“It cannot indeed,” said Everson. “We withdraw our petition.”
I walked out of there in a flurry of emotion, encountering Gerald and Ramsdell on the street.
“It’s over,” I said. “It was clever, Gerald, but it didn’t work. Perhaps you didn’t know, but the letters were regarding me, not my brother. Whoever falsified the letters perhaps did not know that I was the Rochester son who married your mother.”
Ramsdell, confused, began to stammer a response, but I saw that fury rise again in Gerald—his eyes darken, his hands clench—and I mounted Mesrour and rode away before Gerald could strike out. I knew the law would hold Gerald for at least a short time for presenting forgeries to the court. Jane and I would be married and gone by the time he was free to bother anyone again.
***
It was late when I left, and I did not need to put my heels to Mesrour, for he knew we were bound for home, and he galloped those many miles as if I were a highwayman escaping arrest. I knew full well what I was doing, but I didn’t care. Man’s laws can be manipulated to dishonest ends. God’s laws can be used in ways I was sure God had not intended. I would marry Jane; Everson would find a place where I could move Bertha, where she would be safe, and no one would know. I could have it done while Jane and I were on our honeymoon.
It warmed my heart more than I can admit when I spied the first lights of Thornfield-Hall in the distance—home at last, and marriage tomorrow and Bertha to be removed. It was as if every care in the world had suddenly vanished as we sped homeward in rain and driving wind.
Then the moon, which had been passing in and out of rain clouds all evening, revealed to me a figure standing in the lane outside the gates of Thornfield, and I knew immediately it was Jane.Jane?Out so late at night? What could have happened?God, not Bertha,I thought.Please, not Bertha!
As I came closer, she ran to meet me, and I stretched out my hand to her and pulled her up to join me in the saddle. Holding her close, I asked if anything was wrong that she should come to meet me at such an hour, but she insisted it was nothing.
I did not believe her, for I felt a strong foreboding beyond the emotion that had that day occurred, but Jane would say nothing more until after I dined. As nighttime drew on, I tried to cheer her with a reminder that she had promised to sit up with me the night before my wedding, but she smiled only a wan smile.
I managed to coax her into telling me what had disturbed her. She’d had nightmarish visions of a destroyed Thornfield-Hall, and of a child, clinging to her for dear life. I tried to reassure her that all was well, certain that she could not know anything of my fevered idea, abandoned less than a day earlier, to move us out of Thornfield.
But she could not be deterred. “On waking,” she said, “a gleam dazzled my eyes: I thought—oh, it is daylight! But I was mistaken: it was only candlelight, Sophie, I supposed, had come in. There was a light on the dressing table, and the door of the closet, where, before going to bed, I had hung my wedding dress and veil, stood open: I heard a rustling there. I asked, ‘Sophie, what are you doing?’
“No one answered,” she went on, “but a form emerged from the closet: it took the light, held it aloft and surveyed the garments pendent from the portmanteau. ‘Sophie! Sophie!’ I again cried: and still it was silent. I had risen up in bed, I bent forward: first, surprise, then bewilderment, came over me; and then my blood crept cold through my veins. Mr. Rochester, this was not Sophie.”
My own blood chilled at her words.
“It was not Leah,” Jane said, “and it was not Mrs. Fairfax—no, I was sure of it, and am still—it was not even that strange woman, Grace Poole.” It was not, she said, anyone she had ever seen; even in the half darkness she had been certain of that.
“Itmusthave been one of them,” I said, for I could say nothing else. Perhaps the force of my words could convince her.
But in the next moment she described, in slow and fearful words, the savage image of Bertha herself. I dared not breathe as she described how her midnight visitor took up Jane’s bridal veil and placed it on her own head to gaze in the mirror, and in a spasm of violence tore the veil from her head, ripped the lace in two, and threw it to the floor and tramped on it. I imagined Bertha somehow understanding in her own confused way my intentions toward Jane. And, oh God, there was more! When Bertha had finished with the veil, she approached Jane herself with the candle and looked into her eye, and still staring closely at Jane, extinguished the candle and remained there until Jane fainted from terror.
I swallowed deeply and forced calm onto my face. “Who was with you when you revived?” I asked.
No one was there, she said, and as it had become broad daylight, she rose and did her usual ablutions, and while she felt weak, she was not ill, and then she asked who or what that could have been. It was a nightmare, I told her, surely just a creature of an overstimulated brain, and I was relieved that such a vision could be explained away. But she insisted that her nerves were not in fault, that the thing had been real.
I reminded her gently that none of her other dreams had come true, and half succeeded in convincing her, I thought, that it was a matter of nerves. But then she rejoined: in the light of broad day, she had seen her fine new wedding veil, lying on the carpet, torn in half.
I clung to her, wishing I could erase the event from her mind, erase it from time altogether. Now it was clear: it was not just I who was in danger from the madwoman—Jane herself was at risk. How could I protect her now?Would this terror never end?
Struggling to control my voice, I offered an explanation: It was—it must have been—Grace Poole, I said. She’d seen how oddly the servant had acted in the past. In her half sleep, Jane had imagined Grace as a monster. I comforted her in as cheery a voice as I could muster, making it up as I went, desperate to hide the truth for one more day. After the wedding, when we were on our honeymoon, Bertha could be moved away somewhere—anywhere. Grace Poole’s good name deserved better than this, but there was little to be done for it now, knowing my clear-sighted, rational Jane would wonder why Grace was allowed to remain at Thornfield-Hall. I hinted that Grace’s tenure at Thornfield represented a burden and debt I had taken on and must repay, but that when we were married a year and a day I would tell her the whole of it. I would have liked to tell her immediately, to hear her lift my burden with the blessing of her trust and love, to have her tell me that I was not wrong in the clear eyes of God and morality to think I deserved a better life than the one I had been dealt. But I dared not tell her now, while I could still lose her.
Jane, bless her, seemed content with what I had to say. I urged her to sleep with Adèle in the nursery and to lock the door. If I could just get her safely to morning, to our exchange of vows, we would be off to London for our honeymoon and a happy life together.
She did as I suggested, and as soon as she was settled, I climbed to the third floor and let myself into the chamber. All was quiet there, Bertha pacing in silence in her room, and Grace sitting up in the outer room, relishing the one mug of porter I allowed her each night. “She was out again last night,” I said quietly.
I could tell by Grace’s expression that she had not known. “Does the porter make you sleepy?” I asked.
She rose in umbrage at that. “I keep my promises. I do my duties.”
“She nearly attacked Miss Eyre,” I hissed at her.
She shrugged. “In another day you will be shut of us, off on your honeymoon.”
Indeed. I held her eyes, torn between rage at her impertinence and the knowledge that I could not risk losing her service the way I had lost Molly’s.
“Thousands of people better off than her are kept in asylums,” she added, and I think I saw pity in her eyes.
