My Mr. Rochester (5 page)

He said nothing of the mother’s soul. I cast my eyes down and sighed, wishing myself far, far away. In Hamlet 1-3-78—or Millcote. I smiled inwardly upon remembering my touchstone.

“I hope that sigh is from the heart, and that you repent of ever having insulted your excellent benefactor.”

In my mind, I ran to him and kicked his shins and cried out against a world that called Mrs. Reed my benefactor.

In reality, I stood still and said nothing.

“Do you say your prayers night and morning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you read your Bible?”

“Sometimes.”

“With pleasure? Are you fond of it?”

“I like Revelations. The book of Daniel. Genesis and Samuel. The story of Jael in Judges. Some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job and Jonah.”

I meant to impress upon him that I did indeed read my Bible. I added Jael in there as a provocation, but he didn’t react.

“And the psalms? Of course you like them.”

“No, sir.”

“Shocking!”

I had never been so shocking. It was becoming my career.

“I have a little son who knows six psalms by heart,” Brocklehurst said. “If you asked him if he’d prefer a cookie to eat or a new psalm to learn, he’d choose the psalm.”

“Psalms are uninteresting,” I said.

“You do have a wicked heart. You must pray to God to change it.”

I opened my mouth with an excellent rejoinder, but it was lost to fate.

“Sit down, Jane Eyre,” Mrs. Reed said.

I obeyed.

“She should be brought up to something suiting her prospects,” the lady said. “Make her useful and keep her humble. My eldest daughter thinks Jane Eyre will do for a teacher. If you agree, I have no objection. Vacations she will spend, with your permission, at Lowood.”

Dr. Lloyd knitted his eyebrows together and ran his hand through his hair as if some dreadful bargain had hatched before his eyes, a train wreck he couldn’t prevent. I wanted to go to him, throw my arms around his shoulders, and kiss him for standing in the stead of the father I had lost. Dr. Lloyd had looked out for me and secured for me a chance I never dreamed I would get.

For I didn’t care that Bishop Brocklehurst was a bad man. Yes, I could see it even then. At that moment I was in raptures. I was to escape Gateshead forever.

Lowood could not possibly be worse than Gateshead Righteous Household.

« Chapter 5 »
Goodbye To Gateshead

Early one morning soon after Bishop Brocklehurst discovered the wickedness in my heart, I danced over Gateshead’s threshold and out to the courtyard. Last night’s clouds were gone. Fresh snow covered the ground and gates, and the light of the carriage lamps gave all a mystical glow.

My clothes were new, a calf-length gray wool dress, black velvet cloak, and flat-soled black leather boots laced up to my knees. Kid gloves lined with soft microfiber matched the sky-blue mohair slouch hat and scarf Bessie had given me not twenty minutes earlier when she shook me awake.

Make sure she’s well-outfitted for the journey, a credit to Gateshead,
Mrs. Reed had ordered
.
Never mind that nothing in my trunk was new or particularly fine.

With a surge of optimism I threw out my arms and spun in a circle. “Goodbye to Gateshead!”

“Hush girl.” Bessie bit her lower lip to hide her smile.

The Reeds had barely spoken to me since the Night of the Red Room, and they didn’t leave their warm beds now to send me off. Bessie and the carriage driver were the only witnesses to my escape, but the stars in the black sky winked and blinked at me, and I thought the low-hanging crescent moon looked on approvingly.

Invigorating cold air burned into my lungs. I climbed into the carriage where Bessie set the foot warmer on the floor between us. She spread a blanket over our laps, and we were on our way.

“You look quite the young lady, Miss Jane,” she said.

There was a tear in her eye, but I couldn’t stop grinning. I felt quite sophisticated in my traveling clothes, ready for an adventure I never expected to have.

“You’ll forget your Bessie before the train takes you round the first bend,” she said. “You’ll never think of us again.”

“I’m glad to leave Gateshead Righteous,” I said. “But I’ll never forget you, Bessie. You and Dr. Lloyd were the only people ever kind to me in my life.”

“We’ll see you home again when you’ve finished your studies, I’m sure.”

“I’ll never go back to Gateshead!” I said, more violently than I meant to. “I’m going to be a teacher.”

“Oh, Miss Jane.”

I softened my voice. “Don’t cry, Bessie, please. Be happy for me.”

“Child, you would throw away comfort and security for a hard and lonely life.”

Comfort and security? No, prison!
I thought.

“I’m lonely
now
, Bessie. I’m tired of not belonging. I’m no servant, but Abbot was right; I’m no mistress. At Gateshead I’m nothing. A charity case. I can’t bear it.”

She recoiled at the words
charity case
. We turned north off Gateshead Road onto Keystone Highway. It was quiet in the carriage until the blast of a train whistle sounded through the air. We were nearing Gateshead Halt. My heart soared. To my mind, the whistle shouted my triumph to high heaven.

Bessie dug my ticket out of her bag and handed it to the ticket master. A porter took my trunk, and we followed him through the train to my compartment. When he left us, Bessie let out a great sob and hugged me fiercely.

“Oh, Miss Jane. I’ve raised you from an infant. I feel like I’m losing my own dear girl.”

Right. Bessie was as likely as any to slap me for a clever remark or put me in the corner to contemplate my faults. And yet…she was the only one who ever seemed sorry to do it. I kissed her cheek and we said goodbye.

She stayed on the platform as the train pulled away, and as we waved to each other she grew smaller and smaller. Then the train rounded the bend and she was gone.

