Jane Eyre: Mr. Rochester

Jane had spent the autumn at Thornfield Hall as governess to a small French girl named Adèle, and although her days were peaceful, she sometimes longed for a wider, more active life.One cold, calm afternoon in January, tired of sitting indoors, she offered to carry the housekeeper’s letter to the post office in the village of Hay, two miles away.

Halfway there she rested on a stile and watched the moon rise over the hills, and the lane was so still that she could hear a horse coming from far away.When she heard hooves on the frozen road, she remembered an old nursery story about the Gytrash, a spirit that haunted lonely lanes in the shape of a horse or a large dog.A great black and white dog bounded past, followed by a horse and its rider, and Jane saw at once that this was no ghost, only a traveller taking the short way to Millcote.

Suddenly the horse slipped on a sheet of ice and fell, and the rider was thrown to the ground while the dog barked until the hills echoed.Jane asked if he was hurt and offered to help, and though he answered roughly at first, he finally admitted that he had only sprained his ankle.He asked whose house stood on the hill below, and Jane answered that it was Mr. Rochester’s, and that she had never seen him.

“Ah, the governess!” he said, as if he had quite forgotten that such a person existed, and he looked over her plain dark clothes.Leaning heavily on her shoulder, he limped to his horse and pulled himself into the saddle, biting his lip at the pain in his ankle.“Thank you,” he said shortly. “Now make haste with the letter to Hay, and return as fast as you can.” Then he spurred his horse and galloped away with the dog at his heels.

It was only a tiny event, but Jane was pleased to have been needed, for she was weary of a life in which she did nothing but wait.His face stayed in her mind like a new picture hung in the gallery of her memory, for it was dark, strong and stern, unlike any face she knew.On the way home she dreaded going back inside Thornfield, for it meant a silent hall, a lonely little room, and a long winter evening with only gentle Mrs. Fairfax for company.

In the housekeeper’s room she found a great black and white dog sitting before the fire, exactly like the one from the lane, and when she said “Pilot,” it got up and came to her.She rang the bell for a candle and asked the maid whose dog it was, and the maid answered, “He came with master — Mr. Rochester. He has just arrived.”The maid added that the master had had an accident, that his horse had fallen on the ice in Hay Lane, and that a surgeon had been sent for to look at his sprained ankle.