Rochester (Jane Eyre Fanfic)

At the behest of my Janet, who is indeed the only creature—dear witch that she is—with the power to bend me to her will (under which gentle pressure I do happily quiesce) I have submitted to the task of committing something of my history to paper. She has documented her own histories at my request, and so now, to hers, I must comply.

Previous to reading this drivel, I trust the reader has availed himself—or herself (my wife corrects me)—of the story of Jane Eyre; or if he has not, I advise that he do so now, without an instant’s delay, for a man is not wholly a man—a human not entirely humane—until he has stood in the shoes of a neglected child turned governess turned mistress of a great estate. Without such prior edification, reader, I doubt my tale will either enlighten or entertain.

Here my wife admonishes me to be serious, but as I have already given her firm orders to transcribe my words exactly as my tongue employs them—or else I shall speedily lose interest in the task and seek out a more attractive avenue of amusement (viz., I will require another gentle dose of Jane Eyre Rochester’s sweet persuasion)—I trust she will allow me to continue without further interruption.

The reader should already know that I am blind—not, indeed, as absolutely as I was ten years ago, but blind enough that this story can only be recorded via dictation—an unfortunate burden for my darling, who denies in a stern tone that it is any burden at all. (Says she with little Helen—our fourth child and only daughter—pulling mightily at her skirt hem.)

…a man is not wholly a man—a human not entirely humane—until he has stood in the shoes of a neglected child turned governess turned mistress of a great estate.

There now. With little Helen slumbering quietly in my own arms, I might commence while the rest of the children are at play and the two of us have a few fast-dwindling hours at our disposal.

I will not trifle with the reader’s patience by attempting to repeat events that my own wife has already documented so masterfully in her own narration; my object is to paint a picture of my own thoughts and actions in the spaces that she, in her ignorance of the true machinations of my anomalous brain, was obliged to leave blank.

If the reader has wondered at all what had indeed occupied my thoughts during our initial meeting and subsequent interactions, as well as during her two long and torturous absences from Thornfield, here I shall attempt to answer.

First, however, it might be of interest to share a contrast of our childhoods. The reader must bear in mind that I am twenty years my darling’s senior, and while I was scraping my boyish knees on the gravelly garden paths at Thornfield, Jane’s parents were yet my peers in youth. One might follow with the supposition that the distance in our ages ought to have given me a twenty-year advantage of her, but in sagacity at least, I am inclined to consider myself roundly beaten, even then as now.

While my mother lived, I never wanted for that developmental warmth of filial affection that children are so wont to take for granted—they that have it—and crave for in helplessness when they do not. A father’s devotion, however, I have never felt, and without knowing him except as the man to whom I owed all earthly advantages as to education and name, I left Thornfield for school, as green as a sapling and eager for manhood.

My first blow came while I was away. The typhoid took my mother from me swiftly, and at the age of ten, I had my first taste of mortal grief, hardly conscious at the time that a taste it was only. In due course, I would experience the full sensation of it in its most potent strains.

It was during the years after my mother’s death that I became truly acquainted with my father’s character, as well as my value in his eyes. I mattered to him only so far as I never made a spectacle of myself, or exposed myself, and (consequently) my gift of an old, fine name, to the censure of society. Exacting only in matters that might directly impinge my reputation—the polished prize of any elevated individual—he never suffered himself to be a father in any nurturing sense of the word. Whereas my principled Christian mother had exhorted me in my young age to lead a moral and ethical life, and thereby achieve happiness, which teachings I valued as tokens of her great love and preserved with her memory as any sentimental son might preserve an otherwise inconsequential memento, I soon discovered under the tutelage of my father that ethics, at least, were to be borne only so far as their influence did not interfere with one’s motives.

My only brother Rowland was a diligent pupil of our father’s lessons and proved himself to the end his equal in cunning and artifice. For myself, I must forever bear the shame of being too pliant, too raw, and too permissive of the faults of my relatives. Ignorance and inexperience aside, I knew my father to be the avaricious sort, and that might have been enough to warn me, and at last, spare me of the mistake of my life and the bane of my past—my cursed and wretched union with the lunatic Bertha Mason.

