APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/books/jane_eyre/CHAP_30_38

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                     CHAPTER XXX


THE more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked
them. In a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could
sit up all day, and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana and
Mary in all their occupations; converse with them as much as they
wished, and aid them when and where they would allow me. There was a
reviving pleasure in this intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me
for the first time- the pleasure arising from perfect congeniality
of tastes, sentiments, and principles.

I liked to read what they liked to read: what they enjoyed,
delighted me; what they approved, I reverenced. They loved their
sequestered home. I, too, in the grey, small, antique structure,
with its low roof, its latticed casements, its mouldering walls, its
avenue of aged firs- all grown aslant under the stress of mountain
winds; its garden, dark with yew and holly- and where no flowers but
of the hardiest species would bloom- found a charm both potent and
permanent. They clung to the purple moors behind and around their
dwelling- to the hollow vale into which the pebbly bridle-path leading
from their gate descended, and which wound between fern-banks first,
and then amongst a few of the wildest little pasture-fields that
ever bordered a wilderness of heath, or gave sustenance to a flock
of grey moorland sheep, with their little mossy-faced lambs:- they
clung to this scene, I say, with a perfect enthusiasm of attachment. I
could comprehend the feeling, and share both its strength and truth. I
saw the fascination of the locality. I felt the consecration of its
loneliness: my eye feasted on the outline of swell and sweep- on the
wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell by moss, by
heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken, and mellow
granite crag. These details were just to me what they were to them- so
many pure and sweet sources of pleasure. The strong blast and the soft
breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of sunrise and
sunset; the moonlight and the clouded night, developed for me, in
these regions, the same attraction as for them- wound round my
faculties the same spell that entranced theirs.

Indoors we agreed equally well. They were both more accomplished
and better read than I was; but with eagerness I followed in the
path of knowledge they had trodden before me. I devoured the books
they lent me: then it was full satisfaction to discuss with them in
the evening what I had perused during the day. Thought fitted thought;
opinion met opinion: we coincided, in short, perfectly.

If in our trio there was a superior and a leader, it was Diana.
Physically, she far excelled me: she was handsome; she was vigorous.
In her animal spirits there was an affluence of life and certainty
of flow, such as excited my wonder, while it baffled my comprehension.
I could talk a while when the evening commenced, but the first gush of
vivacity and fluency gone, I was fain to sit on a stool at Diana's
feet, to rest my head on her knee, and listen alternately to her and
Mary, while they sounded thoroughly the topic on which I had but
touched. Diana offered to teach me German. I liked to learn of her:
I saw the part of instructress pleased and suited her; that of scholar
pleased and suited me no less. Our natures dovetailed: mutual
affection- of the strongest kind- was the result. They discovered I
could draw: their pencils and colour-boxes were immediately at my
service. My skill, greater in this one point than theirs, surprised
and charmed them. Mary would sit and watch me by the hour together:
then she would take lessons; and a docile, intelligent, assiduous
pupil she made. Thus occupied, and mutually entertained, days passed
like hours, and weeks like days.

As to Mr. St. John, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally
and rapidly between me and his sisters did not extend to him. One
reason of the distance yet observed between us was, that he was
comparatively seldom at home: a large proportion of his time
appeared devoted to visiting the sick and poor among the scattered
population of his parish.

No weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral excursions:
rain or fair, he would, when his hours of morning study were over,
take his hat, and, followed by his father's old pointer, Carlo, go out
on his mission of love or duty- I scarcely know in which light he
regarded it. Sometimes, when the day was very unfavourable, his
sisters would expostulate. He would then say, with a peculiar smile,
more solemn than cheerful-

'And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me
aside from these easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be
for the future I propose to myself?'

Diana and Mary's general answer to this question was a sigh, and
some minutes of apparently mournful meditation.

But besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to
friendship with him: he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and
even of a brooding nature. Zealous in his ministerial labours,
blameless in his life and habits, he yet did not appear to enjoy
that mental serenity, that inward content, which should be the
reward of every sincere Christian and practical philanthropist. Often,
of an evening, when he sat at the window, his desk and papers before
him, he would cease reading or writing, rest his chin on his hand, and
deliver himself up to I know not what course of thought; but that it
was perturbed and exciting might be seen in the frequent flash and
changeful dilation of his eye.

I think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of
delight it was to his sisters. He expressed once, and but once in my
hearing, a strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and an
inborn affection for the dark roof and hoary walls he called his home;
but there was more of gloom than pleasure in the tone and words in
which the sentiment was manifested; and never did he seem to roam
the moors for the sake of their soothing silence- never seek out or
dwell upon the thousand peaceful delights they could yield.

Incommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had an
opportunity of gauging his mind. I first got an idea of its calibre
when I heard him preach in his own church at Morton. I wish I could
describe that sermon: but it is past my power. I cannot even render
faithfully the effect it produced on me.

It began calm- and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice
went, it was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly
restrained zeal breathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted
the nervous language. This grew to force- compressed, condensed,
controlled. The heart was thrilled, the mind astonished, by the
power of the preacher: neither were softened. Throughout there was a
strange bitterness; an absence of consolatory gentleness; stern
allusions to Calvinistic doctrines- election, predestination,
reprobation- were frequent; and each reference to these points sounded
like a sentence pronounced for doom. When he had done, instead of
feeling better, calmer, more enlightened by his discourse, I
experienced an expressible sadness; for it seemed to me- I know not
whether equally so to others- that the eloquence to which I had been
listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of
disappointment- where moved troubling impulses of insatiate
yearnings and disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John Rivers-
pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was- had not yet found that
peace of God which passeth all understanding; he had no more found it,
I thought, than had I with my concealed and racking regrets for my
broken idol and lost elysium- regrets to which I have latterly avoided
referring, but which possessed me and tyrannised over me ruthlessly.

Meantime a month was gone. Diana and Mary were soon to leave Moor
House, and return to the far different life and scene which awaited
them, as governesses in a large, fashionable, south-of-England city,
where each held a situation in families by whose wealthy and haughty
members they were regarded only as humble dependants, and who
neither knew nor sought out their innate excellences, and
appreciated only their acquired accomplishments as they appreciated
the skill of their cook or the taste of their waiting-woman. Mr. St.
John had said nothing to me yet about the employment he had promised
to obtain for me; yet it became urgent that I should have a vocation
of some kind. One morning, being left alone with him a few minutes
in the parlour, I ventured to approach the window-recess- which his
table, chair, and desk consecrated as a kind of study- and I was going
to speak, though not very well knowing in what words to frame my
inquiry- for it is at all times difficult to break the ice of
reserve glassing over such natures as his- when he saved me the
trouble by being the first to commence a dialogue.

Looking up as I drew near- 'You have a question to ask of me?' he
said.

'Yes; I wish to know whether you have heard of any service I can
offer myself to undertake?'

'I found or devised something for you three weeks ago; but as you
seemed both useful and happy here- as my sisters had evidently
become attached to you, and your society gave them unusual pleasure- I
deemed it inexpedient to break in on your mutual comfort till their
approaching departure from Marsh End should render yours necessary.'

'And they will go in three days now?' I said.

'Yes; and when they go, I shall return to the parsonage at
Morton: Hannah will accompany me; and this old house will be shut up.'

I waited a few moments, expecting he would go on with the subject
first broached: but he seemed to have entered another train of
reflection: his look denoted abstraction from me and my business. I
was obliged to recall him to a theme which was of necessity one of
close and anxious interest to me.

'What is the employment you had in view, Mr. Rivers? I hope this
delay will not have increased the difficulty of securing it.'

'Oh, no; since it is an employment which depends only on me to
give, and you to accept.'

He again paused: there seemed a reluctance to continue. I grew
impatient: a restless movement or two, and an eager and exacting
glance fastened on his face, conveyed the feeling to him as
effectually as words could have done, and with less trouble.

'You need be in no hurry to hear,' he said: 'let me frankly tell
you, I have nothing eligible or profitable to suggest. Before I
explain, recall, if you please, my notice, clearly given, that if I
helped you, it must be as the blind man would help the lame. I am
poor; for I find that, when I have paid my father's debts, all the
patrimony remaining to me will be this crumbling grange, the row of
scathed firs behind, and the patch of moorish soil, with the yew-trees
and holly-bushes in front. I am obscure: Rivers is an old name; but of
the three sole descendants of the race, two earn the dependant's crust
among strangers, and the third considers himself an alien from his
native country- not only for life, but in death. Yes, and deems, and
is bound to deem, himself honoured by the lot, and aspires but after
the day when the cross of separation from fleshly ties shall be laid
on his shoulders, and when the Head of that church-militant of whose
humblest members he is one, shall give the word, "Rise, follow Me!"'

St. John said these words as he pronounced his sermons, with a
quiet, deep voice; with an unflushed cheek, and a coruscating radiance
of glance. He resumed-

'And since I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a
service of poverty and obscurity. You may even think it degrading- for
I see now your habits have been what the world calls refined: your
tastes lean to the ideal, and your society has at least been amongst
the educated; but I consider that no service degrades which can better
our race. I hold that the more arid and unreclaimed the soil where the
Christian labourer's task of tillage is appointed him- the scantier
the meed his toil brings- the higher the honour. His, under such
circumstances, is the destiny of the pioneer; and the first pioneers
of the Gospel were the Apostles- their captain was Jesus, the
Redeemer, Himself.'

'Well?' I said, as he again paused- 'proceed.'

He looked at me before he proceeded: indeed, he seemed leisurely to
read my face, as if its features and lines were characters on a
page. The conclusions drawn from this scrutiny he partially
expressed in his succeeding observations.

'I believe you will accept the post I offer you,' said he, 'and
hold it for a while: not permanently, though: any more than I could
permanently keep the narrow and narrowing- the tranquil, hidden office
of English country incumbent; for in your nature is an alloy as
detrimental to repose as that in mine, though of a different kind.'

'Do explain,' I urged, when he halted once more.

'I will; and you shall hear how poor the proposal is,- how trivial-
how cramping. I shall not stay long at Morton, now that my father is
dead, and that I am my own master. I shall leave the place probably in
the course of a twelvemonth; but while I do stay, I will exert
myself to the utmost for its improvement. Morton, when I came to it
two years ago, had no school: the children of the poor were excluded
from every hope of progress. I established one for boys: I mean now to
open a second school for girls. I have hired a building for the
purpose, with a cottage of two rooms attached to it for the mistress's
house. Her salary will be thirty pounds a year: her house is already
furnished, very simply, but sufficiently, by the kindness of a lady,
Miss Oliver; the only daughter of the sole rich man in my parish-
Mr. Oliver, the proprietor of a needle-factory and iron-foundry in the
valley. The same lady pays for the education and clothing of an orphan
from the workhouse, on condition that she shall aid the mistress in
such menial offices connected with her own house and the school as her
occupation of teaching will prevent her having time to discharge in
person. Will you be this mistress?'

He put the question rather hurriedly; he seemed half to expect an
indignant, or at least a disdainful rejection of the offer: not
knowing all my thoughts and feelings, though guessing some, he could
not tell in what light the lot would appear to me. In truth it was
humble- but then it was sheltered, and I wanted a safe asylum: it
was plodding- but then, compared with that of a governess in a rich
house, it was independent; and the fear of servitude with strangers
entered my soul like iron: it was not ignoble- not unworthy- not
mentally degrading. I made my decision.

'I thank you for the proposal, Mr. Rivers, and I accept it with all
my heart.'

'But you comprehend me?' he said. 'It is a village school: your
scholars will be only poor girls- cottagers' children- at the best,
farmers' daughters. Knitting, sewing, reading, writing, ciphering,
will be all you will have to teach. What will you do with your
accomplishments? What, with the largest portion of your mind-
sentiments- tastes?'

'Save them till they are wanted. They will keep.'

'You know what you undertake, then?'

'I do.'

He now smiled: and not a bitter or a sad smile, but one well
pleased and deeply gratified.

'And when will you commence the exercise of your function?'

'I will go to my house to-morrow, and open the school, if you like,
next week.'

'Very well: so be it.'

He rose and walked through the room. Standing still, he again
looked at me. He shook his head.

'What do you disapprove of, Mr. Rivers?' I asked.

'You will not stay at Morton long: no, no!'

'Why? What is your reason for saying so?'

'I read it in your eye; it is not of that description which
promises the maintenance of an even tenor in life.'

'I am not ambitious.'

He started at the word 'ambitious.' He repeated, 'No. What made you
think of ambition? Who is ambitious? I know I am: but how did you find
it out?'

'I was speaking of myself.'

'Well, if you are not ambitious, you are-' He paused.

'What?'

'I was going to say, impassioned: but perhaps you would have
misunderstood the word, and been displeased. I mean, that human
affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you. I am
sure you cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude,
and to devote your working hours to a monotonous labour wholly void of
stimulus: any more than I can be content,' he added, with emphasis,
'to live here buried in morass, pent in with mountains- my nature,
that God gave me, contravened; my faculties, heaven-bestowed,
paralysed- made useless. You hear now how I contradict myself. I,
who preached contentment with a humble lot, and justified the vocation
even of hewers of wood and drawers of water in God's service- I, His
ordained minister, almost rave in my restlessness. Well,
propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means.'

He left the room. In this brief hour I had learnt more of him
than in the whole previous month: yet still he puzzled me.

Diana and Mary Rivers became more sad and silent as the day
approached for leaving their brother and their home. They both tried
to appear as usual; but the sorrow they had to struggle against was
one that could not be entirely conquered or concealed. Diana intimated
that this would be a different parting from any they had ever yet
known. It would probably, as far as St. John was concerned, be a
parting for years: it might be a parting for life.

'He will sacrifice all to his long-framed resolves,' she said:
'natural affection and feelings more potent still. St. John looks
quiet, Jane; but he hides a fever in his vitals. You would think him
gentle, yet in some things he is inexorable as death; and the worst of
it is, my conscience will hardly permit me to dissuade him from his
severe decision: certainly, I cannot for a moment blame him for it. It
is right, noble, Christian: yet it breaks my heart!' And the tears
gushed to her fine eyes. Mary bent her head low over her work.

'We are now without father: we shall soon be without home and
brother,' she murmured.

