My Mr. Rochester 1(36)

In my life I’ve suffered violent responses to unwanted touches. This feeling is no less violent, but I can’t say the touch is unwanted. I’m not afraid. I’m aroused.

We’re serenaded by the horse’s heaving, stamping, and clattering, and the dog joins in with barks and whimpers. The animal noise frightens me and sends me some yards away from the man’s grip. But I can’t be driven away completely until I see him safe.

“Down, Pilot!” He silences his dog, stoops and feels his foot and leg. He is hurt after all. He stumbles a bit over to the stile where I had rested and takes the seat himself.

I’m in a mood to be useful, and my curiosity about the man is stronger than my fear of dog and horse. “If you’re hurt, sir, I can go for help, either from Thornfield Hall or Hayton.”

“I’m fine.” He doesn’t look at me. “Nothing’s broken, I think.” His voice is deep, strong, and gruff. There’s no effort at civility. Again he stands and tries to walk, but winces with pain.

It’s dusk now, but the moon is full and bright. I see him plainly.

His black finely tailored riding cloak now covers him properly. Its fur collar is thrown back over his shoulders, making them appear even broader. His serious face has stern chiseled features, the shadow of a beginning beard, and heavy brows. His dark eyes and frown give him a frustrated look. He isn’t young, but not yet middle-aged. He might be thirty-five.

I feel no fear of him, only a little shyness. Had he been handsome or heroic-looking, I don’t think I could have interrogated him as I did or offered up my services so freely. I’d only ever had one handsome man so close to me, and that didn’t go well.

I have a theoretical reverence for beauty, elegance, gallantry. But really. If ever again I meet those qualities incarnate in masculine form, I won’t deceive myself. I’ll know instinctively they can never have to do with me.

I shun lovely people as one avoids fire, lightning, or snake bite. The aversion isn’t instinctive but by training. Almost from my beginnings I’ve received the catechism: You, Jane Eyre, are a small, unworthy creature; dare not to associate with beautiful people, for the universe will laugh at your darling, mistaken assumption of entitlement.

If this stranger had smiled at me and been good-humored, I would have recoiled in suspicion. If he had deflected my offer of assistance pleasantly and with thanks, I would have gone my way and thought of him no more.

Instead his frown and grumbling roughness sets me at my ease. I can want nothing from him; therefore, he can deny me nothing. He waves me off, and my resolve to help strengthens.

“I won’t leave you, sir, not in the fading light in this solitary lane. At least not until I see you’re fit to mount your horse.”

Until that moment he’d hardly turned his eyes in my direction. When he looks at me I have to catch my breath. His gaze pierces my entire sense of myself.

He sees me. I am a person to him.

“You should be at home,” he barks. “If you have a home nearby. Where are you from?”

“Just below. But I’m not afraid of being out. I can run over to Hayton for you, with pleasure. Indeed, I’m on my way there to post a letter.”

“You say you live below. Do you mean at that house with the parapets and battlements?” He points to Thornfield Hall, where the fading light casts a gleam and brings it out, distinct and pale against the woods beyond.

“That’s it, sir.”

“Whose house is that?”

“Mr. Edward Rochester’s, sir.”

“And you know Mr. Rochester?”

“I have never seen him.”

“He’s not in residence then.”

“No.”

“Can you tell me where he is?”

“I cannot, sir.”

“You’re not a servant there, I’ll wager.” He runs his eye over my simple outfit, the new brown cloak, the old brown bonnet, neither even half fine enough for a lady's maid. He frowns. “You’re…”

On a whim I take pity and help him. “I am the governess.”

There. I’ve said the word. Until now I’d called myself a school teacher. An independent professional. But these last few months I’d forfeited my independence little by little as I grew fonder and fonder of Thornfield. I looked back at the mansion, formidable in the twilight. It had changed me, worked its way into my heart, without my knowing.

“Ah, the governess,” the man repeats. “Devil take me, I’d forgotten.” Again my clothing undergoes scrutiny. He rises from the stile and grimaces upon his first step.

“I won’t ask you to fetch help,” he says. “But you may help me a little yourself, if you’d be so kind.”