“Find Jane!” I ordered Pilot, knowing it was useless. He looked back at me, tongue flapping, joyous at the chance for a romp across the moors, but insensible to my pain. No, I would have to find her myself. Would she take the road or would she set off across the moors? Surely she was too smart to cross the moors, where she could so easily twist an ankle and fall, where the bogs could devour her. And so I spurred Mesrour into a gallop down the estate road; at the gate I turned instinctively not toward Millcote, but the opposite way. How far would she get? She had little enough money, I knew, since her salary would not yet come due for two more months. She must have had in hand only a pittance—not enough to survive on, not even for my resourceful Jane. God, we allow our people little enough; what do we expect them to live on?Damn it all!
I galloped ten miles at least on the road but saw no sign of her, and I knew it was impossible for her to have gone farther on foot, even if she had started out well before light. Did she go toward Millcote?Couldshe, in her desperation, have set out across the moor? Was she lying now in a gulley, having turned her ankle, unable to walk? Had she been accosted by someone living rough and been taken away against her will? I reined in Mesrour and looked about me. All was silent, save the cries of a pair of larks and the wind in the heath and the pant of Pilot at my foot.
“Jane!” I shouted, rising in the stirrups. “Jane!” But there was only silence to carry her name across the moor.
Witlessly, I spurred Mesrour onward, aimlessly, down into one dale and up onto another fell, until slowly it occurred to me that she might not be on foot at all. She might have taken a ride on a passing coach, or a farmer’s wagon bound for market. She might, by now, be past Millcote or on her way to Harrogate; she could be halfway to Doncaster or nearly to Leeds. She could be anywhere.
She could be lost to me.
She could be lost. How could I give up the search?
I could not. I rode this way and that. I stopped a coach-and-four with an irascible passenger but a more kindly coachman to ask if they had seen her; I queried a passing tinker; I spoke to a couple of ruffians who were more drunk than alive; I asked at the George Inn in Millcote and at the Royal Oak at the crossroads. No one had seen her. It was as if she had vanished from the face of the earth.
I returned home well after dark, tired and hungry. I told myself I would find her there: perhaps she had had second thoughts. Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding, and she had only gone for a long walk after all.
But, of course, she had not returned, and no word had come from her. She had forsaken me; my love for her had not been enough. She did not love me as I loved her. She had been within my grasp and now was torn from me—forever. And it wasBerthawho had caused this, my manicwife, the woman I was stuck with for eternity. In a frenzy I stormed up the stairs and burst into her chamber. I ignored Grace and charged straight into Bertha’s bedroom. She had been sleeping, but my angry shouts wakened her, and she cowered in her bed as I screamed at her that all this washerfault, that her dalliance with my brother had ruined my life, her madness had cost me my one chance at happiness, that I was sorry that I had ever laid eyes on her, that I wished I had never come to her blasted Jamaica, that she and her greedy, selfish son had destroyed me.
Grace, horrified, tried speaking sense to me, but I was beyond reason—and when I wouldn’t listen she seized me by the shoulders and forced me out of that place and I stumbled down to where Mrs. Fairfax stood, wringing her hands in the second-floor hall, having heard my angry shouts. She gathered me to her bosom, and, after a few moments, led me to the kitchen and gave me tea and spoke calmly to me until—desperate, miserable, and now ashamed—I grew quiet. She told me that Sam and the others were all out looking for Jane. Surely, she murmured, Miss Eyre will be found by morning, safe and sound, and brought home where she belonged. She tried to give me a sleeping draught but I would not take it; however, I did finally allow her to take me, now exhausted, up to my bedroom.
As soon as she was gone, and before I succumbed to sleep, I left my chamber and made my way to Jane’s room, where I searched her belongings, looking for any indication of where she might have gone. I opened her trunks and rummaged through her neatly packed clothes, and I searched her dressing table. There I found the little pearl necklace I had bought her in Millcote, and holding it clasped in my hand, I returned to my bed and fell asleep.
***
In the morning I woke and was immediately hit with the memory of Jane’s disappearance, and my own sorry state. I wasted no time in riding to Millcote to find Gerald. I was ashamed at what I had said and done the previous night in Bertha’s chamber, for I knew none of it was her fault. But I did have a grievance against Gerald, for I was convinced he had something to do with breaking up our wedding—no doubt out of vengeance for my showing up his manipulations of my father’s letters.
