burst out into loud weeping,said she dared not go. There was stretched Sarah Reed’s once robust and active frame,rigid and still: her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid;her brow and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul.A strange and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with gloom and pain: nothing soft,nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or hopeful, or subduing did it inspire;only a grating anguish for _her_ woes—not _my_ loss—and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a form.
Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence of some minutes she observed—
“With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age: her life was shortened by trouble.” And then a spasm constricted her mouth for an instant:as it passed away she turned and left the room, and so did I. Neither of us had dropt a tear.
CHAPTER XXII
Mr. Rochester had given me but one week’s leave of absence:yet a month elapsed before I quitted Gateshead. I wished to leave immediately after the funeral,but Georgiana entreated me to stay till she could get off to London,whither she was now at last invited by her uncle, Mr. Gibson,who had come down to direct his sister’s interment and settle the family affairs.Georgiana said she dreaded being left alone with Eliza;from her she got neither sympathy in her dejection, support in her fears,nor aid in her preparations; so I bore with her feeble-minded wailings and selfish lamentations as well as I could,and did my best in sewing for her and packing her dresses. It is true, that while I worked,she would idle; and I thought to myself, “If you and I were destined to live always together,cousin, we would commence matters on a different footing.I should not settle tamely down into being the forbearing party;I should assign you your share of labour, and compel you to accomplish it,or else it should be left undone: I should insist, also, on your keeping some of those drawling,half-insincere complaints hushed in your own breast.It is only because our connection happens to be very transitory,and comes at a peculiarly mournful season,that I consent thus to render it so patient and compliant on my part.”
At last I saw Georgiana off; but now it was Eliza’s turn to request me to stay another week.Her plans required all her time and attention, she said;she was about to depart for some unknown bourne; and all day long she stayed in her own room,her door bolted within, filling trunks, emptying drawers, burning papers,and holding no communication with any one. She wished me to look after the house, to see callers, and answer notes of condolence.
One morning she told me I was at liberty. “And,” she added,“I am obliged to you for your valuable services and discreet conduct!There is some difference between living with such an one as you and with Georgiana:you perform your own part in life and burden no one. To-morrow,” she continued,“I set out for the Continent. I shall take up my abode in a religious house near Lisle—a nunnery you would call it;there I shall be quiet and unmolested. I shall devote myself for a time to the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas,and to a careful study of the workings of their system: if I find it to be,as I half suspect it is, the one best calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently and in order,I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and probably take the veil.”
I neither expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to dissuade her from it.“The vocation will fit you to a hair,” I thought: “much good may it do you!”
When we parted, she said: “Good-bye, cousin Jane Eyre; I wish you well: you have some sense.”
I then returned: “You are not without sense, cousin Eliza; but what you have, I suppose,in another year will be walled up alive in a French convent. However, it is not my business,and so it suits you, I don’t much care.”
“You are in the right,” said she; and with these words we each went our separate way.As I shall not have occasion to refer either to her or her sister again,I may as well mention here, that Georgiana made an advantageous match with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion,and that Eliza actually took the veil, and is at this day superior of the convent where she passed the period of her novitiate, and which she endowed with her fortune.
How people feel when they are returning home from an absence, long or short, I did not know:I had never experienced the sensation. I had known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after a long walk,to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy; and later,what it was to come back from church to Lowood, to long for a plenteous meal and a good fire,and to be unable to get either. Neither of these returnings was very pleasant or desirable:no magnet drew me to a given point, increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came.The return to Thornfield was yet to be tried.
My journey seemed tedious—very tedious: fifty miles one day, a night spent at an inn;fifty miles the next day. During the first twelve hours I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments;I saw her disfigured and discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered voice.I mused on the funeral day, the coffin, the hearse,the black train of tenants and servants—few was the number of relatives—the gaping vault,the silent church, the solemn service. Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana;I beheld one the cynosure of a ball-room, the other the inmate of a convent cell;and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities of person and character.The evening arrival at the great town of ——scattered these thoughts; night gave them quite another turn: laid down on my traveller’s bed, I left reminiscence for anticipation.
