Anyone who had seen Ferndean Manor during the dark months would have been hard-pressed to imagine any person living there, much less a newly-wed couple. Indeed, only a small few of the parish could truthfully claim to have set eyes on the place at all, but what those few had seen, and what others, in their ignorance, imagined, combined with rumor and superstition to weave a net of gloom and doom around the secluded house. A general attitude of astonishment abounded at the tenants' decision to remain cloistered away on the remote estate, and the neighboring spinsters and housewives and even some of the more idle husbands tut-tutted amongst themselves, at a loss to comprehend the motives of the eccentric pair. It was common knowledge that Ferndean's reclusive owner had married a young heiress in summer, though how or why were details that never received a full answer. Immediate speculation assumed a marriage of convenience – perhaps he needed the money, perhaps she had a difficult family to escape. That affection might exist was not considered. As the couple made their first appearances at the parish church, speculations were revised somewhat. Some fondness there might be, perhaps some affection had developed between them. Roses, it was said, could grow out of brick walls. Yet the occupants of Ferndean did not linger after services, the gentleman returning quickly to the privacy of his carriage, his wife stepping out to thank the curate and make some remark on the sermon before rejoining her husband to be swept back into the strange sylvan twilight of the estate, inciting more curiosity than if they'd never been seen at all.
"Always in such a hurry to return to that wretched place!" remarked one woman to her friend as she stared after the retreating carriage. "'Tisn't natural! There's no Christian soul for miles, almost no daylight…" For a moment the contemplation of such an awful prospect stilled her oft-wagging tongue. (The good woman, it must be observed, could not have given a precise description of Ferndean for love or money.) Her friend nodded sagely. Provoked to vexation by her own misspent concern, she demanded,
"What on earth can they find to do in winter?"
Framed by the well-meaning parishioners' words, spoken in some snug parlor, or in a neighbor's doorway under the lamplight, Ferndean did indeed appear quite a desolate spot. But if a brave soul had chanced to enter the wood, traverse the long drive through the snow-drifts, approach the house, peer in through a window, they should not have seen desolation. They should not have seen despair.
Downstairs a rosy glow issued from the drawing room windows, spilling reflected radiance out onto the snow. On an upper floor, a small, slight figure wrapped in an immense gray shawl glided moth-like down a dusky corridor, twilit by snow-light. A chamber candle flickered to life. A youthful face appeared at the window – smiling, contented, looking with the young's capacity for wonder out at the white landscape.
Beside the window stood a lady's dressing table, adapted for use as a writing desk. The small white hands belonging to the figure with the smiling face began to move items about on its surface – a glass inkwell, pens, pencils, a book of drawing paper, a stub of candle, a withered flower – seeking something. The fingers lit on a page upon which writing appeared, the ink darker and thicker in some places, in others very faint, and in others no ink at all, only the words' impressions. The page was taken up, held close to be read.
It was a letter, or rather, the ghost of a letter, already completed and sent several months past, leaving behind this under-page onto which the ink had bled and the pen scratched.
My dears, I am so happy I believe I smile all day long! My husband teases me that if I persist with this expression my mouth will freeze and stay fast and I will live to regret it. He will not admit that he is the cause of my joy, and yet it is so, as I am the cause of his.
The sorrow of that dreadful year clings still to him somewhat, but to me his manner has not changed. I speak, and he listens, without condescension – without grudge. I listen, and he speaks with eagerness, omitting no detail, glossing over no novelty, never failing to pause for description, explanation, a chance to broaden an inexperienced, unworldly mind with new images, thoughts, ideas.
My presence, my speech, is never irksome to him. I laugh freely now. I curtail no expression of affection, no fond caress. No oppression haunts me. No sense of degradation or obscurity hounds my footsteps. My hands are no longer cold and empty.
Jane thought no more of the articles she had come to retrieve, of the cold that even now nipped through her thick wrappings. She sank into the chair and read the words again, and then again.
She had written that she was happy, but never before had she fully appreciated the imprecision of the word. Happiness was not a fixed state, a condition of perpetual contentment to be striven toward and attained. Her happiness was a living thing, a mobile, flitting thing that changed constantly, now restive and giddy, now aching, now sweet and pure as the warmth of Edward's smile washing over her.
Still, there were things she had not written of in her letters. She did not write, for instance, of her early fears that she, so small and girlish of form, so inexperienced, would not be enough for him, who had known women of great beauty and passion, and later, of her doubts that she would ever again be able to pass a calm day while in his presence, when the merest touch, the merest brush of his fingers or lips against her skin incensed such tides of desire within her.
She did not write of the nights she woke to her husband's weeping and lay clasping his sleeping form, murmuring into his ear until the sorrow passed or he awoke, so desperately apologetic, so distressed at her witnessing his own deep-rooted depression that it became her turn to weep, his to comfort.
