Walking the path for a few moments, I felt my head clear again, my pulse calm, and I realized how close I had come to the brink. I returned to her once again the master of my emotions. “Jane,” I said lightly, “you are quite pale with your vigils: don’t you curse me for disturbing your rest?”
“Curse you?” she asked. “No, sir.” She was as calm as ever, as if she had witnessed none of the passion that had coursed through my veins.
I took her hand as if to shake it in confirmation of her words. “Jane,” I said, “when will you watch with me again?”
“Whenever I can be useful, sir.”
“For instance, the night before I am married! I am sure I shall not be able to sleep. Will you promise to sit up with me to bear me company?” I was determined, this time, to make her angry, to shake her out of her complacency, to provoke her to speak. “To you I can talk of my lovely one,” I said, “for now you have seen her and know her. She’s a rare one, is she not, Jane?”
“Yes, sir,” was all she said.
“A strapper—a real strapper, Jane: big, brown, and buxom; with hair just such as the ladies of Carthage must have had.” The sarcasm was thick in my voice, but still Jane did not rise to my words.
At that moment then I saw Dent and Lynn at the stables, and I dismissed her—there seemed nothing else I could say that would move her, at least not then.
Chapter 16
I did not see Jane again until the afternoon. Everyone had slept later than usual after having been roused in the night, and they drifted down to breakfast still disturbed. I suggested a picnic to distract them, but Lady Ingram begged off, saying she had a headache, and Mrs. Dent said she did not think her nerves could take such an outing. Only Miss Ingram—despite her late-night vigil—seemed little bothered by the night’s events, and dared me to a gallop over the moors. I took her up on that, curious to know what she might say to me in private. As I could have expected, she asked about my business in Millcote that had taken me away, and about Richard Mason’s visit and swift disappearance. Though she had not made the connection to the disturbance of the previous night, she seemed to believe he was in some way tied to my supposed debts, and I was just evasive enough in my responses to confirm her suspicions. I imagined her interest in me would now cool quickly; she might even spread rumors about me in the neighborhood, but I cared little enough for that. It would be interesting, indeed, to know how I was viewed by society without the veil of wealth surrounding me. At that point, my whole attention was on winning Jane.
Miss Ingram and I returned in time for lunch, and then someone proposed billiards. We were in the midst of the game when Miss Ingram suddenly snapped, “Does that person want you?”
I turned and saw Jane. Alarmed—for it was not her way to interrupt like that—I threw down my cue and followed her into the schoolroom, where we could talk in private. “Well?” I asked, as I closed the door.
“If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two,” she said.
She was leaving me. “What?” I blurted. “You would just leave, without any warning?” Immediately I could see that she was taken aback by the vehemence of my reaction, but I did not care. I would not let her leave me so easily. “What to do?” I demanded. “Where to go?”
“To see a sick lady who has sent for me.”
“What sick lady?—Where does she live?” This was an invention, I was sure. I had overplayed my hand. She was fleeing Thornfield after what she had seen in the night and after my confession, for she refused to live under the same roof as a monster and a sinner. I was losing her!
“At Gateshead in ——shire.” The lady was the widow of Reed, the former Gateshead magistrate, Jane told me, who was Jane’s own uncle.
Then I knew I’d caught her. “The deuce he was! You never told me that before: you always said you had no relations.”
But she had an answer for that, too: when she was orphaned, Reed had taken her in, but Mrs. Reed had cast her off after Mr. Reed’s death because Jane was poor and burdensome—Jane, burdensome!—and because she had disliked Jane. But now John, the son, was dead by his own hand, and his mother had had an apoplectic attack and was asking for Jane.
Perhaps, if the story were true, I should have been more sympathetic to the widow Reed, but in my panic I could think only of Jane. “And what good can you do her?” I asked. “Nonsense, Jane! I would never think of running a hundred miles to see an old lady who will perhaps be dead before you reach her: besides, you say she cast you off.”