My Mr. Rochester 1 (Jane Eyre Retold)

by Rigel, LK

  A wind gust agitates fallen leaves, pushing and pulling them up into a swirling dust devil on the lane. The gust folds and rolls over, multiplies, and repeats its dance on and on through every vale and over every hill beyond my sight.

  I’m pierced by an unexpected feeling of eternal well-being, a profound connection with all life.

  But a rude noise breaks through my bliss. A tramp, tramp, tramp, and metallic clatter. My heart races a little. A horse is coming, I can’t tell where from. The bend of the lane yet hides it. On it comes. I leave the stile but keep to the shoulder, prepared to let the beast go by.

  I am an educated adult of nineteen, but childhood’s magical thinking still influences my mind. Fairy tales and Sunday school fables still dance in my brain with other rubbish. I’m still forming my life’s journey, still sorting real and true from claptrap fed to me by unloving tricksters or controlling piety freaks.

  Onward the horse comes. I watch for it through the low mist, thinking of Gytrash, the gigantic ghost dog of the Canadian tundra.

  Gytrash is said to haunt solitary byways and seize on lone travelers. At the time of the Great Secession, so my cousin John Reed said, Gytrash was seen as far south as Utah and Colorado and as far west as here in Jefferson State where Thornfield Hall lays.

  I laughed at John Reed for believing such stuff and received a thwack across the back of my legs in return. I still have the scar to show for my impudence.

  Now mixed in with the tramp, tramp, tramp of horse’s hooves, a rushing thump-a, thump-a sounds behind the hedges. The traveler isn’t on the road but somewhere among the trees. All at once a great black dog bursts through—exactly in the form of the Gytrash! A lion-like creature with long hair, a white blaze on its huge forehead, and glittering black eyes.

  It thunders past me. I am nothing to it.

  The anticipated horse follows. The substantial blue-black steed bears a rider on its back. The man—the human being—at once breaks the spell that’s captured me. Nothing ever rides with the Gytrash. It’s always alone. This is no supernatural beast, only a man. A traveler taking the shortcut from Millcote.

  As with the great dog, I’m nothing to man or horse. They pass, and I resume my errand.

  But the eerie sound of animal despair stops me. The man calls out, “What the devil?” I turn to see horse and rider fall in a terrible crash to the ground, slipping on thin ice which has glazed the cobblestones.

  The dog comes bounding back, frantic over its master’s predicament. It barks until the hills echo the sound. Then it runs again to me, the only help at hand. My heart races, but I can see the poor animal is no danger to me. It’s only worried about its master. The man struggles vigorously to right himself. He can’t be hurt much.

  Still I ask, “Are you injured, sir?”

  He swears at earth and sky and keeps at it for a few sentences.

  “Can I help at all?” I hide my amusement.

  “Stand here beside me.” He gets to his knees and throws his cloak back for easier movement. He’s a large man, with broad shoulders and thick arms, and for the first time I think of him that way: as a man. He rises to his feet, and I falter.

  “Come here, girl!” he cries. “Are you deaf?”

  I do as he says. He uses me to stay standing, his forearm pressing down on my shoulder. My heart pounds at his touch.

  In my life I’ve suffered violent responses to unwanted touches. This feeling is no less violent, but I can’t say the touch is unwanted. I’m not afraid. I’m aroused.

  We’re serenaded by the horse’s heaving, stamping, and clattering, and the dog joins in with barks and whimpers. The animal noise frightens me and sends me some yards away from the man’s grip. But I can’t be driven away completely until I see him safe.

  “Down, Pilot!” He silences his dog, stoops and feels his foot and leg. He is hurt after all. He stumbles a bit over to the stile where I had rested and takes the seat himself.

  I’m in a mood to be useful, and my curiosity about the man is stronger than my fear of dog and horse. “If you’re hurt, sir, I can go for help, either from Thornfield Hall or Hayton.”

  “I’m fine.” He doesn’t look at me. “Nothing’s broken, I think.” His voice is deep, strong, and gruff. There’s no effort at civility. Again he stands and tries to walk, but winces with pain.

  It’s dusk now, but the moon is full and bright. I see him plainly.

  His black finely tailored riding cloak now covers him properly. Its fur collar is thrown back over his shoulders, making them appear even broader. His serious face has stern chiseled features, the shadow of a beginning beard, and heavy brows. His dark eyes and frown give him a frustrated look. He isn’t young, but not yet middle-aged. He might be thirty-five.