But here I must interject, at my wife’s suggestion, a certain truth that at once baffles and chagrins, and which the two of us have pondered at some length when a whimsical mood turns us toward curious reflections: had I not, in my hot and impulsive youth, suffered myself to be married to a dark and mysterious stranger in a whirlwind of folly that day in Spanish Town, Jamaica, I might never have embarked on that mad, desperate tour of Europe in pursuit of an enigma—a woman with sense and feeling—and thereby encountered Céline Varens, my transient French coquette. If there had been no Céline, it stands to reason to suppose that her daughter, Adèle, might never have discovered herself in my permanent care and in need of a certain, imperative English governess.

What eyes were these, piercing through mine with all the gentle, steady resolve that would later pry from me my darkest and most oppressive confidences?

I use the word ‘imperative’ not lightly, for, in truth, I owe the sanctity of my life, my current ecstasy of being and the foundation of my existence, to this one waiflike, wholly angelic little creature: this certain, imperative English governess.

Dictation—Day Number Two

Here we sit in the life we have constructed about ourselves, Jane at her desk, I sitting upright in our bed and speaking the words she deftly captures in ink, while the children sleep on, sweet and oblivious to their parents’ midnight musings.

I can see my wife’s pale form illumined in candlelight, her familiar contours more clearly defined in my memories than in my sight, and I can well imagine that this quaint smudge of yellow-white upon my blighted vision, with its head of shimmering brown and arms of blushing pink, had visited me in angel form well before I knew it by its earthly name: Jane Eyre.

I can recall with ease the day I first saw her, my angel guised in human flesh and mud-splashed cotton trappings. I had been recalled by business, or fate, back to England, and after an absence spent in all but headlong dissipation (I had thoroughly wasted any hope of ever finding my ideal woman), I took a bleak measure of solace in driving Mesrour wildly down those threading passages through the hills twixt Millcote and Thornfield.

A twisted hope existed in my mind then, I remember, of the ice and the mud and Mesrour’s stamping, furious hooves agreeing on a mutual course of calamity. Combined, the three elements might have uprooted me from my saddle with decisive and definitive ease, and sent me to meet with fatal force the jagged frozen earth. I could almost have welcomed such an abrupt finale to my sufferings, but Mesrour’s footing was as sure as ever for the moment, and who was I to deliberately guide such a fine and loyal beast to his untimely end?

Who was I, indeed? I might as well have been thinking of the beast within my own breast—a fine, loyal animal, full of passionate yearning and ill-guided sentiment. The poor beast’s sole prayer was to one day feel a soft hand on his muzzle, to hear a whispering voice in his twitching ear; he wanted an angel, the contradiction to his gnarled mien and spirit, to murmur comfort to his soul and pet love upon his flanks.

But the poor, stupid animal had been searching too low for his deliverance; for in upturning stones on foreign soils, he had repeatedly uncovered precisely the sort of insects one should expect to find in such places—base, immoral, selfish slugs. Yet error after effort, disappointment after disillusionment, had yet to teach the dumb, disheartened brute to lift his feeble eyes and seek the clouds.

Dictation—Day Number Three

How careless I had been that frosty afternoon, so wholly absorbed in the wretched prison of my mind with thoughts of the even more wretched dungeon to which I was returning, that I had not the sense to recognize my salvation as it put itself off to the side of Hay Lane and out of my way.

Little more than an indifferent, stationary blur in my periphery, she entered my life without ceremony, without any indication of what she would become to me, and I passed her by. It was then that Mesrour deigned at last to lose his footing. The moment his hooves clapped upon the icy causeway, he slipped, and sent me tumbling, not to death, but to “life everlasting.”

Mesrour recovered his footing sooner than I, no worse the wear for his mishap; but I was injured, only to the point of being unable to bear my full weight on one ankle, but it was enough to render me pitiable to my waiting angel. And to think how I tried to shake her off!—such a small, clear voice it was, requesting to assist me up, that I thought at first it was a child, lost, perhaps, and in more need of my help than the contrary, but it would not go at my rough and repeated dismissal.