He had had to learn how to live again. Not to merely exist, but to live consciously; not from moment to moment, as he had at Thornfield, relishing afterwards the intensity of those fleeting instances he had spoken with her, seen her wide eyes meet his, watched as she opened to him, unfurling like a rose, his heart afire, but to experience a lifetime's intensity burning in every moment, to understand that every second with her was a culmination of all that had come before, good and bad. He made a concerted effort to exercise deliberation. He confided everything. He turned his mind and tongue from bleak subjects. He talked of the world, and of living and of her. He let her lead him out on long walks and asked her to describe for him all the creatures that she saw, all the colors and sounds and lives. He let her tease smiles out of him, let her provoke him to laughter, and when the sound came, hearty and ringing from his throat like a release, it did not sound forced. Yet somewhere, buried deep or perhaps just under the surface, the darkness still waited, and on the nights when he retreated back into his old despair and she lay stroking the tears from his face, she whispered to him very softly in a voice like a shadow, "I forgive you," – not because he had asked it but because the comfort in the words could not hurt him.
He was still learning. Sorrow was a hard habit to break.
Just before the cold weather set in, he had confessed to her his shame about the state of the house in which she was expected to live, had expressed wonder at her readiness to abide in a ruin with a man who had nearly gone the same way.
"I have so little to give you, my love, and the thought that you should let your youth molder away here, in this remote wreck of a house, for my sake… it is unendurable."
Jane had met his gloomy words in the practical but tender manner that was, she learned, best suited to dissipate these low spirits.
"Are you recommending that we find another house?"
"Ferndean, in its present state, is no home for a young bride. With the advent of winter it shall become more ghastly still. I should be failing in my duties as a husband if I did not recommend we leave. You need only speak the words."
"But you have settled here, Edward. Do you imagine I should wish to bring upon you more upheaval?"
"Think nothing of that. You must think of yourself, and where you can be happiest. Your happiness is all that matters."
"Things are not so bad here as you believe them to be. Certainly it is damp, and some repairs to the roof would not go amiss, but truly darling, unless you wish it I have no desire to live elsewhere."
"You," he said, shaking his head in disbelief, "would put a saint to shame." She laughed at this latest lesson in hyperbole and resisted the temptation to chide him for it, knowing full well it would be of no use.
"You," she returned, "are a shameless flatterer."
She did, however, chide herself, even as she allowed herself to be gathered to him, all but reclining in his arms, in the middle of the afternoon, while the workbox she'd brought with her rested untouched on the floor. This would not do at all. No, it would not do, and it was indeed never her intention to indulge in such behavior, but as the days grew colder and the hours passed at the fireside grew longer, she found herself more and more seated on the arm of his chair, enfolded in his arms, resting against him in a position that could only be called recumbent. In these intimate moments the tasks of the day were forgotten, the greater world consigned to temporary inexistence. The house might crumble around them, the snow might come in drifts and settle about them, but they were untouchable, invulnerable to any danger, any emotion that did not spring from themselves. They had no need of sustenance, of shelter, of any human comfort but what they could find in each other.
And then, inevitably, the world would resume. She would return to her sewing or sketching or planning, never one for idleness, and he would return to his talk, never voluntarily taciturn, but ever after, for the duration of the day, there was that peace, separate from them, but present.
Jane gazed upon the ghost-letter and felt herself seized by an emotion almost melancholical in nature. The few lines her pen had made there – accidental, unaware – meant so much and yet said so little. There existed no words for a love such as hers. There was nothing in language to express it. This she had learned. She could not share it, she could not give of it. It belonged to herself and Edward only. But perhaps, after all, that was right.
Downstairs the clock chimed the quarter-hour. She had kept him waiting too long. She opened the desk drawer to place the precious letter inside, and there she found the pieces of linen, still wrapped in tissue and ribbon. Moving swiftly now, she put away the letter, gathered up her sewing box, the bundle of linen and her narrow taper. Her shawl fluttered out behind her as she hurried to the door, and then the chamber went dark.
As she entered the drawing room and caught a glimpse of him before he was aware of her – but only a few seconds before, for his senses were sharp, and his ability to detect her presence a sense in its own right, the sharpest of them all. The seconds were enough. His frame was relaxed, but not with listlessness, expectant, but not impatient. He had enough in himself to sustain him in her brief absences. The light was within him now and not so easily quenched. She had given him that. He rose – a chivalrous habit that charmed even as it amused her by its formality, as though he were a suitor, or a stranger, rather than her own heart, her own flesh and bone – and his face, soft and warm in the firelight, greeted her return. She went to him and felt his hand come around her waist, drawing her to him in a wordless embrace as he sat down again and she with him. The box of embroidery was relegated to its accustomed place on the floor beside her empty chair.
Above the mantle there hung a tarnished mirror in a gilt frame, and into this mirror she could now look quite directly. And when Jane saw what was reflected, she had to turn and glance behind her to ascertain that it was true, for something of an old childhood
superstition still lingered: that the living figure and the reflection were not always of the same being, that the reflection might have an existence all its own, and powers beyond what any mortal could conceive. But here was no mischief, no witchery. Here was only the twilit parlor, and the glow of the fire, and Edward's face, and hers.