Mr. Rochester

by Sarah Shoemaker

  But as she grew stronger, the power of her will increased all the more. I went through every weapon in my armory—patience, love, forgiveness, anger, reason—but nothing could pierce the steel of her will, nothing could break down the walls of what I had most admired in her: her resolute independence, her moral compass. I was powerless against her.

  This was not like the previous times in which we had enjoyed parrying with each other, challenging each other, the wordplay that had once so amused me. But this was not a game: this was my life, for without Jane, I had nothing; I was nothing. And yet I saw her slipping away from me, and, try as I might, nothing I could say would move her.

  Still, I was convinced there must be some way to bring her back to me. It tore my heart when she announced at last—so sternly it made me weep—“I am going, sir,” and made to return to her room.

  Devastated, I could not bear to watch her go.

  In the morning, I told myself, in the morning I will find a way to persuade her.

  Chapter 24

  Dawn came in a bleak July sky. I had paced all night. As I watched the light strengthen, I told myself Jane would be mine again before the sun set. I clung to that thought, for surely moral laws were not so immutable that Providence would have brought her to me and then denied me her love. I rose and dressed and hurried to the door of her chamber, not to wake her but to assure myself of her presence. I touched it softly with my fingertips, and then I slipped away and down the stairs.

  I went into my library and looked out, watching an early-morning haze rise from the meadow. What else could I tell her to show her that we belonged together? How to make her understand that our love broke no law of God? I wandered down into the kitchen, where I had often felt most comfortable. Mary was already shaping the day’s bread, and she bobbed a curtsy at me and kept on with her work. She, at least, did not appear changed by yesterday’s calamity. I picked up a piece of ham—a remnant of what was meant to be yesterday’s supper—and popped it into my mouth, and as its cool, salt taste lingered on my tongue, I realized what I’d left missing. Fool that I was! I needed to tell her the rest—tell her about Gerald, about Bertha’s suffering at the hands of my selfish brother, tell her that I had been willing to give up Thornfield for her, and still would, if I could be sure Bertha would be cared for and the estates were in safe, stable hands. Surely Jane, sweet Jane of all people, would understand this! My spirits soaring, I turned to go and wait by her door for her to awake, when Mary spoke: “Something odd, sir,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “The side-passage door was already unlocked when I went out to get the eggs this morning.” She shook her head in confusion. “I was sure I had locked it last night.”

  My mind refused to consider the worst. “John had not already gone out, perhaps?” I asked.

  “No, sir.”

  Oh God, I thought, turning, but her next words stopped me. “And there was bread missing, I’m sure of it.” Then she shrugged. “Probably an unfortunate wanderer passing by. I’ll make sure the house is better secured—”

  Those last words came to me from behind; I was already running. Up the steps from the kitchen, across the hall, up the grand stairs, turning to Jane’s room, and stopping abruptly. Dare I risk waking her? I hardly gave it a second thought. I did knock, but immediately opened the door, envisioning her in bed, turning sleepily in surprise at the intrusion.

  The bed was neatly made, the room in order, and Jane was not in sight. I opened the cupboard: Jane had so few clothes, and they all seemed to be there. No—her black silk dress was missing. I searched the meager rest of her things: she had taken nothing I had given her, and her trunks remained packed and locked, just where John and a stableboy had brought them back upstairs the day before. Perhaps she had just gone out for a morning stroll to clear her head? But even as I thought it, I knew it couldn’t be true, for why else the unlocked kitchen door, the missing bread? No, Jane had removed herself from temptation. From me.

  I ran from the room, my mind at once full and blank, if such a thing is possible, and down the stairs and to the back entry, where I exchanged my ordinary boots for riding boots and threw on a jacket and made for the stable. A few moments later Mesrour and I were clattering out of the stable yard, with Pilot bounding beside us. But where to go? Where? I hesitated a moment, asking myself where Jane would go but finding no answer. Jane was, in some ways, still a mystery to me.

  Not to a city, I thought. Not even to Millcote. Where? Where?