I was going back to Thornfield: but how long was I to stay there?Not long; of that I was sure. I had heard from Mrs. Fairfax in the interim of my absence:the party at the hall was dispersed; Mr. Rochester had left for London three weeks ago,but he was then expected to return in a fortnight. Mrs.Fairfax surmised that he was gone to make arrangements for his wedding,as he had talked of purchasing a new carriage:she said the idea of his marrying Miss Ingram still seemed strange to her;but from what everybody said, and from what she had herself seen,she could no longer doubt that the event would shortly take place.“You would be strangely incredulous if you did doubt it,” was my mental comment. “I don’t doubt it. ”
The question followed, “Where was I to go?” I dreamt of Miss Ingram all the night:in a vivid morning dream I saw her closing the gates of Thornfield against me and pointing me out another road;and Mr. Rochester looked on with his arms folded—smiling sardonically, as it seemed, at both her and me.
I had not notified to Mrs. Fairfax the exact day of my return;for I did not wish either car or carriage to meet me at Millcote.I proposed to walk the distance quietly by myself; and very quietly,after leaving my box in the ostler’s care, did I slip away from the George Inn,about six o’clock of a June evening, and take the old road to Thornfield:a road which lay chiefly through fields, and was now little frequented.
It was not a bright or splendid summer evening, though fair and soft:the haymakers were at work all along the road; and the sky, though far from cloudless,was such as promised well for the future: its blue—where blue was visible—was mild and settled,and its cloud strata high and thin. The west, too, was warm:no watery gleam chilled it—it seemed as if there was a fire lit,an altar burning behind its screen of marbled vapour, and out of apertures shone a golden redness.
I felt glad as the road shortened before me:so glad that I stopped once to ask myself what that joy meant:and to remind reason that it was not to my home I was going, or to a permanent resting-place,or to a place where fond friends looked out for me and waited my arrival. “Mrs.Fairfax will smile you a calm welcome, to be sure,” said I;“and little Adèle will clap her hands and jump to see you:but you know very well you are thinking of another than they, and that he is not thinking of you.”
But what is so headstrong as youth?What so blind as inexperience?These affirmed that it was pleasure enough to have the privilege of again looking on Mr. Rochester,whether he looked on me or not; and they added—“Hasten!hasten!be with him while you may: but a few more days or weeks, at most, and you are parted from him for ever!” And then I strangled a new-born agony—a deformed thing which I could not persuade myself to own and rear—and ran on.
They are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows: or rather,the labourers are just quitting their work, and returning home with their rakes on their shoulders,now, at the hour I arrive. I have but a field or two to traverse,and then I shall cross the road and reach the gates. How full the hedges are of roses!But I have no time to gather any; I want to be at the house. I passed a tall briar,shooting leafy and flowery branches across the path; I see the narrow stile with stone steps;and I see—Mr. Rochester sitting there, a book and a pencil in his hand; he is writing.
Well, he is not a ghost; yet every nerve I have is unstrung:for a moment I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean?I did not think I should tremble in this way when I saw him,or lose my voice or the power of motion in his presence. I will go back as soon as I can stir:I need not make an absolute fool of myself. I know another way to the house.It does not signify if I knew twenty ways; for he has seen me.
“Hillo!” he cries; and he puts up his book and his pencil. “There you are!Come on, if you please.”
I suppose I do come on; though in what fashion I know not; being scarcely cognisant of my movements,and solicitous only to appear calm; and, above all,to control the working muscles of my face—which I feel rebel insolently against my will,and struggle to express what I had resolved to conceal. But I have a veil—it is down:I may make shift yet to behave with decent composure.
“And this is Jane Eyre?Are you coming from Millcote, and on foot?Yes—just one of your tricks: not to send for a carriage,and come clattering over street and road like a common mortal,but to steal into the vicinage of your home along with twilight,just as if you were a dream or a shade. What the deuce have you done with yourself this last month?”
“I have been with my aunt, sir, who is dead.”
“A true Janian reply!Good angels be my guard!She comes from the other world—from the abode of people who are dead;and tells me so when she meets me alone here in the gloaming!If I dared, I’d touch you, to see if you are substance or shadow, you elf!—but I’d as soon offer to take hold of a blue _ignis fatuus_ light in a marsh. Truant!truant!” he added, when he had paused an instant. “Absent from me a whole month, and forgetting me quite, I’ll be sworn!”
I knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again,even though broken by the fear that he was so soon to cease to be my master,and by the knowledge that I was nothing to him: but there was ever in Mr.Rochester (so at least I thought) such a wealth of the power of communicating happiness,that to taste but of the crumbs he scattered to stray and stranger birds like me,was to feast genially. His last words were balm:they seemed to imply that it imported something to him whether I forgot him or not.And he had spoken of Thornfield as my home—would that it were my home!
He did not leave the stile, and I hardly liked to ask to go by.I inquired soon if he had not been to London.
“Yes; I suppose you found that out by second-sight.”
“Mrs. Fairfax told me in a letter.”
“And did she inform you what I went to do?”
“Oh, yes, sir!Everybody knew your errand.”
“You must see the carriage, Jane, and tell me if you don’t think it will suit Mrs.Rochester exactly; and whether she won’t look like Queen Boadicea,leaning back against those purple cushions. I wish, Jane,I were a trifle better adapted to match with her externally. Tell me now,fairy as you are—can’t you give me a charm, or a philter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?”
“It would be past the power of magic, sir;” and, in thought, I added,“A loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough;or rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty.”
Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible:in the present instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response;but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own,and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think it too good for common purposes:it was the real sunshine of feeling—he shed it over me now.
“Pass, Janet,” said he, making room for me to cross the stile: “go up home,and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend’s threshold.”
All I had now to do was to obey him in silence: no need for me to colloquise further.I got over the stile without a word, and meant to leave him calmly.An impulse held me fast—a force turned me round. I said—or something in me said for me, and in spite of me—
“Thank you, Mr. Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you:and wherever you are is my home—my only home.”
I walked on so fast that even he could hardly have overtaken me had he tried.Little Adèle was half wild with delight when she saw me. Mrs.Fairfax received me with her usual plain friendliness. Leah smiled,and even Sophie bid me “bon soir” with glee. This was very pleasant;there is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures,and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.
I that evening shut my eyes resolutely against the future:I stopped my ears against the voice that kept warning me of near separation and coming grief.When tea was over and Mrs. Fairfax had taken her knitting, and I had assumed a low seat near her,and Adèle, kneeling on the carpet, had nestled close up to me,and a sense of mutual affection seemed to surround us with a ring of golden peace,I uttered a silent prayer that we might not be parted far or soon; but when, as we thus sat, Mr.Rochester entered, unannounced, and looking at us,seemed to take pleasure in the spectacle of a group so amicable—when he said he supposed the old lady was all right now that she had got her adopted daughter back again, and added that he saw Adèle was “prête à croquer sa petite maman Anglaise”—I half ventured to hope that he would, even after his marriage, keep us together somewhere under the shelter of his protection, and not quite exiled from the sunshine of his presence.
A fortnight of dubious calm succeeded my return to Thornfield Hall.Nothing was said of the master’s marriage, and I saw no preparation going on for such an event.Almost every day I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had yet heard anything decided:her answer was always in the negative. Once she said she had actually put the question to Mr.Rochester as to when he was going to bring his bride home;but he had answered her only by a joke and one of his queer looks,and she could not tell what to make of him.
One thing specially surprised me, and that was, there were no journeyings backward and forward,no visits to Ingram Park: to be sure it was twenty miles off, on the borders of another county;but what was that distance to an ardent lover?To so practised and indefatigable a horseman as Mr. Rochester, it would be but a morning’s ride.I began to cherish hopes I had no right to conceive: that the match was broken off;that rumour had been mistaken; that one or both parties had changed their minds.I used to look at my master’s face to see if it were sad or fierce;but I could not remember the time when it had been so uniformly clear of clouds or evil feelings.If, in the moments I and my pupil spent with him,I lacked spirits and sank into inevitable dejection, he became even gay.Never had he called me more frequently to his presence; never been kinder to me when there—and, alas!never had I loved him so well.
CHAPTER XXIII
A splendid Midsummer shone over England: skies so pure,suns so radiant as were then seen in long succession, seldom favour even singly,our wave-girt land. It was as if a band of Italian days had come from the South,like a flock of glorious passenger birds, and lighted to rest them on the cliffs of Albion.The hay was all got in; the fields round Thornfield were green and shorn;the roads white and baked; the trees were in their dark prime; hedge and wood,full-leaved and deeply tinted, contrasted well with the sunny hue of the cleared meadows between.
