Once more, I ran. I cannot say what made me turn back to the house, to risk my life to save the woman who had spent fifteen years destroying it. Perhaps it was how little I valued my life without Jane. Perhaps it was that I had spent so many years protecting Bertha that I did not know how to stop. Either way, I am no hero, for I could not save her.
Standing on that shuddering rooftop, I called her name. She half turned and saw me. Calmly, despite the crackling flames that surrounded us both, she gave me a smile. I suppose I may have imagined it, but something in her eyes seemed clear, for once, as if for the first time in years, she knew what she was doing. She gave a cry and turned from me to the edge. I lunged for her, but was too late, and I could only watch as she disappeared from the roof like a great white bird taking flight. For a moment, in my delirium, and standing in the place where she had been, that freedom beckoned me as well.
I did not see her hit the pavement, but I heard the cries of horror from the people below. Mary screamed out, “Sir!” and I knew that if I did not move I would follow Bertha to my death.
I ran. Down the narrow, smoke-clouded steps to the third floor, through the flames that were already licking at the stairs to the second floor, down the gallery, where every room was now fully engulfed in fire, to the grand staircase, where suddenly I stopped. I knew I had no time for indecision, but there was one last thing I had to do. I ran back to the closet where I had hidden Jane’s drawings and my mother’s portrait. They kept slipping from my sweaty, trembling hands as I raced back to the staircase and dove, by force of will, through the flames that were swallowing my only route of escape.
But I was a moment too late. Partway down, without warning, the staircase simply collapsed. I tumbled through the flames, losing my grip on the portraits as the edifice crumbled around me, searing my flesh. I lost all consciousness.
I might never have expected to awake, but awake I did, with a fierce pain all across my body. I was bandaged, even my face, and in a strange bed not my own. I must have stirred, for immediately a hand was placed gently on my shoulder. “Mr. Rochester,” a woman’s voice said.
I tried to speak but made no sound. There were only soft murmurs in the room and the sound of a door opening and closing quietly, and a snuffling sound that I recognized immediately. Beneath my bandages I must have smiled. And then I fell again into a fog.
When I awoke again, I recognized Carter’s voice. “Well, Rochester, you seem to have come through it.”
“Fire,” I said, surprised at the weakness of my voice.
“Fires of hell, I should say.” His voice was more jolly than usual; I suppose he thought he must cheer me up.
“How long—?”
“Two days. Two and a half. You have some nasty wounds.”
“I was burned in the face?”
“Not so much, actually. Mostly on your forehead. Will give you a kind of distinction, I imagine, when it has healed.”
“But my eyes are covered.”
“Ahh…yes,” he said.
I said nothing at first, but clearly he was waiting for me to speak. “My eyes?”
“You have lost one. The banister fell on top of you, damaging it beyond repair. The other…we shall see about that.”
Blind, I thought. Blind! I took a breath. “And what else?”
“Burns elsewhere. But not too serious.”
“Is that all?”
“You have had a very close brush with death, my friend. And you are only just now conscious. Why not take a bit of rest for a while?”
“I have great pain in one hand, but no other feeling.”
“That is to be expected. Why not rest now?” But I heard the hesitation in his voice.
“Carter.”
He spoke, but his voice sounded far off, as if I were hearing him in a dream. “You have lost a hand as well; I am sorry, but there was nothing I could do, it was so badly mangled in your fall. I don’t know if you clung to something and wrenched it all out of line, or if something fell on it and smashed it, or what may have happened. By the time I arrived they had pulled you from the fire to the paving stones outside.”
“‘They’?”
“Onlookers. I have no idea who. Perhaps John, or maybe not. The fire was seen for miles, and people came, for they knew it was Thornfield-Hall burning.”
“Was anyone else hurt?”
“None, thank God. You managed to save everyone. Except of course for—”
“Bertha,” I said, remembering.
“You were very lucky to survive,” he added.
“Lucky,” I repeated. Now I had lost Thornfield as well as Jane. I turned my head away and said nothing more, and neither did he, and after a time I fell into sleep.