Chapter 20
I was late in rising that morning, having lain awake in bed the full duration of the storm, my mind as tossed as tree branches in the wind.
I would marry Jane in a month, as soon as the courts cleared me of the weight of Bertha’s bond, and I would take her away soonest possible on a honeymoon, then to a new home.
I hadn’t told her of that part yet—I hadn’t even thought where we might live: let Jane decide that, I thought, for I was hardly used to the idea myself.
I would arrange for Adèle to be taken into a school—no, Jane must see to that too, as she surely would have a better idea of Adèle’s needs and capabilities than I did.
I would send for the family jewels immediately—they had been locked in a safe at a London bank since my mother’s death—and never mind that they were part of Gerald’s inheritance: they had been my mother’s.
My mother’s. I would take Jane to Millcote and buy her the finest of fabrics for dresses.
As long as I possessed the inheritance, I would spend it as I pleased, and I had promised myself in Gateshead that Jane would have only the best of everything.
That would not go on forever, but for the next month, it would.
Jane was at breakfast with Mrs. Fairfax when I came down in the morning, and I dared not face the two of them together, for I realized how it must look to the proper old lady to see the master of the estate marrying the governess.
Instead, I returned upstairs to the schoolroom and waited there.
Adèle bounced in shortly. She was surprised to see me, but, taking advantage of every opportunity for affection, she leaped into my arms.
“You have become too big a girl to jump into men’s arms—into anyone’s arms,” I scolded her. But I did not put her down immediately.
She placed her hands on my cheeks and held my face close to hers. “Did you hear the storm?” she asked. “Were you afraid?”
“No, of course not. It was only wind and rain.”
“And did you see? The big tree has come down!”
“Indeed, it has,” I said putting her down. “Now, run along, and find Miss Eyre and tell her I am waiting for her here.”
“Will I not have lessons this morning?” she asked, with the joy every child feels at the prospect of freedom.
“We shall see,” I said, though I could not summon my usual gruffness on a morning so happy.
Jane came in shortly afterwards. “Come and bid me good morning,” I said to her, and she came, and we embraced and kissed, the sweetest of kisses.
“You look blooming, and smiling, and pretty, truly pretty this morning.” My heart was full, overcome with the sunshine of her presence. “Who is this sunny-faced girl with the dimpled cheek and rosy lips?”
“It is Jane Eyre, sir,” she said.
“Yes, indeed, but soon to be Jane Rochester: in four weeks, Janet; not a day more. Do you hear that?”
Her face turned a sudden white, and I saw something like panic—or fear—pass across her face. “You gave me a new name,” she said, “Jane Rochester; and it seems so strange.”
“Yes; Mrs. Rochester; young Mrs. Rochester—Fairfax Rochester’s girl-bride. Surely you can become used to it.”
“It can never be, sir; it does not sound likely. Human beings never enjoy complete happiness in this world. I was not born for a different destiny to the rest of my species: to imagine such a lot befalling me is a fairy tale—a daydream.”
But it was, indeed, that very fairy tale, that dream of complete happiness, that I intended to build for her, while it was still in my power to do so.
But to my surprise she responded to my offerings with horror.
I explained that I wanted to treat her as a peer, to make her my equal in society’s eyes, to shower her in jewels as nature had endowed her with spirit. But she would hear none of it.
“And then you won’t know me, sir, and I shall not be your Jane Eyre any longer,” she said.
I wanted the world to see her beauty as clearly as I did, and I tried to make her understand.
“This very day I shall take you in the carriage to Millcote,” I said, “and you must choose some dresses, and we shall be married in the little church at the gates of Thornfield, and then I will waft you away at once to London. And after we have been there, we will go on to all the finest places in Europe—everywhere I took my lonely and jaded self, I will revisit with you, and you will turn them into magical places and heal them in my eyes.”
She laughed. “I am not an angel and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me—for you will not get it.”
That blasted Mr. Rochester again! Could she not understand how much I wanted to be called by my first name, the name my mother gave me?
We bantered back and forth, she laying out a rather woeful portrait of a capricious and cold marriage as a matter of course; I assured her my ardor would not cool in six months, as she claimed—indeed, I was sure it never would.
“I think I shall like you again and yet again,” I said, “and I will make you confess that you do indeed know that I do not only like but love you,” I said, “with truth, fervor, and constancy.”
However, she was not finished with teasing me, and she went on, calling me sir at every opportunity until she nearly drove me mad, finishing with, “Well, then, sir; have the goodness to gratify my curiosity, which is much piqued on one point.”
Grace Poole, I thought. Good God, woman, just give me a few more weeks and we will be clear of Bertha forever.
“What? What?” I asked. At least I had not yet sworn to answer every request, though I was surely eager to prove my love in any way I might.
Still, the more I panicked and attempted to overrule her, the more delighted and sprightly she became.
But finally she came out with it, asking why I had taken such pains to make her think I wished to marry Miss Ingram.
I was surprised that one so intelligent as Jane might need this explained.
“I feigned courtship of Miss Ingram,” I told her, “because I wished to render you as madly in love with me as I was with you; and I knew jealousy would be the best ally I could call in for the furtherance of that end.” For I had thought that she surely would realize that she could never bear the thought of seeing me with another woman.
But, she asked, was it fair to play with someone’s emotions like that?
I responded that I had done it for the best of reasons: to bring her to me.