He was not at the inn, but as I was walking away from there I heard his voice behind me. “Oi! Rochester!” he yelled. I turned around to see him advancing on me in a fury, his eyes wild. “You scoundrel!” he went on, accusing me of taking his rightful inheritance away from him with lies and insinuations.
“I am no scoundrel,” I replied with a calmness I did not feel, “and it is you who doctored those letters with false dates. And you who broke up my wedding—”
“You scum! You dog shit!” Gerald yelled. “How could you marry another while my mother still lived?”
I turned away to leave, and he would have followed me, no doubt, but by then the owner of the inn had come out to see what the trouble was, and held him back while I left.
It is not over,I thought, for I was sure Gerald would not let it go at that. Infuriated, Gerald’s words still ringing in my ears, my mind reeled. I needed calm. I needed peace, and there was only one place I could hope to find it.
***
All was quiet in Jane’s room; no one had been there since I had left it the night before, her trunks still standing as they had been. I searched her belongings again, hunting for any indication of how I might find her. I opened her trunks once more and scoured her dressing table. I even went to the schoolroom and looked there. I found her painting supplies and leafed slowly through her images, seeing there a portrait of almost preternatural perfection: a dark-ringletted goddess that it took me several moments to recognize as Blanche Ingram. Jane’s artistry had rendered her far more beautiful than in life, with a sweet, delicate expression that had never graced that actual face. Did Jane imaginethiswas how I saw her rival? What had I done to her with my cruel, useless games?
A few sheets later came an even greater shock: a portrait of myself that was both honest and loving—she had placed a gleam in my eye that was surely meant for her, and, as always, my hair falling over my forehead. I touched my finger to it; she had seen into my soul and drawn this. She knew me. I was hers. Shedidlove me, and had spoken the truth; there could be no doubt of it now. And yet the man on the page was far better, more beautiful, inside and out, than the man holding it. How could I have treated her so? I held that drawing in a shaking hand and wept.
Before I left the room, I paged through the rest and was arrested by another image. It was a representation of Jane herself. Yet she was almost as unrecognizable as Miss Ingram had been, but for an opposite reason—instead of the sprightly, intelligent passion that illuminated Jane’s face and cried out daily to my heart, here was a visage of dullness and despair. This was not my Jane. I wondered if this was how she felt: deceived, taken in, her loyalty mistreated.Oh God,I thought,what have I done to her? It is I, not Bertha or Gerald, who have driven her away. I am a monster.
My limbs felt heavy, for I had not slept. All was quiet in the corridor, and I crept back to Jane’s room and lay down on her bed, where the pillow still held the faint scent of her, and I fell, at last, into sleep.
***
I rode out the next day and the day after and the day after that. I rode east and west and north and south. I asked discreetly where I could, and searched carefully wherever I went. I toured the moors and the fields and the meadows and the lanes. I tracked down the horrid Reed children once more—the vain absurd one was being courted in London by a man of fashion, the other one in a remote convent—but received no fruitful reply. I wrote to Lowood School, where she had spent her childhood, but they had no news of her, either.
My last hope was that she would write, that she would at least settle my mind that she was alive and well. But a letter never came. Only once did Mrs. Fairfax give me a moment of hope, but the letter wasaboutJane, rather than a response to my inquiries—a message from that accursed solicitor Briggs, who had been responsible for driving us apart. Even if she were found, I would not allowhimto have anything to do with her. I told Mrs. Fairfax I would hear nothing more about it.
“Where is Miss Eyre?” Adèle asked day after day. I had no response for her, and I could bear it no longer. I arranged, at the beginning of the school year, for her to be sent away to school, and Sophie back to France. Adèle did not want to leave, but I was unwilling to hire another governess and I could not care for her myself.
“You will destroy yourself,” Mrs. Fairfax said more than once through that time.
I wished I could. I wished I could drive myself down to the bone and then float away like ash in the wind. I had driven Jane away, made her miserable, and I did not deserve space on this earth.
How could God do this to me?
