Mr. Rochester(162)

I rode out the next day and the day after and the day after that. I rode east and west and north and south. I asked discreetly where I could, and searched carefully wherever I went. I toured the moors and the fields and the meadows and the lanes. I tracked down the horrid Reed children once more—the vain absurd one was being courted in London by a man of fashion, the other one in a remote convent—but received no fruitful reply. I wrote to Lowood School, where she had spent her childhood, but they had no news of her, either.

My last hope was that she would write, that she would at least settle my mind that she was alive and well. But a letter never came. Only once did Mrs. Fairfax give me a moment of hope, but the letter was about Jane, rather than a response to my inquiries—a message from that accursed solicitor Briggs, who had been responsible for driving us apart. Even if she were found, I would not allow him to have anything to do with her. I told Mrs. Fairfax I would hear nothing more about it.

“Where is Miss Eyre?” Adèle asked day after day. I had no response for her, and I could bear it no longer. I arranged, at the beginning of the school year, for her to be sent away to school, and Sophie back to France. Adèle did not want to leave, but I was unwilling to hire another governess and I could not care for her myself.

“You will destroy yourself,” Mrs. Fairfax said more than once through that time.

I wished I could. I wished I could drive myself down to the bone and then float away like ash in the wind. I had driven Jane away, made her miserable, and I did not deserve space on this earth.

How could God do this to me?





Chapter 25



But I went on living, and the only thing I could think to do was to keep on searching. When the folly of that had become obvious even to me, I buried myself in work. I made the rounds of all my cottagers, I helped in the harvest—to the amusement and dismay of the harvesters—and I invented reasons to see Everson. Around that time, odd things began to happen: noises on the grounds late at night, locks broken, the gardens trampled, even once a dead stoat hanging from a tree in the orchard. Ames believed someone was trying to break in, but John and Sam could catch no one. The servants became nervous, afraid to go out at night, and Mrs. Fairfax especially was deeply anxious. I was sure it was Gerald, his madness perhaps growing worse, trying to force his way back to his mother, into the house he considered his own, but there was nothing to prove since we were all unable to catch him. Eventually, Mrs. Fairfax could bear it no more and asked to be released from her duties. I was almost relieved when she did, for I had become uncomfortable in her presence: she had turned almost too kind, more mothering than I could bear at a time when I hated myself and who I had become—a liar and a bigamist. I settled a goodly sum on her and wished her well. She was all graciousness at the gift, and no little embarrassed, I imagine, but she deserved it, if for no other reason than she was my only living relative.

The same day she left, I removed the portrait of my mother from the drawing room and placed it and Jane’s drawings in a closet on the second floor, for I could not bear to see these reminders of all I had done, the misery I had caused and fallen into myself.

I went out with the harvesters as often as I could, hoping to work myself to the marrow, to drop into bed at night too weary to think, to rise in the morning and take to the fields again, to allow the pain of my blistered hands and my weary back to at least in part replace my other, worse, pain, and the sun on my face to burn off a small portion of my regret.





It was one of those nights late in that harvest season, two months or so after Jane had disappeared, and I had fallen into bed and into a weary and miserable sleep, with dreams that assaulted my mind with unease. I dreamed that Jane had died in some lonely, forsaken place; I dreamed that I was perishing on some faraway island, bereft of all I had ever known; I dreamed that the sea had overtaken me and I was drowning; that I had died but instead of peace I was greeted by the fires of hell, which were consuming me, and I could barely breathe.

I woke, but it seemed as if I were still in the dream, for I could smell the fires and feel their heat. I rose from my bed and lit a candle to reassure myself that I was still in my own chamber, and indeed I was, but I felt surrounded by a kind of fury that I could not shake. I walked to the door and opened it and was nearly thrown back by the smoke and the flames. Fire. There was fire. This was no dream.

The far end of the gallery—Jane’s room—was engulfed in flames. I looked up, and the fire seemed worse above me—for fire burns upward first—and I thought of John and Mary, and of Leah and Sam, and, the realization dawning, of Grace Poole and Bertha. Bertha. Fire. I ran to the servants’ stairs and took them two at a time. I roused John and Mary, who were already nearly overcome with smoke, and pulled them from their burning room, and then hastened to Leah’s and Sam’s rooms and brought them out as well, and sent them all downstairs toward safety. Then I dashed up the hidden staircase for Grace and Bertha. Grace, perhaps already dulled with drink, had almost succumbed, but Bertha was not in her room, and I had no time to think. I nearly dragged Grace downstairs with me, both of us leaning on each other, gasping for air, catching her when she stumbled. Half carrying Grace, I somehow shepherded her out of the inferno. Just as we reached safety, Leah cried out and pointed, and I saw Bertha on the roof, at the battlements, like a ghost in her white shift, her hair flying wildly about her head.