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
183
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
184
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
185
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,
186
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.
