Jane Eyre (40 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

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. I longed to see Mr Rochester, and indeed, thoughts of him, and naughty, wicked dreams had provided solace during the long visit. I continued to explore, but I would admit that I wanted more of my master’s touches.

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 anyone. 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 a one as you and with Georgiana, you perform your own part in life and burden no one. Tomorrow,” 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 ballroom, 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 told myself I didn’t feel a stab in the heart; for Mr Rochester never promised anything. We had spent a few moments together—after some emotional duress and that had led to something unspeakably spectacular—and it meant nothing to him. He had the experience of the world and a number of years on me. I was not foolish. I did not try to make myself anything more than another woman in a line of conquests. I was the governess, and though I did understand him better than Miss Ingram ever should, a man such as he needed to make a political match. Love, what of it? It meant nothing, less than nothing; the mere ramblings of an unfettered mind.

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 forever!” 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 enquired 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. He had called me Janet, a name unfamiliar to my ears. No one had ever used that variation on my name. I had noticed the way he addressed me; from the first I was Miss Eyre and then Jane Eyre. The first time he’d taken the liberty of calling me Jane, I’d momentarily lost my voice to shock. I had told myself the intimacy meant nothing. I was the drab governess, nothing more. Now he had called me Janet as if it were the most natural progression. Did this man intentionally confound me? Alas, no. I meant nothing to him, hence the name meant nothing special to anyone but me. Still I could not help the fact I felt giddy at being back and for having had a few moments with him. 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.”

“Allow me to welcome you back to your home properly,” said he.

 I went to him as if being in his arms were the most natural place to be. This time there was no shyness or hesitation as I allowed myself to be gathered close to him.

 “Kiss me,” I said.

 “You’ve forgotten your place in the last month,” responded he, even as he traced my brow with his fingertip.

 “It was a request, sir.”