‘I cannot think of leaving you, sir,’ said she at last, firmly, with the air of one who has determined not to be gainsaid. ‘At so late an hour, in this solitary lane…’

She was near me when she said this; I had just tried my foot, which flatly refused to support me without considerable discomfort, and I believe when I finally looked at her, and, in looking, beheld what I had not expected, that my physical pain, if not my expression of it, melted away as dew under the sun.

Her tone had impressed me, but her look arrested. What eyes were these, piercing through mine with all the gentle, steady resolve that would later pry from me my darkest and most oppressive confidences? I would later accuse her of bewitching my horse, of causing the accident, but, in truth, her spell was cast upon me, and all with that look.

It was set upon a face that was not at once attractive. Indeed, a pair of eyes trained to see beauty in glossy ringlets, in pouting, rose-colored lips and painted cheeks, would have glanced over her as if she had not been there. She was a wisp, a sprite, where tall and buxom Amazons were the rule. And I believe it is to my credit that my eyes, “trained” as they were to recognize the day’s standard of counterfeit beauty, were struck momentarily with the impression that they were, at last, in view of something subtly, yet profoundly, beautiful.

Dictation—Day Number Four

Her hair, chestnut brown beneath her black beaver bonnet, was under the influence of the fog, raised in a state of damp and comely disarray. There were two spots of real color on her cheeks, called forward either by exercise or my proximity (I prefer to think the latter), but otherwise, her aspect was spotless, pale, and perfectly unassuming. Here was a face without pretense, untainted by even the mere vestiges of guile!

In my mind’s eye, I can see her still: eyebrows gently arched and stark brown against the whiteness of her brow, the straight bridge of her well-formed nose ending in a small, rounded point, and the faint creases on either end of her mouth dimpling as she swallowed. There was nothing irregular (or shall I say, distinctive?) about her features except for a solitary freckle below her left eye and the wideness of her lips, which were uneven. The lower was full while the upper came slightly forward and was thin, and faintly pursed, giving her an inquisitive air, as though the beginning of a question was always half formed upon her mouth.

I recall quizzing her with bald impertinence, and to each question she responded without reserve, though I remember a pointed desire to agitate her, to see her press her teeth to her plump lower lip if only for a glimpse of them, most especially after she revealed that she lived at Thornfield and I had not the smallest inkling of who she could be.

I scrutinized her dress, found it functional and to the point, like her occupation, which she presently informed me was governess.

‘Ah, the governess!’ I had exclaimed, exulting in a strange sense of relief that I could leave the scene, return to my abode, and know that this diminutive, interesting creature would follow in due course, that I might have another opportunity of examining her.

I asked her to bring my horse to me, for I was sitting now on the stile, unable to transport myself unassisted, and had the distinct pleasure of at last seeing her unnerved as she approached Mesrour; but she was determined to obey, to conquer her fears, and prove herself useful. The color rose in her face, her petite hands clasped uncertainly at her skirt, and she shied furtively away from Mesrour’s trampling forefeet, determining how best to secure his reins without injuring herself in the attempt.

I might as well have asked a dormouse to corral a tomcat on my behalf, and before I knew quite how it happened, I was smiling, laughing, and on an evening that I formerly believed would grant no cause for either! Miraculous!

I relieved her of the charge before my laughter could be called truly offensive, and summoned her back to me.

‘Necessity compels me to make you useful,’ I told her, and took the liberty of using her as a crutch to help me limp to my horse.

The reader may call it instinct, or some supernatural revelation, but in laying my hand upon her frail shoulder, I at once felt a sympathetic current flow between us. Already, unknowingly, the little elf had begun the long work of kneading the knots from my soul. Indeed, I felt as though a single catch in the ponderous tangle of my heartstrings unwound itself at her touch, and I retook my seat atop Mesrour an altered creature, though I was only then vaguely aware of the seeds of transformation there planted in my bosom.