It was full dawn now. The trees showed distinctly against the brightening sky, and a storm approached from the east. The porter came by with a breakfast trolley and let me choose anything I liked. There was coffee, scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, potatoes and onions, and toast. It all smelled wonderful, but I was too excited to eat.

“How long does it take to get to Lowood?” I said.

“Three to four hours to Lowood Halt—if the tracks are clear and stops aren’t delayed. Then another ten miles to the institution by carriage.” He lowered a tray on the seat across from me and left a small pot of coffee and some toast and marmalade. “You might want something.”

I chewed on half a piece of toast and watched the world go by. With the train’s subtle rocking I relaxed, shedding the fitful excitement which had kept me awake all night. We passed Lake Bellefleur, the farthest I’d ever been from Gateshead mansion. We stopped for half an hour in a real town with tall buildings lit up inside and out, and through the window I watched the workmen load coal onto the train.

The train continued on, and soon I yawned and lifted the dividers on the bench seat so I could lie down and close my eyes, just for a few minutes.

“Jane Eyre!” someone called out in my dream. “Jane Eyre for Lowood!”

But it wasn’t a dream. The train was stopped. Someone had truly called for me. “I’m here!” I cried, afraid he’d leave me.

Lowood Halt had no ticket house. It was no more than a rectangular platform with train tracks on one side and a cobblestone road on the other. At one end an iron bench sat beneath a three-sided rain shelter. Beyond the platform waited a one-horse cart.

“Well?” A man walked by with my trunk. A boy, really, not much older than John Reed. “Get in.”

I climbed into the back of the cart beside my trunk on the flat bed. The driver jumped up to his bench and urged his horse on. The sun was low in the west, hidden by clouds. What sights had I missed, sleeping the day away? My stomach growled. I wished I’d eaten more than two bites of toast.

“Go a little faster, please,” I told the driver. “I don’t want to miss supper at Lowood.”

He looked over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. I prepared for an insult, but his face changed. He had the same look as John Reed did when I was tied to the chair in the Red Room.

I instinctively clutched my cloak at my throat. He grinned—not nicely—and turned back to his horse. “Git, Daisy,” he said with a chuckle. “Walk along sprightly there now. Madam don’t want to miss her supper.”

We traveled miles and miles through remote foothill country. Occasionally we’d pass a private lane, and I might spot a grand house set up the hill well away from the road. The clouds followed us, and a few sprinkles came down. We stopped at an iron gate in a stone fence at a turnaround where the cobblestone road ended. Without ceremony the driver dropped my trunk at the gate then pushed a button recessed in the wall.

I climbed out of the cart, stiff from the jolting ride. Beyond the gate, a long drive led to a cottage, and behind the cottage two mansions faced each other, each as big as Gateshead.

“How marvelous!” I stuck my head through the gate’s bars, hardly believing my eyes. At the end of the drive near the cottage was a powered limousine automobile.

My Uncle Reed had owned an automobile, though not one so large. I never saw it—Mrs. Reed sold it after he died. But John Reed had its picture. I believe the only reason he wanted Anointed status was for the privilege of owning and driving such a vehicle.

“Droppin’ off.” The cart driver spoke to the wall. “I got one Jane Eyre here for you.”

“Why do we stop here?” I said. “The drive is plenty wide enough for the cart.” I blinked away a single fat drop of rain.

“No man is allowed past this point.” He absently pulled his hat brim forward to shield his eyes from the rain. “Not if he ain’t a choker.”

I smiled inwardly. How it would irritate John Reed to hear this driver of low rank using his same slang.

The driver walked over to me and leaned close, his moist warm breath on my neck. “I could come to you the back way, if it gives you pleasure.”

I wanted to slap him, though he was twice my size. We were interrupted by the sound of locks turning, and the gate began to open of its own accord, a wonderful remote mechanical trick.

The driver uttered a nasty laugh and jumped into his cart. “Git, Daisy,” he said to his horse. “You don’t want to miss your supper.”

From somewhere near the gate, a disembodied female voice said, ‘Enter, Jane Eyre!”

« Chapter 6 »
A Bishop’s Charity

Dusk descended suddenly as the sun dipped behind the trees. In the intensifying rain, I ran up the drive with my trunk. I couldn’t resist looking at the limousine, but its windows were darkly tinted and covered with beading raindrops. I couldn’t see inside. While I debated which building to enter, the voice from the gate again called out to me.

“Come, Jane Eyre.”

This time the voice was contained within a human being, a stout dark-haired woman. She beckoned to me from the cottage door. I followed her inside to a small parlor where there was a fire. “Take off your hat and cloak and wait here.”

I draped my cloak over my trunk along with my hat and scarf. While removing my gloves a strange, unnatural sound startled me. It had to be the limousine’s engine. I ran to the window and pulled back the curtain to see the vehicle drive away, red lamps glowing.

The woman returned with a tray and left it on a small table set for two people near the fireplace. The smell of stew and fresh bread made my stomach growl. I dearly hoped I was intended to be one of the two, but she left the room without speaking to me.

The door reopened, and in came a woman of maybe thirty with thick dark hair pulled back in a French braid. An old-fashioned light brown frock was draped over her arm as well as a white pinafore-like apron. She set aside the clothes and greeted me.

“Hello, Jane. What a pretty dress.” Her smile was a little sad, as if she felt pity for me. “I’m Miss Temple, headmistress of Lowood. You’ve arrived too late to eat with the other girls, so you’d better share with me.”