A Breath of Eyre (20 page)

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Authors: Eve Marie Mont

BOOK: A Breath of Eyre
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“How can he keep her up here?” I said. “Surely she needs help. She needs the care of doctors and specialists.”
“Mr. Rochester cannot risk it. After all, she is his wife. That is why he keeps her here. The master thinks to marry you. He would not be able to if people knew the truth.” I fell mute. Mr. Rochester had imprisoned his wife in the attic because she was depressed? No wonder she’d gone mad! What kind of man could do this to his wife? And what kind of woman would agree to marry this man, knowing the truth?
I lifted the candle from the bed stand and approached the corner cautiously, like one approaching a wild animal, half believing it might attack, but suspecting the creature was more afraid of me than I was of it. Beneath the glow of the flickering candlelight, I saw a face that stopped me cold. The woman was not yet middle-aged, covered with grime, her long dark hair matted into rope-like pieces and tangled webs. Yet even beneath the dirt and mass of hair, I recognized the face.
She seemed to recognize me as well and inched forward. She was wearing a white dress, which though dirty and torn, looked like a wedding dress. I knew her face like I knew my own. It was my mother’s face. My two worlds converged in a moment, and I nearly stopped breathing.
“Emma?” the woman said.
My mouth fell. “How—?” I couldn’t go on. Finally, I said, “Grace, why did she call me that?”
“Emma was the name she was going to christen the child, had it lived.”
I knelt down beside the woman and reached out my hand. At first she stared at me warily like a dog who’s been beaten too many times and doesn’t trust the hand that feeds it. Grace watched us fearfully, then stood by the fire in awe as the woman took my hand. We stared into each other’s eyes. She clutched my hand to her chest, and the two of us fell to the floor, clutching each other, sobbing. When we finally pulled away, she searched my face with her hands, fixing on my necklace. She gently lifted the dragonfly from its perch on my neck and leaned down to kiss it.
I was not Jane, after all. I was Emma Townsend. And this was not Bertha. This was my mother. Like Aunt Darlene had said, the spirits were giving me a chance to speak with my mother through the dream. My mother had something important to tell me.
“What can I do?” I said to Grace.
“You can help her escape,” Grace said.
“But how?”
“You and she shall leave this place under cover of darkness. Before the wedding is to take place. It must be soon.”
“What about Rochester?” I said. Yet in that moment, I knew I would never marry Rochester. I did not love Rochester. Perhaps Jane had loved him and could forgive him for this, but I could not.
I did worry what would happen to Jane if I left, if I changed the ending of her story. But it didn’t matter. Like Mr. Sarkissian had said in physics class, we cannot change what’s already happened, but we can start a new path. Grow a new branch in the space-time continuum. That’s what I would have to do. Write a new chapter in Jane’s story.
“Pretend all is well,” Grace said. “When the plan is arranged for your escape, I will send word with a servant. She shall be ready.”
I kissed my mother’s cheek, and with a promise to return, fled to my room, knowing I would never sleep.
C
HAPTER
20
O
ver the next few days, I went through the motions of wedding preparation, though my heart and mind were full of other plans. Mrs. Fairfax had gotten over the shock of my engagement to her master, and she and Adèle helped me attend to all the arrangements. My dress had arrived and was hanging in the closet, sheer and white. Every time I saw it, it reminded me of my mother’s form floating through my room in the middle of the night. She was the one who’d torn my wedding veil. She’d been trying to warn me.
Rochester told me to pack my trunks for the honeymoon, and I did so, knowing full well the trunks would never arrive at their intended destination. As resolved as I was, still I had doubts. I was experiencing an ordeal of struggle, caught between two paralyzing states. At times, I looked at Rochester after he had smiled or kissed me and thought maybe I could forgive him like Jane had. Maybe I could tell him I knew his secret, and we could endeavor together to get my mother the help she needed. But then I thought of her imprisonment in that dungeon for all those years, and my feelings of affection and forgiveness disappeared.