The occurrence on Hay Lane, I know, hardly left the same impression on her. She went on to post her letter, which was her purpose in being alone and on foot, feeling only serene, grateful for an event that served, if nothing else, to break up an otherwise monotonous day. I flatter myself; she was not disappointed upon her return to Thornfield to discover me there; lo and behold: the master of the house, her employer, and the unfortunate traveler—all one and the same man!

‘Here is variety,’ thought she with modest satisfaction. ‘Here is a change from the everyday discourse I must expect from the child and the housekeeper.’

I know her thoughts well enough now, but for my part, I was only eager to continue the dialogue we had begun on the road, to try her mind as well as her patience, just as I had tested my foot after my fall. I wanted to know: could she bear up under the weight of my heavy expectations? For I had seen something in her look and in her aspect all together that had inspired a hopeful curiosity, which curiosity would be satisfied as soon as may be.

It was hardly fair for a mere glimpse of her to rouse in me more pleasure, more excitement, than she, at that time, had even the notion to entertain.

Dictation—Day Number Five

To every point, every wish as to character and intellect, she answered. I suspected she would that first night I summoned her to my drawing-room and quizzed her like any constable, drilling her with my cross, changeable moods as well as a list of forward, impudent questions. And she did; indeed, so roundly did she answer my expectations that for a time I felt sure of some hidden defect, some propensity toward an undisclosed, intolerable vice, that over the course of some weeks I took to shunning her company. I wished to prolong the pleasure of acquainting myself with her as well as forestall the inevitable disclosure of her “hidden defect.”

Soon enough, however, when I began to doubt of the existence of her unnamed deficiency, I became impatient for her deeper feelings. When we chanced to meet in a hallway or stairwell as she went about her business, and I mine, she passed me much too quickly; her glances, diffident and polite as always, were far too disinterested for my taste and patience; and I began to desire a more substantial claim on her emotions. It was hardly fair for a mere glimpse of her to rouse in me more pleasure, more excitement, than she, at that time, had even the notion to entertain. I was an oddity in her eyes, an interesting specimen, no doubt, but she was far too principled to let a polite interest blossom into a stronger attachment without more encouragement than a gruff word or nod every now and again. I permitted myself at last, the delight of showing her kindness.

More to the point, instead of perplexing her with my changeable regard, I was consistent in my kind attentions, and it promptly became a struggle for me not to indulge my growing fondness for her with more intimate demonstrations. I cannot account for the times, so often they occurred in those first blissful days of knowing her, walking with her, and conversing with her, that I nearly swept a lock of hair from her brow, took her fingers casually in mine, or even, on occasion, cut short a word upon her lips by covering them soundly, and deeply, with my own.

But she was a rock, a boulder, a pillar of principle, and just as unreadable. It was not difficult to imagine a torrent of passion cascading behind those serene but effulgent hazel eyes, but I could only imagine. She left me no other recourse, for she rarely allowed a hint of her feeling the sort of passion that must be satisfied, or life itself is become void, to escape her lips and actions, while I was soon frequently at a loss as to how I could go on concealing it.

When she rescued me from the inferno poor Bertha felt necessary to unleash upon my bed, I stood before her, clasping her slight hand in both of mine, a vulnerable and tender man in that hour. It was all I could do not to cover her fingers in passionate kisses, and I slipped, I could not forebear, and told her haltingly that I knew she would do me good one day from the moment I saw her. Her smile, I said, and the look in her eyes had not struck delight to core of my breast for nothing.

And what did she do at this confession? What did she say? Her eyes were wide, yes, her lips parted, wetted by her tongue, as though ready to receive mine, but, no. To my heart’s tender admission, she replied, ‘I am glad I happened to be awake.’ And I felt her hand strain to be free of mine, so that she might go.

Cruel girl! I, nearly burnt in my bed, dripping with the water she’d hurled at me from her own basin, and she only glad to have been awake. I would not release her, not at once, though she threw excuses at me, and when I did, I did so reluctantly.

