John Eyre

by Mimi Matthews

  “She hanged herself.”

  His words were met with a long silence.

  John wished he were content to let it lie. To allow the silence to subsume the gruesome reality of Helen’s death—her imagined final moments as she struggled for air. But he couldn’t leave it at that. The guilt was too much a part of him. Guilt and—he was ashamed to admit—anger.

  “There were more seemly ways she could have done it,” he said abruptly. “A pond on the grounds of her estate she might have drowned herself in. An overdose of the sleeping draught she took each evening. But either of those methods might have conjured doubt or uncertainty.”

  “She wanted her intention to be clear?”

  “I believe so.” John had long suspected it to be Helen’s parting blow at her husband. An action that would result in Sir William having to live with the unambiguous shame of her suicide. But lately John had begun to wonder if it hadn’t also been meant for him. The man whom she’d begged to take her away. To save her. The man who had ultimately let her down.

  “I suppose you loved her,” Mrs. Rochester said.

  His throat tightened. He turned his head, looking across the lawn at the boys playing. “Not in the way she wanted.”

  He’d loved her as a friend. Had admired her greatly. Indeed, for a time, her grace and gentle femininity had been a pattern card by which every other lady was measured and fell short. But there had been nothing of romance about his admiration. Nothing of heat or passion.

  Mrs. Rochester was quiet for several minutes, the crunch of their footsteps on the frozen path the only sound as they continued down past the thorn trees. “Is that why you left your position in Lowton? Because your employer’s wife fancied you?”

  “What else could I have done?”

  “You might have run away with her.”

  “On a schoolmaster’s pay? But I wouldn’t have been a schoolmaster any longer. I would have had no employment. And Sir William wasn’t likely to grant his wife a divorce. Where could Helen and I have gone? We’d have been outcasts.” John gave voice to thoughts he’d never before shared with anyone. “No. There was no future for us. The best thing that I could think to do was to leave.”

  “And yet…if you had loved her…”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “Not that kind of love. Not the kind that moves mountains—that overcomes all odds.”

  At that moment the boys ran up out of the mist to join them, rackets hanging loose in their hands. Their cheeks were flushed from the cold.

  Games of battledore and shuttlecock were a new addition to their time out of doors. John had had to initiate play himself, demonstrating how to toss the shuttlecock back and forth, and how to strike it with one of the light rackets. Stephen and Peter had initially been reluctant, but in the past month they’d come to enjoy batting the shuttlecock about.

  Enjoy being a relative word.

  John had yet to hear either of them laugh, though he was pleased to see them running and chasing each other, and even more so to observe the brightness in their formerly dull eyes.

  He set his hand on Stephen’s shoulder. “At this rate, you’ll soon be frozen through. Another half an hour, and then we’ll return to the schoolroom.”

  The boys trotted off again. John watched them go, satisfied that they understood his meaning.

  Mrs. Rochester didn’t wait long to resume their conversation. “You speak of love that can move mountains. Can a gentleman love in such a way? I’d have thought such strength of emotion only existed in novels and poetry.”

  John turned his attention back to her. “I can’t speak for other gentlemen. All I know is that I’ve never experienced it myself. But you…” His gaze drifted over her mourning black. “I suppose you felt such a love for your husband.”

  “Why on earth would you suppose that?”

  “Mr. Fairfax said he died a year ago. Yet you’re still in full mourning. Another lady might have transitioned to shades of gray or lavender by this time. But you haven’t done so. I’d assumed it was because you were still deeply grieved by his loss.”

  “And therefore I must have loved him greatly?”

  “That’s the logical conclusion.”

  A glint of wry humor flashed in her eyes. “My dear Mr. Eyre, what makes you think that it’s my husband for whom I wear mourning clothes?”

  John searched her face. It was difficult to tell if she was being serious. He rather doubted it. Their brief acquaintance had impressed upon him her perpetual habit of keeping people off balance. It was, he gathered, some manner of protective mechanism. A way to stop them from getting too close to her.

  “I’m afraid you’ve had a great deal of loss in your life,” he said.

  Her expression of amusement faded. “Haven’t we all? You’ve just admitted to having lost Lady Helen.”

  “She wasn’t mine to lose.” The truth of the statement sank into John’s bones. He wasn’t entirely ready for it. He was too used to feeling responsible for Helen’s death. Too accustomed to his own guilt. He cleared his throat. “But your husband, and your parents—”

  “Enough talk of death,” Mrs. Rochester said. “It isn’t why I sought out your company. I wished to speak to you of faith.”

  “It’s not a subject I’m in any position to remark upon, not when my own faith is at its lowest ebb. Of course, if you’ve changed your mind about my taking Stephen and Peter to church—”

  “I told you, the boys aren’t to be paraded in front of strangers.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Besides,” she added, “I would have thought you reluctant to attend church on any account. Mr. Fairfax informs me that you’ve had several invitations to tea from the vicar in Hay, and that you’ve each time sent your regrets.”

  “True enough.” The vicar, Mr. Taylor, seemed a civil sort of gentleman, eager to make John’s acquaintance, and thereby lure him to Sunday services. John had politely declined his invitations, claiming to be too busy for social calls at present.

