The Sense of an Ending
“Some days since: nay, I can number them — four; it was last Monday night, a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced frenzy —sorrow, sullenness. I had long had the impression that since I could nowhere find you, you must be dead.”
“Where are you?’ seemed spoken amongst mountains; for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the words.”
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre p. 515-516
I know what Rochester is saying to Jane, having experienced it just once — the way that a bad feeling can feel like a self-indulgent performance next to the painfully felt conviction that a loved one had died. Next to grief, the frenzy of a bad argument doesn't feel so bad. The mood changes from something that can be repaired to something that cannot. It was a Saturday and Sunday for me. I called across the Santa Fe mountains and could see and feel farther than I ever had before. I could see all the way home to Fruita, Colorado, even farther if I tried. I wanted his presence, would walk the whole way to find him. He might have gone to scout Blue Mesa Reservoir where he wanted to take me fishing and camping in just two weeks, where he might have gone to “pout.” as Elliot suggested. I looked there from where I stood and called his name. I knew he was in the mountains, in the air, in the land, somewhere. If I could believe it was true, he was there, but I felt that echo.
Note: “and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart” (Thackeray, Vanity Fair, p.375)