  “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? Could she, 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 was Bertha who had caused this, my manic wife, 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 was her fault, 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 imagine this was 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. She did love 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 was about Jane, 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 allow him to 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?

  Chapter 25

  But I went on living, and the only thing I could think to do was to keep on searching. When the folly of that had become obvious even to me, I buried myself in work. I made the rounds of all my cottagers, I helped in the harvest—to the amusement and dismay of the harvesters—and I invented reasons to see Everson. Around that time, odd things began to happen: noises on the grounds late at night, locks broken, the gardens trampled, even once a dead stoat hanging from a tree in the orchard. Ames believed someone was trying to break in, but John and Sam could catch no one. The servants became nervous, afraid to go out at night, and Mrs. Fairfax especially was deeply anxious. I was sure it was Gerald, his madness perhaps growing worse, trying to force his way back to his mother, into the house he considered his own, but there was nothing to prove since we were all unable to catch him. Eventually, Mrs. Fairfax could bear it no more and asked to be released from her duties. I was almost relieved when she did, for I had become uncomfortable in her presence: she had turned almost too kind, more mothering than I could bear at a time when I hated myself and who I had become—a liar and a bigamist. I settled a goodly sum on her and wished her well. She was all graciousness at the gift, and no little embarrassed, I imagine, but she deserved it, if for no other reason than she was my only living relative.

  The same day she left, I removed the portrait of my mother from the drawing room and placed it and Jane’s drawings in a closet on the second floor, for I could not bear to see these reminders of all I had done, the misery I had caused and fallen into myself.

  I went out with the harvesters as often as I could, hoping to work myself to the marrow, to drop into bed at night too weary to think, to rise in the morning and take to the fields again, to allow the pain of my blistered hands and my weary back to at least in part replace my other, worse, pain, and the sun on my face to burn off a small portion of my regret.

  * * *

  It was one of those nights late in that harvest season, two months or so after Jane had disappeared, and I had fallen into bed and into
a weary and miserable sleep, with dreams that assaulted my mind with unease. I dreamed that Jane had died in some lonely, forsaken place; I dreamed that I was perishing on some faraway island, bereft of all I had ever known; I dreamed that the sea had overtaken me and I was drowning; that I had died but instead of peace I was greeted by the fires of hell, which were consuming me, and I could barely breathe.

  I woke, but it seemed as if I were still in the dream, for I could smell the fires and feel their heat. I rose from my bed and lit a candle to reassure myself that I was still in my own chamber, and indeed I was, but I felt surrounded by a kind of fury that I could not shake. I walked to the door and opened it and was nearly thrown back by the smoke and the flames. Fire. There was fire. This was no dream.

  The far end of the gallery—Jane’s room—was engulfed in flames. I looked up, and the fire seemed worse above me—for fire burns upward first—and I thought of John and Mary, and of Leah and Sam, and, the realization dawning, of Grace Poole and Bertha. Bertha. Fire. I ran to the servants’ stairs and took them two at a time. I roused John and Mary, who were already nearly overcome with smoke, and pulled them from their burning room, and then hastened to Leah’s and Sam’s rooms and brought them out as well, and sent them all downstairs toward safety. Then I dashed up the hidden staircase for Grace and Bertha. Grace, perhaps already dulled with drink, had almost succumbed, but Bertha was not in her room, and I had no time to think. I nearly dragged Grace downstairs with me, both of us leaning on each other, gasping for air, catching her when she stumbled. Half carrying Grace, I somehow shepherded her out of the inferno. Just as we reached safety, Leah cried out and pointed, and I saw Bertha on the roof, at the battlements, like a ghost in her white shift, her hair flying wildly about her head.

  Once more, I ran. I cannot say what made me turn back to the house, to risk my life to save the woman who had spent fifteen years destroying it. Perhaps it was how little I valued my life without Jane. Perhaps it was that I had spent so many years protecting Bertha that I did not know how to stop. Either way, I am no hero, for I could not save her.