  I feel no fear of him, only a little shyness. Had he been handsome or heroic-looking, I don’t think I could have interrogated him as I did or offered up my services so freely. I’d only ever had one handsome man so close to me, and that didn’t go well.

  I have a theoretical reverence for beauty, elegance, gallantry. But really. If ever again I meet those qualities incarnate in masculine form, I won’t deceive myself. I’ll know instinctively they can never have to do with me.

  I shun lovely people as one avoids fire, lightning, or snake bite. The aversion isn’t instinctive but by training. Almost from my beginnings I’ve received the catechism: You, Jane Eyre, are a small, unworthy creature; dare not to associate with beautiful people, for the universe will laugh at your darling, mistaken assumption of entitlement.

  If this stranger had smiled at me and been good-humored, I would have recoiled in suspicion. If he had deflected my offer of assistance pleasantly and with thanks, I would have gone my way and thought of him no more.

  Instead his frown and grumbling roughness sets me at my ease. I can want nothing from him; therefore, he can deny me nothing. He waves me off, and my resolve to help strengthens.

  “I won’t leave you, sir, not in the fading light in this solitary lane. At least not until I see you’re fit to mount your horse.”

  Until that moment he’d hardly turned his eyes in my direction. When he looks at me I have to catch my breath. His gaze pierces my entire sense of myself.

  He sees me. I am a person to him.

  “You should be at home,” he barks. “If you have a home nearby. Where are you from?”

  “Just below. But I’m not afraid of being out. I can run over to Hayton for you, with pleasure. Indeed, I’m on my way there to post a letter.”

  “You say you live below. Do you mean at that house with the parapets and battlements?” He points to Thornfield Hall, where the fading light casts a gleam and brings it out, distinct and pale against the woods beyond.

  “That’s it, sir.”

  “Whose house is that?”

  “Mr. Edward Rochester’s, sir.”

  “And you know Mr. Rochester?”

  “I have never seen him.”

  “He’s not in residence then.”

  “No.”

  “Can you tell me where he is?”

  “I cannot, sir.”

  “You’re not a servant there, I’ll wager.” He runs his eye over my simple outfit, the new brown cloak, the old brown bonnet, neither even half fine enough for a lady's maid. He frowns. “You’re…”

  On a whim I take pity and help him. “I am the governess.”

  There. I’ve said the word. Until now I’d called myself a school teacher. An independent professional. But these last few months I’d forfeited my independence little by little as I grew fonder and fonder of Thornfield. I looked back at the mansion, formidable in the twilight. It had changed me, worked its way into my heart, without my knowing.

  “Ah, the governess,” the man repeats. “Devil take me, I’d forgotten.” Again my clothing undergoes scrutiny. He rises from the stile and grimaces upon his first step.

  “I won’t ask you to fetch help,” he says. “But you may help me a little yourself, if you’d be so
kind.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Do you have an umbrella or something I can use as a stick?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then try to get hold of my horse's bridle and lead him to me. You’re not afraid of that either, I’ll wager.”

  I most certainly am afraid to touch the horse, but his tone is so commanding I obey almost against my will. I go to the tall steed and endeavor to catch the bridle. It’s a spirited thing and won’t let me come near its head. I make effort on effort, careful to avoid its trampling feet.

  After some time the stranger bursts out laughing, a weird sound, incongruous coming out of that grim figure. “Give it up,” he says. “At this rate the mountain will never come to Mohammad. You’ll have to aid Mohammad to go to the mountain. Come here.”

  I obey.

  “Pardon my familiarity.” Again he lays a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Necessity compels me to make you useful.”

  Again his massive body pushes against me, his arm around my neck, his strength denied only by a sprained ankle. With no choice, I lay my arm across his back to further support him. His size comes all from muscle, his strength from muscle and will. My emotions churn, and an image invades my mind. I see this stranger doing what others have done against my wishes, but I feel no anger.

  I want him to kiss me.

  We shuffle and limp to his horse. Catching the bridle on first attempt, he springs to his saddle, grimacing in the effort. “Now hand me my whip,” he commands. “It lies there at the fence.”

  I seek the instrument and find it, hand it up to him. Our eyes meet. Perhaps an electric current passes between us. Perhaps I imagine it.

