CHAPTER XXI

Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and
the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the
key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had strange
ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between
far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding
their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin)
whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may
be but the sympathies of Nature with man.

When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Bessie Leaven
say to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about a little child; and that
to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either to one’s self or one’s
kin. The saying might have worn out of my memory, had not a circumstance
immediately followed which served indelibly to fix it there. The next day
Bessie was sent for home to the deathbed of her little sister.

Of late I had often recalled this saying and this incident; for during the past
week scarcely a night had gone over my couch that had not brought with it a
dream of an infant, which I sometimes hushed in my arms, sometimes dandled on
my knee, sometimes watched playing with daisies on a lawn, or again, dabbling
its hands in running water. It was a wailing child this night, and a laughing
one the next: now it nestled close to me, and now it ran from me; but whatever
mood the apparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed not for seven
successive nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber.

I did not like this iteration of one idea—this strange recurrence of one image,
and I grew nervous as bedtime approached and the hour of the vision drew near.
It was from companionship with this baby-phantom I had been roused on that
moonlight night when I heard the cry; and it was on the afternoon of the day
following I was summoned downstairs by a message that some one wanted me in
Mrs. Fairfax’s room. On repairing thither, I found a man waiting for me, having
the appearance of a gentleman’s servant: he was dressed in deep mourning, and
the hat he held in his hand was surrounded with a crape band.

“I daresay you hardly remember me, Miss,” he said, rising as I entered; “but my
name is Leaven: I lived coachman with Mrs. Reed when you were at Gateshead,
eight or nine years since, and I live there still.”

“Oh, Robert! how do you do? I remember you very well: you used to give me a
ride sometimes on Miss Georgiana’s bay pony. And how is Bessie? You are married
to Bessie?”

“Yes, Miss: my wife is very hearty, thank you; she brought me another little
one about two months since—we have three now—and both mother and child are
thriving.”

“And are the family well at the house, Robert?”

“I am sorry I can’t give you better news of them, Miss: they are very badly at
present—in great trouble.”

“I hope no one is dead,” I said, glancing at his black dress. He too looked
down at the crape round his hat and replied—

“Mr. John died yesterday was a week, at his chambers in London.”

“Mr. John?”

“Yes.”

“And how does his mother bear it?”

“Why, you see, Miss Eyre, it is not a common mishap: his life has been very
wild: these last three years he gave himself up to strange ways, and his death
was shocking.”

“I heard from Bessie he was not doing well.”

“Doing well! He could not do worse: he ruined his health and his estate amongst
the worst men and the worst women. He got into debt and into jail: his mother
helped him out twice, but as soon as he was free he returned to his old
companions and habits. His head was not strong: the knaves he lived amongst
fooled him beyond anything I ever heard. He came down to Gateshead about three
weeks ago and wanted missis to give up all to him. Missis refused: her means
have long been much reduced by his extravagance; so he went back again, and the
next news was that he was dead. How he died, God knows!—they say he killed
himself.”

I was silent: the tidings were frightful. Robert Leaven resumed—

“Missis had been out of health herself for some time: she had got very stout,
but was not strong with it; and the loss of money and fear of poverty were
quite breaking her down. The information about Mr. John’s death and the manner
of it came too suddenly: it brought on a stroke. She was three days without
speaking; but last Tuesday she seemed rather better: she appeared as if she
wanted to say something, and kept making signs to my wife and mumbling. It was
only yesterday morning, however, that Bessie understood she was pronouncing
your name; and at last she made out the words, ‘Bring Jane—fetch Jane Eyre: I
want to speak to her.’ Bessie is not sure whether she is in her right mind, or
means anything by the words; but she told Miss Reed and Miss Georgiana, and
advised them to send for you. The young ladies put it off at first; but their
mother grew so restless, and said, ‘Jane, Jane,’ so many times, that at last
they consented. I left Gateshead yesterday: and if you can get ready, Miss, I
should like to take you back with me early to-morrow morning.”

“Yes, Robert, I shall be ready: it seems to me that I ought to go.”

“I think so too, Miss. Bessie said she was sure you would not refuse: but I
suppose you will have to ask leave before you can get off?”

“Yes; and I will do it now;” and having directed him to the servants’ hall, and
recommended him to the care of John’s wife, and the attentions of John himself,
I went in search of Mr. Rochester.