At that moment a little accident supervened, which seemed decreed
by fate purposely to prove the truth of the adage, that 'misfortunes
never come singly,' and to add to their distresses the vexing one of
the slip between the cup and the lip. St. John passed the window
reading a letter. He entered.

'Our uncle John is dead,' said he.

Both the sisters seemed struck: not shocked or appalled; the
tidings appeared in their eyes rather momentous than afflicting.

'Dead?' repeated Diana.

'Yes.'

She riveted a searching gaze on her brother's face. 'And what
then?' she demanded, in a low voice.

'What then, Die?' he replied, maintaining a marble immobility of
feature. 'What then? Why- nothing. Read.'

He threw the letter into her lap. She glanced over it, and handed
it to Mary. Mary perused it in silence, and returned it to her
brother. All three looked at each other, and all three smiled- a
dreary, pensive smile enough.

'Amen! We can yet live,' said Diana at last.

'At any rate, it makes us no worse off than we were before,'
remarked Mary.

'Only it forces rather strongly on the mind the picture of what
might have been; said Mr. Rivers, 'and contrasts it somewhat too
vividly with what is.'

He folded the letter, locked it in his desk, and again went out.

For some minutes no one spoke. Diana then turned to me.

'Jane, you will wonder at us and our mysteries,' she said, 'and
think us hard-hearted beings not to be more moved at the death of so
near a relation as an uncle; but we have never seen him or known
him. He was my mother's brother. My father and he quarrelled long ago.
It was by his advice that my father risked most of his property in the
speculation that ruined him. Mutual recrimination passed between them:
they parted in anger, and were never reconciled. My uncle engaged
afterwards in more prosperous undertakings: it appears he realised a
fortune of twenty thousand pounds. He was never married, and had no
near kindred but ourselves and one other person, not more closely
related than we. My father always cherished the idea that he would
atone for his error by leaving his possessions to us; that letter
informs us that he has bequeathed every penny to the other relation,
with the exception of thirty guineas, to be divided between St.
John, Diana, and Mary Rivers, for the purchase of three mourning
rings. He had a right, of course, to do as he pleased: and yet a
momentary damp is cast on the spirits by the receipt of such news.
Mary and I would have esteemed ourselves rich with a thousand pounds
each; and to St. John such a sum would have been valuable, for the
good it would have enabled him to do.'

This explanation given, the subject was dropped, and no further
reference made to it by either Mr. Rivers or his sisters. The next day
I left Marsh End for Morton. The day after, Diana and Mary quitted
the parsonage: and so the old grange was abandoned.

                      CHAPTER XXXI


MY home, then,- when I at last find a home,- is a cottage; a little
room with whitewashed walls and a sanded floor, containing four
painted chairs and a table, a clock, a cupboard, with two or three
plates and dishes, and a set of tea-things in delf. Above, a chamber
of the same dimensions as the kitchen, with a deal bedstead and
chest of drawers; small, yet too large to be filled with my scanty
wardrobe: though the kindness of my gentle and generous friends has
increased that, by a modest stock of such things as are necessary.

It is evening. I have dismissed, with the fee of an orange, the
little orphan who serves me as a handmaid. I am sitting alone on the
hearth. This morning, the village school opened. I had twenty
scholars. But three of the number can read: none write or cipher.
Several knit, and a few sew a little. They speak with the broadest
accent of the district. At present, they and I have a difficulty in
understanding each other's language. Some of them are unmannered,
rough, intractable, as well as ignorant; but others are docile, have a
wish to learn, and evince a disposition that pleases me. I must not
forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood
as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of
native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as
likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best-born. My
duty will be to develop these germs: surely I shall find some
happiness in discharging that office. Much enjoyment I do not expect
in the life opening before me: yet it will, doubtless, if I regulate
my mind, and exert my powers as I ought, yield me enough to live on
from day to day.

Was I very gleeful, settled, content, during the hours I passed
in yonder bare, humble schoolroom this morning and afternoon? Not to
deceive myself, I must reply- No: I felt desolate to a degree. I felt-
yes, idiot that I am- I felt degraded. I doubted I had taken a step
which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence. I
was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of
all I heard and saw round me. But let me not hate and despise myself
too much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong- that is a
great step gained; I shall strive to overcome them. To-morrow, I
trust, I shall get the better of them partially; and in a few weeks,
perhaps, they will be quite subdued. In a few months, it is
possible, the happiness of seeing progress, and a change for the
better in my scholars may substitute gratification for disgust.

Meantime, let me ask myself one question- Which is better?- To have
surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful
effort- no struggle;- but to have sunk down in the silken snare;
fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime,
amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in
France, Mr. Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love half my
time- for he would- oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a
while. He did love me- no one will ever love me so again. I shall
never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace-
for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms. He was
fond and proud of me- it is what no man besides will ever be.- But
where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above all, feeling?
Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool's paradise at
Marseilles- fevered with delusive bliss one hour- suffocating with the
bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next- or to be a
village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook
in the healthy heart of England?

Yes; I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and
law, and scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied
moment. God directed me to a correct choice: I thank His providence
for the guidance!

Having brought my eventide musings to this point, I rose, went to
my door, and looked at the sunset of the harvest-day, and at the quiet
fields before my cottage, which, with the school, was distant half a
mile from the village. The birds were singing their last strains-


           'The air was mild, the dew was balm.'

While I looked, I thought myself happy, and was surprised to find
myself ere long weeping- and why? For the doom which had reft me
from adhesion to my master: for him I was no more to see; for the
desperate grief and fatal fury- consequences of my departure- which
might now, perhaps, be dragging him from the path of right, too far to
leave hope of ultimate restoration thither. At this thought, I
turned my face aside from the lovely sky of eve and lonely vale of
Morton- I say lonely, for in that bend of it visible to me there was
no building apparent save the church and the parsonage, half-hid in
trees, and, quite at the extremity, the roof of Vale Hall, where the
rich Mr. Oliver and his daughter lived. I hid my eyes, and leant my
head against the stone frame of my door; but soon a slight noise
near the wicket which shut in my tiny garden from the meadow beyond it
made me look up. A dog- old Carlo, Mr. Rivers' pointer, as I saw in
a moment- was pushing the gate with his nose, and St. John himself
leant upon it with folded arms; his brow knit, his gaze, grave
almost to displeasure, fixed on me. I asked him to come in.

'No, I cannot stay; I have only brought you a little parcel My
sisters left for you. I think it contains a colour-box, pencils, and
paper.'

I approached to take it: a welcome gift it was. He examined my
face, I thought, with austerity, as I came near: the traces of tears
were doubtless very visible upon it.

'Have you found your first day's work harder than you expected?' he
asked.

'Oh, no! On the contrary, I think in time I shall get on with my
scholars very well.'

'But perhaps your accommodations- your cottage- your furniture-
have disappointed your expectations? They are, in truth, scanty
enough; but-' I interrupted-

'My cottage is clean and weather-proof; my furniture sufficient and
commodious. All I see has made me thankful, not despondent. I am not
absolutely such a fool and sensualist as to regret the absence of a
carpet, a sofa, and silver plate; besides, five weeks ago I had
nothing- I was an outcast, a beggar, a vagrant; now I have
acquaintance, a home, a business. I wonder at the goodness of God; the
generosity of my friends; the bounty of my lot. I do not repine.'

'But you feel solitude an oppression? The little house there behind
you is dark and empty.'

'I have hardly had time yet to enjoy a sense of tranquillity,
much less to grow impatient under one of loneliness.'

'Very well; I hope you feel the content you express: at any rate,
your good sense will tell you that it is too soon yet to yield to
the vacillating fears of Lot's wife. What you had left before I saw
you, of course I do not know; but I counsel you to resist firmly every
temptation which would incline you to look back: pursue your present
career steadily, for some months at least.'

'It is what I mean to do,' I answered. St. John continued-

'It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn
the bent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience.
God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate; and
when our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get- when
our will strains after a path we may not follow- we need neither
starve from inanition, nor stand still in despair: we have but to seek
another nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden food it
longed to taste- and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous
foot a road as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up
against us, if rougher than it.

'A year ago I was myself intensely miserable, because I thought I
had made a mistake in entering the ministry: its uniform duties
wearied me to death. I burnt for the more active life of the world-
for the more exciting toils of a literary career- for the destiny of
an artist, author, orator; anything rather than that of a priest: yes,
the heart of a politician, of a soldier, of a votary of glory, a lover
of renown, a luster after power, beat under my curate's surplice. I
considered; my life was so wretched, it must be changed, or I must
die. After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief
fell: my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without
bounds- my powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their
full strength, spread their wings, and mount beyond ken. God had an
errand for me; to bear which afar, to deliver it well, skill and
strength, courage and eloquence, the best qualifications of soldier,
statesman, and orator, were all needed: for these all centre in the
good missionary.

'A missionary I resolved to be. From that moment my state of mind
changed; the fetters dissolved and dropped from every faculty, leaving
nothing of bondage but its galling soreness- which time only can heal.
My father, indeed, opposed the determination, but since his death, I
have not a legitimate obstacle to contend with; some affairs
settled, a successor for Morton provided, an entanglement or two of
the feelings broken through or cut asunder- a last conflict with human
weakness, in which I know I shall overcome, because I have vowed
that I will overcome- and I leave Europe for the East.'

He said this, in his peculiar, subdued, yet emphatic voice;
looking, when he had ceased speaking, not at me, but at the setting
sun, at which I looked too. Both he and I had our backs towards the
path leading up the field to the wicket. We had heard no step on the
grass-grown track; the water running in the vale was the one lulling
sound of the hour and scene; we might well then start when a gay
voice, sweet as a silver bell, exclaimed-

'Good evening, Mr. Rivers. And good evening, old Carlo. Your dog is
quicker to recognise his friends than you are, sir; he pricked his
ears and wagged his tail when I was at the bottom of the field, and
you have your back towards me now.'

It was true. Though Mr. Rivers had started at the first of those
musical accents, as if a thunderbolt had split a cloud over his
head, he stood yet, at the close of the sentence, in the same attitude
in which the speaker had surprised him- his arm resting on the gate,
his face directed towards the west. He turned at last, with measured
deliberation. A vision, as it seemed to me, had risen at his side.
There appeared, within three feet of him, a form clad in pure
white-a youthful, graceful form: full, yet fine in contour; and
when, after bending to caress Carlo, it lifted up its head, and
threw back a long veil, there bloomed under his glance a face of
perfect beauty. Perfect beauty is a strong expression; but I do not
retrace or qualify it: as sweet features as ever the temperate clime
of Albion moulded; as pure hues of rose and lily as ever her humid
gales and vapoury skies generated and screened, justified, in this
instance, the term. No charm was wanting, no defect was perceptible;
the young girl had regular and delicate lineaments; eyes shaped and
coloured as we see them in lovely pictures, large, and dark, and full;
the long and shadowy eyelash which encircles a fine eye with so soft a
fascination; the pencilled brow which gives such clearness; the
white smooth forehead, which adds such repose to the livelier beauties
of tint and ray; the cheek oval, fresh, and smooth; the lips, fresh
too, ruddy, healthy, sweetly formed; the even and gleaming teeth
without flaw; the small dimpled chin; the ornament of rich,
plenteous tresses- all advantages, in short, which, combined,
realise the ideal of beauty, were fully hers. I wondered, as I
looked at this fair creature: I admired her with my whole heart.
Nature had surely formed her in a partial mood; and, forgetting her
usual stinted step-mother dole of gifts, had endowed this, her
darling, with a grand-dame's bounty.

What did St. John Rivers think of this earthly angel? I naturally
asked myself that question as I saw him turn to her and look at her;
and, as naturally, I sought the answer to the inquiry in his
countenance. He had already withdrawn his eye from the Peri, and was
looking at a humble tuft of daisies which grew by the wicket.

'A lovely evening, but late for you to be out alone,' he said, as
he crushed the snowy heads of the closed flowers with his foot.
town some twenty miles distant) 'this afternoon. Papa told me you
had opened your school, and that the new mistress was come; and so I
put on my bonnet after tea, and ran up the valley to see her: this
is she?' pointing to me.

'It is,' said St. John.

'Do you think you shall like Morton?' she asked of me, with a
direct and naive simplicity of tone and manner, pleasing, if
child-like.

'I hope I shall. I have many inducements to do so.'

'Did you find your scholars as attentive as you expected?'

'Quite.'

'Do you like your house?'

'Very much.'

'Have I furnished it nicely?'

'Very nicely, indeed.'

'And made a good choice of an attendant for you in Alice Wood?'

'You have indeed. She is teachable and handy.' (This then, I
thought, is Miss Oliver, the heiress; favoured, it seems, in the gifts
of fortune, as well as in those of nature! What happy combination of
the planets presided over her birth, I wonder?)

'I shall come up and help you to teach sometimes,' she added. 'It
will be a change for me to visit you now and then; and I like a
night, or rather this morning, I was dancing till two o'clock. The
are the most agreeable men in the world: they put all our young
knife-grinders and scissor merchants to shame.'

It seemed to me that Mr. St. John's under lip protruded, and his
upper lip curled a moment. His mouth certainly looked a good deal
compressed, and the lower part of his face unusually stern and square,
as the laughing girl gave him this information. He lifted his gaze,
too, from the daisies, and turned it on her. An unsmiling, a
searching, a meaning gaze it was. She answered it with a second laugh,
and laughter well became her youth, her roses, her dimples, her bright
eyes.

As he stood, mute and grave, she again fell to caressing Carlo.
'Poor Carlo loves me,' said she. 'He is not stern and distant to his
friends; and if he could speak, he would not be silent.'

As she patted the dog's head, bending with native grace before
his young and austere master, I saw a glow rise to that master's face.
I saw his solemn eye melt with sudden fire, and flicker with
resistless emotion. Flushed and kindled thus, he looked nearly as
beautiful for a man as she for a woman. His chest heaved once, as if
his large heart, weary of despotic constriction, had expanded, despite
the will, and made a vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty. But
he curbed it, I think, as a resolute rider would curb a rearing steed.
He responded neither by word nor movement to the gentle advances
made him.

'Papa says you never come to see us now,' continued Mis Oliver,
looking up. 'You are quite a stranger at Vale Hall. He is alone this
evening, and not very well: will you return with me and visit him?'

