Chapter 14 #2
“Tell me: are those the actions of proper children?” I asked.
Then, recalling every family story I had heard around the dinner table, I told a tale or two on each girl: how Louisa had tried to climb a tree and was too afraid to climb back down, how Mary had been thrown from a horse at the age of twelve and had refused to ride ever since, how Amy had secretly learned to cook eggs and had surprised her mother by making breakfast for her mother’s birthday just last year.
And I described their homes and their favorite lockets and the books they preferred to read.
Through it all, they sat amazed that an old Gypsy could have seen so closely into their lives.
“What about the future?” Mary asked softly when I had finished.
“Ah,” I croaked, “the future is far more difficult, for it has not yet been written in stone, as the past has. You cannot erase the past, but you can change the future.”
“Will my sister marry Mr. Rochester?” Mary asked suddenly.
“Your sister does not love Mr. Rochester. She will not marry him.”
The three sat silent in astonishment.
“I told that lady many things,” I added, “and some of it she did not want to hear.” But I didn’t want to send them back with sour faces, so I gave them beautiful, obedient children; stately homes; lovely gowns and exquisite jewelry—all the things I imagined young girls dream of, and I even whispered into each delicate ear the name of a young man in their group whom I was sure held her interest. I sent them away giggling.
After they left, Sam returned to usher me out, as all the young ladies had seen me.
“All?” I said. “All?” Sam nodded, not understanding whom I was after. “There is one more, is there not?”
“Ah, well. But she is not a lady,” he insisted.
“No? What is she, then?”
“She is just the governess—a kind person indeed, but—”
“She is a lady, young man, and I will see her.”
“She is a private person. She may not come.”
“You may tell her I will not leave until she comes.”
He hurried away, and as he went, I adjusted my disguise, and gripped tightly the arms of my chair. Now came the true test.
Miss Ingram had come in imperious and defiant; the three girls had come shy and a little afraid; but my Jane came in curious and, as ever, composed.
I pretended to read as she entered and ignored her at first, to see how she would act in private with a person by all accounts her social inferior.
I was pleased, but not surprised, to see her wait as calmly and respectfully as she did for me in my normal guise.
“Well, and you want your fortune told?” I asked her.
“I don’t care about it, Mother,” she said; “you may please yourself: but I ought to warn you, I have no faith.”
I suppressed a smile. This was my Jane, all right.
“Why don’t you tremble?” I asked.
“I’m not cold,” she responded.
“Why don’t you turn pale?”
“I am not sick.”
“Why don’t you consult my art?”
“I’m not silly.”
I chuckled, for I had guessed well her responses. I pulled out a pipe and lit it slowly, and gazed for a time into the fire, letting her observe me all the while. Then I said, “You are cold; you are sick; and you are silly.”
“Prove it.”
“You are cold, because you are alone: no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick; because the best of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far away from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not beckon it to approach; nor will you stir one step to meet it where it waits you.” There, I had laid it out.
She did not take the bait. “You might say all that to almost anyone,” she replied.
“But would it be true of almost anyone? Find me another precisely placed as you are.”
“It would be easy to find you thousands,” she responded.
“You could scarcely find me one. If you knew it, you are peculiarly situated: very near happiness; yes; within reach of it.” What did I have to do to make her rise to my provocations? I promised her bliss in exchange for one movement. But she still would not act.
“I don’t understand enigmas,” she responded. “I never could guess a riddle in my life.” My sturdy Jane was not going to bend, was not going to give an inch, even to a poor old Gypsy.
“If you wish me to speak more plainly,” I challenged, “show me your palm.”
She handed me a shilling, which I stowed away as carefully as if it were worth a guinea, and I bent over the fine lines in her flesh, wishing that I were a real fortune-teller, who would know her heart line, and what it said of her.
Cautiously I raised my eyes to her. “Destiny is not written there. It is in the face: on the forehead, about the eyes, in the eyes themselves.” Those eyes: how often had I wished to plumb their depths.
“And in the lines of the mouth. Kneel, and lift up your head.” I came within half a yard of her, and stirred the fire, whose glare lit Jane’s face more fully, and more deeply cloaked my own.
I saw her watching me, and I waited for a while before saying, “I wonder with what feelings you came to me tonight. I wonder what thoughts are busy in your heart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the fine people flitting before you like shapes in a magic lantern.”