On Midsummer-eve, Adèle, weary with gathering wild strawberries in Hay Lane half the day,had gone to bed with the sun. I watched her drop asleep, and when I left her, I sought the garden.
It was now the sweetest hour of the twenty-four:—“Day its fervid fires had wasted,” and dew fell cool on panting plain and scorched summit.Where the sun had gone down in simple state—pure of the pomp of clouds—spread a solemn purple,burning with the light of red jewel and furnace flame at one point, on one hill-peak,and extending high and wide, soft and still softer, over half heaven.The east had its own charm or fine deep blue, and its own modest gem, a rising and solitary star:soon it would boast the moon; but she was yet beneath the horizon.
I walked a while on the pavement; but a subtle,well-known scent—that of a cigar—stole from some window;I saw the library casement open a handbreadth; I knew I might be watched thence;so I went apart into the orchard. No nook in the grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like;it was full of trees, it bloomed with flowers: a very high wall shut it out from the court,on one side; on the other, a beech avenue screened it from the lawn.At the bottom was a sunk fence; its sole separation from lonely fields: a winding walk,bordered with laurels and terminating in a giant horse-chestnut, circled at the base by a seat,led down to the fence. Here one could wander unseen. While such honey-dew fell,such silence reigned, such gloaming gathered, I felt as if I could haunt such shade for ever;but in threading the flower and fruit parterres at the upper part of the enclosure,enticed there by the light the now rising moon cast on this more open quarter,my step is stayed—not by sound, not by sight, but once more by a warning fragrance.
Sweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine, pink,and rose have long been yielding their evening sacrifice of incense:this new scent is neither of shrub nor flower; it is—I know it well—it is Mr. Rochester’s cigar.I look round and I listen. I see trees laden with ripening fruit.I hear a nightingale warbling in a wood half a mile off; no moving form is visible,no coming step audible; but that perfume increases: I must flee.I make for the wicket leading to the shrubbery, and I see Mr. Rochester entering.I step aside into the ivy recess; he will not stay long: he will soon return whence he came,and if I sit still he will never see me.
But no—eventide is as pleasant to him as to me, and this antique garden as attractive;and he strolls on, now lifting the gooseberry-tree branches to look at the fruit, large as plums,with which they are laden; now taking a ripe cherry from the wall;now stooping towards a knot of flowers,either to inhale their fragrance or to admire the dew-beads on their petals.A great moth goes humming by me; it alights on a plant at Mr. Rochester’s foot: he sees it, and bends to examine it.
“Now, he has his back towards me,” thought I, “and he is occupied too; perhaps, if I walk softly, I can slip away unnoticed.”
I trode on an edging of turf that the crackle of the pebbly gravel might not betray me:he was standing among the beds at a yard or two distant from where I had to pass;the moth apparently engaged him. “I shall get by very well,” I meditated. As I crossed his shadow,thrown long over the garden by the moon, not yet risen high, he said quietly, without turning—
“Jane, come and look at this fellow.”
I had made no noise: he had not eyes behind—could his shadow feel?I started at first, and then I approached him.
“Look at his wings,” said he, “he reminds me rather of a West Indian insect;one does not often see so large and gay a night-rover in England; there!he is flown.”
The moth roamed away. I was sheepishly retreating also; but Mr. Rochester followed me,and when we reached the wicket, he said—
“Turn back: on so lovely a night it is a shame to sit in the house;and surely no one can wish to go to bed while sunset is thus at meeting with moonrise.”
It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer,there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse;and always the lapse occurs at some crisis,when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment.I did not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr. Rochester in the shadowy orchard;but I could not find a reason to allege for leaving him. I followed with lagging step,and thoughts busily bent on discovering a means of extrication;but he himself looked so composed and so grave also, I became ashamed of feeling any confusion:the evil—if evil existent or prospective there was—seemed to lie with me only; his mind was unconscious and quiet.
“Jane,” he recommenced, as we entered the laurel walk,and slowly strayed down in the direction of the sunk fence and the horse-chestnut,“Thornfield is a pleasant place in summer, is it not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You must have become in some degree attached to the house,—you,who have an eye for natural beauties, and a good deal of the organ of Adhesiveness?”
“I am attached to it, indeed.”
