I managed to coax her into telling me what had disturbed her. She’d had nightmarish visions of a destroyed Thornfield-Hall, and of a child, clinging to her for dear life. I tried to reassure her that all was well, certain that she could not know anything of my fevered idea, abandoned less than a day earlier, to move us out of Thornfield.
But she could not be deterred. “On waking,” she said, “a gleam dazzled my eyes: I thought—oh, it is daylight! But I was mistaken: it was only candlelight, Sophie, I supposed, had come in. There was a light on the dressing table, and the door of the closet, where, before going to bed, I had hung my wedding dress and veil, stood open: I heard a rustling there. I asked, ‘Sophie, what are you doing?’
“No one answered,” she went on, “but a form emerged from the closet: it took the light, held it aloft and surveyed the garments pendent from the portmanteau. ‘Sophie! Sophie!’ I again cried: and still it was silent. I had risen up in bed, I bent forward: first, surprise, then bewilderment, came over me; and then my blood crept cold through my veins. Mr. Rochester, this was not Sophie.”
My own blood chilled at her words.
“It was not Leah,” Jane said, “and it was not Mrs. Fairfax—no, I was sure of it, and am still—it was not even that strange woman, Grace Poole.” It was not, she said, anyone she had ever seen; even in the half darkness she had been certain of that.
“It must have been one of them,” I said, for I could say nothing else. Perhaps the force of my words could convince her.
But in the next moment she described, in slow and fearful words, the savage image of Bertha herself. I dared not breathe as she described how her midnight visitor took up Jane’s bridal veil and placed it on her own head to gaze in the mirror, and in a spasm of violence tore the veil from her head, ripped the lace in two, and threw it to the floor and tramped on it. I imagined Bertha somehow understanding in her own confused way my intentions toward Jane. And, oh God, there was more! When Bertha had finished with the veil, she approached Jane herself with the candle and looked into her eye, and still staring closely at Jane, extinguished the candle and remained there until Jane fainted from terror.
I swallowed deeply and forced calm onto my face. “Who was with you when you revived?” I asked.
No one was there, she said, and as it had become broad daylight, she rose and did her usual ablutions, and while she felt weak, she was not ill, and then she asked who or what that could have been. It was a nightmare, I told her, surely just a creature of an overstimulated brain, and I was relieved that such a vision could be explained away. But she insisted that her nerves were not in fault, that the thing had been real.
I reminded her gently that none of her other dreams had come true, and half succeeded in convincing her, I thought, that it was a matter of nerves. But then she rejoined: in the light of broad day, she had seen her fine new wedding veil, lying on the carpet, torn in half.
I clung to her, wishing I could erase the event from her mind, erase it from time altogether. Now it was clear: it was not just I who was in danger from the madwoman—Jane herself was at risk. How could I protect her now? Would this terror never end?
Struggling to control my voice, I offered an explanation: It was—it must have been—Grace Poole, I said. She’d seen how oddly the servant had acted in the past. In her half sleep, Jane had imagined Grace as a monster. I comforted her in as cheery a voice as I could muster, making it up as I went, desperate to hide the truth for one more day. After the wedding, when we were on our honeymoon, Bertha could be moved away somewhere—anywhere. Grace Poole’s good name deserved better than this, but there was little to be done for it now, knowing my clear-sighted, rational Jane would wonder why Grace was allowed to remain at Thornfield-Hall. I hinted that Grace’s tenure at Thornfield represented a burden and debt I had taken on and must repay, but that when we were married a year and a day I would tell her the whole of it. I would have liked to tell her immediately, to hear her lift my burden with the blessing of her trust and love, to have her tell me that I was not wrong in the clear eyes of God and morality to think I deserved a better life than the one I had been dealt. But I dared not tell her now, while I could still lose her.
Jane, bless her, seemed content with what I had to say. I urged her to sleep with Adèle in the nursery and to lock the door. If I could just get her safely to morning, to our exchange of vows, we would be off to London for our honeymoon and a happy life together.
She did as I suggested, and as soon as she was settled, I climbed to the third floor and let myself into the chamber. All was quiet there, Bertha pacing in silence in her room, and Grace sitting up in the outer room, relishing the one mug of porter I allowed her each night. “She was out again last night,” I said quietly.
I could tell by Grace’s expression that she had not known. “Does the porter make you sleepy?” I asked.
She rose in umbrage at that. “I keep my promises. I do my duties.”
“She nearly attacked Miss Eyre,” I hissed at her.
She shrugged. “In another day you will be shut of us, off on your honeymoon.”
Indeed. I held her eyes, torn between rage at her impertinence and the knowledge that I could not risk losing her service the way I had lost Molly’s.
“Thousands of people better off than her are kept in asylums,” she added, and I think I saw pity in her eyes.
“You have served me well all these years, Grace, and I appreciate that.”
She nodded.
“And have you saved enough by now?”
She smiled her gap-toothed smile. “It is never enough.”
I left her with that. Nothing is ever enough. One thinks one has done enough, and it turns out not to be so; one thinks nothing else could go wrong but is mistaken in the end. And yet, as I left the chamber, the big clock downstairs chimed and I told myself that in a few hours, my new life would begin.
Chapter 22