The fortnight that followed was a quiet, suspended uncertainty: there were no wedding preparations, no trips to Ingram Park twenty miles away, and Rochester was uncharacteristically cheerful whenever they were together, calling for her more often than ever, and Jane loved him more with every passing day, half-convinced the rumors of his marriage to Miss Ingram had been mistaken. The truth came on Midsummer Eve, when Jane wandered into the walled orchard after Adèle fell asleep, drawn by the scent of Rochester’s cigar. She tried to hide when she saw him, but he called her over to examine a large moth, then invited her to walk with him instead of returning to the house. They wandered down to the ancient horse-chestnut tree at the edge of the grounds, and Rochester delivered the blow: she would have to leave Thornfield in a month, he was marrying Miss Ingram, and he had already arranged for her to take a post as governess to five daughters of a Mrs. O’Gall in Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland. When they sat on the bench at the tree’s roots, he confessed he felt as if a string were tied under his left ribs, knotted inextricably to a matching string in her small frame, that the Channel and two hundred miles of land between them would snap that cord, and he feared he would bleed inwardly from the loss.
Jane’s carefully held composure shattered. She argued that the ocean would not keep her from him, that she would never forget him no matter how far she was sent, before erupting into the fierce, impassioned speech she had long held in check: she was no automaton, no soulless machine, no inferior creature whose morsel of bread could be snatched from her lips without consequence; she had as much soul and heart as he did, even if she was poor, obscure, plain and little, and if he married Blanche Ingram, she would go, but he would never break her spirit. Rochester stopped her mid-rant, pulled her into his arms, and swore he had no intention of marrying Miss Ingram: he had feigned the courtship entirely to provoke her jealousy, to make her admit her own feelings, and had tested Blanche by spreading a rumor his fortune was a third of its reputed size, only to watch her and her mother cool instantly. He proposed, Jane finally accepted, and as a summer storm broke over the grounds, they rushed back to the house, where Mrs. Fairfax caught them kissing in the hall at midnight. Jane ran up to her room, giddy with joy, and woke the next morning to find the great horse-chestnut tree split in two by lightning during the night’s storm.
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