I did not return to the tower during those nights of preparation, out of fear that I would be discovered and our plan would be ruined. I thought ceaselessly about my mother. The night I’d met her, she had not seemed insane, yet she
had
tried to murder Rochester in his sleep, just as she’d bitten Mr. Mason’s chest. But was she really mad? And wouldn’t any of us go mad if we were faceless to the world, invisible, voiceless, imprisoned in stone with no blue sky, no ocean, no fire but that which burned within us?
On the night of the planned escape, I sat on my bed waiting for the hours to pass. I even drifted off to sleep once or twice. At one point, I had a dream that I was standing on the beach at Hull’s Cove as a little girl. I lifted my head to the sky and saw storm clouds, high and dim, and a moon breaking through them. The moon kept descending until it fell into the ocean itself, transforming into a white human form. A woman emerged from the waves and spoke to me. Actually, she whispered: “My daughter, flee temptation.”
“Mother, I will,” I said. And she turned around, walked back into the waves, and disappeared into the dark mirror of the ocean.
I woke with a start, worried I had slept too long. It was still night, but summer nights are short, and I knew we had to go. I had packed some clothing in a small trunk, along with a cloak and a purse containing twenty shillings. I tied on my bonnet and shawl and stole from my room.
In terror, I wound my way up the stairs to the third floor. I knew what I had to do, and I went through the motions mechanically. Grace opened the door before I knocked. My mother was waiting with a small trunk of her own, which she dropped as soon as she saw me so she could embrace me. I struggled not to cry and put a finger to her lips to remind her we must be silent. I shook Grace’s hand and nodded, noticing she had tears in her eyes.
We carried our trunks downstairs, where I went to the kitchen and packed us some water and bread for the journey. I met my mother at the side door, which we passed through and shut softly behind us. Dawn was already glimmering in the yard. I took my mother’s hand and we began to run with our small trunks in tow, passing through the gates of Thornfield, leaving it behind forever.
Beyond the fields about a mile off lay a road, which stretched in the opposite direction of Millcote. We walked in that direction, neither of us knowing where it would take us. We walked till after sunrise until our shoes were wet with dew. A weakness extending to my limbs seized me, and at one point I fell. My mother reached down and helped me stand. When we met the road, we rested a while under the hedge until we heard the wheels of a coach. I stood up and lifted my hand, and the coach stopped. I asked where it was going, and the driver named a place a long way off, where I hoped Mr. Rochester had no connections. I told him I had only twenty shillings, but he agreed to take us anyway. We climbed inside the coach, and it rolled on its way.
After driving for several hours, the coachman set us down in a town called Whitcross. We paid him all we had, so now we had no money in the world. Whitcross was not quite a town, more a crossroads in the moors, with waves of mountains framing a valley far beyond. Even though it was now midday, we saw no passengers on these roads. The terrain seemed wild, the heather growing deep on the surrounding slopes.
We waded into the heather, knee-deep in its dark growth. Wearily, we walked in search of shelter. After a few hours with no sign of civilization, we found a mossy granite crag and sat under it for cover from the sun. I passed some water to my mother, and she drank greedily. Now that we were resting, I noticed that Grace had combed my mother’s dark hair and pinned it neatly off her head. She was dressed in a simple black frock. She did not look crazy at all; in fact, she looked just like me.
Hunger pangs gnawed at my stomach, and I knew my mother must be hungry, too. I broke off a piece of bread and handed it to her. As we ate silently, I noticed the sky was deep blue and already contained a few stars. Night would fall shortly. For tonight, we would have to sleep here.
Beside the crag, the heather was very deep, so we lay down in it, our feet buried in the dusky pink blooms. I folded my shawl over us both and tucked my bonnet under our heads as a pillow. We lay on our backs with our eyes to the stars.
My mother rolled onto her side to look at me. “Did you ever meet a person and feel a physical tugging, as if some string connected you to her, pulling your own soul toward hers?”
I knew what she meant, and Rochester had known it, too. It was the unseen connection that made us love certain people. “Yes,” I said, remembering dimly a boy who stood on the other side of a great ocean, a boy with hazel eyes and strong swimmer’s arms.
