It didn’t have to be like this. I was not some puppeteer’s marionette. I had agency. I was a free human being. I had a marketable skill. I could break free. Go into the world. Teach in a different school.
I advertised my services—and received one answer.
« Chapter 10 »
The News From Gateshead
A few weeks later after my last class ended, Miss Miller summoned me to the superintendent’s cottage. She handed me an elegant fawn brown envelope of heavy linen stock post marked from the state of Jefferson, addressed to J. Eyre, Lowood Righteous Institution, Lowton, Idaho.
My heart raced as I opened it and read the letter inside. “It’s from a Mrs. Fairfax at Thornfield Righteous Estate,” I said. “In Millcote County, Jefferson.”
Millcote. I’d never forgotten the name. My true home, my soul’s home. Where my guardian angel had guided my hand that day in the library window seat. It was a sign! I’d taken the right course.
“But who do you know in Jefferson?” Miss Miller said. “Who do you know anywhere?”
Exactly, I thought. “She’s offered me a position teaching her daughter.” I stared at the word governess but couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“What an idea!” Miss Miller chuckled, as if the offer was an insult. “Homeschooling would hardly suit.”
“I think it would suit me very well.” I showed her the letter. “The pay is double what I receive from Lowood.”
She read thoroughly—or I should say she stared at the page for a while. “I’ll miss you, Jane,” she said finally, and I was surprised by her truly sad expression. “I’ll write to Mrs. Reed this afternoon.”
What? “What has she to do with it?”
“You’re not twenty-one,” Miss Miller said. “You can’t change employment without your guardian’s approval—and you certainly can’t move to another state without it.”
So unfair! For two years, I’d earned my own living, and now I had to ask permission? All my hope came crashing down. Mrs. Reed would never agree to anything if it would make me happy. For five years, I’d had no contact with her. All my vacations were spent at Lowood. She’d never visited me. I’d had no letter or message from anyone at Gateshead.
In fact, aside from the occasional walk to Lowton, I’d had no real interaction with the outer world.
I had to get out, away from Lowood—more to the point, away from Gideon Blackstone. Dread crept over me and took hold. It would be two years before I was twenty-one. Two years before I could try again. I couldn’t deny Gideon for two years. I had the presence of mind to know I didn’t love him. The feelings he’d sent coursing through my body were pure lust. But they were real, and they were too strong to fight.
“Please do, Miss Miller.” I was desperate. “Send a request to Gateshead.”
I spent a nerve-addled ten days before the curt answer came, scrawled on a postcard: Jane Eyre could do as she pleased. Mrs. Reed had no further interest in her whatsoever.
To compound the surprise, Bishop Brocklehurst wrote a more than adequate separation review with the post script that I was welcome to return to Lowood should I ever leave Mrs. Fairfax’s employ.
Miss Miller got over her sorrow. Now she was delighted for me. She prattled on about my coming adventure more than I did.
“You must have some decent dresses made. Thank goodness you ordered those boots, and I thought them lavish. A Righteous Estate in Jefferson! It must be grand. You can’t wear your teacher’s dresses there, even as an LPI.”
She couldn’t say governess either. Oh, no. Jane Eyre was going out to be a Licensed Private Instructor.
“I can’t afford a new wardrobe.”
“Nonsense, you’ve had two years’ salary,” she said.
“I’ve saved little more than $300,” I said.
“But you never go anywhere. Aside from those boots and your shawl, you’ve shown no extravagance. What could you spend your money on?”
I shook my head, laughing inside. She had no idea how meagerly the Board supplied Lowood’s teachers. After room and board were deducted, an art teacher could spend three times the balance on paints and brushes, charcoals and canvases and easels. One new “best” dress would have to do, and I bought a new cloak—and one extravagance I told no one else about.
When I went to Lowton for the cloak, I stepped into the bookshop. I was the only customer in the store, and as I headed toward what Miss Scatcherd had called the witchcraft section, Mrs. Dean said hello.
I had wanted to know her better. She wasn’t much older than me, and I’d love to know about life in the United States. I wondered where her husband was. Now I would never know.