Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (35 page)

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.

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. — I am, Madam, &c., &c.,

“John Eyre, Madeira.”

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.

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 cars 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.