《简·爱：自传》

第二十二章 / CHAPTER XXIV

The month Jane Eyre spent at Gateshead Hall after Mrs. Reed’s funeral stretched far beyond the single week Rochester had granted her, first to soothe the selfish, tearful Georgiana until she could depart for London to marry a wealthy, worn-out man of fashion, then to accommodate Eliza, who insisted Jane stay an extra week while she secretly prepared to leave for a French convent, where she would study Catholic dogma and eventually take her vows, rising in time to become the convent’s superior. Jane bore Georgiana’s feeble-minded wailings and selfish lamentations as patiently as she could, even daydreaming that if they were to live together permanently, she would assign Georgiana her fair share of labour and forbid her half-insincere complaints, though she consented to play the forbearing caretaker only because their time together was so short, bracketed by grief. Their final parting with Eliza was curt and unsentimental: Eliza acknowledged Jane had sense, Jane teased that Eliza’s sharp mind would soon be walled up alive in a nunnery, and they went their separate ways, never to cross paths again.

Jane’s journey back to Thornfield was a tedious two-day, hundred-mile trek, her mind first replaying the grim details of Mrs. Reed’s funeral, then mulling the starkly different fates of her cousins—one the cynosure of London ballrooms, the other a cloistered nun—before shifting to anxious anticipation of the home she was returning to. She had avoided arranging a carriage to meet her at Millcote, choosing instead to walk the final stretch alone on a soft, rose-dusted June evening; no warm pull of belonging drew her forward, only the desperate need to see Rochester again, even as she reminded herself he was on the cusp of marrying Blanche Ingram and would soon be lost to her. She found him sitting on a stile at the edge of the Thornfield grounds, writing in a book, and was immediately unstrung, every nerve trembling when he called her over, teasing her for sneaking back like a ghost after a month’s absence. He asked if she’d seen the new carriage he’d bought for his bride, joked that he needed a charm to make him handsome enough for Miss Ingram, and when she murmured a loving eye was all the charm he needed, he gave her one of his rare, warm, sunlit smiles. As she passed him, she was compelled to turn back and blurt that Thornfield was her only home, then rushed off before she could say more, heart pounding.