He was not in any of the lower rooms; he was not in the yard, the stables, or
the grounds. I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had seen him;—yes: she believed he was
playing billiards with Miss Ingram. To the billiard-room I hastened: the click
of balls and the hum of voices resounded thence; Mr. Rochester, Miss Ingram,
the two Misses Eshton, and their admirers, were all busied in the game. It
required some courage to disturb so interesting a party; my errand, however,
was one I could not defer, so I approached the master where he stood at Miss
Ingram’s side. She turned as I drew near, and looked at me haughtily: her eyes
seemed to demand, “What can the creeping creature want now?” and when I said,
in a low voice, “Mr. Rochester,” she made a movement as if tempted to order me
away. I remember her appearance at the moment—it was very graceful and very
striking: she wore a morning robe of sky-blue crape; a gauzy azure scarf was
twisted in her hair. She had been all animation with the game, and irritated
pride did not lower the expression of her haughty lineaments.

“Does that person want you?” she inquired of Mr. Rochester; and Mr. Rochester
turned to see who the “person” was. He made a curious grimace—one of his
strange and equivocal demonstrations—threw down his cue and followed me from
the room.

“Well, Jane?” he said, as he rested his back against the schoolroom door, which
he had shut.

“If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two.”

“What to do?—where to go?”

“To see a sick lady who has sent for me.”

“What sick lady?—where does she live?”

“At Gateshead; in ——shire.”

“-shire? That is a hundred miles off! Who may she be that sends for people to
see her that distance?”

“Her name is Reed, sir—Mrs. Reed.”

“Reed of Gateshead? There was a Reed of Gateshead, a magistrate.”

“It is his widow, sir.”

“And what have you to do with her? How do you know her?”

“Mr. Reed was my uncle—my mother’s brother.”

“The deuce he was! You never told me that before: you always said you had no
relations.”

“None that would own me, sir. Mr. Reed is dead, and his wife cast me off.”

“Why?”

“Because I was poor, and burdensome, and she disliked me.”

“But Reed left children?—you must have cousins? Sir George Lynn was talking of
a Reed of Gateshead yesterday, who, he said, was one of the veriest rascals on
town; and Ingram was mentioning a Georgiana Reed of the same place, who was
much admired for her beauty a season or two ago in London.”

“John Reed is dead, too, sir: he ruined himself and half-ruined his family, and
is supposed to have committed suicide. The news so shocked his mother that it
brought on an apoplectic attack.”

“And what good can you do her? Nonsense, Jane! I would never think of running a
hundred miles to see an old lady who will, perhaps, be dead before you reach
her: besides, you say she cast you off.”

“Yes, sir, but that is long ago; and when her circumstances were very
different: I could not be easy to neglect her wishes now.”

“How long will you stay?”

“As short a time as possible, sir.”

“Promise me only to stay a week—”

“I had better not pass my word: I might be obliged to break it.”

“At all events you will come back: you will not be induced under any
pretext to take up a permanent residence with her?”
will
“Oh, no! I shall certainly return if all be well.”

“And who goes with you? You don’t travel a hundred miles alone.”

“No, sir, she has sent her coachman.”

“A person to be trusted?”

“Yes, sir, he has lived ten years in the family.”

Mr. Rochester meditated. “When do you wish to go?”

“Early to-morrow morning, sir.”

“Well, you must have some money; you can’t travel without money, and I daresay
you have not much: I have given you no salary yet. How much have you in the
world, Jane?” he asked, smiling.

I drew out my purse; a meagre thing it was. “Five shillings, sir.” He took the
purse, poured the hoard into his palm, and chuckled over it as if its
scantiness amused him. Soon he produced his pocket-book: “Here,” said he,
offering me a note; it was fifty pounds, and he owed me but fifteen. I told him
I had no change.

“I don’t want change; you know that. Take your wages.”

I declined accepting more than was my due. He scowled at first; then, as if
recollecting something, he said—

“Right, right! Better not give you all now: you would, perhaps, stay away three
months if you had fifty pounds. There are ten; is it not plenty?”

“Yes, sir, but now you owe me five.”

“Come back for it, then; I am your banker for forty pounds.”

“Mr. Rochester, I may as well mention another matter of business to you while I
have the opportunity.”

“Matter of business? I am curious to hear it.”

“You have as good as informed me, sir, that you are going shortly to be
married?”

“Yes; what then?”

“In that case, sir, Adèle ought to go to school: I am sure you will perceive
the necessity of it.”

“To get her out of my bride’s way, who might otherwise walk over her rather too
emphatically? There’s sense in the suggestion; not a doubt of it. Adèle, as you
say, must go to school; and you, of course, must march straight to—the devil?”