'It is not a seasonable hour to intrude on Mr. Oliver,' answered
St. John.

'Not a seasonable hour! But I declare it is. It is just the hour
when papa most wants company: when the works are closed and he has
no business to occupy him. Now, Mr. Rivers, do come. Why are you so
very shy, and so very sombre?' She filled up the hiatus his silence
left by a reply of her own.

'I forgot!' she exclaimed, shaking her beautiful curled head, as if
shocked at herself. 'I am so giddy and thoughtless! Do excuse me. It
had slipped my memory that you have good reasons to be indisposed
for joining in my chatter. Diana and Mary have left you, and Moor
House is shut up, and you are so lonely. I am sure I pity you. Do come
and see papa.'

'Not to-night, Miss Rosamond, not to-night.'

Mr. St. John spoke almost like an automaton: himself only knew
the effort it cost him thus to refuse.

'Well, if you are so obstinate, I will leave you; for I dare not
stay any longer: the dew begins to fall. Good evening!'

She held out her hand. He just touched it. 'Good evening!' he
repeated, in a voice low and hollow as an echo. She turned, but in a
moment returned.

'Are you well?' she asked. Well might she put the question: his
face was blanched as her gown.

'Quite well,' he enunciated; and, with a bow, he left the gate. She
went one way; he another. She turned twice to gaze after him as she
tripped fairy-like down the field; he, as he strode firmly across,
never turned at all.

This spectacle of another's suffering and sacrifice rapt my
thoughts from exclusive meditation on my own. Diana Rivers had
designated her brother 'inexorable as death.' She had not exaggerated.

                     CHAPTER XXXII


I CONTINUED the labours of the village-school as actively and
faithfully as I could. It was truly hard work at first. Some time
elapsed before, with all my efforts, I could comprehend my scholars
and their nature. Wholly untaught, with faculties quite torpid, they
seemed to me hopelessly dull; and, at first sight, all dull alike: but
I soon found I was mistaken. There was a difference amongst them as
amongst the educated; and when I got to know them, and they me, this
difference rapidly developed itself. Their amazement at me, my
language, my rules, and ways, once subsided, I found some of these
heavy-looking, gaping rustics wake up into sharp-witted girls
enough. Many showed themselves obliging, and amiable too; and I
discovered amongst them not a few examples of natural politeness,
and innate self-respect, as well as of excellent capacity, that won
both my good-will and my admiration. These soon took a pleasure in
doing their work well, in keeping their persons neat, in learning
their tasks regularly, in acquiring quiet and orderly manners. The
rapidity of their progress, in some instances, was even surprising;
and an honest and happy pride I took in it: besides, I began
personally to like some of the best girls; and they liked me. I had
amongst my scholars several farmers' daughters: young women grown,
almost. These could already read, write, and sew; and to them I taught
the elements of grammar, geography, history, and the finer kinds of
needlework. I found estimable characters amongst them- characters
desirous of information and disposed for improvement- with whom I
passed many a pleasant evening hour in their own homes. Their
parents then (the farmer and his wife) loaded me with attentions.
There was an enjoyment in accepting their simple kindness, and in
repaying it by a consideration- a scrupulous regard to their feelings-
to which they were not, perhaps, at all times accustomed, and which
both charmed and benefited them; because, while it elevated them in
their own eyes, it made them emulous to merit the deferential
treatment they received.

I felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood. Whenever I went
out, I heard on all sides cordial salutations, and was welcomed with
friendly smiles. To live amidst general regard, though it be but the
regard of working people, is like 'sitting in sunshine, calm and
sweet'; serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray. At this
period of my life, my heart far oftener swelled with thankfulness than
sank with dejection: and yet, reader, to tell you all, in the midst of
this calm, this useful existence- after a day passed in honourable
exertion amongst my scholars, an evening spent in drawing or reading
contentedly alone- I used to rush into strange dreams at night: dreams
many-coloured, agitated, full of the ideal, the stirring, the
stormy- dreams where, amidst unusual scenes, charged with adventure,
with agitating risk and romantic chance, I still again and again met
Mr. Rochester, always at some exciting crisis; and then the sense of
being in his arms, hearing his voice, meeting his eye, touching his
hand and cheek, loving him, being loved by him- the hope of passing
a lifetime at his side, would be renewed, with all its first force and
fire. Then I awoke. Then I recalled where I was, and how situated.
Then I rose up on my curtainless bed, trembling and quivering; and
then the still, dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair, and
heard the burst of passion. By nine o'clock the next morning I was
punctually opening the school; tranquil, settled, prepared for the
steady duties of the day.

Rosamond Oliver kept her word in coming to visit me. Her call at
the school was generally made in the course of her morning ride. She
would canter up to the door on her pony, followed by a mounted
livery servant. Anything more exquisite than her appearance, in her
purple habit, with her Amazon's cap of black velvet placed
gracefully above the long curls that kissed her cheek and floated to
her shoulders, can scarcely be imagined: and it was thus she would
enter the rustic building, and glide through the dazzled ranks of
the village children. She generally came at the hour when Mr. Rivers
was engaged in giving his daily catechising lesson. Keenly, I fear,
did the eye of the visitress pierce the young pastor's heart. A sort
of instinct seemed to warn him of her entrance, even when he did not
see it; and when he was looking quite away from the door, if she
appeared at it, his cheek would glow, and his marble-seeming features,
though they refused to relax, changed indescribably, and in their very
quiescence became expressive of a repressed fervour, stronger than
working muscle or darting glance could indicate.

Of course, she knew her power: indeed, he did not, because he could
not, conceal it from her. In spite of his Christian stoicism, when she
went up and addressed him, and smiled gaily, encouragingly, even
fondly in his face, his hand would tremble and his eye burn. He seemed
to say, with his sad and resolute look, if he did not say it with
his lips, 'I love you, and I know you prefer me. It is not despair
of success that keeps me dumb. If I offered my heart, I believe you
would accept it. But that heart is already laid on a sacred altar: the
fire is arranged round it. It will soon be no more than a sacrifice
consumed.'

And then she would pout like a disappointed child; a pensive
cloud would soften her radiant vivacity; she would withdraw her hand
hastily from his, and turn in transient petulance from his aspect,
at once so heroic and so martyr-like. St. John, no doubt, would have
given the world to follow, recall, retain her, when she thus left him;
but he would not give one chance of heaven, nor relinquish, for the
elysium of her love, one hope of the true, eternal Paradise.
Besides, he could not bind all that he had in his nature- the rover,
the aspirant, the poet, the priest- in the limits of a single passion.
He could not- he would not- renounce his wild field of mission warfare
for the parlours and the peace of Vale Hall. I learnt so much from
himself in an inroad I once, despite his reserve, had the daring to
make on his confidence.

Miss Oliver already honoured me with frequent visits to my cottage.
I had learnt her whole character, which was without mystery or
disguise: she was coquettish, but not heartless; exacting, but not
worthlessly selfish. She had been indulged from her birth, but was not
absolutely spoilt. She was hasty, but good-humoured; vain (she could
not help it, when every glance in the glass showed her such a flush of
loveliness), but not affected; liberal-handed; innocent of the pride
of wealth; ingenuous; sufficiently intelligent; gay, lively, and
unthinking: she was very charming, in short, even to a cool observer
of her own sex like me; but she was not profoundly interesting or
thoroughly impressive. A very different sort of mind was hers from
that, for instance, of the sisters of St. John. Still, I liked her
almost as I liked my pupil Adele; except that, for a child whom we
have watched over and taught, a closer affection is engendered than we
can give an equally attractive adult acquaintance.

She had taken an amiable caprice to me. She said I was like Mr.
Rivers, only, certainly, she allowed, 'not one-tenth so handsome,
though I was a nice neat little soul enough, but he was an angel.' I
was, however, good, clever, composed, and firm, like him. I was a
lusus naturae, she affirmed, as a village schoolmistress: she was sure
my previous history, if known, would make a delightful romance.

One evening, while, with her usual child-like activity, and
thoughtless yet not offensive inquisitiveness, she was rummaging the
cupboard and the table-drawer of my little kitchen, she discovered
first two French books, a volume of Schiller, a German grammar and
dictionary, and then my drawing-materials and some sketches, including
a pencil-head of a pretty little cherub-like girl, one of my scholars,
and sundry views from nature, taken in the Vale of Morton and on the
surrounding moors. She was first transfixed with surprise, and then
electrified with delight.

'Had I done these pictures? Did I know French and German? What a
love- what a miracle I was! I drew better than her master in the first

'With pleasure,' I replied; and I felt a thrill of artist-delight
at the idea of copying from so perfect and radiant a model. She had
then on a dark-blue silk dress; her arms and her neck were bare; her
only ornament was her chestnut tresses, which waved over her shoulders
with all the wild grace of natural curls. I took a sheet of fine
card-board, and drew a careful outline. I promised myself the pleasure
of colouring it; and, as it was getting late then, I told her she must
come and sit another day.

She made such a report of me to her father, that Mr. Oliver himself
accompanied her next evening- a tall, massive-featured, middle-aged,
and grey-headed man, at whose side his lovely daughter looked like a
bright flower near a hoary turret. He appeared a taciturn, and perhaps
a proud personage; but he was very kind to me. The sketch of
Rosamond's portrait pleased him highly: he said I must make a finished
picture of it. He insisted, too, on my coming the next day to spend
the evening at Vale Hall.

I went. I found it a large, handsome residence, showing abundant
evidences of wealth in the proprietor. Rosamond was full of glee and
pleasure all the time I stayed. Her father was affable; and when he
entered into conversation with me after tea, he expressed in strong
terms his approbation of what I had done in Morton school, and said he
only feared, from what he saw and heard, I was too good for the place,
and would soon quit it for one more suitable.

'Indeed,' cried Rosamond, 'she is clever enough to be a governess
in a high family, papa.'

I thought I would far rather be where I am than in any high
family in the land. Mr. Oliver spoke of Mr. Rivers- of the Rivers
family- with great respect. He said it was a very old name in that
neighbourhood; that the ancestors of the house were wealthy; that
all Morton had once belonged to them; that even now he considered
the representative of that house might, if he liked, make an
alliance with the best. He accounted it a pity that so fine and
talented a young man should have formed the design of going out as a
missionary; it was quite throwing a valuable life away. It appeared,
then, that her father would throw no obstacle in the way of Rosamond's
union with St. John. Mr. Oliver evidently regarded the young
clergyman's good birth, old name, and sacred profession as
sufficient compensation for the want of fortune.

It was the 5th of November, and a holiday. My little servant, after
helping me to clean my house, was gone, well satisfied with the fee of
a penny for her aid. All about me was spotless and bright- scoured
floor, polished grate, and well-rubbed chairs. I had also made
myself neat, and had now the afternoon before me to spend as I would.

The translation of a few pages of German occupied an hour; then I
got my palette and pencils, and fell to the more soothing, because
easier occupation, of completing Rosamond Oliver's miniature. The head
was finished already: there was but the background to tint and the
drapery to shade off; a touch of carmine, too, to add to the ripe
lips- a soft curl here and there to the tresses- a deeper tinge to the
shadow of the lash under the azured eyelid. I was absorbed in the
execution of these nice details, when, after one rapid tap, my door
unclosed, admitting St. John Rivers.

'I am come to see how you are spending your holiday,' he said.
'Not, I hope, in thought? No, that is well: while you draw you will
not feel lonely. You see, I mistrust you still, though you have
borne up wonderfully so far. I have brought you a book for evening
solace,' and he laid on the table a new publication- a poem: one of
those genuine productions so often vouchsafed to the fortunate
public of those days- the golden age of modern literature. Alas! the
readers of our era are less favoured. But courage! I will not pause
either to accuse or repine. I know poetry is not dead, nor genius
lost; nor has Mammon gained power over either, to bind or slay: they
will both assert their existence, their presence, their liberty and
strength again one day. Powerful angels, safe in heaven! they smile
when sordid souls triumph, and feeble ones weep over their
destruction. Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do
not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but
reign and redeem: and without their divine influence spread
everywhere, you would be in hell- the hell of your own meanness.

While I was eagerly glancing at the bright pages of Marmion (for
Marmion it was), St. John stooped to examine my drawing. His tall
figure sprang erect again with a start: he said nothing. I looked up
at him: he shunned my eye. I knew his thoughts well, and could read
his heart plainly; at the moment I felt calmer and cooler than he: I
had then temporarily the advantage of him, and I conceived an
inclination to do him some good, if I could.

'With all his firmness and self-control,' thought I, 'he tasks
himself too far: locks every feeling and pang within- expresses,
confesses, imparts nothing. I am sure it would benefit him to talk a
little about this sweet Rosamond, whom he thinks he ought not to
marry: I will make him talk.'

I said first, 'Take a chair, Mr. Rivers.' But he answered, as he
always did, that he could not stay. 'Very well,' I responded,
mentally, 'stand if you like; but you shall not go just yet, I am
determined: solitude is at least as bad for you as it is for me.
I'll try if I cannot discover the secret spring of your confidence,
and find an aperture in that marble breast through which I can shed
one drop of the balm of sympathy.'

'Is this portrait like?' I asked bluntly.

'Like! Like whom? I did not observe it closely.'

'You did, Mr. Rivers.'

He almost started at my sudden and strange abruptness: he looked at
me astonished. 'Oh, that is nothing yet,' I muttered within. 'I
don't mean to be baffled by a little stiffness on your part; I'm
prepared to go to considerable lengths.' I continued, 'You observed it
closely and distinctly; but I have no objection to your looking at
it again,' and I rose and placed it in his hand.

'A well-executed picture,' he said; 'very soft, clear colouring;
very graceful and correct drawing.'

'Yes, yes; I know all that. But what of the resemblance? Who is
it like?'

Mastering some hesitation, he answered, 'Miss Oliver, I presume.'

'Of course. And now, sir, to reward you for the accurate guess, I
will promise to paint you a careful and faithful duplicate of this
very picture, provided you admit that the gift would be acceptable
to you. I don't wish to throw away my time and trouble on an
offering you would deem worthless.'

He continued to gaze at the picture: the longer he looked, the
firmer he held it, the more he seemed to covet it. 'It is like!' he
murmured; 'the eye is well managed: the colour, light, expression, are
perfect. It smiles!'