I spent the remainder of the night in the library, curled upon the sofa, but I did not sleep until I had formulated a plan. If there was anything that could crumble the foundation of my stubborn girl’s will and bring her resolutely to her knees, I knew it to be the haughty airs of one who would not begrudge the opportunity to bathe me in her affections if it meant another chance at my money. Indeed, the longer I considered it, the more I was convinced of my own genius, for what better to aggravate the elevated nature of Jane Eyre than the insignificant and corrosive propensities of Blanche Ingram.

She prattled, jested, and teased, and I silently hated her for not being Jane Eyre.

Dictation—Day Number Six

I went away. For two weeks I arranged for the dinner party that would surely bring my Jane to the catalyst of her emotions, and I gathered my unknowing pawns—the Eshtons, the Lyns, Dents, and Ingrams. All would be players in my game, and they were cast with special consideration. They were repugnant to me, with only few exceptions, but on a whole I shared with my guests as many common interests as there are birds in the sea. And so I knew they would be to Jane.

Blanche Ingram was my Ace, and after I had brought them all en force to Thornfield and hurled Jane into the midst of them, she attended to me quite as I’d anticipated. It was a trial those nights when we were gathered in the drawing room, not to seek out Jane’s face, usually half concealed behind a screen in a corner, and ascertain if she was indeed witness to my animated parleys with the inconsequent Miss Ingram. How I hungered to see a spark of jealousy in those placid eyes! But I never looked. Instead I burned, blazed with the conviction that she must be looking and burning with me. It seemed impossible that she was not, for I was aflame.

The first hint of my success came the first night, when I caught her as she slipped away from the drawing room after an especially trying string of festivities, and saw with triumph the traces of emotion glistening in her eyes. She managed with devilish composure to deny that anything was amiss; indeed, when I’d stopped her, she was at the foot of the staircase, bent over her sandal, but she hastily righted herself and faced me. ‘What?’ thought I. ‘Tending to her laces while in the throes of misery? Why not fleeing to her bedroom to weep bitter tears into her pillow?’ I surmised that her object in fussing with her sandals was to wait and see if I would follow her. To date, my wife has not given me a conclusive answer to this conjecture…and it appears will not do so now as she does not interrupt…

Still nothing.

Back to the narrative: I resisted the urge to demand then and there to know what afflicted her, to pry from her, in precious detail, what exactly she had seen, heard, or felt to distress her so; I instead wished her good night and only just stopped myself from calling her “my darling.”

In the days following, I continued the game with increased confidence, until a new scheme took form in my mind, one that would take in all of my guests and, at last, bring my Jane to the brink.

…if she had lingered a moment longer, I would have seized her then and there to my breast and made her vow never again to part from me…

The reader knows what happened when I posed as a gipsy woman; how I brought each single female in to have their fortunes told and confronted them each with a figurative mirror to hold up to themselves. Jane has asked me what I had said to Blanche Ingram that had put her in such ill humour when she returned to the party and I will reveal to the reader this: I told her the truth.

‘There is one in the company that does not admire you, Blanche,’ said Gipsy Rochester. ‘He is wise to your tricks and was never taken in, for he cannot love, and does not love, where he was never loved—nay, even esteemed. You will never marry where you and your family have intended and planned for you to marry, but let this news not be a cause for distress. You could not have made him happy any more than he could have made you so. Even his money would have failed to assuage the sting of learning that your powers of charming were utterly and miserably lost on the one being with whom you would be destined to spend the whole course of your life, and even that—his money—may not be quite as secure as the size of his estate might suggest. Poor Blanche. There will be no charge for the telling of your fortune, for I see you will need every shilling you can get your fingers on.’

In essence, this was the speech I gave to Blanche, and the one I gave to Jane was less truthful, and less successfully received. I prodded her, goaded her, and baited her with affirmative reports that Rochester was soon to marry Blanche. I teased her with promises that happiness was within reach of her if she would just reach out and take it—all to no end. No successful end, anyway, as it were. I tired of the interrogation and ended it abruptly, revealing myself to her in abject, but veiled defeat. She would neither confess nor confirm anything. She was inscrutable as a sphinx. It wasn’t until she revealed the treacherous presence of Mr Mason in my home that she displayed a comforting measure of concern at my distress, issuing sweet promises to stand by me always, even in the face of censure and public disdain.