“I hope not, sir; but I must seek another situation somewhere.”

“In course!” he exclaimed, with a twang of voice and a distortion of features
equally fantastic and ludicrous. He looked at me some minutes.

“And old Madam Reed, or the Misses, her daughters, will be solicited by you to
seek a place, I suppose?”

“No, sir; I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify me in
asking favours of them—but I shall advertise.”

“You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt!” he growled. “At your peril you
advertise! I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds.
Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I’ve a use for it.”

“And so have I, sir,” I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind me. “I
could not spare the money on any account.”

“Little niggard!” said he, “refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me five
pounds, Jane.”

“Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence.”

“Just let me look at the cash.”

“No, sir; you are not to be trusted.”

“Jane!”

“Sir?”

“Promise me one thing.”

“I’ll promise you anything, sir, that I think I am likely to perform.”

“Not to advertise: and to trust this quest of a situation to me. I’ll find you
one in time.”

“I shall be glad so to do, sir, if you, in your turn, will promise that I and
Adèle shall be both safe out of the house before your bride enters it.”

“Very well! very well! I’ll pledge my word on it. You go to-morrow, then?”

“Yes, sir; early.”

“Shall you come down to the drawing-room after dinner?”

“No, sir, I must prepare for the journey.”

“Then you and I must bid good-bye for a little while?”

“I suppose so, sir.”

“And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me; I’m not
quite up to it.”

“They say, Farewell, or any other form they prefer.”

“Then say it.”

“Farewell, Mr. Rochester, for the present.”

“What must I say?”

“The same, if you like, sir.”

“Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present; is that all?”

“Yes.”

“It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly. I should like
something else: a little addition to the rite. If one shook hands, for
instance; but no—that would not content me either. So you’ll do no more than
say Farewell, Jane?”

“It is enough, sir: as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in
many.”

“Very likely; but it is blank and cool—‘Farewell.’”

“How long is he going to stand with his back against that door?” I asked
myself; “I want to commence my packing.” The dinner-bell rang, and suddenly
away he bolted, without another syllable: I saw him no more during the day, and
was off before he had risen in the morning.

I reached the lodge at Gateshead about five o’clock in the afternoon of the
first of May: I stepped in there before going up to the hall. It was very clean
and neat: the ornamental windows were hung with little white curtains; the
floor was spotless; the grate and fire-irons were burnished bright, and the
fire burnt clear. Bessie sat on the hearth, nursing her last-born, and Robert
and his sister played quietly in a corner.

“Bless you!—I knew you would come!” exclaimed Mrs. Leaven, as I entered.

“Yes, Bessie,” said I, after I had kissed her; “and I trust I am not too late.
How is Mrs. Reed?—Alive still, I hope.”

“Yes, she is alive; and more sensible and collected than she was. The doctor
says she may linger a week or two yet; but he hardly thinks she will finally
recover.”

“Has she mentioned me lately?”

“She was talking of you only this morning, and wishing you would come, but she
is sleeping now, or was ten minutes ago, when I was up at the house. She
generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the afternoon, and wakes up about six
or seven. Will you rest yourself here an hour, Miss, and then I will go up with
you?”

Robert here entered, and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the cradle and went
to welcome him: afterwards she insisted on my taking off my bonnet and having
some tea; for she said I looked pale and tired. I was glad to accept her
hospitality; and I submitted to be relieved of my travelling garb just as
passively as I used to let her undress me when a child.

Old times crowded fast back on me as I watched her bustling about—setting out
the tea-tray with her best china, cutting bread and butter, toasting a
tea-cake, and, between whiles, giving little Robert or Jane an occasional tap
or push, just as she used to give me in former days. Bessie had retained her
quick temper as well as her light foot and good looks.

Tea ready, I was going to approach the table; but she desired me to sit still,
quite in her old peremptory tones. I must be served at the fireside, she said;
and she placed before me a little round stand with my cup and a plate of toast,
absolutely as she used to accommodate me with some privately purloined dainty
on a nursery chair: and I smiled and obeyed her as in bygone days.

She wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall, and what sort of a person
the mistress was; and when I told her there was only a master, whether he was a
nice gentleman, and if I liked him. I told her he was rather an ugly man, but
quite a gentleman; and that he treated me kindly, and I was content. Then I
went on to describe to her the gay company that had lately been staying at the
house; and to these details Bessie listened with interest: they were precisely
of the kind she relished.

