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
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 Adele 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 Adele 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
Adele, 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 Adele was 'prete a 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.
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CHAPTER XXIII
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A SPLENDID Midsummer shone over England: skies so pure, suns so
radiant as were then seen in long succession, seldom favour even
singly, our wave-girt land. It was as if a band of Italian days had
come from the South, like a flock of glorious passenger birds, and
lighted to rest them on the cliffs of Albion. The hay was all got
in; the fields round Thornfield were green and shorn; the roads
white and baked; the trees were in their dark prime; hedge and wood,
full-leaved and deeply tinted, contrasted well with the sunny hue of
the cleared meadows between.
On Midsummer-eve, Adele, weary with gathering wild strawberries
in Hay Lane half the day, had gone to bed with the sun. I watched
her drop asleep, and when I left her, I sought the garden.
It was now the sweetest hour of the twenty-four:- 'Day its fervid
fires had wasted,' and dew fell cool on panting plain and scorched
summit. Where the sun had gone down in simple state- pure of the
pomp of clouds- spread a solemn purple, burning with the light of
red jewel and furnace flame at one point, on one hill-peak, and
extending high and wide, soft and still softer, over half heaven.
The east had its own charm of fine deep blue, and its own modest
gem, a rising and solitary star: soon it would boast the moon; but she
was yet beneath the horizon.
I walked a while on the pavement; but a subtle, well-known scent-
that of a cigar- stole from some window; I saw the library casement
open a hand-breadth; I knew I might be watched thence; so I went apart
into the orchard. No nook in the grounds more sheltered and more
Eden-like; it was full of trees, it bloomed with flowers: a very
high wall shut it out from the court, on one side; on the other, a
beech avenue screened it from the lawn. At the bottom was a sunk
fence; its sole separation from lonely fields: a winding walk,
bordered with laurels and terminating in a giant horse-chestnut,
circled at the base by a seat, led down to the fence. Here one could
wander unseen. While such honey-dew fell, such silence reigned, such
gloaming gathered, I felt as if I could haunt such shade for ever; but
in threading the flower and fruit parterres at the upper part of the
enclosure, enticed there by the light the now rising moon cast on this