She gave a little shrug, confessing nothing.
What was she made of, this Jane? “Then you have some secret hope,” I asked, “to buoy you up and please you with whispers of the future?”
“Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my earnings to set up a school someday in a little house rented by myself.”
Alone. But independent. Was that truly all she hoped for? Solitary independence, devoid of love and family? Did she really not crave my love as I craved hers? “A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on,” I countered, “and sitting in that window seat (you see I know your habits)—”
“You have learned them from the servants,” she interrupted.
“Ah, you think yourself sharp,” I said. Could nothing stir a reaction?
Then I had an idea: “Well—perhaps I have: to speak truth, I have an acquaintance with one of them—Mrs. Poole.” I watched her face closely, and she seemed indeed startled—more so, it proved to me that all her suspicions still lay on Grace’s shoulders, that she had learned nothing further of Bertha in my absence.
I offered a few good words in poor Grace’s favor, she who had been serving me so well, but Jane was again unmoved.
We continued on like that, I trying to draw her out on the subject of courtship and marriage, she frustrating me at every turn, for she would not admit—even in relative secrecy—that she held any personal interest in her master’s attention to Miss Ingram.
The harder I pushed, the more clever and evasive she became.
In the end, I broke before she did. Able to bear it no more, I made as close to a profession of love as I dared, lavishing praise on those qualities in her face and form I was growing to love so well—it was all I could do not to grasp her and pull her close.
As her eyes studied mine, I felt myself falling into a kind of dream.
If I could have kept that moment forever, I would have.
But I could not, and I gave up. She had won. “Rise, Miss Eyre: leave me; ‘the play is played out,’” I said, and, slowly, I began to uncover my face.
She stared as I did so, comprehending and uncomprehending. “Well, Jane,” I said to her, “do you know me?”
“Only take off the red cloak, sir, and then—”
Back suddenly to some semblance of our former stations, the confessions of the past half hour (such as they were) forgotten, she scolded me for talking nonsense and for trying to draw her into “nonsense” as well.
But I knew there had been truth there. I asked her to forgive me, but she would not until she felt clear of her own conscience.
Yet when I asked her for news from the drawing room, hoping to hear my effects on the silly ladies earlier, she confessed instead that a stranger had come, a man from the West Indies named Mason, and—my God!
—my heart froze. Not Gerald, true, but Richard Mason—just as bad!
That fool, in my own home, talking with all those gossips—what might he have said by now?
And what unspeakable events would come trailing after his revelations?
It was a blow. Desperation clung to me, and I hardly had strength to stand, but Jane helped me to a chair and I urged her to sit beside me.
I held her hand in both of mine and could do nothing more than wish for some quiet place where she and I could dwell forever away from all cares and all disasters.
“Can I help you, sir?” she asked after a time. “I’d give my life to serve you.” Ah—now she offers a glimmer of feeling! But my agitation over Richard was too great for me to seize on it. She continued: “Tell me what to do,—I’ll try, at least, to do it.”
For a moment I could think of nothing but Jane—and of Bertha, and of the need, above all else, to keep the knowledge of my shameful secret from destroying the happiness I could just glimpse on the horizon.
Then, gathering my wits, I sent Jane into the dining room for a glass of wine and to spy on the group there assembled.
Jane returned shortly with word that the guests were all standing around the buffet cheerful and gay. God give me strength to face whatever comes next… “If all these people came in a body and spat at me, what would you do, Jane?”
“Turn them out of the room, sir, if I could,” she responded. She knew nothing of my sins, knew not why I asked. And yet, she stood by me unquestioning, her loyalty fierce in the face of ruin. I nearly smiled at the thought of little Jane, standing up to them all.
“But if I were to go to them, and they only looked at me coldly, and whispered sneeringly amongst each other, and then dropt off and left me one by one, would you go with them?”
She looked straight at me: “I rather think not, sir; I should have more pleasure in staying with you.”
“You could dare censure for my sake?”
“I could dare it for the sake of any friend who deserved my adherence; as you, I am sure, do.”
Friend. That was more than I had heard from her before, though less than I had allowed myself to dream.
But I could not dwell: there was no time to waste.
Richard could even now be speaking the words that might bring my world crumbling to my feet.
Much as I would have loved to hide away forever with Jane, I urged her to return to the dining room and secretly summon Richard to me.