ripening fruit. I hear a nightingale warbling in a wood half a mile
off; no moving form is visible, no coming step audible; but that
perfume increases: I must flee. I make for the wicket leading to the
shrubbery, and I see Mr. Rochester entering. I step aside into the
ivy recess; he will not stay long: he will soon return whence he
came, and if I sit still he will never see me.
But no—eventide is as pleasant to him as to me, and this
antique garden as attractive; and he strolls on, now lifting the
gooseberry-tree branches to look at the fruit, large as plums, with
which they are laden; now taking a ripe cherry from the wall; now
stooping towards a knot of flowers, either to inhale their fragrance
or to admire the dew-beads on their petals. A great moth goes
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humming by me; it alights on a plant at Mr. Rochester’s foot: he
sees it, and bends to examine it.
“Now, he has his back towards me,” thought I, “and he is
occupied too; perhaps, if I walk softly, I can slip away unnoticed.”
I trode on an edging of turf that the crackle of the pebbly gravel
might not betray me: he was standing among the beds at a yard or
two distant from where I had to pass; the moth apparently
engaged him. “I shall get by very well,” I meditated. As I crossed
his shadow, thrown long over the garden by the moon, not yet
risen high, he said quietly, without turning—
“Jane, come and look at this fellow.”
I had made no noise: he had not eyes behind—could his shadow
feel? I started at first, and then I approached him.
“Look at his wings,” said he, “he reminds me rather of a West
Indian insect; one does not often see so large and gay a night-rover
in England; there! he is flown.”
The moth roamed away. I was sheepishly retreating also; but
Mr. Rochester followed me, and when we reached the wicket, he
said—
“Turn back: on so lovely a night it is a shame to sit in the house;
and surely no one can wish to go to bed while sunset is thus at
meeting with moonrise.”
It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes
prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails
me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some
crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted
to get me out of painful embarrassment. I did not like to walk at
this hour alone with Mr. Rochester in the shadowy orchard; but I
could not find a reason to allege for leaving him. I followed with
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lagging step, and thoughts busily bent on discovering a means of
extrication; but he himself looked so composed and so grave also, I
became ashamed of feeling any confusion: the evil—if evil existent
or prospective there was—seemed to lie with me only; his mind
was unconscious and quiet.
“Jane,” he recommenced, as we entered the laurel walk, and
slowly strayed down in the direction of the sunk fence and the
horse-chestnut, “Thornfield is a pleasant place in summer, is it
not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You must have become in some degree attached to the
house,—you, who have an eye for natural beauties, and a good
deal of the organ of Adhesiveness?”
“I am attached to it, indeed.”
“And though I don’t comprehend how it is, I perceive you have
acquired a degree of regard for that foolish little child Adèle, too;
and even for simple dame Fairfax?”
“Yes, sir; in different ways, I have an affection for both.”
“And would be sorry to part with them?”
“Yes.”
“Pity!” he said, and sighed and paused. “It is always the way of
events in this life,” he continued presently: “no s"};
