I did not see Jane again until the afternoon. Everyone had slept later than usual after having been roused in the night, and they drifted down to breakfast still disturbed. I suggested a picnic to distract them, but Lady Ingram begged off, saying she had a headache, and Mrs. Dent said she did not think her nerves could take such an outing. Only Miss Ingram—despite her late-night vigil—seemed little bothered by the night’s events, and dared me to a gallop over the moors. I took her up on that, curious to know what she might say to me in private. As I could have expected, she asked about my business in Millcote that had taken me away, and about Richard Mason’s visit and swift disappearance. Though she had not made the connection to the disturbance of the previous night, she seemed to believe he was in some way tied to my supposed debts, and I was just evasive enough in my responses to confirm her suspicions. I imagined her interest in me would now cool quickly; she might even spread rumors about me in the neighborhood, but I cared little enough for that. It would be interesting, indeed, to know how I was viewed by society without the veil of wealth surrounding me. At that point, my whole attention was on winning Jane.
Miss Ingram and I returned in time for lunch, and then someone proposed billiards. We were in the midst of the game when Miss Ingram suddenly snapped, “Does that person want you?”
I turned and saw Jane. Alarmed—for it was not her way to interrupt like that—I threw down my cue and followed her into the schoolroom, where we could talk in private. “Well?” I asked, as I closed the door.
“If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two,” she said.
She was leaving me. “What?” I blurted. “You would just leave, without any warning?” Immediately I could see that she was taken aback by the vehemence of my reaction, but I did not care. I would not let her leave me so easily. “What to do?” I demanded. “Where to go?”
“To see a sick lady who has sent for me.”
“What sick lady?—Where does she live?” This was an invention, I was sure. I had overplayed my hand. She was fleeing Thornfield after what she had seen in the night and after my confession, for she refused to live under the same roof as a monster and a sinner. I was losing her!
“At Gateshead in ——shire.” The lady was the widow of Reed, the former Gateshead magistrate, Jane told me, who was Jane’s own uncle.
Then I knew I’d caught her. “The deuce he was! You never told me that before: you always said you had no relations.”
But she had an answer for that, too: when she was orphaned, Reed had taken her in, but Mrs. Reed had cast her off after Mr. Reed’s death because Jane was poor and burdensome—Jane, burdensome!—and because she had disliked Jane. But now John, the son, was dead by his own hand, and his mother had had an apoplectic attack and was asking for Jane.
Perhaps, if the story were true, I should have been more sympathetic to the widow Reed, but in my panic I could think only of Jane. “And what good can you do her?” I asked. “Nonsense, Jane! I would never think of running a hundred miles to see an old lady who will perhaps be dead before you reach her: besides, you say she cast you off.”
“Yes, sir, but that is long ago,” she said, “and when her circumstances were very different: I could not be easy to neglect her wishes now.” Her compassion: it was so Jane, and I began to believe her, for it was exactly how she would think, with a degree of loyalty that, as proven just that morning during my ride with Miss Ingram, was lacking in so many of her “superiors” in society.
If this summons were real—and I wanted to believe it was, not least because I could not believe Jane would lie—then her absence would be painful, but not unbearable. “How long will you stay?” I asked her.
“As short a time as possible, sir.”
“Promise me only to stay a week,” I demanded. More than that I could not stand.
But she would not make that promise for fear she might have to break it. However, she did promise that she would indeed return as soon as she could.
I had schemed to rid myself of my guests so that I could be alone with Jane, but instead, it was she who was leaving, and they who were hanging on. I could not think what to say—after all my manipulations, to be defeated by a sick woman a hundred miles away. My dear Jane, opening her generous heart to someone who had treated her badly. Would that I could match her. “Well,” I said, “you must have some money; you can’t travel without money.”
I tried to give her fifty pounds for her expenses, but upright Jane refused to take more than she was owed; she refused to be in my debt, while I would have given her the world merely to ensure her return. Honest Jane—how could I have imagined she would try to deceive me? But—was I not deceiving her?
I hardly had time to think of that before she surprised me with a further statement: “Mr. Rochester, I may as well mention another matter of business to you while I have the opportunity. You have as good as informed me, sir, that you are going shortly to be married?”