She chastised me for acting disgracefully, but I was surprised that it was not her emotions she defended but those of her rival, Miss Ingram, whom she imagined pining for the prize Jane was now enjoying.
I laughed at that. “Her feelings are concentrated in one—pride; and that needs humbling. Were you jealous, Jane?”
She would not concede the point, and went on to impugn my principles. I smiled to think of all the years of joyful battle ahead of us. Not even at Cambridge had I experienced so worthy and quick-witted an opponent.
When I asked her to make ready for a trip to Millcote, she made one last request, sending me off to put Mrs. Fairfax’s mind at rest as to my intentions, for it seemed she had seen Jane and me kissing in the hall the previous night.
I found that good woman in her sitting room, mending an apron. I could have summoned her to my office, but I wanted to approach her at her most comfortable. I hoped she would be happy for us, as perhaps my own mother might have been; I hoped Jane’s happiness, in particular, would win her over.
“Good morning,” I said, as if surprised to see her there.
She put her mending aside and rose. “Sir,” she said, her face betraying nothing.
“May I have a word?”
“Of course.”
I sat in the chair facing hers, and she seated herself again. “You knew my mother far better than anyone else I know,” I began.
She stiffened. “I did not know her well at all, sir.”
“Still, she was a lady in every meaning of the word, was she not?”
“Yes, sir, she was.”
“When she married my father—George Howell Rochester—were there whisperings that she had married beneath herself?” This was treacherous ground, I knew, but it seemed the best. “He had the Rochester name, but he had put himself in trade, which made him a kind of pariah, no? I cannot imagine what must have been said of him in those days.”
Mrs. Fairfax’s eyes lowered.
“Did you ever hear gossip of that sort?” I asked.
“It could have happened,” she allowed.
“She was your late husband’s second cousin, I understand.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And he never said anything? That she had married beneath herself?”
“Of course not. Your father was a gentleman, despite…”
I nodded. “Despite that he was in trade.”
She cleared her throat, and her eyes wandered away from mine. “I really don’t recall, sir.”
“I never knew my mother, as you are well aware. So I have only a child’s dream of what his mother might have been, but I assume that she was a fine woman.
However”—I cleared my throat—“in all my life, and in the many, many places I have traveled, I have never met a woman as admirable as our Miss Eyre.”
If I had imagined that I would catch her unprepared, I was mistaken. “If I may say so, sir,” she said, “she is a child—only eighteen.”
“Many women of good family marry at eighteen.”
“As I say, sir.”
I had to smile that she did not dare to point out I was twice Jane’s age. “Yes, she is young,” I agreed. “But she is wise beyond her years; surely you have seen that.”
She said nothing in response, for she could not deny my words.
I continued: “Would that I were younger, or she older. But that is not the case. Is that the only reservation you might have? You should know I shall marry her regardless, but I—and Jane, I am sure—would welcome your blessing. So again I ask, is her youth your only reservation?”
She looked at me straight on. “It will indeed be said, sir, that you are marrying beneath your station. Eyebrows do rise when a man allies himself with his child’s governess.”
“You do not admire her?”
“I think she is a fine young woman, sir. But a governess, married to the master of the house, it does…it does not…”
“It does not bode well for the governess, you are saying. You have concern that I would take advantage—”
“Oh no, sir! No. It’s just…she is very inexperienced, sir.”
I would have laughed if I had not felt so put out by the rest of the conversation.
“On that count, you will not have to concern yourself,” I said to her, rising.
“Miss Eyre is perfectly capable of taking care of herself.” I started toward the door, but I stopped and turned.
“At any rate,” I added, “I am determined to marry her. Whether you accept her or not is your affair, I suppose, but in one month, she shall be my wife.”
After that, Jane and I—and Adèle, who despite my original wishes charmed her way into our carriage—took off for Millcote.
I urged Jane to agree to the loveliest of fabrics, but she was a stubborn little thing, and instead chose only a black satin and a pearl-gray silk.
The harder I tried to lavish her with gifts, the harder she resisted, saying, “I only want an easy mind, sir; not crushed by crowded obligations. Do you remember what you said of Céline Varens?—of the diamonds, the cashmeres you gave her? I will not be your English Céline Varens. I shall continue to act as Adèle’s governess: by that I shall earn my board and lodging, and thirty pounds a year besides.
I’ll furnish my own wardrobe out of that money, and you shall give me nothing but—”
My God, I thought. Such independence in her! Cannot she simply let me spoil her while I still have the means? “Well,” I asked, “but what?”
“Your regard: and if I give you mine in return, that debt will be quit.”
“Well,” I responded, “for cool native impudence, and pure innate pride, you haven’t your equal.” I shall say this for her: certainly, unlike some women, her view of marriage was not dictated by the fanciful romantic vision of a Jane Austen novel.
As we were approaching Thornfield, I asked her to dine with me that evening, for she had not yet done so in all the past months. But she declined, for, as she insisted, she had come to Thornfield a governess and she was determined to remain so until the day of our wedding.
I gazed at her, sitting primly beside me, her hands folded in her lap.
She is a puzzle, I thought; she is a puzzle to be unwrapped one piece at a time until she is completely revealed.
Well, then, so be it, I said to myself. I will have the rest of my life to discover my Jane.
Difficult, contradictory, maddening as she might be, she was my whole world, almost my hope of heaven.
But if she could be difficult, so could I; and as soon as I had a chance, I ordered the finest wedding veil to be had to grace Jane’s head.