'Would it comfort, or would it wound you to have a similar
painting? Tell me that. When you are at Madagascar, or at the Cape, or
in India, would it be a consolation to have that memento in your
possession? or would the sight of it bring recollections calculated to
enervate and distress?'

He now furtively raised his eyes: he glanced at me, irresolute,
disturbed: he again surveyed the picture.

'That I should like to have it is certain: whether it would be
judicious or wise is another question.'

Since I had ascertained that Rosamond really preferred him, and
that her father was not likely to oppose the match, I- less exalted in
my views than St. John- had been strongly disposed in my own heart
to advocate their union. It seemed to me that, should he become the
possessor of Mr. Oliver's large fortune, he might do as much good with
it as if he went and laid his genius out to wither, and his strength
to waste, under a tropical sun. With this persuasion I now answered-

'As far as I can see, it would be wiser and more judicious if you
were to take to yourself the original at once.'

By this time he had sat down: he had laid the picture on the
table before him, and with his brow supported on both hands, hung
fondly over it. I discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my
audacity. I saw even that to be thus frankly addressed on a subject he
had deemed unapproachable- to hear it thus freely handled- was
beginning to be felt by him as a new pleasure- an unhoped-for
relief. Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of
their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive. The
sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and to 'burst' with
boldness and good-will into 'the silent sea' of their souls is often
to confer on them the first of obligations.

'She likes you, I am sure,' said I, as I stood behind his chair,
'and her father respects you. Moreover, she is a sweet girl- rather
thoughtless; but you would have sufficient thought for both yourself
and her. You ought to marry her.'

'Does she like me?' he asked.

'Certainly; better than she likes any one else. She talks of you
continually: there is no subject she enjoys so much or touches upon so
often.'

'It is very pleasant to hear this,' he said- 'very: go on for
another quarter of an hour.' And he actually took out his watch and
laid it upon the table to measure the time.

'But where is the use of going on,' I asked, 'when you are probably
preparing some iron blow of contradiction, or forging a fresh chain to
fetter your heart?'

'Don't imagine such hard things. Fancy me yielding and melting,
as I am doing: human love rising like a freshly opened fountain in
my mind and overflowing with sweet inundation all the field I have
so carefully and with such labour prepared- so assiduously sown with
the seeds of good intentions, of self-denying plans. And now it is
deluged with a nectarous flood- the young germs swamped- delicious
poison cankering them: now I see myself stretched on an ottoman in the
drawing-room at Vale Hall at my bride Rosamond Oliver's feet: she is
talking to me with her sweet voice- gazing down on me with those
eyes your skilful hand has copied so well- smiling at me with these
coral lips. She is mine- I am hers- this present life and passing
world suffice to me. Hush! say nothing- my heart is full of delight-
my senses are entranced- let the time I marked pass in peace.'

I humoured him: the watch ticked on: he breathed fast and low: I
stood silent. Amidst this hush the quarter sped; he replaced the
watch, laid the picture down, rose, and stood on the hearth.

'Now,' said he, 'that little space was given to delirium and
delusion. I rested my temples on the breast of temptation, and put
my neck voluntarily under her yoke of flowers; I tasted her cup. The
pillow was burning: there is an asp in the garland: the wine has a
bitter taste: her promises are hollow- her offers false: I see and
know all this.'

I gazed at him in wonder.

'It is strange,' pursued he, 'that while I love Rosamond Oliver
so wildly- with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the
object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, and fascinating- I
experience at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that she
would not make me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to
me; that I should discover this within a year after marriage; and that
to twelve months' rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I
know.'

'Strange indeed!' I could not help ejaculating.

'While something in me,' he went on, 'is acutely sensible to her
charms, something else is as deeply impressed with her defects: they
are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to- co-operate
in nothing I undertook. Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, a female
apostle? Rosamond a missionary's wife? No!'

'But you need not be a missionary. You might relinquish that
scheme.'

'Relinquish! What! my vocation? My great work? My foundation laid
on earth for a mansion in heaven? My hopes of being numbered in the
band who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering
their race- of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance- of
substituting peace for war- freedom for bondage- religion for
superstition- the hope of heaven for the fear of hell? Must I
relinquish that? It is dearer than the blood in my veins. It is what I
have to look forward to, and to live for.'

After a considerable pause, I said- 'And Miss Oliver? Are her
disappointment and sorrow of no interest to you?'

'Miss Oliver is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers: in
less than a month, my image will be effaced from her heart. She will
forget me; and will marry, probably, some one who will make her far
happier than I should do.'

'You speak coolly enough; but you suffer in the conflict. You are
wasting away.'

'No. If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects,
yet unsettled- my departure, continually procrastinated. Only this
morning, I received intelligence that the successor, whose arrival I
have been so long expecting, cannot be ready to replace me for three
months to come yet; and perhaps the three months may extend to six.'

'You tremble and become flushed whenever Miss Oliver enters the
schoolroom.'

Again the surprised expression crossed his face. He had not
imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man. For me, I
felt at home in this sort of discourse. I could never rest in
communication with strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male
or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and
crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their
heart's very hearthstone.

'You are original,' said he, 'and not timid. There is something
brave in your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye; but allow me
to assure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions. You think
them more profound and potent than they are. You give me a larger
allowance of sympathy than I have a just claim to. When I colour,
and when I shake before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself. I scorn the
weakness. I know it is ignoble: a mere fever of the flesh: not, I
declare, the convulsion of the soul. That is just as fixed as a
rock, firm set in the depths of a restless sea. Know me to be what I
am- a cold, hard man.'

I smiled incredulously.

'You have taken my confidence by storm,' he continued, 'and now
it is much at your service. I am simply, in my original state-
stripped of that blood-bleached robe with which Christianity covers
human deformity- a cold, hard, ambitious man. Natural affection
only, of all the sentiments, has permanent power over me. Reason,
and not feeling, is my guide; my ambition is unlimited: my desire to
rise higher, to do more than others, insatiable. I honour endurance,
perseverance, industry, talent; because these are the means by which
men achieve great ends and mount to lofty eminence. I watch your
career with interest, because I consider you a specimen of a diligent,
orderly, energetic woman: not because I deeply compassionate what
you have gone through, or what you still suffer.'

'You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher,' I said.

'No. There is this difference between me and deistic
philosophers: I believe; and I believe the Gospel. You missed your
epithet. I am not a pagan, but a Christian philosopher- a follower
of the sect of Jesus. As His disciple I adopt His pure, His
merciful, His benignant doctrines. I advocate them: I am sworn to
spread them. Won in youth to religion, she has cultivated my
original qualities thus:- From the minute germ, natural affection, she
has developed the overshadowing tree, philanthropy. From the wild
stringy root of human uprightness, she has reared a due sense of the
Divine justice. Of the ambition to win power and renown for my
wretched self, she has formed the ambition to spread my Master's
kingdom; to achieve victories for the standard of the cross. So much
has religion done for me; turning the original materials to the best
account; pruning and training nature. But she could not eradicate
nature: nor will it be eradicated "till this mortal shall put on
immortality."'

Having said this, he took his hat, which lay on the table beside my
palette. Once more he looked at the portrait.

'She is lovely,' he murmured. 'She is well named the Rose of the
World, indeed!'

'And may I not paint one like it for you?'

'Cui bono? No.'

He drew over the picture the sheet of thin paper on which I was
accustomed to rest my hand in painting, to prevent the card-board from
being sullied. What he suddenly saw on this blank paper, it was
impossible for me to tell; but something had caught his eye. He took
it up with a snatch; he looked at the edge; then shot a glance at
me, inexpressibly peculiar, and quite incomprehensible: a glance
that seemed to take and make note of every point in my shape, face,
and dress; for it traversed all, quick, keen as lightning. His lips
parted, as if to speak: but he checked the coming sentence, whatever
it was.

'What is the matter?' I asked.

'Nothing in the world,' was the reply; and, replacing the paper,
I saw him dexterously tear a narrow slip from the margin. It
disappeared in his glove; and, with one hasty nod and
'good-afternoon,' he vanished.

'Well!' I exclaimed, using an expression of the district, 'that
caps the globe, however!'

I, in my turn, scrutinised the paper; but saw nothing on it save
a few dingy stains of paint where I had tried the tint in my pencil. I
pondered the mystery a minute or two; but finding it insolvable, and
being certain it could not be of much moment, I dismissed, and soon
forgot it.

                    CHAPTER XXXIII


WHEN Mr. St. John went, it was beginning to snow; the whirling
storm continued all night. The next day a keen wind brought fresh
and blinding falls; by twilight the valley was drifted up and almost
impassable. I had closed my shutter, laid a mat to the door to prevent
the snow from blowing in under it, trimmed my fire, and after
sitting nearly an hour on the hearth listening to the muffled fury
of the tempest, I lit a candle, took down Marmion, and beginning-


          'Day set on Norham's castled steep,

          And Tweed's fair river broad and deep,

            And Cheviot's mountains lone;

          The massive towers, the donjon keep,

          The flanking walls that round them sweep,

            In yellow lustre shone'-

I soon forgot storm in music.

I heard a noise: the wind, I thought, shook the door. No; it was
St. John Rivers, who, lifting the latch, came in out of the frozen
hurricane- the howling darkness- and stood before me: the cloak that
covered his tall figure all white as a glacier. I was almost in
consternation, so little had I expected any guest from the
blocked-up vale that night.

'Any ill news?' I demanded. 'Has anything happened?'

'No. How very easily alarmed you are!' he answered, removing his
cloak and hanging it up against the door, towards which he again
coolly pushed the mat which his entrance had deranged. He stamped
the snow from his boots.

'I shall sully the purity of your floor,' said he, 'but you must
excuse me for once.' Then he approached the fire. 'I have had hard
work to get here, I assure you,' he observed, as he warmed his hands
over the flame. 'One drift took me up to the waist; happily the snow
is quite soft yet.'

'But why are you come?' I could not forbear saying.

'Rather an inhospitable question to put to a visitor; but since you
ask it, I answer simply to have a little talk with you; I got tired of
my mute books and empty rooms. Besides, since yesterday I have
experienced the excitement of a person to whom a tale has been
half-told, and who is impatient to hear the sequel.'

He sat down. I recalled his singular conduct of yesterday, and
really I began to fear his wits were touched. If he were insane,
however, his was a very cool and collected insanity: I had never
seen that handsome-featured face of his look more like chiselled
marble than it did just now, as he put aside his snow-wet hair from
his forehead and let the firelight shine free on his pale brow and
cheek as pale, where it grieved me to discover the hollow trace of
care or sorrow now so plainly graved. I waited, expecting he would say
something I could at least comprehend; but his hand was now at his
chin, his finger on his lip: he was thinking. It struck me that his
hand looked wasted like his face. A perhaps uncalled-for gush of
pity came over my heart: I was moved to say-

'I wish Diana or Mary would come and live with you: it is too bad
that you should be quite alone; and you are recklessly rash about your
own health.'

'Not at all,' said he: 'I care for myself when necessary. I am well
now. What do you see amiss in me?'

This was said with a careless, abstracted indifference, which
showed that my solicitude was, at least in his opinion, wholly
superfluous. I was silenced.

He still slowly moved his finger over his upper lip, and still
his eye dwelt dreamily on the glowing grate; thinking it urgent to say
something, I asked him presently if he felt any cold draught from
the door, which was behind him.

'No, no!' he responded shortly and somewhat testily.

'Well,' I reflected, 'if you won't talk, you may be still; I'll let
you alone now, and return to my book.'

So I snuffed the candle and resumed the perusal of Marmion. He soon
stirred; my eye was instantly drawn to his movements; he only took out
a morocco pocket-book, thence produced a letter, which he read in
silence, folded it, put it back, relapsed into meditation. It was vain
to try to read with such an inscrutable fixture before me; nor could
I, in my impatience, consent to be dumb; he might rebuff me if he
liked, but talk I would.

'Have you heard from Diana and Mary lately?'

'Not since the letter I showed you a week ago.'

'There has not been any change made about your own arrangements?
You will not be summoned to leave England sooner than you expected?'

'I fear not, indeed: such chance is too good to befall me.' Baffled
so far, I changed my ground. I bethought myself to talk about the
school and my scholars.

'Mary Garrett's mother is better, and Mary came back to the
school this morning, and I shall have four new girls next week from
the Foundry Close- they would have come to-day but for the snow.'

'Indeed!'

'Mr. Oliver pays for two.'

'Does he?'

'He means to give the whole school a treat at Christmas.'

'I know.'

'Was it your suggestion?'

'No.'

'Whose, then?'

'His daughter's, I think.'

'It is like her: she is so good-natured.'

'Yes.'

Again came the blank of a pause: the clock struck eight strokes. It
aroused him; he uncrossed his legs, sat erect, turned to me.

'Leave your book a moment, and come a little nearer the fire,' he
said.

Wondering, and of my wonder finding no end, I complied.

'Half an hour ago,' he pursued, 'I spoke of my impatience to hear
the sequel of a tale: on reflection, I find the matter will be
better managed by my assuming the narrator's part, and converting
you into a listener. Before commencing, it is but fair to warn you
that the story will sound somewhat hackneyed in your ears; but stale
details often regain a degree of freshness when they pass through
new lips. For the rest, whether trite or novel, it is short.

'Twenty years ago, a poor curate- never mind his name at this
moment- fell in love with a rich man's daughter; she fell in love with
him, and married him, against the advice of all her friends, who
consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before two
years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by
side under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed part of the
pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old
daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap-
cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to-night.
Charity carried the friendless thing to the house of its rich maternal
relations; it was reared by an aunt-in-law, called (I come to names
now) Mrs. Reed of Gateshead. You start- did you hear a noise? I
daresay it is only a rat scrambling along the rafters of the adjoining
schoolroom: it was a barn before I had it repaired and altered, and
barns are generally haunted by rats.- To proceed. Mrs. Reed kept the
orphan ten years: whether it was happy or not with her, I cannot
say, never having been told; but at the end of that time she
transferred it to a place you know- being no other than Lowood School,
where you so long resided yourself. It seems her career there was very
honourable: from a pupil, she became a teacher, like yourself-
really it strikes me there are parallel points in her history and
yours- she left it to be a governess: there, again, your fates were
analogous; she undertook the education of the ward of a certain Mr.
Rochester.'