“When I lost my baby,” she said, “I felt a snapping of something inside me so profound it caused me physical pain. I thought I’d never recover. When you walked into my chamber that night, I felt as though the cord had been mended. I felt whole in a way I could not explain. You were a stranger to me, and yet, you were as familiar to me as my own skin.”
“I felt the same way,” I said. “I lost my mother when I was very young. When I saw you, I felt she’d come back to me.”
She sighed. “I am glad we found each other,” she said. “But do not entertain hopes that this will end well for me.”
“What do you mean?” I said, turning on my side to look at her.
“That same tug I felt when I saw you pulls at me now, yet it pulls me in the opposite direction. It pulls me toward destruction rather than redemption.”
“So fight against it,” I said.
“I am trying, but it feels as though this night with you is not real. This is all a dream. I am just a dream.” She’d been living so long as a prisoner that the very glimmer of freedom must have felt unreal to her.
“You are not a dream,” I said. “You’re real.” I reached over to pinch her, and she winced.
“Am I? How long does one have to be invisible to the world before she disappears completely? Fades into the walls of the attic? Maybe I’m just a ghost after all.”
“No,” I said. “You are not a ghost. You’re a mother and a wife—a woman with a past, present, and future. You have an existence beyond those walls now. You’re free!”
She sighed. “Emma, you cannot change what happens to me. My destiny was sealed the moment I agreed to marry Mr. Rochester. I knew I would not be suited for marriage, but I had no voice to say no. My father had arranged the marriage when Rochester was a young man. He may have believed he was in love with me then, but the truth is that he married me for my dowry. He had been cheated of his inheritance, and he knew the only way to protect his estate was to marry for money. I allowed thoughts of romance to cloud my judgment. When first I saw him, I thought he was a knight on horseback who would save me from my dull and obscure existence. I thought he was my savior. I let him make promises to me and take me away from everyone I loved. But once in his home, I became his prisoner. As a daughter, I’d been a servant to my father, and after marriage, I became a servant to my husband. I don’t know that I have ever felt true love and affection from anyone.”
“You have it now,” I said, grabbing her hand.
“Yes, but you cannot stay with me. The longer you stay here, the harder it will be for you to leave. You must go back where you belong.”
Again I felt that inner turmoil, two tides pulling me in opposite directions. “I don’t know where I belong,” I said. “But I’m here with you now. And I can help you.”
She sat up, her face lit by moonlight. “You cannot save me, but you can save your friends,” she said, her voice scaring me with its intensity.
“I don’t have any friends,” I said, thinking with a lump in my throat about my father and Grandma Mackie, about Michelle and Owen, about Gray. Their faces came to me vividly now, and I felt that ache my mother had talked about, a physical tugging that caused me internal pain.
“You are not alone,” my mother said.
“Then why do I feel so lonely?” I asked.
“Because you don’t know how strong you are. You are far stronger than you believe.”
“I’m not strong. Every time things get difficult, I run away. That doesn’t take courage.”
“One day you will learn what true courage is. It is not always in the dramatic gesture or the daring rescue. Sometimes it takes courage to run away, especially when you must run from the one you love. You left Thornfield, even though you loved Mr. Rochester. You are stronger than I ever was.”
“But you had no choice!” I said. “You couldn’t leave!”
“There were times ...” Her voice trailed off, and I suspected she was fighting tears. “There were times I could have left, but I never had the strength. Something always made me stay. A force as strong as gravity.”
“But you did leave,” I said. “We did. We left him for good.”
“Yes, you are right,” she said, taking my hand. We lay back down, and I yawned. Fatigue had overtaken me like a drug. “Sleep now,” she said. “You will need your strength.”
I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but she began singing a lullaby, and I felt a stirring inside me as if I’d heard this song many times before.
“Love, to thee my thoughts are turning
All through the night
All for thee my heart is yearning,
All through the night.
Though sad fate our lives may sever
Parting will not last forever,
There’s a hope that leaves me never,
All through the night.”
She wrapped her arms around me, and we fell asleep in that bed of heather, lying beneath the moon like a mother and daughter from some dark and wondrous fairy tale, a tale I feared would not end happily.

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