I found Cambridge, Harvard’s home in Massachusetts. Pepperdine was in the southwest on the California coast. John Reed’s campus-to-be overlooked the ocean. How wonderful.
It was interesting to compare the current maps with the one country of two generations ago. Spokane had been part of the state of Washington. Reno was part of the state of Nevada. Half the Sierra Nevada Mountains were part of California! That made no sense. Our westernmost state, Jefferson, was carved out from parts of Oregon, California, and Nevada. A strip of United States little more than a hundred miles wide ran along the Canadian border. Why did they do that?
I was in my glory leafing through the pages. Europe might as well be Mars. I’d met people, visitors to Gateshead, who’d been to Canada and the heathen country and missionaries at church who’d returned from Mexico and Ecuador and Argentina. But not Europe. Or Asia, for that matter.
Of all the places in the world, why did God place me at Gateshead? I was out of tune here. Surely somewhere existed where I could sing a happy song and breathe free. I returned to the map of North America. I closed my eyes, made a circle in the air three times, and pointed to a spot on the map.
My finger landed a few hundred miles from Gateshead in the state of Jefferson in a county called Millcote. I turned to Jefferson’s county maps. Millcote was farm country, spread over foothills and valleys. There were three Righteous Households: Fairfax, Ingram, and Wade—and one Righteous Estate, Thornfield. I traced the county perimeter.
Yes.
A sense of well-being glowed within me. Surely my guardian angel had guided my hand. Right then I adopted Millcote as my true home, my soul’s home. It didn’t matter if I never saw it. I knew now such a resting place existed in the world. It would be the theoretical anchor for my adrift self.
Had Georgiana done me a favor, sending the atlas? I was glad she did. Somehow it made me like the heathen country a little better. How funny was that? I turned to the county page for Cambridge to look for Harvard.
Someone had written on the page. Scandalous! The lettering was tiny, but when I held the atlas up to the window for better light the writing was clear:
Hamlet 1-3-78
I set the book down and drew my knees to my chest, mulling the inscription over. Hamlet 1-3-78. It must be a topographical reference, but Cambridge was far larger than a hamlet. A town, at least. A city, I thought. Anyway, a pox on whoever defaced such a beautiful book!
With my arms wrapped around my legs, I leaned against the cold windowpane and watched the rain fall silently on the world outside. Leaves fluttered and bent and popped up again, gathering and dropping the small weight of raindrops.
In the ivy that clung to the window’s Juliet railing, two tiny brown sparrows sheltered from the weather. One tilted his little head inquisitively, and I wished for my drawing pad and charcoal pencils. I tried to capture his features in my memory.
The library door opened.
“Ha! Madam Mope, I’ve got you!” John Reed cried, as if he’d pounced upon the object of his search—me. He paused, having found the room empty. “I know you’re in here, Jane Eyre. The choker’s gone, and I’ll seek until I find.”
Choker. John Reed and his friends called all clergymen chokers after the white cravats tied so tightly in fanciful knots around their necks.
“Where the hell is she?”
If only Mrs. Reed could once overhear her darling boy’s foul swears.
“Eliza!” he called out. “Jane isn’t here. Tell mother she’s run out into the rain. She’s in trouble.”
I closed my eyes and thanked my guardian angel for giving me the presence of mind to close the curtain. I prayed John wouldn’t find me. That I wouldn’t hiccup involuntarily.
“She’s in the window seat. I’m sure of it.” Eliza came into the room in answer to John’s call. “She’s always there.”
I’d give him no satisfaction of discovery and no opportunity to drag me out. I threw back the curtain and stepped down to the floor. “What do you want?” Though my heart raced a hundred miles a minute, I tried to affect utter indifference.
“Say: what do you want, Master Reed.” He sat in the armchair by the unlit fireplace and pointed at the floor. “I want you to come here, and bring that book.”
Bile rose in my throat. By accident of birth, I was expected to submit to this bully? “No.”
Eliza gasped.
“Come here, charity case,” John Reed said. “I don’t think you understand the precarious nature of your position.”
I laughed. “Do you even know what that means? You’re repeating something you read in a book.”