'Mr. Rivers!' I interrupted.

'I can guess your feelings,' he said, 'but restrain them for a
while: I have nearly finished; hear me to the end. Of Mr.
Rochester's character I know nothing, but the one fact that he
professed to offer honourable marriage to this young girl, and that at
the very altar she discovered he had a wife yet alive, though a
lunatic. What his subsequent conduct and proposals were is a matter of
pure conjecture; but when an event transpired which rendered inquiry
after the governess necessary, it was discovered she was gone- no
one could tell when, where, or how. She had left Thornfield Hall in
the night; every research after her course had been vain: the
country had been scoured far and wide; no vestige of information could
be gathered respecting her. Yet that she should be found is become a
matter of serious urgency: advertisements have been put in all the
papers; I myself have received a letter from one Mr. Briggs, a
solicitor, communicating the details I have just imparted. Is it not
an odd tale?'

'Just tell me this,' said I, 'and since you know so much, you
surely can tell it me- what of Mr. Rochester? How and where is he?
What is he doing? Is he well?'

'I am ignorant of all concerning Mr. Rochester: the letter never
mentions him but to narrate the fraudulent and illegal attempt I
have adverted to. You should rather ask the name of the governess- the
nature of the event which requires her appearance.'

'Did no one go to Thornfield Hall, then? Did no one see Mr.
Rochester?'

'I suppose not.'

'But they wrote to him?'

'Of course.'

'And what did he say? Who has his letters?'

'Mr. Briggs intimates that the answer to his application was not
from Mr. Rochester, but from a lady: it is signed "Alice Fairfax."'

I felt cold and dismayed: my worst fears then were probably true:
he had in all probability left England and rushed in reckless
desperation to some former haunt on the Continent. And what opiate for
his severe sufferings- what object for his strong passions- had he
sought there? I dared not answer the question. Oh, my poor master-
once almost my husband- whom I had often called 'my dear Edward!'

'He must have been a bad man,' observed Mr. Rivers.

'You don't know him- don't pronounce an opinion upon him,' I
said, with warmth.

'Very well,' he answered quietly: 'and indeed my head is
otherwise occupied than with him: I have my tale to finish. Since
you won't ask the governess's name, I must tell it of my own accord.
Stay! I have it here- it is always more satisfactory to see
important points written down, fairly committed to black and white.'

And the pocket-book was again deliberately produced, opened, sought
through; from one of its compartments was extracted a shabby slip of
paper, hastily torn off: I recognised in its texture and its stains of
ultra-marine, and lake, and vermilion, the ravished margin of the
portrait-cover. He got up, held it close to my eyes: and I read,
traced in Indian ink, in my own handwriting, the words 'JANE EYRE'-
the work doubtless of some moment of abstraction.

'Briggs wrote to me of a Jane Eyre:' he said, 'the advertisements
demanded a Jane Eyre: I knew a Jane Elliott.- I confess I had my
suspicions, but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once
resolved into certainty. You own the name and renounce the alias?'

'Yes- yes; but where is Mr. Briggs? He perhaps knows more of Mr.
Rochester than you do.'

'Briggs is in London. I should doubt his knowing anything at all
about Mr. Rochester; it is not in Mr. Rochester he is interested.
Meantime, you forget essential points in pursuing trifles: you do
not inquire why Mr. Briggs sought after you- what he wanted with you.'

'Well, what did he want?'

'Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is
dead; that he has left you all his property, and that you are now
rich- merely that- nothing more.'

'I!- rich?'

'Yes, you, rich- quite an heiress.'

Silence succeeded.

'You must prove your identity of course,' resumed St. John
presently: 'a step which will offer no difficulties; you can then
enter on immediate possession. Your fortune is vested in the English
funds; Briggs has the will and the necessary documents.'

Here was a new card turned up! It is a fine thing, reader, to be
lifted in a moment from indigence to wealth- a very fine thing; but
not a matter one can comprehend or consequently enjoy, all at once.
And then there are other chances in life far more thrilling and
rapture-giving: this is solid, an affair of the actual world,
nothing ideal about it: all its associations are solid and sober,
and its manifestations are the same. One does not jump, and spring,
and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune; one begins to
consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady
satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and
brood over our bliss with a solemn brow.

Besides, the words Legacy, Bequest, go side by side with the words,
Death, Funeral. My uncle I had heard was dead- my only relative;
ever since being made aware of his existence, I had cherished the hope
of one day seeing him: now, I never should. And then this money came
only to me: not to me and a rejoicing family, but to my isolated self.
It was a grand boon doubtless; and independence would be glorious-
yes, I felt that- that thought swelled my heart.

'You unbend your forehead at last,' said Mr. Rivers. 'I thought
Medusa had looked at you, and that you were turning to stone.
Perhaps now you will ask how much you are worth?'

'How much am I worth?'

'Oh, a trifle! Nothing of course to speak of- twenty thousand
pounds, I think they say- but what is that?'

'Twenty thousand pounds?'

Here was a new stunner- I had been calculating on four or five
thousand. This news actually took my breath for a moment: Mr. St.
John, whom I had never heard laugh before, laughed now.

'Well,' said he, 'if you had committed a murder, and I had told you
your crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast.'

'It is a large sum- don't you think there is a mistake?'

'No mistake at all.'

'Perhaps you have read the figures wrong- it may be two thousand!'

'It is written in letters, not figures,- twenty thousand.'

I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical
powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions
for a hundred. Mr. Rivers rose now and put his cloak on.

'If it were not such a very wild night,' he said, 'I would send
Hannah down to keep you company: you look too desperately miserable to
be left alone. But Hannah, poor woman! could not stride the drifts
so well as I: her legs are not quite so long: so I must e'en leave you
to your sorrows. Good-night.'

He was lifting the latch: a sudden thought occurred to me.

'Stop one minute!' I cried.

'Well?'

'It puzzles me to know why Mr. Briggs wrote to you about me; or how
he knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the-way
place, had the power to aid in my discovery.'

'Oh! I am a clergyman,' he said; 'and the clergy are often appealed
to about odd matters.' Again the latch rattled.

'No; that does not satisfy me!' I exclaimed: and indeed there was
something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of
allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever.

'It is a very strange piece of business,' I added; 'I must know
more about it.'

'Another time.'

'No; to-night!- to-night!' and as he turned from the door, I placed
myself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed.

'You certainly shall not go till you have told me all,' I said.

'I would rather not just now.'

'You shall!- you must!'

'I would rather Diana or Mary informed you.'

Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax:
gratified it must be, and that without delay; and I told him so.

'But I apprised you that I was a hard man,' said he, 'difficult
to persuade.'

'And I am a hard woman,- impossible to put off.'

'And then,' he pursued, 'I am cold: no fervour infects me.'

'Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice. The blaze there has
thawed all the snow from your cloak; by the same token, it has
streamed on to my floor, and made it like a trampled street. As you
hope ever to be forgiven, Mr. Rivers, the high crime and
misdemeanour of spoiling a sanded kitchen, tell me what I wish to
know.'

'Well, then,' he said, 'I yield; if not to your earnestness, to
your perseverance: as stone is worn by continual dropping. Besides,
you must know some day,- as well now as later. Your name is Jane
Eyre?'

'Of course: that was all settled before.'

'You are not, perhaps, aware that I am your namesake?- that I was
christened St. John Eyre Rivers?'

'No, indeed! I remember now seeing the letter E. comprised in
your initials written in books you have at different times lent me;
but I never asked for what name it stood. But what then? Surely-'

I stopped: I could not trust myself to entertain, much less to
express, the thought that rushed upon me- that embodied itself,- that,
in a second, stood out a strong, solid probability. Circumstances knit
themselves, fitted themselves, shot into order: the chain that had
been lying hitherto a formless lump of links was drawn out
straight,- every ring was perfect, the connection complete. I knew, by
instinct, how the matter stood, before St. John had said another word;
but I cannot expect the reader to have the same intuitive
perception, so I must repeat his explanation.

'My mother's name was Eyre; she had two brothers; one a
clergyman, who married Miss Jane Reed, of Gateshead; the other, John
Eyre, Esq., merchant, late of Funchal, Madeira. Mr. Briggs, being
Mr. Eyre's solicitor, wrote to us last August to inform us of our
uncle's death, and to say that he had left his property to his brother
the clergyman's orphan daughter, overlooking us, in consequence of a
quarrel, never forgiven, between him and my father. He wrote again a
few weeks since, to intimate that the heiress was lost, and asking
if we knew anything of her. A name casually written on a slip of paper
has enabled me to find her out. You know the rest.' Again he was
going, but I set my back against the door.

'Do let me speak,' I said; 'let me have one moment to draw breath
and reflect.' I paused- he stood before me, hat in hand, looking
composed enough. I resumed-

'Your mother was my father's sister?'

'Yes.'

'My aunt, consequently?'

He bowed.

'My uncle John was your uncle John? You, Diana, and Mary are his
sister's children, as I am his brother's child?'

'Undeniably.'

'You three, then, are my cousins; half our blood on each side flows
from the same source?'

'We are cousins; yes.'

I surveyed him. It seemed I had found a brother: one I could be
proud of,- one I could love; and two sisters, whose qualities were
such, that, when I knew them but as mere strangers, they had
inspired me with genuine affection and admiration. The two girls, on
whom, kneeling down on the wet ground, and looking through the low,
latticed window of Moor House kitchen, I had gazed with so bitter a
mixture of interest and despair, were my near kinswomen; and the young
and stately gentleman who had found me almost dying at his threshold
was my blood relation. Glorious discovery to a lonely wretch! This was
wealth indeed!- wealth to the heart!- a mine of pure, genial
affections. This was a blessing, bright, vivid, and exhilarating;- not
like the ponderous gift of gold: rich and welcome enough in its way,
but sobering from its weight. I now clapped my hands in sudden joy- my
pulse bounded, my veins thrilled.

'Oh, I am glad!- I am glad!' I exclaimed.

St. John smiled. 'Did I not say you neglected essential points to
pursue trifles?' he asked. 'You were serious when I told you you had
got a fortune; and now, for a matter of no moment, you are excited.'

'What can you mean? It may be of no moment to you; you have sisters
and don't care for a cousin; but I had nobody; and now three
relations,- or two, if you don't choose to be counted,- are born
into my world full-grown. I say again, I am glad!'

I walked fast through the room: I stopped, half suffocated with the
thoughts that rose faster than I could receive, comprehend, settle
them:- thoughts of what might, could, would, and should be, and that
ere long. I looked at the blank wall: it seemed a sky thick with
ascending stars,- every one lit me to a purpose or delight. Those
who had saved my life, whom, till this hour, I had loved barrenly, I
could now benefit. They were under a yoke,- I could free them: they
were scattered,- I could reunite them: the independence, the affluence
which was mine, might be theirs too. Were we not four? Twenty thousand
pounds shared equally, would be five thousand each,- enough and to
spare: justice would be done,- mutual happiness secured. Now the
wealth did not weigh on me: now it was not a mere bequest of coin,- it
was a legacy of life, hope, enjoyment.

How I looked while these ideas were taking my spirit by storm, I
cannot tell; but I perceived soon that Mr. Rivers had placed a chair
behind me, and was gently attempting to make me sit down on it. He
also advised me to be composed; I scorned the insinuation of
helplessness and distraction, shook off his hand, and began to walk
about again.

'Write to Diana and Mary to-morrow,' I said, 'and tell them to come
home directly. Diana said they would both consider themselves rich
with a thousand pounds, so with five thousand they will do very well.'

'Tell me where I can get you a glass of water,' said St. John; 'you
must really make an effort to tranquillise your feelings.'

'Nonsense! and what sort of an effect will the bequest have on you?
Will it keep you in England, induce you to marry Miss Oliver, and
settle down like an ordinary mortal?'

'You wander: your head becomes confused. I have been too abrupt
in communicating the news; it has excited you beyond your strength.'

'Mr. Rivers! you quite put me out of patience: I am rational
enough; it is you who misunderstand, or rather who affect to
misunderstand.'

'Perhaps, if you explained yourself a little more fully, I should
comprehend better.'

'Explain! What is there to explain? You cannot fail to see that
twenty thousand pounds, the sum in question, divided equally between
the nephew and three nieces of our uncle, will give five thousand to
each? What I want is, that you should write to your sisters and tell
them of the fortune that has accrued to them.'

'To you, you mean.'

'I have intimated my view of the case: I am incapable of taking any
other. I am not brutally selfish, blindly unjust, or fiendishly
ungrateful. Besides, I am resolved I will have a home and connections.
I like Moor House, and I will live at Moor House; I like Diana and
Mary, and I will attach myself for life to Diana and Mary. It would
please and benefit me to have five thousand pounds; it would torment
and oppress me to have twenty thousand; which, moreover, could never
be mine in justice, though it might in law. I abandon to you, then,
what is absolutely superfluous to me. Let there be no opposition,
and no discussion about it; let us agree amongst each other, and
decide the point at once.'

'This is acting on first impulses; you must take days to consider
such a matter, ere your word can be regarded as valid.'

'Oh! if all you doubt is my sincerity, I am easy: you see the
justice of the case?'

'I do see a certain justice; but it is contrary to all custom.
Besides, the entire fortune is your right: my uncle gained it by his
own efforts; he was free to leave it to whom he would: he left it to
you. After all, justice permits you to keep it: you may, with a
clear conscience, consider it absolutely your own.'

'With me,' said I, 'it is fully as much a matter of feeling as of
conscience: I must indulge my feelings; I so seldom have had an
opportunity of doing so. Were you to argue, object, and annoy me for a
year, I could not forego the delicious pleasure of which I have caught
a glimpse- that of repaying, in part, a mighty obligation, and winning
to myself life-long friends.'

'You think so now,' rejoined St. John, 'because you do not know
what it is to possess, nor consequently to enjoy wealth: you cannot
form a notion of the importance twenty thousand pounds would give you;
of the place it would enable you to take in society; of the
prospects it would open to you: you cannot-'

'And you,' I interrupted, 'cannot at all imagine the craving I have
for fraternal and sisterly love. I never had a home, I never had
brothers or sisters; I must and will have them now: you are not
reluctant to admit me and own me, are you?'

