My Mr. Rochester 1(35)

Today I long for something different. I’m impossible. Only four months into my entirely satisfactory new life, I’m restless with it. I leapt at the chance to get away.

Something inside me will not be quiet, still, tranquil. I can’t be happy with my most outrageous good fortune. Would I go back to the sterile austerity of Lowood or the cruel luxury of Gateshead?

Never.

I have so much. I want something more—but what it is, I don’t know. Fire where there is a chill? Feeling where there is composure? I feel I’m going crazy with ingratitude, but I don’t know how to stop myself.

What would I alter? I’ve exchanged discomfort for comfort, tolerance for appreciation, endless chatter for a mix of quiet and conversation. Mrs. Fairfax treats me as her equal, and teaching fills my need for creative occupation.

In truth these months at Thornfield have been the most tranquil and secure epoch of my nineteen years. And yet I jinx it. Today I’m antsy for a temporary escape. I’ve grown complacent in my comfort. I long for something out of the ordinary, something different—something interesting—to happen.

I don’t know if the clouds sank into the earth during my reverie on the stile, but they’re gone. A freakish mist swarms at my feet. Above the hilltop the flat disk of the moon rises, full and eerily brightening against the late afternoon sky, while the wispy mist snakes like a living thing about the hedges and rocks and trees.

A wind gust agitates fallen leaves, pushing and pulling them up into a swirling dust devil on the lane. The gust folds and rolls over, multiplies, and repeats its dance on and on through every vale and over every hill beyond my sight.

I’m pierced by an unexpected feeling of eternal well-being, a profound connection with all life.

But a rude noise breaks through my bliss. A tramp, tramp, tramp, and metallic clatter. My heart races a little. A horse is coming, I can’t tell where from. The bend of the lane yet hides it. On it comes. I leave the stile but keep to the shoulder, prepared to let the beast go by.

I am an educated adult of nineteen, but childhood’s magical thinking still influences my mind. Fairy tales and Sunday school fables still dance in my brain with other rubbish. I’m still forming my life’s journey, still sorting real and true from claptrap fed to me by unloving tricksters or controlling piety freaks.

Onward the horse comes. I watch for it through the low mist, thinking of Gytrash, the gigantic ghost dog of the Canadian tundra.

Gytrash is said to haunt solitary byways and seize on lone travelers. At the time of the Great Secession, so my cousin John Reed said, Gytrash was seen as far south as Utah and Colorado and as far west as here in Jefferson State where Thornfield Hall lays.

I laughed at John Reed for believing such stuff and received a thwack across the back of my legs in return. I still have the scar to show for my impudence.

Now mixed in with the tramp, tramp, tramp of horse’s hooves, a rushing thump-a, thump-a sounds behind the hedges. The traveler isn’t on the road but somewhere among the trees. All at once a great black dog bursts through—exactly in the form of the Gytrash! A lion-like creature with long hair, a white blaze on its huge forehead, and glittering black eyes.

It thunders past me. I am nothing to it.

The anticipated horse follows. The substantial blue-black steed bears a rider on its back. The man—the human being—at once breaks the spell that’s captured me. Nothing ever rides with the Gytrash. It’s always alone. This is no supernatural beast, only a man. A traveler taking the shortcut from Millcote.

As with the great dog, I’m nothing to man or horse. They pass, and I resume my errand.

But the eerie sound of animal despair stops me. The man calls out, “What the devil?” I turn to see horse and rider fall in a terrible crash to the ground, slipping on thin ice which has glazed the cobblestones.

The dog comes bounding back, frantic over its master’s predicament. It barks until the hills echo the sound. Then it runs again to me, the only help at hand. My heart races, but I can see the poor animal is no danger to me. It’s only worried about its master. The man struggles vigorously to right himself. He can’t be hurt much.

Still I ask, “Are you injured, sir?”

He swears at earth and sky and keeps at it for a few sentences.

“Can I help at all?” I hide my amusement.

“Stand here beside me.” He gets to his knees and throws his cloak back for easier movement. He’s a large man, with broad shoulders and thick arms, and for the first time I think of him that way: as a man. He rises to his feet, and I falter.

“Come here, girl!” he cries. “Are you deaf?”

I do as he says. He uses me to stay standing, his forearm pressing down on my shoulder. My heart pounds at his touch.