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 dreamed 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 carfr 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 hostler’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 hay-makers 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 lighted—an altar burning behind its screen of marbled vapor—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 forever!” 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 laborers 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 pass a tall brier, 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 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 cognizant 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,fs 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,ftor 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 colloquize 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”fu with glee. This was very pleasant; there is no happiness like that of being loved by our 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 n
estled 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”fv—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 Thorn field 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 rumor 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 sunk 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.
Chapter XXIII
A splendid midsummer shone over England; skies so pure, suns so radiant, as were then seen in long succession, seldom favor, even singly, our wave-girt land. It was as if a band of Italian days had come from the south, like a flock of glorious passenger-birds, and lighted to rest them on the cliffs of Albion. The hay was all got in; the fields round Thornfield were green and shorn; the roads white and baked; the trees were in their dark prime; hedge and wood, full-leaved and deeply-tinted, contrasted well with the sunny hue of the cleared meadows between.
On midsummer eve, Adèle, weary with gathering wild strawberries in Hay-lane half the day, had gone to bed with the sun. I watched her drop asleep, and when I left her I sought the garden.
It was now the sweetest hour of the twenty-four. “Day its fervid fires had wasted,” and dew fell cool on panting plain and scorched summit.59 Where the sun had gone down in simple state—pure of the pomp of clouds—spread a solemn purple, burning with the light of red jewel and furnace-flame at one point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and wide, soft and still softer, over half heaven. The east had its own charm of fine deep blue, and its own modest gem, a rising and solitary star; soon it would boast the moon, but she was yet beneath the horizon.
I walked a while on the pavement, but a subtile, well-known scent—that of a cigar—stole from some window. I saw the library casement open a hand-breadth; I knew I might be watched thence, so I went apart into the orchard. No nook in the grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like. It was full of trees; it bloomed with flowers. A very high wall shut it out from the court, on one-side; on the other, a beech avenue screened it from the lawn. At the bottom was a sunk fence, its sole separation from lonely fields. A winding walk, bordered with laurels and terminating in a giant horse-chestnut, circled at the base by a seat, led down to the fence. Here one could wander unseen. While such honeydew fell, such silence reigned, such gloaming gathered, I felt as if I could haunt such shade forever. But in threading the flower and fruit parterres at the upper part of the inclosure, enticed there by the light the now rising moon casts on this more open quarter, my step is stayed—not by sound, nor by sight; but once more by a warning fragrance.
Sweet-brier and southern-wood, jasmine, pink, and rose, have long been yielding their evening sacrifice of incense. This new scent is neither of shrub nor flower. It is—I know it well—it is Mr. Rochester’s cigar. I look round, and I listen. I see trees laden with ripening fruit. I hear a nightingale warbling in a wood half a mile off; no moving form is visible, no coming step audible; but that perfume increases. I must flee. I make for the wicket leading to the shrubbery, and I see Mr. Rochester entering. I step aside into the ivy recess; he will not stay long; he will soon return whence he came, and if I sit here he will never see me.
But no—eventide is as pleasant to him as to me, and this antique garden as attractive; and he strolls on, now lifting the gooseberry-tree branches to look at the fruit, large as plums, with which they are laden—now taking a ripe cherry from the wall—now stooping toward a knot of flowers, either to inhale their fragrance or to admire the dew-beads on their petals. A great moth goes humming by me; it alights on a plant at Mr. Rochester’s feet; he sees it, and bends to examine it.
“Now he has his back toward me,” thought I, “and he is occupied, too; perhaps, if I walk softly, I can slip away unnoticed.”
I trod on an edging of turf, that the crackle of the pebbly gravel might not betray me; he was standing among the beds at a yard or two distant from where I had to pass; the moth apparently engaged him. “I shall get by very well,” I meditated. As I crossed his shadow, thrown long over the garden by the moon, not yet risen high, he said quietly, without turning,
“Jane, come and look at this fellow.”
I had made no noise—he had not eyes behind—could his shadow feel? I started at first, and then I approached him.
“Look at his wings,” said he; “he reminds me rather of a West Indian insect; one does not often see so large and gay a night-rover in England. There! he is flown.”
The moth roamed away; I was sheepishly retreating also, but Mr. Rochester followed me, and when we reached the wicket he said—
“Turn back; on so lovely a night it is a shame to sit in the house; and surely no one can wish to go to bed while sunset is thus at meeting with moonrise.”
It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment. I did not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr. Rochester in the shadowy orchard; but I could not find a reason to allege for leaving him. I followed with lagging step, and thoughts busily bent on discovering a means of extrication; but he himself looked so composed, and so grave also, I became ashamed of feeling any confusion; the evil—if evil existent or perspective there was—seemed to lie with me only; his mind was unconscious and quiet.
“Jane,” he recommenced, as we entered the laurel-walk, and slowly strayed down in the direction of the sunk fence and the horse-chestnut, “Thornfield is a pleasant place in summer, is it not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You must have become in some degree attached to the house—you, who have an eye for natural beauties, and a good deal of the organ of adhesiveness?”
“I am attached to it, indeed.”
“And though I don’t comprehend how it is, I perceive you have acquired a degree of regard for that foolish little child Adèle, too; and even for simple dame Fairfax?”
“Yes, sir; in different ways, I have an affection for both.”
“And would be sorry to part with them?”
“Yes.”
“Pity!” he said, and sighed and paused. “It is always the way of events in this life,” he continued presently; “no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting-place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and move on, for the hour of repose is expired.”
“I believe you must, Jane. I am sorry, Janet; but I believe, indeed, you must.”
This was a blow; but I did not let it prostrate me.
“Well, sir, I shall be ready when the order to march comes.”
“It is come now—I must give it to-night.”
“Then you are going to be married, sir?”
“Ex-act-ly—pre-cise-ly; with your usual acuteness, you have hit the nail straight on the head.”
“Soon, sir?”
“Very soon, my—, that is, Miss Eyre; and you’ll remember, Jane, the first time I, or Rumor, plainly intimated to you that it was my intention to put my old bachelor’s neck into the sacred noose, to enter into the holy estate of matrimony—to take Miss Ingram to my bosom, in short (she’s an extensive armful; but that’s not to the point—one can’t have too much of such a very excellent thing as my beautiful Blanche)—well, as I was saying—listen to me, Jane! You’re not turning your head to look after more moths, are you? That was only a lady-clock,fw child, ‘flying away home.’ I wish to remind you that it was you who first said to me, with that discretion I respect in you—with that foresight, prudence, and humility which befit your responsible and dependent position—that in case I married Miss Ingram, both you and little Adèle had better trot forthwith. I pass over the sort of slur conveyed in this suggestion on the character of my beloved; indeed, when you are far away, Janet, I’ll try to forget it; I shall notice only its wisdom, which is such that I have made it my law of action. Adèle must go to school, and you, Miss Eyre, must get a new situation.”
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