'Jane, I will be your brother- my sisters will be your sisters-
without stipulating for this sacrifice of your just rights.'

'Brother? Yes; at the distance of a thousand leagues! Sisters? Yes;
slaving amongst strangers! I, wealthy- gorged with gold I never earned
and do not merit! You, penniless! Famous equality and
fraternisation! Close union! Intimate attachment!'

'But, Jane, your aspirations after family ties and domestic
happiness may be realised otherwise than by the means you contemplate:
you may marry.'

'Nonsense, again! Marry! I don't want to marry, and never shall
marry.'

'That is saying too much: such hazardous affirmations are a proof
of the excitement under which you labour.'

'It is not saying too much: I know what I feel, and how averse
are my inclinations to the bare thought of marriage. No one would take
me for love; and I will not be regarded in the light of a mere money
speculation. And I do not want a stranger- unsympathising, alien,
different from me; I want my kindred: those with whom I have full
fellow-feeling. Say again you will be my brother: when you uttered the
words I was satisfied, happy; repeat them, if you can, repeat them
sincerely.'

'I think I can. I know I have always loved my own sisters; and I
know on what my affection for them is grounded,- respect for their
worth and admiration of their talents. You too have principle and
mind: your tastes and habits resemble Diana's and Mary's; your
presence is always agreeable to me; in your conversation I have
already for some time found a salutary solace. I feel I can easily and
naturally make room in my heart for you, as my third and youngest
sister.'

'Thank you: that contents me for to-night. Now you had better go;
for if you stay longer, you will perhaps irritate me afresh by some
mistrustful scruple.'

'And the school, Miss Eyre? It must now be shut up, I suppose?'

'No. I will retain my post of mistress till you get a substitute.'

He smiled approbation: we shook hands, and he took leave.

I need not narrate in detail the further struggles I had, and
arguments I used, to get matters regarding the legacy settled as I
wished. My task was a very hard one; but, as I was absolutely
resolved- as my cousins saw at length that my mind was really and
immutably fixed on making a just division of the property- as they
must in their own hearts have felt the equity of the intention; and
must, besides, have been innately conscious that in my place they
would have done precisely what I wished to do- they yielded at
length so far as to consent to put the affair to arbitration. The
judges chosen were Mr. Oliver and an able lawyer: both coincided in my
opinion: I carried my point. The instruments of transfer were drawn
out: St. John, Diana, Mary, and I, each became possessed of a
competency.

                     CHAPTER XXXIV


IT was near Christmas by the time all was settled: the season of
general holiday approached. I now closed Morton school, taking care
that the parting should not be barren on my side. Good fortune opens
the hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when
we have largely received, is but to afford a vent to the unusual
ebullition of the sensations. I had long felt with pleasure that
many of my rustic scholars liked me, and when we parted, that
consciousness was confirmed: they manifested their affection plainly
and strongly. Deep was my gratification to find I had really a place
in their unsophisticated hearts: I promised them that never a week
should pass in future that I did not visit them, and give them an
hour's teaching in their school.

Mr. Rivers came up as, having seen the classes, now numbering sixty
girls, file out before me, and locked the door, I stood with the key
in my hand, exchanging a few words of special farewell with some
half-dozen of my best scholars: as decent, respectable, modest, and
well-informed young women as could be found in the ranks of the
British peasantry. And that is saying a great deal; for after all, the
British peasantry are the best taught, best mannered, most
self-respecting of any in Europe: since those days I have seen
paysannes and Bauerinnen; and the best of them seemed to me
ignorant, coarse, and besotted, compared with my Morton girls.

'Do you consider you have got your reward for a season of
exertion?' asked Mr. Rivers, when they were gone. 'Does not the
consciousness of having done some real good in your day and generation
give pleasure?'

'Doubtless.'

'And you have only toiled a few months! Would not a life devoted to
the task of regenerating your race be well spent?'

'Yes,' I said; 'but I could not go on for ever so: I want to
enjoy my own faculties as well as to cultivate those of other
people. I must enjoy them now; don't recall either my mind or body
to the school; I am out of it and disposed for full holiday.'

He looked grave. 'What now? What sudden eagerness is this you
evince? What are you going to do?'

'To be active: as active as I can. And first I must beg you to
set Hannah at liberty, and get somebody else to wait on you.'

'Do you want her?'

'Yes, to go with me to Moor House. Diana and Mary will be at home
in a week, and I want to have everything in order against their
arrival.'

'I understand. I thought you were for flying off on some excursion.
It is better so: Hannah shall go with you.'

'Tell her to be ready by to-morrow then; and here is the schoolroom
key: I will give you the key of my cottage in the morning.'

He took it. 'You give it up very gleefully,' said he; 'I don't
quite understand your light-heartedness, because I cannot tell what
employment you propose to yourself as a substitute for the one you are
relinquishing. What aim, what purpose, what ambition in life have
you now?'

'My first aim will be to clean down (do you comprehend the full
force of the expression?)- to clean down Moor House from chamber to
cellar; my next to rub it up with bees-wax, oil, and an indefinite
number of cloths, till it glitters again; my third, to arrange every
chair, table, bed, carpet, with mathematical precision; afterwards I
shall go near to ruin you in coals and peat to keep up good fires in
every room; and lastly, the two days preceding that on which your
sisters are expected will be devoted by Hannah and me to such a
beating of eggs, sorting of currants, grating of spices, compounding
of Christmas cakes, chopping up of materials for mince-pies, and
solemnising of other culinary rites, as words can convey but an
inadequate notion of to the uninitiated like you. My purpose, in
short, is to have all things in an absolutely perfect state of
readiness for Diana and Mary before next Thursday; and my ambition
is to give them a beau-ideal of a welcome when they come.'

St. John smiled slightly: still he was dissatisfied.

'It is all very well for the present,' said he; 'but seriously, I
trust that when the first flush of vivacity is over, you will look a
little higher than domestic endearments and household joys.'

'I mean, on the contrary, to be busy.'

'Jane, I excuse you for the present: two months' grace I allow
you for the full enjoyment of your new position, and for pleasing
yourself with this late-found charm of relationship; but then, I
hope you will begin to look beyond Moor House and Morton, and sisterly
society, and the selfish calm and sensual comfort of civilised
affluence. I hope your energies will then once more trouble you with
their strength.'

I looked at him with surprise. 'St. John,' I said, 'I think you are
almost wicked to talk so. I am disposed to be as content as a queen,
and you try to stir me up to restlessness! To what end?'

'To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has
committed to your keeping; and of which He will surely one day
demand a strict account. Jane, I shall watch you closely and
anxiously- I warn you of that. And try to restrain the
disproportionate fervour with which you throw yourself into
commonplace home pleasures. Don't cling so tenaciously to ties of
the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause;
forbear to waste them on trite transient objects. Do you hear, Jane?'

'Yes; just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have adequate
cause to be happy, and I will be happy. Good-bye!'

Happy at Moor House I was, and hard I worked; and so did Hannah:
she was charmed to see how jovial I could be amidst the bustle of a
house turned topsy-turvy- how I could brush, and dust, and clean,
and cook. And really, after a day or two of confusion worse
confounded, it was delightful by degrees to invoke order from the
to purchase some new furniture: my cousins having given me carte
blanche to effect what alterations I pleased, and a sum having been
set aside for that purpose. The ordinary sitting-room and bedrooms I
left much as they were: for I knew Diana and Mary would derive more
pleasure from seeing again the old homely tables, and chairs, and
beds, than from the spectacle of the smartest innovations. Still
some novelty was necessary, to give to their return the piquancy
with which I wished it to be invested. Dark handsome new carpets and
curtains, an arrangement of some carefully selected antique
ornaments in porcelain and bronze, new coverings, and mirrors, and
dressing-cases, for the toilet-tables, answered the end: they looked
fresh without being glaring. A spare parlour and bedroom I refurnished
entirely, with old mahogany and crimson upholstery: I laid canvas on
the passage, and carpets on the stairs. When all was finished, I
thought Moor House as complete a model of bright modest snugness
within, as it was, at this season, a specimen of wintry waste and
desert dreariness without.

The eventful Thursday at length came. They were expected about
dark, and ere dusk fires were lit upstairs and below; the kitchen
was in perfect trim; Hannah and I were dressed, and all was in
readiness.

St. John arrived first. I had entreated him to keep quite clear
of the house till everything was arranged: and, indeed, the bare
idea of the commotion, at once sordid and trivial, going on within its
walls sufficed to scare him to estrangement. He found me in the
kitchen, watching the progress of certain cakes for tea, then
baking. Approaching the hearth, he asked, 'If I was at last
satisfied with housemaid's work?' I answered by inviting him to
accompany me on a general inspection of the result of my labours. With
some difficulty, I got him to make the tour of the house. He just
looked in at the doors I opened; and when he had wandered upstairs and
downstairs, he said I must have gone through a great deal of fatigue
and trouble to have effected such considerable changes in so short a
time: but not a syllable did he utter indicating pleasure in the
improved aspect of his abode.

This silence damped me. I thought perhaps the alterations had
disturbed some old associations he valued. I inquired whether this was
the case: no doubt in a somewhat crestfallen tone.

'Not at all; he had, on the contrary, remarked that I had
scrupulously respected every association: he feared, indeed, I must
have bestowed more thought on the matter than it was worth. How many
minutes, for instance, had I devoted to studying the arrangement of
this very room?- By the bye, could I tell him where such a book was?'

I showed him the volume on the shelf: he took it down, and
withdrawing to his accustomed window recess, he began to read it.

Now, I did not like this, reader. St. John was a good man; but I
began to feel he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was
hard and cold. The humanities and amenities of life had no
attraction for him- its peaceful enjoyments no charm. Literally, he
lived only to aspire- after what was good and great, certainly; but
still he would never rest, nor approve of others resting round him. As
I looked at his lofty forehead, still and pale as a white stone- at
his fine lineaments fixed in study- I comprehended all at once that he
would hardly make a good husband: that it would be a trying thing to
be his wife. I understood, as by inspiration, the nature of his love
for Miss Oliver; I agreed with him that it was but a love of the
senses. I comprehended how he should despise himself for the
feverish influence it exercised over him; how he should wish to stifle
and destroy it; how he should mistrust its ever conducing
permanently to his happiness or hers. I saw he was of the material
from which nature hews her heroes- Christian and Pagan- her lawgivers,
her statesmen, her conquerors: a steadfast bulwark for great interests
to rest upon; but, at the fireside, too often a cold cumbrous
column, gloomy and out of place.

'This parlour is not his sphere,' I reflected: 'the Himalayan ridge
or Caffre bush, even the plague-cursed Guinea Coast swamp would suit
him better. Well may he eschew the calm of domestic life; it is not
his element: there his faculties stagnate- they cannot develop or
appear to advantage. It is in scenes of strife and danger- where
courage is proved, and energy exercised, and fortitude tasked- that he
will speak and move, the leader and superior. A merry child would have
the advantage of him on this hearth. He is right to choose a
missionary's career- I see it now.'

'They are coming! they are coming!' cried Hannah, throwing open the
parlour door. At the same moment old Carlo barked joyfully. Out I ran.
It was now dark; but a rumbling of wheels was audible. Hannah soon had
a lantern lit. The vehicle had stopped at the wicket; the driver
opened the door: first one well-known form, then another, stepped out.
In a minute I had my face under their bonnets, in contact first with
Mary's soft cheek, then with Diana's flowing curls. They laughed-
kissed me- then Hannah: patted Carlo, who was half wild with
delight; asked eagerly if all was well; and being assured in the
affirmative, hastened into the house.

They were stiff with their long and jolting drive from Whitcross,
and chilled with the frosty night air; but their pleasant countenances
expanded to the cheerful firelight. While the driver and Hannah
brought in the boxes, they demanded St. John. At this moment he
advanced from the parlour. They both threw their arms round his neck
at once. He gave each one quiet kiss, said in a low tone a few words
of welcome, stood a while to be talked to, and then, intimating that
he supposed they would soon rejoin him in the parlour, withdrew
there as to a place of refuge.

I had lit their candles to go upstairs, but Diana had first to give
hospitable orders respecting the driver; this done, both followed
me. They were delighted with the renovation and decorations of their
rooms; with the new drapery, and fresh carpets, and rich tinted
china vases: they expressed their gratification ungrudgingly. I had
the pleasure of feeling that my arrangements met their wishes exactly,
and that what I had done added a vivid charm to their joyous return
home.

Sweet was that evening. My cousins, full of exhilaration, were so
eloquent in narrative and comment, that their fluency covered St.
John's taciturnity: he was sincerely glad to see his sisters; but in
their glow of fervour and flow of joy he could not sympathise. The
event of the day- that is, the return of Diana and Mary- pleased
him; but the accompaniments of that event, the glad tumult, the
garrulous glee of reception irked him: I saw he wished the calmer
morrow was come. In the very meridian of the night's enjoyment,
about an hour after tea, a rap was heard at the door. Hannah entered
with the intimation that 'a poor lad was come, at that unlikely
time, to fetch Mr. Rivers to see his mother, who was drawing away.'

'Where does she live, Hannah?'

'Clear up at Whitcross Brow, almost four miles off, and moor and
moss all the way.'

'Tell him I will go.'

'I'm sure, sir, you had better not. It's the worst road to travel
after dark that can be: there's no track at all over the bog. And then
it is such a bitter night- the keenest wind you ever felt. You had
better send word, sir, that you will be there in the morning.'

But he was already in the passage, putting on his cloak; and
without one objection, one murmur, he departed. It was then nine
o'clock: he did not return till midnight. Starved and tired enough
he was: but he looked happier than when he set out. He had performed
an act of duty; made an exertion; felt his own strength to do and
deny, and was on better terms with himself.

I am afraid the whole of the ensuing week tried his patience. It
was Christmas week: we took to no settled employment, but spent it
in a sort of merry domestic dissipation. The air of the moors, the
freedom of home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Diana and Mary's
spirits like some life-giving elixir: they were gay from morning
till noon, and from noon till night. They could always talk; and their
discourse, witty, pithy, original, had such charms for me, that I
preferred listening to, and sharing in it, to doing anything else. St.
John did not rebuke our vivacity; but he escaped from it: he was
seldom in the house; his parish was large, the population scattered,
and he found daily business in visiting the sick and poor in its
different districts.