In such conversation an hour was soon gone: Bessie restored to me my bonnet,
&c., and, accompanied by her, I quitted the lodge for the hall. It was also
accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine years ago, walked down the path I
was now ascending. On a dark, misty, raw morning in January, I had left a
hostile roof with a desperate and embittered heart—a sense of outlawry and
almost of reprobation—to seek the chilly harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so
far away and unexplored. The same hostile roof now again rose before me: my
prospects were doubtful yet; and I had yet an aching heart. I still felt as a
wanderer on the face of the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and
my own powers, and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my
wrongs, too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished.

“You shall go into the breakfast-room first,” said Bessie, as she preceded me
through the hall; “the young ladies will be there.”

In another moment I was within that apartment. There was every article of
furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was first introduced to Mr.
Brocklehurst: the very rug he had stood upon still covered the hearth. Glancing
at the bookcases, I thought I could distinguish the two volumes of Bewick’s
British Birds occupying their old place on the third shelf, and Gulliver’s
Travels and the Arabian Nights ranged just above. The inanimate objects were
not changed; but the living things had altered past recognition.

Two young ladies appeared before me; one very tall, almost as tall as Miss
Ingram—very thin too, with a sallow face and severe mien. There was something
ascetic in her look, which was augmented by the extreme plainness of a
straight-skirted, black, stuff dress, a starched linen collar, hair combed away
from the temples, and the nun-like ornament of a string of ebony beads and a
crucifix. This I felt sure was Eliza, though I could trace little resemblance
to her former self in that elongated and colourless visage.

The other was as certainly Georgiana: but not the Georgiana I remembered—the
slim and fairy-like girl of eleven. This was a full-blown, very plump damsel,
fair as waxwork, with handsome and regular features, languishing blue eyes, and
ringleted yellow hair. The hue of her dress was black too; but its fashion was
so different from her sister’s—so much more flowing and becoming—it looked as
stylish as the other’s looked puritanical.

In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother—and only one; the thin
and pallid elder daughter had her parent’s Cairngorm eye: the blooming and
luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and chin—perhaps a little
softened, but still imparting an indescribable hardness to the countenance
otherwise so voluptuous and buxom.

Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me, and both addressed me by the
name of “Miss Eyre.” Eliza’s greeting was delivered in a short, abrupt voice,
without a smile; and then she sat down again, fixed her eyes on the fire, and
seemed to forget me. Georgiana added to her “How d’ye do?” several commonplaces
about my journey, the weather, and so on, uttered in rather a drawling tone:
and accompanied by sundry side-glances that measured me from head to foot—now
traversing the folds of my drab merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain
trimming of my cottage bonnet. Young ladies have a remarkable way of letting
you know that they think you a “quiz” without actually saying the words. A
certain superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone,
express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing them by any
positive rudeness in word or deed.

A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power over me
it once possessed: as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised to find how
easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi-sarcastic
attentions of the other—Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana ruffle me. The
fact was, I had other things to think about; within the last few months
feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than any they could
raise—pains and pleasures so much more acute and exquisite had been excited
than any it was in their power to inflict or bestow—that their airs gave me no
concern either for good or bad.

“How is Mrs. Reed?” I asked soon, looking calmly at Georgiana, who thought fit
to bridle at the direct address, as if it were an unexpected liberty.

“Mrs. Reed? Ah! mama, you mean; she is extremely poorly: I doubt if you can see
her to-night.”

“If,” said I, “you would just step upstairs and tell her I am come, I should be
much obliged to you.”

Georgiana almost started, and she opened her blue eyes wild and wide. “I know
she had a particular wish to see me,” I added, “and I would not defer attending
to her desire longer than is absolutely necessary.”

“Mama dislikes being disturbed in an evening,” remarked Eliza. I soon rose,
quietly took off my bonnet and gloves, uninvited, and said I would just step
out to Bessie—who was, I dared say, in the kitchen—and ask her to ascertain
whether Mrs. Reed was disposed to receive me or not to-night. I went, and
having found Bessie and despatched her on my errand, I proceeded to take
further measures. It had heretofore been my habit always to shrink from
arrogance: received as I had been to-day, I should, a year ago, have resolved
to quit Gateshead the very next morning; now, it was disclosed to me all at
once that that would be a foolish plan. I had taken a journey of a hundred
miles to see my aunt, and I must stay with her till she was better—or dead: as
to her daughters’ pride or folly, I must put it on one side, make myself
independent of it. So I addressed the housekeeper; asked her to show me a room,
told her I should probably be a visitor here for a week or two, had my trunk
conveyed to my chamber, and followed it thither myself: I met Bessie on the
landing.