I shall not linger too long on memories that tend in that direction. Instead I will jump forward to Jane’s abrupt and unfavorable departure to Gateshead. She does not perfectly know what transpired in that month, but she does know that my company was gone when she returned to me waiting on the steps for a glimpse of her, impatient for her return and cross at her leaving in the first place. I had planned to bandy some ill-humoured, chiding words with her, but upon seeing her, my heart was too full to say anything cross, and I was rewarded with these words—I can recite them by heart: ‘Thank you, Mr Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you; and wherever you are is my home—my only home.’

It was good that she fled from me like a nimble-toed forest sprite after this priceless speech, for if she had lingered a moment longer, I would have seized her then and there to my breast and made her vow never again to part from me, for she too carried my home in the palm of her hand, in the warmth of her soul.

My guests were not so lucky during her absence; I did not repress my ill humours, for without her there to witness my general gaiety with my inferior companions, their presence ceased to be of any significance to me, and I presently became a morose, despondent, and utterly insupportable host.

Colonel Dent spoke in passing by my ear, ‘Watch your game, man. This is no way to win a lady.’

In my prime, I was said to be fabulous in company. Wit and levity were my weapons in fine society, and they were at my ready disposal. I had a fine singing voice—I do still, my wife informs me—and I was considered a favorable addition to any party. Not so those two and a half dismal weeks at Thornfield.

The bulk of the party were sufficiently wrapped up in themselves and their own interwoven dramas to allow me my inexplicable melancholy without interference, but Blanche was not to be ignored, and in persisting in her pursuit of me, believing herself to be pressing her advantage by endeavoring to put me in good humour, became more repulsive to me than I can express. She was the viper I brought knowingly into my home to serve a specific purpose, and in failing to satisfy that purpose, was simply a viper in my home. I spent a large portion of my evenings sulking in the areas of the drawing room where Jane formerly haunted, and the rest enduring Blanche’s unrelenting attempts to extricate me from my depression. She prattled, jested, and teased, and I silently hated her for not being Jane Eyre.

One evening I permitted her to coax me into a game of billiards if only for the pleasure of besting her. My former trick had been to coddle her vanity by feigning defeat at her hands. I would say such fluff as, ‘It is a rare woman that can best a man at his own game,’ or, ‘Please let us do something else or I shall have no masculinity left in time for the pheasant hunt.’ Above all things, Blanche Ingram loved to be validated in her feelings of superiority. If I wanted to upset her, I needed only to out-sing, out-ride, or outwit her—or best her in any game, and I intended to best her roundly.

Her brazen jests and haughty declarations came fewer and fewer as the game progressed. She began to chew her lip in growing agitation, striking the end of her cue on the floor between turns, while I said nothing at all and took a drag now and again on my cigar. Others of the party felt the tension and conversations about us presently ceased. When there were remarks, we were the object. Blanche treated the attention with asperity, ignoring or sneering at her companions’ jibes or exclamations of praise.

I took it all in stride, as if the game was as consequential to me as the cigar I was puffing; it made Blanche’s discomfiture all the more entertaining. After an exceptional move on my part and a round of ‘aahs’ from the women, Colonel Dent spoke in passing by my ear, ‘Watch your game, man. This is no way to win a lady.’

This provoked a smirk from me and another sneer from Blanche, whose ears at present were sharp for such comments.

‘How do you mean, Colonel?’ she chimed with a toss of her raven ringlets. ‘I shall be offended, indeed, if you are attempting to make any implication that I, or indeed any woman is fool enough to be cajoled into matrimony by a man’s treating her like an infant, as though she were unequal to any challenge that might be better met by another of his own sex. I assure you, sir, that I am equal to this challenge.’

