Chapter 22
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Mr. Rochester had give one week’s leave of absence: yet a month elapsed before I quitted Gateshead. I wished to leave immediately after the funeral, but Geiareated me to stay till she could get off to London, whither she was now at last invited by her uncle, Mr. Gibson, who had e down to direct his sister’s interment ale the family affairs. Geiana said she dreaded bei aloh Eliza; from her she got her sympathy in her deje, 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 pag her dresses. It is true, that while I worked, she would idle; and I thought to myself, “If you and I were destio live always together, cousin, we would eters on a different footing. I should not settle tamely down into being the forbearing party; I should assign you your share of labour, and pel you to aplish it, or else it should be left undone: I should insist, also, on your keeping some of those drawling, half-insincere plaibbr>..</abbr>nts hushed in your ow. It is only because our e happens to be very transitory, and es at a peculiarly mournful season, that I sent thus to re so patient and pliant on my part.”At last I saw Geiana 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 unication with any one. She wished me to look after the house, to see callers, and answer notes of dolence.
One m she told me I was at liberty. “And,” she added, “I am obliged to you for your valuable services and discreet duct! There is some differeween living with su one as you and with Geiana: you perform your own part in life and burden no oo-morrow,” she tinued, “I set out for the ti. I shall take up my abode in a religious house near Lisle—a nunnery you would call it; there I shall be quiet and ued. I shall devote myself for a time to the examination of the Roman Catholias, and to a careful study of the ws of their system: if I find it to be, as I half suspect it is, the o calculated to ehe doing of all things detly and in order, I shall embrace the tes of Rome and probably take the veil.”
I her expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to dissuade her from it. “The vocation will fit you to a hair,” I thought: “muay it do you!”
When we parted, she said: “Good-bye, cousin Jane Eyre; I wish you well: you have some sense.”
I theurned: “You are not without sense, cousin Eliza; but what you have, I suppose, in another year will be walled up alive in a French vent. 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 Geiana 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 vent 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 experiehe sensation. I had known what it was to e back to Gateshead when a child after a long walk, to be scolded for looking cold loomy; and later, what it was to e back from church to Lowood, to long for a plenteous meal and a good fire, and to be uo get either. her of these returnings was very pleasant or desirable: no mag drew me to a given point, increasing in its strength of attra 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 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 Geiana; I beheld ohe osure of a ball-room, the other the inmate of a vent 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 aurn: laid down on my traveller’s bed, I left reminisce 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 ierim of my absehe party at the hall was dispersed; Mr. Rochester had left for London three weeks ago, but he was then expected to return in a fht. Mrs. Fairfax surmised that he was goo make arras for his wedding, as he had talked of purchasing a new carriage: she said the idea of his marrying Miss Ingram still seemed strao 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 ent. “I don’t doubt it.”
The question followed, “Where was I to go?” I dreamt of Miss Ingram all the night: in a vivid m dream I saw her closing the gates of Thornfield against me and pointi 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 iler’s care, did I slip away from the Gee 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 aled, 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 s 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 oo ask myself what that joy meant: and to remind reason that it was not to my home I was going, or to a perma resting-place, or to a place where fond friends looked out for me and waited my arrival. “Mrs. Fairfax will smile you a calm wele, 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 ahan they, and that he is not thinking of you.”
But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperiehese affirmed that it<mark>?</mark> leasure enough to have the privilege of again looking on Mr. Rochester, whether he looked on me or not; and they added—“Hasten! hasteh 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-bony—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, aurning 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 stoeps; 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 stir: I need not make an absolute fool of myself. I know another way to the house. It does not signify if I kwenty ways; for he has seen me.
“Hillo!” he cries; as up his book and his pencil. “There you are! e on, if you please.”
I suppose I do e on; though in what fashion I know not; being scarcely isant of my movements, and solicitous only to appear calm; and, above all, to trol the w muscles of my face— which I feel rebel ily against my will, and struggle to express what I had resolved to ceal. But I have a veil—it is down: I may make shift yet to behave with det posure.
“And this is Jane Eyre? Are you ing from Millcote, and on foot? Yes—just one of your tricks: not to send for a carriage, and e clattering over street and road like a ortal, but to steal into the viage of your home along with twilight, just as if you were a dream or a shade. What the deuce have you doh yourself this last month?”
“I have been with my aunt, sir, who is dead.”
“A true Janian reply! Good angels be my guard! She es 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 fetting me quite, I’ll be sworn!”
I khere would be pleasure iing 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 unig 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 fot 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 sed-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—’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 o such you are handsome enough; or rather your sternness has a power beyoy.”
Mr. Rochester had sometimes rea<s>..</s>d my unspoken thoughts with an a to me inprehensible: in the present instance he took no notiy 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 on purposes: it was the real sunshine of feeling—he shed it over me now.
“Pass, Ja,” said he, making room for me to cross the stile: “go up home, and stay your weary little wanderi at a friend’s threshold.”
All I had now to do was to obey him in sileno need for me to colloquise further. I got over the stile without a word, a 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 yreat 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 fort.
I that evening shut my eyes resolutely against the future: I stopped my cars against the voice that kept warning me of near separation and ing 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 led close up to me, and a sense of mutual affe 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 rete e croquer sa petite maman Anglaise”—I half veo hope that he would, even after his marriage, keep us together somewhere uhe shelter of his prote, and not quite exiled from the sunshine of his presence.
A fht 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 su event. Almost every day I asked Mrs. Fairfax if she had yet heard anything decided: her answer was always in the ive. Once she said she had actually put the question to Mr. Rochester as to when he was going t 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.
Ohing 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 ty; but what was that distao an ardent lover? To so practised and iigable a horseman as Mr. Rochester, it would be but a m’s ride. I began to cherish hopes I had nht to ceive: that the match was broken off; that rumour had been mistaken; that one or both parties had ged 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 iable deje, he became even gay. Never had he called me more frequently to his presenever been kio me when there—and, alas! never had I loved him so well.
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