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.