  “You have no wish to meet our estimable vicar?”

  “Not at the moment.” John paused. “I notice that you don’t attend church yourself.”

  “What has that to do with anything?”

  “It makes me wonder if your faith is as feeble as mine.”

  “I daresay you think faith is measured by how often one attends Sunday services. How loud one sings from a hymnbook.” Her eyes found his. Something inexplicable flickered behind her gaze. “Do you believe in good and evil, Mr. Eyre?”

  The question sent a strange chill through John’s veins. She asked it with such gravity. Such solemn intent. He wished he could answer with the same conviction. Instead, his answer was tepid at best. “As much as any Christian.”

  “Which is to say, not very much at all.” Her skirts brushed against his leg. Somehow, during the course of their walk, they’d drawn closer to each other. As close as a pair of lovers sharing whispered confidences. “I know how it is. We all of us are raised on stories of God and the devil. Abstract ideas of good and bad. But what about in the real world? Do you believe in the forces of evil? And that godly people can ultimately triumph over them?”

  “I would like to believe. But in our world, you must admit that evil often triumphs. Bad people prevail, while good, honest people are ground into dust. For evidence, you need look no further than the inhabitants of any workhouse.”

  “And yet my faith is stronger than it’s ever been.” She gave him a look, as challenging as her tone. “Do you doubt it?”

  He opened his mouth to reply, but she forestalled him.

  “I don’t attend church because the essence of my belief has nothing to do with an inanimate building or with the people who populate it. My faith is solely concerned with matters of good and evil. And you must believe, sir, that I stand firmly and relentlessly on the side of
good. The side of God. You would do well to determine where it is that you stand.”

  Her speech was so passionate, so unflinchingly earnest, that he felt the impulse to answer in kind—albeit with a trifle less heat. “At the moment,” he said. “I stand next to you. It seems a worthy place to be.”

  A spasm of emotion crossed over her face, as fleeting as it was unreadable. “Would that I could be certain—” She broke off.

  “Certain of what?”

  Her reply, when it came, was equally quiet. “That you would remain at my side, irrespective of what comes.”

  “I have no plans to leave Thornfield.” He cleared his throat. “So long as you’re pleased with my service, and the boys—”

  “Ah, yes. The boys. You wish them to continue improving. To speak, eventually.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “As to that… It’s complicated.” Her shoulders stiffened. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “I do understand.”

  She gave him an uncertain glance.

  “You’re protective of them,” he said.

  Her bosom rose and fell on a deep breath. “I have tried to be.”

  “And yet…” He warned himself not to say it. The words tumbled out nonetheless. “You left them for months on end while you resumed your travels.”

  “Not because I didn’t care for them. Indeed, I cared too much. If you only knew…” She stopped on the path, turning back to face the house. Its silhouette was barely discernable in the mist, only the battlements standing out strong and clear against the winter sky. “This wretched place. How often I have abhorred the very thought of it. No sooner do I arrive here than I want to leave again.”

  “Understandably so. It can be dreary at times, especially with the Millcote mists.”

  “Is that the name they’ve given to this effluvium?”

  “It’s how it’s been described to me. As a phenomenon particular to this part of the country.” He paused, adding, “You said it contributed to your parents’ death.”

  “After a fashion. The dampness of it, and the chill. There’s always been fog in the valley, as long as I can remember. But this…the Millcote mists, as you call them…” A frown worked its way between her brows. “This is something new.”

  “Whatever it is, surely it’s no reason to shun the place. Not when Stephen and Peter are in residence.”

  “You’re very decided in your opinions for a paid subordinate.” There was no humor in her voice this time. No hint of amusement in her eyes.

  “I want only what’s best for my pupils.”

  “They’ve found in you a passionate advocate, I see.”

  John might have saved himself the sting of additional rebuke, but he felt himself duty bound to continue. “Were things different—were they talking and acting as carefree boys are wont to do—I wouldn’t dream of pressing the subject. But despite the progress I’ve made with the pair of them, they still require a great deal of help. A great deal of care. As their tutor, I can only do so much. Your presence here would—”

  “Do you think any of this has been easy? That I’ve been blessed with a surfeit of choices—for the boys, or for myself? By God, sir, you don’t know what it is to navigate such a treacherous sea as I have done.” She looked at Thornfield, casting such a glare over the place as John had never seen. “My instincts have served me well thus far. Had I not heeded them, I wouldn’t be standing as I am now.”

  He tried to understand her, not entirely certain that he did. “You aren’t very happy here, are you?”

  “There was a time I was, though I didn’t know it then.”

  “Was it so long ago?”

  “A lifetime. I was just a girl—as green as you are now. I played here, and learned here, and grew into a lady with all of my stubbornness and resolve. At that age, I’d have given anything to travel to a far-off land. To walk along the banks of the Seine. To see the pyramids at sunset. What had I to be afraid of? And when my parents died, I set out, still in mourning clothes, just as I’m wearing now. First, a year and a half in Europe. And then…” Her brow contracted, as if at a painful memory. “Do you know, as much as I wanted to be gone from this place, in my darkest hour I’d have sold my soul to see it again.” She laughed suddenly—a startlingly bitter sound. “I rather believe I did sell it.”

