Chapter 23
The others hurried away, while I remained in that chamber of horrors, alone but for Grace Poole and her demonic charge.
This, I supposed, would be my life from here on, trapped with this “wife,” unless Jane would forgive me.
“Grace,” I said, “you and Bertha will not be moving to other quarters. The whole world is now aware that my mad wife lives here; there is no point in hiding the truth anymore.”
“She will move out of this chamber now, sir?” Grace asked.
“I suppose not,” I said. “This is as safe for her as anywhere, and safer than most.”
Still, I tarried, afraid to step outside and face the destruction of all my hopes. We untied Bertha as soon as she calmed, and with Grace beside her caressing her arm, Bertha dozed off in bed a few minutes later.
Numbly, I left that ghastly place and walked down the stairs, glad not to encounter Jane or Adèle. Mrs. Fairfax was in her sitting room, and I stopped there, for I owed her an explanation. “I am sorry to have deceived you,” I said.
Her eyes rose to meet mine. “I was aware of some of it,” she said simply, and turned back to her sewing.
We both remained silent for a time, and then I asked, “Is Miss Eyre in her room?”
“I imagine she is, sir,” she said, still not looking at me.
I rose and left her there. That is how things shall be now, I thought: the averted eyes, the stares behind my back.
People will conjecture all kinds of scenes of mayhem—and worse—hidden behind these walls.
Thornfield-Hall would now be a place haunted by my shame and sins, its great reputation forever tarnished.
And how could I continue to live at Thornfield myself?
Would that I had let Rowland’s accursed son take the place off my hands!
I mounted the stairs slowly and turned toward Jane’s room.
At the door, I paused: I cannot disturb her, I thought; it is not my right.
I can do nothing but wait for her to enter the world again, and forgive me.
Silently, I pressed my hand—and then my forehead—against the wood of the door panel.
I don’t know how long I stood there, feeling a flood of remorse and exhaustion wash over me as the waters came into my soul.
Eventually, I went to the nearest room and brought out a chair and quietly set it down in front of Jane’s door.
I had betrayed her, just as my father had betrayed me, and I knew, better than anyone, that a trust once broken is never again the same.
I sat there for hours—replaying times we had spent together, happier times; surely they had meant as much to her as they had to me.
After a time I began to worry that something could have happened to her—that the recent events had made her ill—but just then I heard soft sounds of movement, and then the bolt was withdrawn, and a pale, rumpled Jane collapsed into my arms.
I gathered her close and held her. “You come out at last!” I said.
“I have been waiting for you long, and listening; yet not one movement have I heard, nor one sob: five minutes more of that deathlike hush, and I should have forced the lock like a burglar.” She moved slightly in my arms, as if trying to escape, but I held her to me, waiting for her to scream at me and pound my chest, to release the anger that meant she still cared.
But she was silent while I blundered on: “Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. Will you ever forgive me?”
Still, she said nothing. Would she never speak to me again? “You know I am a scoundrel, Jane?” I said. Even rage would have been better than this stubborn, gruesome silence.
“Yes, sir,” she said, her first words to me.
“Then tell me so roundly and sharply—don’t spare me.”
But she could not: she was too weak to do more than lie in my arms, and I realized she had had nothing to eat since the night before.
I carried her down to the library and plied her with water and wine and sent for nourishment for the both of us, for I had not eaten, either.
Slowly she revived, regaining color in her face and limbs, and regaining as well her willpower.
I was sure she felt comfort in my arms, as I did in hers, yet she would not allow a kiss or even an endearing touch.
“Why, Jane?—because I have a wife already? You think me a low rake?” I asked her, but I knew the answer before she could give it.
And I could have repeated her other arguments before she gave them as well.
Nothing I could say would move her. I challenged her to consider my dilemma: the husband of a mad wife, the necessity of keeping my secret in order to hire and keep servants, and even a governess!
—but she chastised me, saying it was not Bertha’s fault she was mad.
I tried reason; I challenged that she didn’t truly love me; I told her my entire story, from childhood to my ill-considered, disastrous marriage and my realization of what Bertha really was, and my decadent, wastrel life in Europe, all of it up until I met her that dark January evening, hoping that she would see me anew, sure that she would admit I had done the best that could be asked of any man in the same place.
I brought her and myself near to tears more than once.
But as she grew stronger, the power of her will increased all the more.
I went through every weapon in my armory—patience, love, forgiveness, anger, reason—but nothing could pierce the steel of her will, nothing could break down the walls of what I had most admired in her: her resolute independence, her moral compass. I was powerless against her.
This was not like the previous times in which we had enjoyed parrying with each other, challenging each other, the wordplay that had once so amused me.
But this was not a game: this was my life, for without Jane, I had nothing; I was nothing.
And yet I saw her slipping away from me, and, try as I might, nothing I could say would move her.
Still, I was convinced there must be some way to bring her back to me. It tore my heart when she announced at last—so sternly it made me weep—“I am going, sir,” and made to return to her room.
Devastated, I could not bear to watch her go.
In the morning, I told myself, in the morning I will find a way to persuade her.