Chapter 37 — Ferndean; the reunion

Jane takes a chaise the next morning and travels thirty miles further into the country. The road becomes narrower; the country becomes wilder; the trees close over the lane. She dismisses the chaise at the gate and walks the last half-mile up the muddy track. Ferndean is a small, low manor of dark stone, half-hidden in beech and oak. The windows are shuttered; smoke rises thinly from one chimney; the place is silent except for birds.

Rochester is sitting alone on the stone bench beside the front door. He has aged. His hair is iron-grey at the temples; his face is gaunt; his right sleeve is empty and pinned at the cuff; his good eye is closed against the sunset. The Newfoundland Pilot, lying at his feet, lifts his head and runs to her. Rochester turns his head toward the sound, calls John the old servant — he has taken Pilot's reaction to mean one of the household has come out. Jane signs to John to be silent and walks across the yard.

She speaks. He hears her voice and rises with such violence that he almost falls; he has thought, for a fraction of a second, that he is hallucinating. She gives him her hand and lets him feel that she is real. They go inside. They sit by the fire and talk for hours. She tells him about the year on the moors, about Moor House, about the inheritance, about her present independence. He tells her about the night of the fire, about the year alone at Ferndean. He tells her, too, that on a particular evening some weeks earlier he had stood in the wood outside the house and cried out her name, three times, in his despair: "Jane! Jane! Jane!" She gives him the date. It is the same date she heard the voice on the moors. He proposes; she accepts. The discipline that has organized her since the red-room has not been overcome; it has been honored.