Jane Eyre: The Orchard

On a warm midsummer evening, after Adèle had gone to bed, Jane walked out into the orchard at Thornfield, where the air was heavy with the scent of flowers and ripening fruit.Suddenly she smelled Mr. Rochester’s cigar, and she stepped into a corner among the ivy, hoping that he would soon go back and never see her.But he walked slowly through the garden, and when a great moth landed on a flower near his feet, he said quietly, without turning around, “Jane, come and look at this fellow.”

He led her down the laurel walk toward an old chestnut tree and remarked that Thornfield was pleasant in summer, and that she must have grown fond of it, and of Adèle and Mrs. Fairfax too.Then he sighed and told her that she must leave Thornfield, because in about a month he would marry Miss Ingram, and Adèle would go to school.He had already found her a new position teaching five girls in Ireland, and he added kindly that once she was there, he would probably never see her again.

Jane said that it was a long way, and when he asked what she feared, the answer escaped her before she could stop it: the sea would be a wall between her and him.Her tears broke out, and at last, unable to hide her feelings, she cried that she loved Thornfield because she had lived there a full and happy life among bright and kind minds, and above all because she knew him.She said that leaving him would feel like death, and when she reminded him that Miss Ingram was to be his bride, he swore that Jane must stay, but she insisted that she had to go.

Her voice grew strong as she asked him whether he thought that, because she was poor, plain and small, she had no soul and no heart, and she told him that she had as much of both as he did.She said that if God had given her beauty and wealth, she would have made it as hard for him to leave her as it was now for her to leave him, and that in spirit they stood equal before God.When he drew her toward him, she pulled herself free and said that she was no bird caught in a net, but a free human being with an independent will.

Rochester answered that he did not love Miss Ingram and that she did not love him, and he asked Jane to be his wife, saying that she was his equal and his likeness.Jane did not believe him at first, and only when she looked at his face in the moonlight and saw how shaken and sincere he was did she ask whether he truly loved her.When he swore that he did, Jane accepted, and he called her his little wife and said, in a voice that sounded almost fierce with joy, that no one had any right to interfere.

Just then the wind rose, thunder cracked, and rain rushed down, and Rochester hurried her into the house, where Mrs. Fairfax, standing pale and amazed in the hall, saw him kiss Jane goodnight.Jane felt no fear during the storm, but in the morning Adèle ran in to say that the great chestnut tree in the orchard, where they had sat, had been struck by lightning and split in half.