Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
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.
CHAPTER XXIII
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, Adèle, 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 or 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
handbreadth; 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 more open quarter, my step
is stayed—not by sound, not by sight, but once more by a warning
fragrance.
Sweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine, pink, and rose have long been
yielding their evening sacrifice of incense: this new scent is neither
of shrub nor flower; it is—I know it well—it is Mr. Rochester’s cigar.
I look round and I listen. I see trees laden with ripening fruit. I
hear a nightingale warbling in a wood half a mile off; no moving form
is visible, no coming step audible; but that perfume increases: I must
flee. I make for the wicket leading to the shrubbery, and I see Mr.
Rochester entering. I step aside into the ivy recess; he will not stay
long: he will soon return whence he came, and if I sit still he will
never see me.
But no—eventide is as pleasant to him as to me, and this antique garden
as attractive; and he strolls on, now lifting the gooseberry-tree
branches to look at the fruit, large as plums, with which they are
laden; now taking a ripe cherry from the wall; now stooping towards a
knot of flowers, either to inhale their fragrance or to admire the
dew-beads on their petals. A great moth goes humming by me; it alights
on a plant at Mr. Rochester’s foot: he sees it, and bends to examine
it.
“Now, he has his back towards me,” thought I, “and he is occupied too;
perhaps, if I walk softly, I can slip away unnoticed.”
I trode on an edging of turf that the crackle of the pebbly gravel
might not betray me: he was standing among the beds at a yard or two
distant from where I had to pass; the moth apparently engaged him. “I
shall get by very well,” I meditated. As I crossed his shadow, thrown
long over the garden by the moon, not yet risen high, he said quietly,
without turning—
“Jane, come and look at this fellow.”
I had made no noise: he had not eyes behind—could his shadow feel? I
started at first, and then I approached him.
“Look at his wings,” said he, “he reminds me rather of a West Indian
insect; one does not often see so large and gay a night-rover in
England; there! he is flown.”
The moth roamed away. I was sheepishly retreating also; but Mr.
Rochester followed me, and when we reached the wicket, he said—
“Turn back: on so lovely a night it is a shame to sit in the house; and
surely no one can wish to go to bed while sunset is thus at meeting
with moonrise.”
It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt
enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing
an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile
word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful
embarrassment. I did not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr.
Rochester in the shadowy orchard; but I could not find a reason to
allege for leaving him. I followed with lagging step, and thoughts
busily bent on discovering a means of extrication; but he himself
looked so composed and so grave also, I became ashamed of feeling any
confusion: the evil—if evil existent or prospective there was—seemed to
lie with me only; his mind was unconscious and quiet.
“Jane,” he recommenced, as we entered the laurel walk, and slowly
strayed down in the direction of the sunk fence and the horse-chestnut,
“Thornfield is a pleasant place in summer, is it not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You must have become in some degree attached to the house,—you, who
have an eye for natural beauties, and a good deal of the organ of
Adhesiveness?”
“I am attached to it, indeed.”
“And though I don’t comprehend how it is, I perceive you have acquired
a degree of regard for that foolish little child Adèle, too; and even
for simple dame Fairfax?”
“Yes, sir; in different ways, I have an affection for both.”
“And would be sorry to part with them?”
“Yes.”
“Pity!” he said, and sighed and paused. “It is always the way of events
in this life,” he continued presently: “no sooner have you got settled
in a pleasant resting-place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and
move on, for the hour of repose is expired.”
“Must I move on, sir?” I asked. “Must I leave Thornfield?”
“I believe you must, Jane. I am sorry, Janet, but I believe indeed you
must.”
This was a blow: but I did not let it prostrate me.
“Well, sir, I shall be ready when the order to march comes.”
“It is come now—I must give it to-night.”
“Then you _are_ going to be married, sir?”
“Ex-act-ly—pre-cise-ly: with your usual acuteness, you have hit the
nail straight on the head.”
“Soon, sir?”
“Very soon, my—that is, Miss Eyre: and you’ll remember, Jane, the first
time I, or Rumour, plainly intimated to you that it was my intention to
put my old bachelor’s neck into the sacred noose, to enter into the
holy estate of matrimony—to take Miss Ingram to my bosom, in short
(she’s an extensive armful: but that’s not to the point—one can’t have
too much of such a very excellent thing as my beautiful Blanche): well,
as I was saying—listen to me, Jane! You’re not turning your head to
look after more moths, are you? That was only a lady-clock, child,
‘flying away home.’ I wish to remind you that it was you who first said
to me, with that discretion I respect in you—with that foresight,
prudence, and humility which befit your responsible and dependent
position—that in case I married Miss Ingram, both you and little Adèle
had better trot forthwith. I pass over the sort of slur conveyed in
this suggestion on the character of my beloved; indeed, when you are
far away, Janet, I’ll try to forget it: I shall notice only its wisdom;
which is such that I have made it my law of action. Adèle must go to
school; and you, Miss Eyre, must get a new situation.”
“Yes, sir, I will advertise immediately: and meantime, I suppose—” I
was going to say, “I suppose I may stay here, till I find another
shelter to betake myself to:” but I stopped, feeling it would not do to
risk a long sentence, for my voice was not quite under command.
“In about a month I hope to be a bridegroom,” continued Mr. Rochester;