บทที่ บทที่ 22 · Mr. Rochester had given me but one week’s leave of absence: yet a month

. 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 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 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

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, 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.