“Missis is awake,” said she; “I have told her you are here: come and let us see
if she will know you.”

I did not need to be guided to the well-known room, to which I had so often
been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days. I hastened before
Bessie; I softly opened the door: a shaded light stood on the table, for it was
now getting dark. There was the great four-post bed with amber hangings as of
old; there the toilet-table, the armchair, and the footstool, at which I had a
hundred times been sentenced to kneel, to ask pardon for offences by me
uncommitted. I looked into a certain corner near, half-expecting to see the
slim outline of a once dreaded switch which used to lurk there, waiting to leap
out imp-like and lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck. I approached the
bed; I opened the curtains and leant over the high-piled pillows.

Well did I remember Mrs. Reed’s face, and I eagerly sought the familiar image.
It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the
promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in bitterness and hate,
and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her
great sufferings, and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries—to
be reconciled and clasp hands in amity.

The well-known face was there: stern, relentless as ever—there was that
peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised, imperious,
despotic eyebrow. How often had it lowered on me menace and hate! and how the
recollection of childhood’s terrors and sorrows revived as I traced its harsh
line now! And yet I stooped down and kissed her: she looked at me.

“Is this Jane Eyre?” she said.

“Yes, Aunt Reed. How are you, dear aunt?”

I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again: I thought it no sin to
forget and break that vow now. My fingers had fastened on her hand which lay
outside the sheet: had she pressed mine kindly, I should at that moment have
experienced true pleasure. But unimpressionable natures are not so soon
softened, nor are natural antipathies so readily eradicated. Mrs. Reed took her
hand away, and, turning her face rather from me, she remarked that the night
was warm. Again she regarded me so icily, I felt at once that her opinion of
me—her feeling towards me—was unchanged and unchangeable. I knew by her stony
eye—opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to tears—that she was resolved to
consider me bad to the last; because to believe me good would give her no
generous pleasure: only a sense of mortification.

I felt pain, and then I felt ire; and then I felt a determination to subdue
her—to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will. My tears had
risen, just as in childhood: I ordered them back to their source. I brought a
chair to the bed-head: I sat down and leaned over the pillow.

“You sent for me,” I said, “and I am here; and it is my intention to stay till
I see how you get on.”

“Oh, of course! You have seen my daughters?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you may tell them I wish you to stay till I can talk some things over
with you I have on my mind: to-night it is too late, and I have a difficulty in
recalling them. But there was something I wished to say—let me see—”

The wandering look and changed utterance told what wreck had taken place in her
once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly, she drew the bedclothes round her; my
elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt, fixed it down: she was at once
irritated.

“Sit up!” said she; “don’t annoy me with holding the clothes fast. Are you Jane
Eyre?”

“I am Jane Eyre.”

“I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe. Such a
burden to be left on my hands—and so much annoyance as she caused me, daily and
hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden starts of temper,
and her continual, unnatural watchings of one’s movements! I declare she talked
to me once like something mad, or like a fiend—no child ever spoke or looked as
she did; I was glad to get her away from the house. What did they do with her
at Lowood? The fever broke out there, and many of the pupils died. She,
however, did not die: but I said she did—I wish she had died!”

“A strange wish, Mrs. Reed; why do you hate her so?”

“I had a dislike to her mother always; for she was my husband’s only sister,
and a great favourite with him: he opposed the family’s disowning her when she
made her low marriage; and when news came of her death, he wept like a
simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I entreated him rather to put it
out to nurse and pay for its maintenance. I hated it the first time I set my
eyes on it—a sickly, whining, pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all
night long—not screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering and
moaning. Reed pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it as if it had
been his own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed his own at that age. He would
try to make my children friendly to the little beggar: the darlings could not
bear it, and he was angry with them when they showed their dislike. In his last
illness, he had it brought continually to his bedside; and but an hour before
he died, he bound me by vow to keep the creature. I would as soon have been
charged with a pauper brat out of a workhouse: but he was weak, naturally weak.
John does not at all resemble his father, and I am glad of it: John is like me
and like my brothers—he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish he would cease tormenting
me with letters for money! I have no more money to give him: we are getting
poor. I must send away half the servants and shut up part of the house; or let
it off. I can never submit to do that—yet how are we to get on? Two-thirds of
my income goes in paying the interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully,
and always loses—poor boy! He is beset by sharpers: John is sunk and
degraded—his look is frightful—I feel ashamed for him when I see him.”

She was getting much excited. “I think I had better leave her now,” said I to
Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed.

“Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often talks in this way towards night—in the
morning she is calmer.”

I rose. “Stop!” exclaimed Mrs. Reed, “there is another thing I wished to say.
He threatens me—he continually threatens me with his own death, or mine: and I
dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great wound in his throat, or
with a swollen and blackened face. I am come to a strange pass: I have heavy
troubles. What is to be done? How is the money to be had?”

Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught: she
succeeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed, and sank
into a dozing state. I then left her.

More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with her. She
continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor forbade everything
which could painfully excite her. Meantime, I got on as well as I could with
Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold, indeed, at first. Eliza would sit
half the day sewing, reading, or writing, and scarcely utter a word either to
me or her sister. Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the
hour, and take no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for
occupation or amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with me, and they
served me for both.

Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take a
seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy
vignettes, representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in
the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse of sea between two
rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and
water-flags, and a naiad’s head, crowned with lotus-flowers, rising out of
them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow’s nest, under a wreath of
hawthorn-bloom.

One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was to be, I did
not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad point, and worked
away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and prominent forehead and a
square lower outline of visage: that contour gave me pleasure; my fingers
proceeded actively to fill it with features. Strongly-marked horizontal
eyebrows must be traced under that brow; then followed, naturally, a
well-defined nose, with a straight ridge and full nostrils; then a
flexible-looking mouth, by no means narrow; then a firm chin, with a decided
cleft down the middle of it: of course, some black whiskers were wanted, and
some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and waved above the forehead. Now for
the eyes: I had left them to the last, because they required the most careful
working. I drew them large; I shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and
sombre; the irids lustrous and large. “Good! but not quite the thing,” I
thought, as I surveyed the effect: “they want more force and spirit;” and I
wrought the shades blacker, that the lights might flash more brilliantly—a
happy touch or two secured success. There, I had a friend’s face under my gaze;
and what did it signify that those young ladies turned their backs on me? I
looked at it; I smiled at the speaking likeness: I was absorbed and content.

“Is that a portrait of some one you know?” asked Eliza, who had approached me
unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy head, and hurried it beneath
the other sheets. Of course, I lied: it was, in fact, a very faithful
representation of Mr. Rochester. But what was that to her, or to any one but
myself? Georgiana also advanced to look. The other drawings pleased her much,
but she called that “an ugly man.” They both seemed surprised at my skill. I
offered to sketch their portraits; and each, in turn, sat for a pencil outline.
Then Georgiana produced her album. I promised to contribute a water-colour
drawing: this put her at once into good humour. She proposed a walk in the
grounds. Before we had been out two hours, we were deep in a confidential
conversation: she had favoured me with a description of the brilliant winter
she had spent in London two seasons ago—of the admiration she had there
excited—the attention she had received; and I even got hints of the titled
conquest she had made. In the course of the afternoon and evening these hints
were enlarged on: various soft conversations were reported, and sentimental
scenes represented; and, in short, a volume of a novel of fashionable life was
that day improvised by her for my benefit. The communications were renewed from
day to day: they always ran on the same theme—herself, her loves, and woes. It
was strange she never once adverted either to her mother’s illness, or her
brother’s death, or the present gloomy state of the family prospects. Her mind
seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety, and aspirations after
dissipations to come. She passed about five minutes each day in her mother’s
sick-room, and no more.

Eliza still spoke little: she had evidently no time to talk. I never saw a
busier person than she seemed to be; yet it was difficult to say what she did:
or rather, to discover any result of her diligence. She had an alarm to call
her up early. I know not how she occupied herself before breakfast, but after
that meal she divided her time into regular portions, and each hour had its
allotted task. Three times a day she studied a little book, which I found, on
inspection, was a Common Prayer Book. I asked her once what was the great
attraction of that volume, and she said, “the Rubric.” Three hours she gave to
stitching, with gold thread, the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large
enough for a carpet. In answer to my inquiries after the use of this article,
she informed me it was a covering for the altar of a new church lately erected
near Gateshead. Two hours she devoted to her diary; two to working by herself
in the kitchen-garden; and one to the regulation of her accounts. She seemed to
want no company; no conversation. I believe she was happy in her way: this
routine sufficed for her; and nothing annoyed her so much as the occurrence of
any incident which forced her to vary its clockwork regularity.