“And though I don’t comprehend how it is,I perceive you have acquired a degree of regard for that foolish little child Adèle, too; and even for simple dame Fairfax?”
“Yes, sir; in different ways, I have an affection for both.”
“And would be sorry to part with them?”
“Yes.”
“Pity!” he said, and sighed and paused. “It is always the way of events in this life,” he continued presently: “no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting-place,than a voice calls out to you to rise and move on, for the hour of repose is expired.”
“Must I move on, sir?” I asked. “Must I leave Thornfield?”
“I believe you must, Jane. I am sorry, Janet, but I believe indeed you must.”
This was a blow: but I did not let it prostrate me.
“Well, sir, I shall be ready when the order to march comes.”
“It is come now—I must give it to-night.”
“Then you _are_ going to be married, sir?”
“Ex-act-ly—pre-cise-ly: with your usual acuteness, you have hit the nail straight on the head.”
“Soon, sir?”
“Very soon, my—that is, Miss Eyre: and you’ll remember, Jane, the first time I, or Rumour,plainly intimated to you that it was my intention to put my old bachelor’s neck into the sacred noose,to enter into the holy estate of matrimony—to take Miss Ingram to my bosom,in short (she’s an extensive armful: but that’s not to the point—one can’t have too much of such a very excellent thing as my beautiful Blanche):well, as I was saying—listen to me, Jane!You’re not turning your head to look after more moths, are you?That was only a lady-clock, child, ‘flying away home.’ I wish to remind you that it was you who first said to me,with that discretion I respect in you—with that foresight, prudence,and humility which befit your responsible and dependent position—that in case I married Miss Ingram,both you and little Adèle had better trot forthwith.I pass over the sort of slur conveyed in this suggestion on the character of my beloved; indeed,when you are far away, Janet, I’ll try to forget it: I shall notice only its wisdom;which is such that I have made it my law of action. Adèle must go to school; and you, Miss Eyre, must get a new situation.”
“Yes, sir, I will advertise immediately: and meantime, I suppose—” I was going to say,“I suppose I may stay here, till I find another shelter to betake myself to:” but I stopped,feeling it would not do to risk a long sentence, for my voice was not quite under command.
“In about a month I hope to be a bridegroom,” continued Mr. Rochester; “and in the interim,I shall myself look out for employment and an asylum for you.”
“Thank you, sir; I am sorry to give—”
“Oh, no need to apologise!I consider that when a dependent does her duty as well as you have done yours,she has a sort of claim upon her employer for any little assistance he can conveniently render her;indeed I have already, through my future mother-in-law, heard of a place that I think will suit:it is to undertake the education of the five daughters of Mrs.Dionysius O’Gall of Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland. You’ll like Ireland, I think:they’re such warm-hearted people there, they say.”
“It is a long way off, sir.”
“No matter—a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the distance.”
“Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier—”
“From what, Jane?”
“From England and from Thornfield: and—”
“Well?”
“From _you_, sir.”
I said this almost involuntarily, and, with as little sanction of free will, my tears gushed out.I did not cry so as to be heard, however; I avoided sobbing. The thought of Mrs.O’Gall and Bitternutt Lodge struck cold to my heart;and colder the thought of all the brine and foam, destined, as it seemed,to rush between me and the master at whose side I now walked,and coldest the remembrance of the wider ocean—wealth, caste,custom intervened between me and what I naturally and inevitably loved.
“It is a long way,” I again said.
“It is, to be sure; and when you get to Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland,I shall never see you again, Jane: that’s morally certain. I never go over to Ireland,not having myself much of a fancy for the country. We have been good friends, Jane; have we not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And when friends are on the eve of separation,they like to spend the little time that remains to them close to each other. Come!we’ll talk over the voyage and the parting quietly half-an-hour or so,while the stars enter into their shining life up in heaven yonder: here is the chestnut tree:here is the bench at its old roots. Come, we will sit there in peace to-night,though we should never more be destined to sit there together.” He seated me and himself.
“It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels:but if I can’t do better, how is it to be helped?Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?”
I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still.
“Because,” he said, “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me,as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs,tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us,I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt;and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you,—you’d forget me.”
“That I _never_ should, sir: you know—” Impossible to proceed.
“Jane, do you hear that nightingale singing in the wood?Listen!”