  “Now make haste with your errand to Hayton.” He turns away from me. “And return to your home as fast as you can.” At the touch of his heel, the horse starts and rears. Then the stranger bounds away, away from me with the dog Pilot rushing in his traces.

  All three vanish. I am alone and my world is again silent. The bright moon stares at me serenely—and I believe a star or two winks.

  « Chapter 14 »

  The Master

  The incident on the road has happened and is gone, a thing of no moment, no romance, and no interest. Yet I have had my wish, the answer to the very purpose of my outing. The encounter with the stranger made a quarter hour’s change in a monotonous life.

  My help had been needed and claimed. I had given it. I was pleased to have done something. Something trivial and transitory, yes, but something active, an opposite in my all-too-passive existence.

  And the new face will be useful to me, a new picture in the gallery of my memory, unlike any hanging there. Masculine, strong, stern. And though his face was infused with judgment, it’s a kind of judgment new to me: fair judgment. Intelligent discrimination.

  I’m eager to draw that visage.

  I carry the face before me when I enter Hayton and slip the letter into the slot at the post office. As I retrace my steps homeward, the brow grows less severe and more heroic. The dark eyes become rich with understanding. The broad shoulders and trim waist are more dangerous to contemplate.

  When I come to the stile, I stop a minute and look around, listening for a horse on the lane. I wait for a rider in a cloak and his Gytrash-like Newfoundland dog.

  I see only wild vegetation to my left and the church ahead on my right. The willow rises up to meet the moonbeams in the coming night. The faintest waft of wind gently teases the tree’s hanging bare branches.

  I glance down in the direction of Thornfield Hall where there’s a light in a window. It reminds me I am now late, and I hurry on. I come back through the open gryphon gate—though I could swear I’d closed it earlier.

  I linger at the gate. I linger on the lawn. I pace back and forth on the pavement. I now linger at Thornfield’s door. I find I don’t want to go in.

  To pass over its threshold is to return to normalcy. To stagnation. I will cross the silent foyer and ascend the dark staircase. I’ll enter my lonely room and wash away the dust and sweat that evidence my little journey. I will spend a tranquil evening with Mrs. Fairfax, quashing entirely the excitement awakened deep within me.

  I will slip again into Thornfield’s placid existence, whose very privileges of security and ease I’ve become incapable of appreciating. The door’s glass shutters are closed, but I don’t need to see inside to know what awaits me.

  Both my eyes and my spirit are drawn from the gloomy house to the night sky above, a cobalt sea absolved from taint of cloud, the moon ascending in solemn march, seeming to look upward as she aspires to the fathomless depth and measureless distance of space.

  The trembling stars celebrate her course, and they make my heart tremble. Once again I sense the continuity and infinite relationship of all things. I can’t bear to lose this bliss.

  A little thing recalls me from the sublime. The grandfather clock in the hall strikes seven times. Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane. I turn from moon and stars, open the door, and go in.

  In the foyer, the high-hung bronze wall sconce is lit. Yet a brighter light issues from the parlor whose pocket door stands open. Within, a homely fire burns in the grate, revealing people near the mantel. There’s a cheerful mingling of voices, including Adele’s eager childish tone.

  The door closes.

  I run to Mrs. Fairfax’s office. There is a fire there too but no lamp and no Mrs. Fairfax. Alone on the rug before the fire lies a great black long-haired dog with a white blaze on its forehead. The very double of the Gytrash of the lane.

  It is so like the other that I step forward. “Pilot?”

  The thing gets up and comes to me and sniffs at me. I pet him, and he wags his great tail, but still he’s an eerie creature to be alone with. I ring the bell for a lamp, and I hope too for an account of this visitor.

  “What dog is this?” I ask Leah who answers my call.

  “He came with Master.”

  “With whom?”

  “With Master. Mr. Rochester. He is just arrived.”

  “Thank you, Leah.”

  I hurry for the staircase. This is terrible! I will stay in my room, and perhaps by tomorrow morning he’ll be gone again. I cannot live in the same house with that man. He is too…he is too much. I’m three quarters of the way up when the pocket doors below slide again into the wall.

  “Jane, there you are,” Mrs. Fairfax calls up to me. “Come down at once. Mr. Rochester is here. He wants you.”

  My Mr. Rochester

  Episode 1

  l.k. rigel

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