Once they had left, I could not bear to reenter that cursed Hall, and started toward the orchard, needing solace from the burdens of the night. I had hoped that Jane might walk with me, but when I turned I saw her retreating instead to the house. I softly called her back, and together we strolled down the walk, inclosed by the boxwood hedge, a private island for the two of us, full of flowers coming into bloom. I was feeling more acutely than ever the pain of Thornfield’s accursedness, yet there is something about trees—about an orchard—that is calming to the soul. I bent and plucked the first rose of the season and offered it to Jane. It was slim enough thanks for all she had done in the night, and our eyes rose together toward the sky and the sun, appearing in the east.
“You have passed a strange night, Jane,” I said to her. Much as I feared what truths she might have learned in my absence, it was better that I know them now. “Were you afraid when I left you alone with Mason?”
“I was afraid of someone coming out of the inner room.”
“But I had fastened the door—I had the key in my pocket: I should have been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb—my pet lamb—so near a wolf’s den, unguarded: you were safe.”My pet lamb: it was the first endearment I had allowed myself to speak to her, and, I confess, I wanted her to notice it. It seemed an innocent and mild enough evocation of my feelings—though the term did little justice to the strength of character I had witnessed in the night.
Her words interrupted my thoughts. “Will Grace Poole live here still, sir?”
Ah, so she did still believe Grace to be the monster. I was glad of it, may Grace forgive me; and I would let her continue to believe that. It moved me to hear Jane so concerned for my well-being, and after the traumas of the night, I wanted, for just a moment, to bare my soul to her sympathies. But all I could do was allude to the precariousness of my daily life, the crater crust on which I stood, capable of spewing fire at any moment.
Jane did not—as she could not—understand the danger Richard Mason posed to me, especially given the weakness in his own character that we had both that night witnessed. At that time I still believed that Richard could hurt me only accidentally (it was from Gerald Rochester that I feared a deliberate attack), and Jane did not see why I could not simply request—or command—Richard not to harm me. In her goodness, Jane did not yet understand that good intentions and moral truth might inflict as dangerous, as painful—indeed asfatal—a wound as malicious intent.
Indeed, I wished suddenly to hear her opinion of my own case, to see myself through her clear and honest eyes, and to know how harshly she might judge me if I confessed the truth about Bertha, and about my desire for Jane herself. I sat down on a little bench in the garden and bade her sit next to me, but she remained standing. “Sit, sit,” I urged. “You don’t hesitate to take a place at my side, do you? Is that wrong, Jane?” I wanted to again hear her call me her friend—or more—but now I worried that this endless night could have changed all that.
Yet, she assured me that she was content to stay with me, and sat by my side. I tried to cast a portrait for her of my situation: “Imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive that you there commit a capital error, no matter of what nature or from what motives, but one whose consequences must follow you through life and taint all your existence.” I saw her start at the wordscapital errorand hurried to correct them. “Mind, I don’t say acrime; I am not speaking of shedding of blood or any other guilty act, which might make the perpetrator amenable to the law: my word iserror.” I described in vaguest generalities my mistakes, my sins, my miseries, wandering foreign lands seeking solace from my “error,” until at last, heart weary and soul withered, returning home and making an acquaintance who had all the good and bright qualities that had been lost, and of feeling regenerated, alive again, and my desire to spend the remaining days in the company of this “stranger.” And then I asked the question: To attain that end, did she not believe one is “justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom—a mere conventional impediment”? Could I not, I begged obliquely, pursue my happiness with Jane, despite that she was a governess in my employ, and despite that Bertha lived?
I waited for her absolution, but she did not respond. I tried again, but she spoke only of relying on divine, not mortal, solace. Oh, my difficult Jane, did she not see that to me her own little self was more than mortal, was, indeed, a window into heaven itself?