One morning at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive for
some minutes, asked him, 'If his plans were yet unchanged.'

'Unchanged and unchangeable,' was the reply. And he proceeded to
inform us that his departure from England was now definitely fixed for
the ensuing year.

'And Rosamond Oliver?' suggested Mary, the words seeming to
escape her lips involuntarily: for no sooner had she uttered them,
than she made a gesture as if wishing to recall them. St. John had a
book in his hand- it was his unsocial custom to read at meals- he
closed it, and looked up.

'Rosamond Oliver,' said he, 'is about to be married to Mr.
Granby, one of the best connected and most estimable residents in
from her father yesterday.'

His sisters looked at each other and at me; we all three looked
at him: he was serene as glass.

'The match must have been got up hastily,' said Diana: 'they cannot
have known each other long.'
But where there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case,
where the connection is in every point desirable, delays are
Frederic gives up to them, can be refitted for their reception.'

The first time I found St. John alone after this communication, I
felt tempted to inquire if the event distressed him: but he seemed
so little to need sympathy, that, so far from venturing to offer him
more, I experienced some shame at the recollection of what I had
already hazarded. Besides, I was out of practice in talking to him:
his reserve was again frozen over, and my frankness was congealed
beneath it. He had not kept his promise of treating me like his
sisters; he continually made little, chilling differences between
us, which did not at all tend to the development of cordiality: in
short, now that I was acknowledged his kinswoman, and lived under
the same roof with him, I felt the distance between us to be far
greater than when he had known me only as the village
schoolmistress. When I remembered how far I had once been admitted
to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his present frigidity.

Such being the case, I felt not a little surprised when he raised
his head suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping, and said-

'You see, Jane, the battle is fought and the victory won.'

Startled at being thus addressed, I did not immediately reply:
after a moment's hesitation I answered-

'But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors
whose triumphs have cost them too dear? Would not such another ruin
you?'

'I think not; and if I were, it does not much signify; I shall
never be called upon to contend for such another. The event of the
conflict is decisive: my way is now clear; I thank God for it!' So
saying, he returned to his papers and his silence.

As our mutual happiness (i.e., Diana's, Mary's, and mine) settled
into a quieter character, and we resumed our usual habits and
regular studies, St. John stayed more at home: he sat with us in the
same room, sometimes for hours together. While Mary drew, Diana
pursued a course of encyclopaedic reading she had (to my awe and
amazement) undertaken, and I fagged away at German, he pondered a
mystic lore of his own: that of some Eastern tongue, the acquisition
of which he thought necessary to his plans.

Thus engaged, he appeared, sitting in his own recess, quiet and
absorbed enough; but that blue eye of his had a habit of leaving the
outlandish-looking grammar, and wandering over, and sometimes fixing
upon us, his fellow-students, with a curious intensity of observation:
if caught, it would be instantly withdrawn; yet ever and anon, it
returned searchingly to our table. I wondered what it meant: I
wondered, too, at the punctual satisfaction he never failed to exhibit
on an occasion that seemed to me of small moment, namely, my weekly
visit to Morton school; and still more was I puzzled when, if the
day was unfavourable, if there was snow, or rain, or high wind, and
his sisters urged me not to go, he would invariably make light of
their solicitude, and encourage me to accomplish the task without
regard to the elements.

'Jane is not such a weakling as you would make her,' he would
say: 'she can bear a mountain blast, or a shower, or a few flakes of
snow, as well as any of us. Her constitution is both sound and
elastic;- better calculated to endure variations of climate than
many more robust.'

And when I returned, sometimes a good deal tired, and not a
little weather-beaten, I never dared complain, because I saw that to
murmur would be to vex him: on all occasions fortitude pleased him;
the reverse was a special annoyance.

One afternoon, however, I got leave to stay at home, because I
really had a cold. His sisters were gone to Morton in my stead: I
sat reading Schiller; he, deciphering his crabbed Oriental scrolls. As
I exchanged a translation for an exercise, I happened to look his way:
there I found myself under the influence of the ever-watchful blue
eye. How long it had been searching me through and through, and over
and over, I cannot tell: so keen was it, and yet so cold, I felt for
the moment superstitious- as if I were sitting in the room with
something uncanny.

'Jane, what are you doing?'

'Learning German.'

'I want you to give up German and learn Hindostanee.'

'You are not in earnest?'

'In such earnest that I must have it so: and I will tell you why.'

He then went on to explain that Hindostanee was the language he was
himself at present studying; that, as he advanced, he was apt to
forget the commencement; that it would assist him greatly to have a
pupil with whom he might again and again go over the elements, and
so fix them thoroughly in his mind; that his choice had hovered for
some time between me and his sisters; but that he had fixed on me
because he saw I could sit at a task the longest of the three. Would I
do him this favour? I should not, perhaps, have to make the
sacrifice long, as it wanted now barely three months to his departure.

St. John was not a man to be lightly refused: you felt that every
impression made on him, either for pain or pleasure, was deep-graved
and permanent. I consented. When Diana and Mary returned, the former
found her scholar transferred from her to her brother: she laughed,
and both she and Mary agreed that St. John should never have persuaded
them to such a step. He answered quietly-

'I know it.'

I found him a very patient, very forbearing, and yet an exacting
master: he expected me to do a great deal; and when I fulfilled his
expectations, he, in his own way, fully testified his approbation.
By degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away
my liberty of mind: his praise and notice were more restraining than
his indifference. I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was
by, because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that
vivacity (at least in me) was distasteful to him. I was so fully aware
that only serious moods and occupations were acceptable, that in his
presence every effort to sustain or follow any other became vain: I
fell under a freezing spell. When he said 'go,' I went; 'come,' I
came; 'do this,' I did it. But I did not love my servitude: I
wished, many a time, he had continued to neglect me.

One evening when, at bedtime, his sisters and I stood round him,
bidding him good-night, he kissed each of them, as was his custom;
and, as was equally his custom, he gave me his hand. Diana, who
chanced to be in a frolicsome humour (she was not painfully controlled
by his will; for hers, in another way, was as strong), exclaimed-

'St. John! you used to call Jane your third sister, but you don't
treat her as such: you should kiss her too.'

She pushed me towards him. I thought Diana very provoking, and felt
uncomfortably confused; and while I was thus thinking and feeling, St.
John bent his head; his Greek face was brought to a level with mine,
his eyes questioned my eyes piercingly- he kissed me. There are no
such things as marble kisses or ice kisses, or I should say my
ecclesiastical cousin's salute belonged to one of these classes; but
there may be experiment kisses, and his was an experiment kiss. When
given, he viewed me to learn the result; it was not striking: I am
sure I did not blush; perhaps I might have turned a little pale, for I
felt as if this kiss were a seal affixed to my fetters. He never
omitted the ceremony afterwards, and the gravity and quiescence with
which I underwent it, seemed to invest it for him with a certain
charm.

As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I
felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle
half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force
myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural
vocation. He wanted to train me to an elevation I could never reach;
it racked me hourly to aspire to the standard he uplifted. The thing
was as impossible as to mould my irregular features to his correct and
classic pattern, to give to my changeable green eyes the sea-blue tint
and solemn lustre of his own.

Not his ascendancy alone, however, held me in thrall at present. Of
late it had been easy enough for me to look sad: a cankering evil
sat in my heart and drained my happiness at its source- the evil of
suspense.

Perhaps you think I had forgotten Mr. Rochester, reader, amidst
these changes of place and fortune. Not for a moment. His idea was
still with me, because it was not a vapour sunshine could disperse,
nor a sand-traced effigy storms could wash away; it was a name
graven on a tablet, fated to last as long as the marble it
inscribed. The craving to know what had become of him followed me
everywhere; when I was at Morton, I re-entered my cottage every
evening to think of that; and now at Moor House, I sought my bedroom
each night to brood over it.

In the course of my necessary correspondence with Mr. Briggs
about the will, I had inquired if he knew anything of Mr.
Rochester's present residence and state of health; but, as St. John
had conjectured, he was quite ignorant of all concerning him. I then
wrote to Mrs. Fairfax, entreating information on the subject. I had
calculated with certainty on this step answering my end: I felt sure
it would elicit an early answer. I was astonished when a fortnight
passed without reply; but when two months wore away, and day after day
the post arrived and brought nothing for me, I fell a prey to the
keenest anxiety.

I wrote again: there was a chance of my first letter having missed.
Renewed hope followed renewed effort: it shone like the former for
some weeks, then, like it, it faded, flickered: not a line, not a word
reached me. When half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died
out, and then I felt dark indeed.

A fine spring shone round me, which I could not enjoy. Summer
approached; Diana tried to cheer me: she said I looked ill, and wished
to accompany me to the sea-side. This St. John opposed; he said I
did not want dissipation, I wanted employment; my present life was too
purposeless, I required an aim; and, I suppose, by way of supplying
deficiencies, he prolonged still further my lessons in Hindostanee,
and grew more urgent in requiring their accomplishment: and I, like
a fool, never thought of resisting him- I could not resist him.

One day I had come to my studies in lower spirits than usual; the
ebb was occasioned by a poignantly felt disappointment. Hannah had
told me in the morning there was a letter for me, and when I went down
to take it, almost certain that the long-looked-for tidings were
vouchsafed me at last, I found only an unimportant note from Mr.
Briggs on business. The bitter check had wrung from me some tears; and
now, as I sat poring over the crabbed characters and flourishing
tropes of an Indian scribe, my eyes filled again.

St. John called me to his side to read; in attempting to do this my
voice failed me: words were lost in sobs. He and I were the only
occupants of the parlour: Diana was practising her music in the
drawing-room, Mary was gardening- it was a very fine May day, clear,
sunny, and breezy. My companion expressed no surprise at this emotion,
nor did he question me as to its cause; he only said-

'We will wait a few minutes, Jane, till you are more composed.' And
while I smothered the paroxysm with all haste, he sat calm and
patient, leaning on his desk, and looking like a physician watching
with the eye of science an expected and fully understood crisis in a
patient's malady. Having stifled my sobs, wiped my eyes, and
muttered something about not being very well that morning, I resumed
my task, and succeeded in completing it. St. John put away my books
and his, locked his desk, and said-

'Now, Jane, you shall take a walk; and with me.'

'I will call Diana and Mary.'

'No; I want only one companion this morning, and that must be
you. Put on your things; go out by the kitchen-door: take the road
towards the head of Marsh Glen: I will join you in a moment.'

I know no medium: I never in my life have known any medium in my
dealings with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own,
between absolute submission and determined revolt. I have always
faithfully observed the one, up to the very moment of bursting,
sometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other; and as neither
present circumstances warranted, nor my present mood inclined me to
mutiny, I observed careful obedience to St. John's directions; and
in ten minutes I was treading the wild track of the glen, side by side
with him.

The breeze was from the west: it came over the hills, sweet with
scents of heath and rush; the sky was of stainless blue; the stream
descending the ravine, swelled with past spring rains, poured along
plentiful and clear, catching golden gleams from the sun, and sapphire
tints from the firmament. As we advanced and left the track, we trod a
soft turf, mossy fine and emerald green, minutely enamelled with a
tiny white flower, and spangled with a star-like yellow blossom: the
hills, meantime, shut us quite in; for the glen, towards its head,
wound to their very core.

'Let us rest here,' said St. John, as we reached the first
stragglers of a battalion of rocks, guarding a sort of pass, beyond
which the beck rushed down a waterfall; and where, still a little
farther, the mountain shook off turf and flower, had only heath for
raiment and crag for gem- where it exaggerated the wild to the savage,
and exchanged the fresh for the frowning- where it guarded the forlorn
hope of solitude, and a last refuge for silence.

I took a seat: St. John stood near me. He looked up the pass and
down the hollow; his glance wandered away with the stream, and
returned to traverse the unclouded heaven which coloured it: he
removed his hat, let the breeze stir his hair and kiss his brow. He
seemed in communion with the genius of the haunt: with his eye he bade
farewell to something.

'And I shall see it again,' he said aloud, 'in dreams when I
sleep by the Ganges: and again in a more remote hour- when another
slumber overcomes me- on the shore of a darker stream!'

Strange words of a strange love! An austere patriot's passion for
his fatherland! He sat down; for half an hour we never spoke;
neither he to me nor I to him: that interval past, he recommenced-

'Jane, I go in six weeks; I have taken my berth in an East Indiaman
which sails on the 20th of June.'

'God will protect you; for you have undertaken His work,' I
answered.

'Yes,' said he, 'there is my glory and joy. I am the servant of
an infallible Master. I am not going out under human guidance, subject
to the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms: my
king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect. It seems strange to
me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner,-
to join in the same enterprise.'

'All have not Your powers, and it would be folly for the feeble
to wish to march with the strong.'

'I do not speak to the feeble, or think of them: I address only
such as are worthy of the work, and competent to accomplish it.'

'Those are few in number, and difficult to discover.'

'You say truly; but when found, it is right to stir them up- to
urge and exhort them to the effort- to show them what their gifts are,
and why they were given- to speak Heaven's message in their ear,- to
offer them, direct from God, a place in the ranks of His chosen.'

'If they are really qualified for the task, will not their own
hearts be the first to inform them of it?'

I felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over
me: I trembled to hear some fatal word spoken which would at once
declare and rivet the spell.

'And what does your heart say?' demanded St. John.

'My heart is mute- my heart is mute,' I answered, struck and
thrilled.

'Then I must speak for it,' continued the deep, relentless voice.
'Jane, come with me to India: come as my helpmeet and
fellow-labourer.'

The glen and sky spun round: the hills heaved! It was as if I had
heard a summons from Heaven- as if a visionary messenger, like him
of Macedonia, had enounced, 'Come over and help us!' But I was no
apostle,- I could not behold the herald,- I could not receive his
call.

'Oh, St. John!' I cried, 'have some mercy!'

I appealed to one who, in the discharge of what he believed his
duty, knew neither mercy nor remorse. He continued-

'God and nature intended you for a missionary's wife. It is not
personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed
for labour, not for love. A missionary's wife you must- shall be.
You shall be mine: I claim you- not for my pleasure, but for my
Sovereign's service.'