She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than usual,
that John’s conduct, and the threatened ruin of the family, had been a source
of profound affliction to her: but she had now, she said, settled her mind, and
formed her resolution. Her own fortune she had taken care to secure; and when
her mother died—and it was wholly improbable, she tranquilly remarked, that she
should either recover or linger long—she would execute a long-cherished
project: seek a retirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured
from disturbance, and place safe barriers between herself and a frivolous
world. I asked if Georgiana would accompany her.

“Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common: they never had had.
She would not be burdened with her society for any consideration. Georgiana
should take her own course; and she, Eliza, would take hers.”

Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her time in
lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the house, and wishing over
and over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an invitation up to town.
“It would be so much better,” she said, “if she could only get out of the way
for a month or two, till all was over.” I did not ask what she meant by “all
being over,” but I suppose she referred to the expected decease of her mother
and the gloomy sequel of funeral rites. Eliza generally took no more notice of
her sister’s indolence and complaints than if no such murmuring, lounging
object had been before her. One day, however, as she put away her account-book
and unfolded her embroidery, she suddenly took her up thus—

“Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never allowed
to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make no use of life.
Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you
seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person’s strength: if no one
can be found willing to burden her or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy,
useless thing, you cry out that you are ill-treated, neglected, miserable.
Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of continual change and
excitement, or else the world is a dungeon: you must be admired, you must be
courted, you must be flattered—you must have music, dancing, and society—or you
languish, you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make
you independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day;
share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no stray
unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes—include all; do each
piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid regularity. The day will
close almost before you are aware it has begun; and you are indebted to no one
for helping you to get rid of one vacant moment: you have had to seek no one’s
company, conversation, sympathy, forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an
independent being ought to do. Take this advice: the first and last I shall
offer you; then you will not want me or any one else, happen what may. Neglect
it—go on as heretofore, craving, whining, and idling—and suffer the results of
your idiocy, however bad and insufferable they may be. I tell you this plainly;
and listen: for though I shall no more repeat what I am now about to say, I
shall steadily act on it. After my mother’s death, I wash my hands of you: from
the day her coffin is carried to the vault in Gateshead Church, you and I will
be as separate as if we had never known each other. You need not think that
because we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten
me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this—if the whole human
race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth,
I would leave you in the old world, and betake myself to the new.”

She closed her lips.

“You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that tirade,”
answered Georgiana. “Everybody knows you are the most selfish, heartless
creature in existence: and I know your spiteful hatred towards me: I
have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played me about Lord Edwin
Vere: you could not bear me to be raised above you, to have a title, to be
received into circles where you dare not show your face, and so you acted the
spy and informer, and ruined my prospects for ever.” Georgiana took out her
handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour afterwards; Eliza sat cold,
impassable, and assiduously industrious.
I
True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here were two
natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other despicably savourless
for the want of it. Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed; but
judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human
deglutition.

It was a wet and windy afternoon: Georgiana had fallen asleep on the sofa over
the perusal of a novel; Eliza was gone to attend a saint’s-day service at the
new church—for in matters of religion she was a rigid formalist: no weather
ever prevented the punctual discharge of what she considered her devotional
duties; fair or foul, she went to church thrice every Sunday, and as often on
week-days as there were prayers.

I bethought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped, who lay
there almost unheeded: the very servants paid her but a remittent attention:
the hired nurse, being little looked after, would slip out of the room whenever
she could. Bessie was faithful; but she had her own family to mind, and could
only come occasionally to the hall. I found the sick-room unwatched, as I had
expected: no nurse was there; the patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic;
her livid face sunk in the pillows: the fire was dying in the grate. I renewed
the fuel, re-arranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile on her who could not now
gaze on me, and then I moved away to the window.

The rain beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously: “One
lies there,” I thought, “who will soon be beyond the war of earthly elements.
Whither will that spirit—now struggling to quit its material tenement—flit when
at length released?”

In pondering the great mystery, I thought of Helen Burns, recalled her dying
words—her faith—her doctrine of the equality of disembodied souls. I was still
listening in thought to her well-remembered tones—still picturing her pale and
spiritual aspect, her wasted face and sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid
deathbed, and whispered her longing to be restored to her divine Father’s
bosom—when a feeble voice murmured from the couch behind: “Who is that?”

I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for days: was she reviving? I went up to her.

“It is I, Aunt Reed.”

“Who—I?” was her answer. “Who are you?” looking at me with surprise and a sort
of alarm, but still not wildly. “You are quite a stranger to me—where is
Bessie?”

“She is at the lodge, aunt.”

“Aunt,” she repeated. “Who calls me aunt? You are not one of the Gibsons; and
yet I know you—that face, and the eyes and forehead, are quiet familiar to me:
you are like—why, you are like Jane Eyre!”