My God. “Yes, what then?”
“In that case, sir, Adèle ought to go to school: I am sure you will perceive the necessity of it.”
“To get her out of my bride’s way; who might otherwise walk over her rather too emphatically. There’s sense to the suggestion,” I said, nodding, wanting to force her out with it, wanting her to know I could see my so-called bride as clearly as she. “Not a doubt of it: Adèle, as you say, must go to school; and you, of course, must march straight to—the devil?”
“I hope not, sir: but I must seek another situation somewhere.”
“In course! And old Madam Reed, or the Misses, her daughters, will be solicited by you to seek a place, I suppose?”
“No, sir; I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify me in asking favors of them—but I shall advertise.”
“Not on such terms,” I thought, but they make you travel a hundred miles to see the old hag. “You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt!” I snapped at her. “At your peril you advertise! I wish I had only offered you a sovereign! Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I’ve a use for it.”
She was leaving me after all: perhaps not immediately, but she was already making plans. It wasn’t Bertha who was driving her away, but Blanche, and at my own stupid hand! I was desperate, and furious at myself. I swore I’d solve this, but for now, I most urgently needed assurance of her return. For that, I managed to get her to promise not to seek a new position on her own, saying that I would find one that would suit her, for I had no intention of ever letting her go. In return, she made me promise to allow Adèle and herself both to be safe out of the house before my bride entered it, and I pledged my word on that.
As the conversation drew to a close, I could not bear to say good-bye, and told her so, hoping to draw her into a confession of fondness that I might cling to during her absence. “How do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me; I’m not quite up to it.” Not up to it: I had spent my life losing those I cared about.
“They say, Farewell; or any other form they prefer.”
“Then say it.”
“Farewell, Mr. Rochester, for the present.” There it was again, that calm coldness. How easy farewells seemed for her!
“What must I say?” My back was against the door; I could have taken her in my arms and prevented her from escaping.
“The same, if you like, sir.”
“Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present: is that all?”
“Yes.”
“It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly. I should like something else: a little addition to the rite. If one shook hands, for instance; but no,—that would not content me either.” Could I goad her into embracing me? But she stood in front of me determined and steady. “So you’ll do no more than say farewell, Jane?”
“It is enough, sir.”
Did she truly not understand what I was asking? Well, whether she did or not, I had to face the fact that, once more, she had bested me at my own game. Another battle lost, and I could think of nothing more to say, and so I opened the door and left.
I rose early the next morning and watched from my bedroom window as the coach rolled down the drive, and I stayed there until long after it was out of sight.
* * *
Before the others awoke, I rode to Carter’s home, where he was tending to Richard Mason, who lay, still weak, in bed. “It was a fearful night,” Richard moaned when he saw me. “I could never have anticipated my own sister would come at me with such vengeance.”
“In her mind, she is not your sister,” Carter reminded him, as he helped him to a draught, which Richard drank deeply. A few moments later, he was snoring lightly, and Carter turned to me. “How did she get a blade?”
“She is locked up all day, day after day,” I said. “She has more than enough time to fashion a weapon from some stray object—a spoon, for example.”
“Perhaps you need a better caretaker, or more of them,” Carter said. “Grace Poole is fine, but perhaps she is not enough—”
It was not the first time I had wondered about that. “One Grace Poole can be explained,” I said. “More climbing those stairs every day would arouse suspicions that must not be aroused.”
Carter looked at me seriously. “Perhaps it is time to make it known who resides in that apartment,” he said. “People are apt to be kinder than one imagines.”
To Carter it seemed simple, but he had no idea about Jane, or my hopes for a future with her. And yet—perhaps he was right on one count: the situation with Bertha must change, and change now.
As I rode home, a plan began to take shape: I would see Everson about finding a new place to house Bertha, discreetly. The location must be far enough away to allay suspicion, yet close enough for me to visit occasionally; but that was the easy part. Finding a place with light and fresh air, yet without windows that could be broken, would be much harder. It was not something one did in a week or two, or even a month, perhaps, but I vowed to begin immediately, during Jane’s absence, so that I could begin to press my case to Jane without the specter of Bertha lingering over us both.