  John didn’t know what to say. He suspected she was remembering her husband. Grieving him.

  “But I’m being morbid.” She dashed the fingers of one hand against her cheek before turning back to him. There was a peculiar sheen to her eyes. “That’s why I must have a companion to talk to. Someone thoughtful and sensible. Like you, John. Someone who won’t be put off by all of the nonsense I talk, and who isn’t afraid of the sharp side of my tongue.”

  He wondered if she realized she’d called him by his Christian name? He rather thought not. “I’m certainly not that. But I do wish I understood you better.”

  “So do I,” she said. “More than you can possibly know.”

  Thornfield Hall

  Yorkshire, England

  March 1844

  “Who will light the fire this morning?” John asked several days later, standing in front of the children’s makeshift desks in the darkened library. “Stephen? Peter?”

  Stephen was on his feet in a flash, his chair scraping back upon the floor as he pushed it behind him. Peter trailed after his brother, both of them hurrying to the hearth for what was, undeniably, their favorite schoolroom task.

  “Wait,” John cautioned as Stephen retrieved the tinderbox. “Don’t be careless. Remember, fire is dangerous. You must treat it with respect.”

  Having duly warned him, John stood back, giving Stephen independence to apply steel to flint. In no time at all a spark was struck.

  “You may help him, Peter.” John urged the younger boy forward, one hand resting gently on his back.

  The boys knelt down in front of the hearth, and while Stephen lit the kindling, Peter blew on it to coax it into a flame.

  John hadn’t any idea why the activity was so enthralling to the pair of them. He suspected it was because they’d once been very cold. To them, a fire was a valuable thing, the ease with which they could now conjure one endlessly fascinating.

  “Very good, boys,” John said. “Now the lamps, if you please.”

  Stephen obediently lit two twists of paper, and distributing one to Peter, the two boys made short work of lighting the library’s oil lamps. When they were finished, they threw the remains of their twists back into the fireplace before resuming their seats.

  “Excellent. We shall need the light today.” John brought out the watercolor paper and paints and set them before the boys.

  Yesterday had been a particularly difficult day for them, working at their letters and sums. And then in the afternoon the rain had come in a furious gale, putting a stop to any outdoor activities.

  John was determined that today would begin on a less dreary note. “We’re going to paint a landscape this morning.”

  Peter glanced out through library windows at the bleak winter scene beyond.

  “Precisely,” John said, handing out their paintbrushes. “But we won’t paint the lawn and the trees as they look now. We’ll paint them as they looked in the summer.”

  Sitting down across from them, he demonstrated on his own piece of watercolor paper, deftly sketching in a sun and trees with leaves on their branches. Stephen and Peter watched intently, leaning forward in their chairs, as John began to fill in the sketch with light touches of watercolor paint.

  “Do you see?” He took a bit of green paint onto his brush and gave a wash of color to the lawn. “It’s not wintertime in our painting. There’s no snow or ice. It’s warm and sunny out. Just as when you first arrived here at Thornfield.”

  The boys briefly exchanged a look.r />
  “Go on,” John encouraged them. “You’ll want blues, greens, and yellows. Bright colors for a bright summer day.”

  Standing up again, he busied himself about the library, organizing the books for their next lesson as the boys began painting. Intermittently, he stopped to assist them—helping Stephen to mix his colors, and guiding Peter in how to better hold his brush—but for the most part, he left them to their own devices. It was better that way, in his opinion. Not everything in drawing and painting should be minutely circumscribed. An artist must learn to trust his own interpretation.

  When an hour had passed, he returned to look over their work.

  “Was the sky really so blue, then?” John examined Peter’s childish painting. “That gives me hope it might be so again. But what’s this?” He took a closer look. There was a grayish cast over part of the landscape—a wisp of swirling vapor, unartfully rendered. “You’ve painted the Millcote mists,” he said, smiling. “But the mists weren’t here in the summer, surely. Fog and mist come with the cold weather. They derive from moisture in the air.”

  Peter blinked up at him.

  “It’s not a criticism.” John squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Your work is very good. I especially like the way you’ve shaded the trees.” With that, he moved to look at Stephen’s painting.

  Stephen still held his brush in his hand and was even now continuing to apply a wash of grayish white to his summer landscape.

  “You’ve painted the mist as well.” John frowned in spite of himself. He quickly schooled his features. He didn’t wish the boys to think he was disappointed in them. “Is that the way you remember it? Your arrival here?”

  Unsurprisingly, Stephen and Peter gave no answer. They merely looked at him in silent expectation, as if they were waiting for something. Praise, John thought. He gave it freely.

  But he wondered, all the same.

  Why was the mist present in their paintings? It must mean something. An indication, perhaps, of the boys’ state of mind when they’d first come to Thornfield.

  He mentioned this possibility to Mr. Fairfax that evening at dinner. The elderly butler only laughed.