“But the instrument—the instrument!” I insisted. “God, who does the work, ordains the instrument, and I believe I have found the instrument for my cure in—”Jane Eyre!I nearly choked out the words but stopped myself just in time. She had listened to my story and remained unmoved—how could I believe, then, that she felt the same for me as I for her? I would not bare my soul to her if she would not deign to have it. No—I saved myself humiliation in the final moment; she would speak first of love, or neither of us would.
She said nothing, and I felt the gates of my heart close up once more, that I had so recently made vulnerable to attack. I would not make that mistake again. “Littlefriend”—I spat the word back at her—“you have noticed my tender penchant for Miss Ingram; don’t you think if I married hershewould regenerate me with a vengeance?” And I rose and left her with that thought.
Walking the path for a few moments, I felt my head clear again, my pulse calm, and I realized how close I had come to the brink. I returned to her once again the master of my emotions. “Jane,” I said lightly, “you are quite pale with your vigils: don’t you curse me for disturbing your rest?”
“Curse you?” she asked. “No, sir.” She was as calm as ever, as if she had witnessed none of the passion that had coursed through my veins.
I took her hand as if to shake it in confirmation of her words. “Jane,” I said, “when will you watch with me again?”
“Whenever I can be useful, sir.”
“For instance, the night before I am married! I am sure I shall not be able to sleep. Will you promise to sit up with me to bear me company?” I was determined, this time, tomakeher angry, to shake her out of her complacency, to provoke her to speak. “To you I can talk of my lovely one,” I said, “for now you have seen her and know her. She’s a rare one, is she not, Jane?”
“Yes, sir,” was all she said.
“A strapper—a real strapper, Jane: big, brown, and buxom; with hair just such as the ladies of Carthage must have had.” The sarcasm was thick in my voice, but still Jane did not rise to my words.
At that moment then I saw Dent and Lynn at the stables, and I dismissed her—there seemed nothing else I could say that would move her, at least not then.
Chapter 16
Idid not see Jane again until the afternoon. Everyone had slept later than usual after having been roused in the night, and they drifted down to breakfast still disturbed. I suggested a picnic to distract them, but Lady Ingram begged off, saying she had a headache, and Mrs. Dent said she did not think her nerves could take such an outing. Only Miss Ingram—despite her late-night vigil—seemed little bothered by the night’s events, and dared me to a gallop over the moors. I took her up on that, curious to know what she might say to me in private. As I could have expected, she asked about my business in Millcote that had taken me away, and about Richard Mason’s visit and swift disappearance. Though she had not made the connection to the disturbance of the previous night, she seemed to believe he was in some way tied to my supposed debts, and I was just evasive enough in my responses to confirm her suspicions. I imagined her interest in me would now cool quickly; she might even spread rumors about me in the neighborhood, but I cared little enough for that. It would be interesting, indeed, to know how I was viewed by society without the veil of wealth surrounding me. At that point, my whole attention was on winning Jane.
Miss Ingram and I returned in time for lunch, and then someone proposed billiards. We were in the midst of the game when Miss Ingram suddenly snapped, “Doesthat personwant you?”
I turned and saw Jane. Alarmed—for it was not her way to interrupt like that—I threw down my cue and followed her into the schoolroom, where we could talk in private. “Well?” I asked, as I closed the door.
“If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two,” she said.
She was leaving me.“What?” I blurted. “You would just leave, without any warning?” Immediately I could see that she was taken aback by the vehemence of my reaction, but I did not care. I would not let her leave me so easily. “What to do?” I demanded. “Where to go?”
“To see a sick lady who has sent for me.”
“What sick lady?—Where does she live?” This was an invention, I was sure. I had overplayed my hand. She was fleeing Thornfield after what she had seen in the night and after my confession, for she refused to live under the same roof as a monster and a sinner. I was losing her!
“At Gateshead in ——shire.” The lady was the widow of Reed, the former Gateshead magistrate, Jane told me, who was Jane’s own uncle.
Then I knew I’d caught her. “The deuce he was! You never told me that before: you always said you had no relations.”