I said nothing: I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring my
identity.

“Yet,” said she, “I am afraid it is a mistake: my thoughts deceive me. I wished
to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none exists: besides, in eight
years she must be so changed.” I now gently assured her that I was the person
she supposed and desired me to be: and seeing that I was understood, and that
her senses were quite collected, I explained how Bessie had sent her husband to
fetch me from Thornfield.

“I am very ill, I know,” she said ere long. “I was trying to turn myself a few
minutes since, and find I cannot move a limb. It is as well I should ease my
mind before I die: what we think little of in health, burdens us at such an
hour as the present is to me. Is the nurse here? or is there no one in the room
but you?”

I assured her we were alone.

“Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was in breaking
the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as my own child; the
other—” she stopped. “After all, it is of no great importance, perhaps,” she
murmured to herself: “and then I may get better; and to humble myself so to her
is painful.”

She made an effort to alter her position, but failed: her face changed; she
seemed to experience some inward sensation—the precursor, perhaps, of the last
pang.

“Well, I must get it over. Eternity is before me: I had better tell her.—Go to
my dressing-case, open it, and take out a letter you will see there.”

I obeyed her directions. “Read the letter,” she said.

It was short, and thus conceived:—

“MADAM,—
“Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my niece, Jane Eyre, and
to tell me how she is? It is my intention to write shortly and desire her to
come to me at Madeira. Providence has blessed my endeavours to secure a
competency; and as I am unmarried and childless, I wish to adopt her during my
life, and bequeath her at my death whatever I may have to leave.
ADAM
I am, Madam, &c., &c.,
“JOHN EYRE, Madeira.”
OHNYRE
It was dated three years back.

“Why did I never hear of this?” I asked.

“Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand in
lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct to me, Jane—the fury
with which you once turned on me; the tone in which you declared you abhorred
me the worst of anybody in the world; the unchildlike look and voice with which
you affirmed that the very thought of me made you sick, and asserted that I had
treated you with miserable cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when
you thus started up and poured out the venom of your mind: I felt fear as if an
animal that I had struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes and
cursed me in a man’s voice.—Bring me some water! Oh, make haste!”

“Dear Mrs. Reed,” said I, as I offered her the draught she required, “think no
more of all this, let it pass away from your mind. Forgive me for my passionate
language: I was a child then; eight, nine years have passed since that day.”

She heeded nothing of what I said; but when she had tasted the water and drawn
breath, she went on thus—

“I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for you to be adopted
by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease and comfort, was what I could not
endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his disappointment, but Jane
Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at Lowood. Now act as you please:
write and contradict my assertion—expose my falsehood as soon as you like. You
were born, I think, to be my torment: my last hour is racked by the
recollection of a deed which, but for you, I should never have been tempted to
commit.”

“If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and to regard me
with kindness and forgiveness——”

“You have a very bad disposition,” said she, “and one to this day I feel it
impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be patient and quiescent
under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and violence, I can
never comprehend.”

“My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but not
vindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to love you
if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be reconciled to you now:
kiss me, aunt.”

I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She said I oppressed
her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded water. As I laid her down—for I
raised her and supported her on my arm while she drank—I covered her ice-cold
and clammy hand with mine: the feeble fingers shrank from my touch—the glazing
eyes shunned my gaze.

“Love me, then, or hate me, as you will,” I said at last, “you have my full and
free forgiveness: ask now for God’s, and be at peace.”

Poor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the effort to change
her habitual frame of mind: living, she had ever hated me—dying, she must hate
me still.

The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed. I yet lingered half-an-hour longer,
hoping to see some sign of amity: but she gave none. She was fast relapsing
into stupor; nor did her mind again rally: at twelve o’clock that night she
died. I was not present to close her eyes, nor were either of her daughters.
They came to tell us the next morning that all was over. She was by that time
laid out. Eliza and I went to look at her: Georgiana, who had burst out into
loud weeping, said she dared not go. There was stretched Sarah Reed’s once
robust and active frame, rigid and still: her eye of flint was covered with its
cold lid; her brow and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable
soul. A strange and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with
gloom and pain: nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or hopeful, or
subduing did it inspire; only a grating anguish for her woes—not
my loss—and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such
a form.
hermy
Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence of some minutes she observed—

“With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age: her life was
shortened by trouble.” And then a spasm constricted her mouth for an instant:
as it passed away she turned and left the room, and so did I. Neither of us had
dropt a tear.

CHAPTER XXII

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.