Jane Eyre (41 page)

 “A request was it, Janet?”

 “A plea, an entreaty. Call it anything you will, sir, but I have dreamt of this moment.” I tipped back my head to look at him. Not handsome was he, but beloved. “Please kiss me.”

 “I have thought of you, Jane Eyre, remembering how perfectly you responded to me. I recollected the sight of your reddened buttocks. And the scream rendered from you when  you shattered beneath the punishing force of my hand against your tender quim.”

 “Was it only a thought, sir?”

 “A bold one are you! I admit, miss, that I took pleasure myself, spurred by the images—indelibly seared as they are!—of your body spread wide with anticipation. Now, enough of the prattle! You shall kiss me, Miss Eyre.”

 “I should kiss you, sir? I fear I know not what to do first.”

 “Then choose not to, and be on your way.”

 What an enigma my master was. He delighted in my submission, and in this instant, demanded I lead him.

 “I left you with a kiss. Return to me with one. Show me how much you missed me.”

 There was such a difference in our heights, and he made no accommodation. I was left with no choice but to lift up onto my toes and wrap my arms around the back of his neck. I pressed my lips to his gently, once, twice. Then tentatively, I used the tip of my tongue to seek entrance.

 I was not quite as bold as he had been. I sought his tongue and touched it with mine.

 His body felt hard against mine. Even as I had leaned into him, he had tightened his grip, as if he was afraid I would try to escape.

 His response emboldened me.

 I gently took his lower lip between my teeth.

 He went rigid. I suspected he would not allow me control much longer, so I seized the moment. With tenderness, I bit his lip and then instantly laved the tiny hurt. It was a pantomime of the way he’d used me, spanking my flesh and then heightening the pleasure with his touch.

 I released him and plunged my tongue into his mouth. How I had missed the taste of him! He had had a glass of wine—I did not doubt it—and he had smoked one of his customary cigars. He was familiar to me, and dear.

 I forced his head a bit lower so I could explore his recesses more.

 The kiss was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was warm. It was soul-shaking in its length and breadth. I delighted in having momentary control. My quim was stirred; how perfectly did my body respond to his!

 All too soon, he reached up and forced me to release my hands.

 When he spoke, his single word was a rough sound almost like an animal’s growl. “Enough!”

 “Sir?” He stunned me.

 “Unless you wish me to take you here and now, miss, I suggest you cease.”

 I tried to school my face into revealing nothing, but I felt a smile forming. I looked at his physiognomy. Indeed, he showed a physical reaction to the way I had explored him. “You liked the kiss, then, I take it, sir?”

 “Insolent miss. Do not think that will go unpunished.”

 The mere words were enough to tantalise me. How I had missed Thornfield! How I had missed my master.

 Giving into impulse—something I had been wont to do my entire life—I reached for his manhood. I noticed the image of it. It was bigger than it had been when I first arrived. I touched him there, pressing my palm to his front. I was firm, and I felt him press back against me.

 “A second insolent act, miss?”

 He made no move to stop me, so I continued on, moving my hand up and down. I squeezed him. “That does not hurt, sir?”

 “Nay, Miss Eyre. Quite the contrary.” He closed his eyes.

 Such power did I experience! No wonder he enjoyed teasing me. Heady, indeed, was the knowledge you could bring pleasure to another.

 I quit my touch and walked on so fast that even he could hardly have overtaken me had he tried. I gave in and smile broadly. It was good to be home! 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 cars 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 forwards, 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. If I were Miss Ingram, I’d make the journey myself, anything to spend time in the presence of my beloved Mr Rochester. 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, never had he spent more time teaching me wicked ways—and, alas! Never had I loved him so well.

 Chapter Twenty-Three

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 casino 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 forever, 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? Was he as aware of my presence as I was his? 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. As much as I was in love with him, being near him, with him being promised to another, confounded my heart. 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. I wondered if he could see the way my pulse raced so awfully. This was the moment I’d dreaded; yet I knew it must surely come. “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 tonight.”

“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.”