The bed was neatly made, the room in order, and Jane was not in sight. I opened the cupboard: Jane had so few clothes, and they all seemed to be there. No—her black silk dress was missing. I searched the meager rest of her things: she had taken nothing I had given her, and her trunks remained packed and locked, just where John and a stableboy had brought them back upstairs the day before. Perhaps she had just gone out for a morning stroll to clear her head? But even as I thought it, I knew it couldn’t be true, for why else the unlocked kitchen door, the missing bread? No, Jane had removed herself from temptation. From me.
I ran from the room, my mind at once full and blank, if such a thing is possible, and down the stairs and to the back entry, where I exchanged my ordinary boots for riding boots and threw on a jacket and made for the stable. A few moments later Mesrour and I were clattering out of the stable yard, with Pilot bounding beside us. But where to go? Where? I hesitated a moment, asking myself where Jane would go but finding no answer. Jane was, in some ways, still a mystery to me.
Not to a city, I thought. Not even to Millcote. Where? Where?
“Find Jane!” I ordered Pilot, knowing it was useless. He looked back at me, tongue flapping, joyous at the chance for a romp across the moors, but insensible to my pain. No, I would have to find her myself. Would she take the road or would she set off across the moors? Surely she was too smart to cross the moors, where she could so easily twist an ankle and fall, where the bogs could devour her. And so I spurred Mesrour into a gallop down the estate road; at the gate I turned instinctively not toward Millcote, but the opposite way. How far would she get? She had little enough money, I knew, since her salary would not yet come due for two more months. She must have had in hand only a pittance—not enough to survive on, not even for my resourceful Jane. God, we allow our people little enough; what do we expect them to live on? Damn it all!
I galloped ten miles at least on the road but saw no sign of her, and I knew it was impossible for her to have gone farther on foot, even if she had started out well before light. Did she go toward Millcote? Could she, in her desperation, have set out across the moor? Was she lying now in a gulley, having turned her ankle, unable to walk? Had she been accosted by someone living rough and been taken away against her will? I reined in Mesrour and looked about me. All was silent, save the cries of a pair of larks and the wind in the heath and the pant of Pilot at my foot.
“Jane!” I shouted, rising in the stirrups. “Jane!” But there was only silence to carry her name across the moor.
Witlessly, I spurred Mesrour onward, aimlessly, down into one dale and up onto another fell, until slowly it occurred to me that she might not be on foot at all. She might have taken a ride on a passing coach, or a farmer’s wagon bound for market. She might, by now, be past Millcote or on her way to Harrogate; she could be halfway to Doncaster or nearly to Leeds. She could be anywhere.
She could be lost to me.
She could be lost. How could I give up the search?
I could not. I rode this way and that. I stopped a coach-and-four with an irascible passenger but a more kindly coachman to ask if they had seen her; I queried a passing tinker; I spoke to a couple of ruffians who were more drunk than alive; I asked at the George Inn in Millcote and at the Royal Oak at the crossroads. No one had seen her. It was as if she had vanished from the face of the earth.
I returned home well after dark, tired and hungry. I told myself I would find her there: perhaps she had had second thoughts. Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding, and she had only gone for a long walk after all.
But, of course, she had not returned, and no word had come from her. She had forsaken me; my love for her had not been enough. She did not love me as I loved her. She had been within my grasp and now was torn from me—forever. And it was Bertha who had caused this, my manic wife, the woman I was stuck with for eternity. In a frenzy I stormed up the stairs and burst into her chamber. I ignored Grace and charged straight into Bertha’s bedroom. She had been sleeping, but my angry shouts wakened her, and she cowered in her bed as I screamed at her that all this was her fault, that her dalliance with my brother had ruined my life, her madness had cost me my one chance at happiness, that I was sorry that I had ever laid eyes on her, that I wished I had never come to her blasted Jamaica, that she and her greedy, selfish son had destroyed me.
Grace, horrified, tried speaking sense to me, but I was beyond reason—and when I wouldn’t listen she seized me by the shoulders and forced me out of that place and I stumbled down to where Mrs. Fairfax stood, wringing her hands in the second-floor hall, having heard my angry shouts. She gathered me to her bosom, and, after a few moments, led me to the kitchen and gave me tea and spoke calmly to me until—desperate, miserable, and now ashamed—I grew quiet. She told me that Sam and the others were all out looking for Jane. Surely, she murmured, Miss Eyre will be found by morning, safe and sound, and brought home where she belonged. She tried to give me a sleeping draught but I would not take it; however, I did finally allow her to take me, now exhausted, up to my bedroom.
As soon as she was gone, and before I succumbed to sleep, I left my chamber and made my way to Jane’s room, where I searched her belongings, looking for any indication of where she might have gone. I opened her trunks and rummaged through her neatly packed clothes, and I searched her dressing table. There I found the little pearl necklace I had bought her in Millcote, and holding it clasped in my hand, I returned to my bed and fell asleep.
*
In the morning I woke and was immediately hit with the memory of Jane’s disappearance, and my own sorry state. I wasted no time in riding to Millcote to find Gerald. I was ashamed at what I had said and done the previous night in Bertha’s chamber, for I knew none of it was her fault. But I did have a grievance against Gerald, for I was convinced he had something to do with breaking up our wedding—no doubt out of vengeance for my showing up his manipulations of my father’s letters.
He was not at the inn, but as I was walking away from there I heard his voice behind me. “Oi! Rochester!” he yelled. I turned around to see him advancing on me in a fury, his eyes wild. “You scoundrel!” he went on, accusing me of taking his rightful inheritance away from him with lies and insinuations.
“I am no scoundrel,” I replied with a calmness I did not feel, “and it is you who doctored those letters with false dates. And you who broke up my wedding—”
“You scum! You dog shit!” Gerald yelled. “How could you marry another while my mother still lived?”
I turned away to leave, and he would have followed me, no doubt, but by then the owner of the inn had come out to see what the trouble was, and held him back while I left.
It is not over, I thought, for I was sure Gerald would not let it go at that. Infuriated, Gerald’s words still ringing in my ears, my mind reeled. I needed calm. I needed peace, and there was only one place I could hope to find it.
*