Colonel Dent inclined his head to her. ‘No offense intended, Blanche. You are indeed nearer to Rochester’s equal than any of us.’

I could have snorted my derision at such a remark, which resonated more like an insult than a compliment, but I abstained, circling the billiard table and murmuring to the raging woman as I passed, ‘No one said anything of matrimony, Blanche.’

Her eyes snapped to my face, but I ignored her, plucking up my cigar from the edge of the table and taking another drag as I mapped my next move. I took it and was one stroke nearer to winning.

She took her next move in a dudgeon, applying too much force behind her stroke and sending the cue-ball arcing off the table and thudding onto the carpet. Her brother plucked it from the floor and attempted to hand it to her, but the game was over; she would not rally. Some of the ladies tried to console her, but she repelled them. The men recommenced earlier discussions and averted their eyes and attention to anything other than the fuming woman in the white dress and red sash. Lady Ingram decried the uselessness of such games and attempted to extricate a promise from her daughter to never approach a billiards table again, except in passing en route to a piano.

Blanche settled herself on a divan, roughly smoothing out her skirt and looking anywhere I was not as I followed her and filled the seat beside her.

‘Rest easy, Blanche,’ I said, exhaling a cloud of smoke before adding, ‘Many a man was beaten at my hand. You are no different than any of them.’

She looked at me, hunting for a sign that I was laughing at her, but I was immensely grave, considering the ember at the end of my cigar. She waved the smoke away from her face.

‘And some were more easily beaten,’ I said.

‘Indeed, Mr Rochester,’ said she with disdain.

‘Come, Blanche, don’t be angry with me,’ I implored. I paused, and then added, still as somber as a father, ‘I’ve a set of pistols upstairs; would it gratify you to demand satisfaction from me?’

She said nothing, certain now that I was laughing at her. Her nostrils flared; her fine, insidious eyes narrowed.

‘And I accepted?’ I added.

Where was her ready, imperious retort? No other gentleman was safe from them, so why should I be? True, but I was her object, or my money was at any rate.

When she did not answer, I offered her my cigar. It smoldered momentarily between us, held aloft by my waiting thumb and forefinger. She clenched her teeth, her expression fixed and furious. An instant later she had risen from the divan and pronounced that she was overtired and was going to bed. Presently the other ladies disbanded, their leader absent among them, and similarly sought retirement above, while I, their host, settled back on the divan, took long drags from my cigar, and thought of Jane.

I was restored in whole. Bodily, I was deficient, but spiritually she repaired me, reconstructed my tattered parts, and I was intact.

Dictation—Day Number Seven

My guests presently found excuses to leave, the Ingrams first of all, and the rest followed suit. I kept to my own apartments as they made their preparations and only came down to hand the women into their carriages and witness their long-awaited departures.

For many of them, there was no real cause to mourn their leaving or my ill-humour; their thoughts were already bent toward upcoming balls and amusements and their heads could bear room for no more. Blanche and I exchanged icy farewells, while her mother carried on about there being other days and possible opportunities for meeting again.

I spent the remaining week and a half in agitation before Jane finally returned, and the reader knows what followed. Let me not dwell too much on things that have passed that can bear no fruit in recollecting in detail.

I shall be succinct: I proposed to Jane and was accepted, but only after first driving her to distraction with hints that I was indeed going to be married to Blanche Ingram, and she sent to Ireland. Blanche served her purpose after all, the good girl. But the wedding was broken up by the revelation of my then still-living wife and I spent well over a year with an empty chest.

Jane had fled Thornfield, taking my heart with her to keep her company as she tried to erect a new life about herself. What I bore during her absence I choose not to recall. I was in daily torment—let me say that. And when she spirited again to my side, this time to my dwelling place in Ferndean, I was restored in whole. Bodily, I was deficient, but spiritually she repaired me, reconstructed my tattered parts, and I was intact.

It was the final spell she cast upon me, which magic has lasted these ten years and will continue to last through the generations. As anyone that takes up her story knows, as you have done, reader, she is a creature destined to entrance, to inspire, and to instruct the hearts of all whom she touches.