'I am not fit for it: I have no vocation,' I said.

He had calculated on these first objections: he was not irritated
by them. Indeed, as he leaned back against the crag behind him, folded
his arms on his chest, and fixed his countenance, I saw he was
prepared for a long and trying opposition, and had taken in a stock of
patience to last him to its close- resolved, however, that that
close should be conquest for him.

'Humility, Jane,' said he, 'is the groundwork of Christian virtues:
you say right that you are not fit for the work. Who is fit for it? Or
who, that ever was truly called, believed himself worthy of the
summons? I, for instance, am but dust and ashes. With St. Paul, I
acknowledge myself the chiefest of sinners; but I do not suffer this
sense of my personal vileness to daunt me. I know my Leader: that He
is just as well as mighty; and while He has chosen a feeble instrument
to perform a great task, He will, from the boundless stores of His
providence, supply the inadequacy of the means to the end. Think
like me, Jane- trust like me. It is the Rock of Ages I ask you to lean
on: do not doubt but it will bear the weight of your human weakness.'

'I do not understand a missionary life: I have never studied
missionary labours.'

'There I, humble as I am, can give you the aid you want: I can
set you your task from hour to hour; stand by you always; help you
from moment to moment. This I could do in the beginning: soon (for I
know your powers) you would be as strong and apt as myself, and
would not require my help.'

'But my powers- where are they for this undertaking? I do not
feel them. Nothing speaks or stirs in me while you talk. I am sensible
of no light kindling- no life quickening- no voice counselling or
cheering. Oh, I wish I could make you see how much my mind is at
this moment like a rayless dungeon, with one shrinking fear fettered
in its depths- the fear of being persuaded by you to attempt what I
cannot accomplish!'

'I have an answer for you- hear it. I have watched you ever since
we first met: I have made you my study for ten months. I have proved
you in that time by sundry tests: and what have I seen and elicited?
In the village school I found you could perform well, punctually,
uprightly, labour uncongenial to your habits and inclinations; I saw
you could perform it with capacity and tact: you could win while you
controlled. In the calm with which you learnt you had become
suddenly rich, I read a mind clear of the vice of Demas:- lucre had no
undue power over you. In the resolute readiness with which you cut
your wealth into four shares, keeping but one to yourself, and
relinquishing the three others to the claim of abstract justice, I
recognised a soul that revelled in the flame and excitement of
sacrifice. In the tractability with which, at my wish, you forsook a
study in which you were interested, and adopted another because it
interested me; in the untiring assiduity with which you have since
persevered in it- in the unflagging energy and unshaken temper with
which you have met its difficulties- I acknowledge the complement of
the qualities I seek. Jane, you are docile, diligent, disinterested,
faithful, constant, and courageous; very gentle, and very heroic:
cease to mistrust yourself- I can trust you unreservedly. As a
conductress of Indian schools, and a helper amongst Indian women, your
assistance will be to me invaluable.'

My iron shroud contracted round me; persuasion advanced with
slow, sure step. Shut my eyes as I would, these last words of his
succeeded in making the way, which had seemed blocked up,
comparatively clear. My work, which had appeared so vague, so
hopelessly diffuse, condensed itself as he proceeded, and assumed a
definite form under his shaping hand. He waited for an answer. I
demanded a quarter of an hour to think, before I again hazarded a
reply.

'Very willingly,' he rejoined; and rising, he strode a little
distance up the pass, threw himself down on a swell of heath, and
there lay still.

'I can do what he wants me to do: I am forced to see and
acknowledge that,' I meditated,- 'that is, if life be spared me. But I
feel mine is not the existence to be long protracted under an Indian
sun. What then? He does not care for that: when my time came to die,
he would resign me, in all serenity and sanctity, to the God who
gave me. The case is very plain before me. In leaving England, I
should leave a loved but empty land- Mr. Rochester is not there; and
if he were, what is, what can that ever be to me? My business is to
live without him now: nothing so absurd, so weak as to drag on from
day to day, as if I were waiting some impossible change in
circumstances, which might reunite me to him. Of course (as St. John
once said) I must seek another interest in life to replace the one
lost: is not the occupation he now offers me truly the most glorious
man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its noble cares and sublime
results, the one best calculated to fill the void left by uptorn
affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say, Yes- and yet
I shudder. Alas! If I join St. John, I abandon half myself: if I go to
India, I go to premature death. And how will the interval between
leaving England for India, and India for the grave, be filled? Oh, I
know well! That, too, is very clear to my vision. By straining to
satisfy St. John till my sinews ache, I shall satisfy him- to the
finest central point and farthest outward circle of his
expectations. If I do go with him- if I do make the sacrifice he
urges, I will make it absolutely: I will throw all on the altar-
heart, vitals, the entire victim. He will never love me; but he
shall approve me; I will show him energies he has not yet seen,
resources he has never suspected. Yes, I can work as hard as he can,
and with as little grudging.

'Consent, then, to his demand is possible: but for one item- one
dreadful item. It is- that he asks me to be his wife, and has no
more of a husband's heart for me than that frowning giant of a rock,
down which the stream is foaming in yonder gorge. He prizes me as a
soldier would a good weapon, and that is all. Unmarried to him, this
would never grieve me; but can I let him complete his calculations-
coolly put into practice his plans- go through the wedding ceremony?
Can I receive from him the bridal ring, endure all the forms of love
(which I doubt not he would scrupulously observe) and know that the
spirit was quite absent? Can I bear the consciousness that every
endearment he bestows is a sacrifice made on principle? No: such a
martyrdom would be monstrous. I will never undergo it. As his
sister, I might accompany him- not as his wife: I will tell him so.'

I looked towards the knoll: there he lay, still as a prostrate
column; his face turned to me: his eye beaming watchful and keen. He
started to his feet and approached me.

'I am ready to go to India, if I may go free.'

'Your answer requires a commentary,' he said; 'it is not clear.'

'You have hitherto been my adopted brother- I, your adopted sister:
let us continue as such: you and I had better not marry.'

He shook his head. 'Adopted fraternity will not do in this case. If
you were my real sister it would be different: I should take you,
and seek no wife. But as it is, either our union must be consecrated
and sealed by marriage, or it cannot exist: practical obstacles oppose
themselves to any other plan. Do you not see it, Jane? Consider a
moment- your strong sense will guide you.'

I did consider; and still my sense, such as it was, directed me
only to the fact that we did not love each other as man and wife
should: and therefore it inferred we ought not to marry. I said so.
'St. John,' I returned, 'I regard you as a brother- you, me as a
sister: so let us continue.'

'We cannot- we cannot,' he answered, with short, sharp
determination: 'it would not do. You have said you will go with me
to India: remember- you have said that.'

'Conditionally.'

'Well- well. To the main point- the departure with me from England,
the co-operation with me in my future labours- you do not object.
You have already as good as put your hand to the plough: you are too
consistent to withdraw it. You have but one end to keep in view- how
the work you have undertaken can best be done. Simplify your
complicated interests, feelings, thoughts, wishes, aims; merge all
considerations in one purpose: that of fulfilling with effect- with
power- the mission of your great Master. To do so, you must have a
coadjutor: not a brother- that is a loose tie- but a husband. I,
too, do not want a sister: a sister might any day be taken from me.
I want a wife: the sole helpmeet I can influence efficiently in
life, and retain absolutely till death.'

I shuddered as he spoke: I felt his influence in my marrow- his
hold on my limbs.

'Seek one elsewhere than in me, St. John: seek one fitted to you.'

'One fitted to my purpose, you mean- fitted to my vocation. Again I
tell you it is not the insignificant private individual- the mere man,
with the man's selfish senses- I wish to mate: it is the missionary.'

'And I will give the missionary my energies- it is all he wants-
but not myself: that would be only adding the husk and shell to the
kernel. For them he has no use: I retain them.'

'You cannot- you ought not. Do you think God will be satisfied with
half an oblation? Will He accept a mutilated sacrifice? It is the
cause of God I advocate: it is under His standard I enlist you. I
cannot accept on His behalf a divided allegiance: it must be entire.'

'Oh! I will give my heart to God,' I said. 'You do not want it.'

I will not swear, reader, that there was not something of repressed
sarcasm both in the tone in which I uttered this sentence, and in
the feeling that accompanied it. I had silently feared St. John till
now, because I had not understood him. He had held me in awe,
because he had held me in doubt. How much of him was saint, how much
mortal, I could not heretofore tell: but revelations were being made
in this conference: the analysis of his nature was proceeding before
my eyes. I saw his fallibilities: I comprehended them. I understood
that, sitting there where I did, on the bank of heath, and with that
handsome form before me, I sat at the feet of a man, erring as I.
The veil fell from his hardness and despotism. Having felt in him
the presence of these qualities, I felt his imperfection and took
courage. I was with an equal- one with whom I might argue- one whom,
if I saw good, I might resist.

He was silent after I had uttered the last sentence, and I
presently risked an upward glance at his countenance. His eye, bent on
me, expressed at once stern surprise and keen inquiry. 'Is she
sarcastic, and sarcastic to me!' it seemed to say. 'What does this
signify?'

'Do not let us forget that this is a solemn matter,' he said ere
long; 'one of which we may neither think nor talk lightly without sin.
I trust, Jane, you are in earnest when you say you will give your
heart to God: it is all I want. Once wrench your heart from man, and
fix it on your Maker, the advancement of that Maker's spiritual
kingdom on earth will be your chief delight and endeavour; you will be
ready to do at once whatever furthers that end. You will see what
impetus would be given to your efforts and mine by our physical and
mental union in marriage: the only union that gives a character of
permanent conformity to the destinies and designs of human beings;
and, passing over all minor caprices- all trivial difficulties and
delicacies of feeling- all scruple about the degree, kind, strength or
tenderness of mere personal inclination- you will hasten to enter into
that union at once.'

'Shall I?' I said briefly; and I looked at his features,
beautiful in their harmony, but strangely formidable in their still
severity; at his brow, commanding but not open; at his eyes, bright
and deep and searching, but never soft; at his tall imposing figure;
and fancied myself in idea his wife. Oh! it would never do! As his
curate, his comrade, all would be right: I would cross oceans with him
in that capacity; toil under Eastern suns, in Asian deserts with him
in that office; admire and emulate his courage and devotion and
vigour; accommodate quietly to his masterhood; smile undisturbed at
his ineradicable ambition; discriminate the Christian from the man:
profoundly esteem the one, and freely forgive the other. I should
suffer often, no doubt, attached to him only in this capacity: my body
would be under rather a stringent yoke, but my heart and mind would be
free. I should still have my unblighted self to turn to: my natural
unenslaved feelings with which to communicate in moments of
loneliness. There would be recesses in my mind which would be only
mine, to which he never came, and sentiments growing there fresh and
sheltered which his austerity could never blight, nor his measured
warrior-march trample down: but as his wife- at his side always, and
always restrained, and always checked- forced to keep the fire of my
nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never
utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital-
this would be unendurable.

'St. John!' I exclaimed, when I had got so far in my meditation.

'Well?' he answered icily.

'I repeat I freely consent to go with you as your
fellow-missionary, but not as your wife; I cannot marry you and become
part of you.'

'A part of me you must become,' he answered steadily: 'otherwise
the whole bargain is void. How can I, a man not yet thirty, take out
with me to India a girl of nineteen, unless she be married to me?
How can we be for ever together- sometimes in solitudes, sometimes
amidst savage tribes- and unwed?'

'Very well,' I said shortly; 'under the circumstances, quite as
well as if I were either your real sister, or a man and a clergyman
like yourself.'

'It is known that you are not my sister; I cannot introduce you
as such: to attempt it would be to fasten injurious suspicions on us
both. And for the rest, though you have a man's vigorous brain, you
have a woman's heart and- it would not do.'

'It would do,' I affirmed with some disdain, 'perfectly well. I
have a woman's heart, but not where you are concerned; for you I
have only a comrade's constancy; a fellow-soldier's frankness,
fidelity, fraternity, if you like; a neophyte's respect and submission
to his hierophant: nothing more- don't fear.'

'It is what I want,' he said, speaking to himself; 'it is just what
I want. And there are obstacles in the way: they must be hewn down.
Jane, you would not repent marrying me- be certain of that; we must be
married. I repeat it: there is no other way; and undoubtedly enough of
love would follow upon marriage to render the union right even in your
eyes.'

'I scorn your idea of love,' I could not help saying, as I rose
up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. 'I scorn
the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you
when you offer it.'

He looked at me fixedly, compressing his well-cut lips while he did
so. Whether he was incensed or surprised, or what, it was not easy
to tell: he could command his countenance thoroughly.

'I scarcely expected to hear that expression from you,' he said: 'I
think I have done and uttered nothing to deserve scorn.'

I was touched by his gentle tone, and overawed by his high, calm
mien.

'Forgive me the words, St. John; but it is your own fault that I
have been roused to speak so unguardedly. You have introduced a
topic on which our natures are at variance- a topic we should never
discuss: the very name of love is an apple of discord between us. If
the reality were required, what should we do? How should we feel? My
dear cousin, abandon your scheme of marriage- forget it.'

'No,' said he; 'it is a long-cherished scheme, and the only one
which can secure my great end: but I shall urge you no further at
present. To-morrow, I leave home for Cambridge: I have many friends
there to whom I should wish to say farewell. I shall be absent a
fortnight- take that space of time to consider my offer: and do not
forget that if you reject it, it is not me you deny, but God.
Through my means, He opens to you a noble career; as my wife only
can you enter upon it. Refuse to be my wife, and you limit yourself
for ever to a track of selfish ease and barren obscurity. Tremble lest
in that case you should be numbered with those who have denied the
faith, and are worse than infidels!'

He had done. Turning from me, he once more


             'Looked to river, looked to hill.'

But this time his feelings were all pent in his heart: I was not
worthy to hear them uttered. As I walked by his side homeward, I
read well in his iron silence all he felt towards me: the
disappointment of an austere and despotic nature, which has met
resistance where it expected submission- the disapprobation of a cool,
inflexible judgment, which has detected in another feelings and
views in which it has no power to sympathise: in short, as a man, he
would have wished to coerce me into obedience: it was only as a
sincere Christian he bore so patiently with my perversity, and allowed
so long a space for reflection and repentance.

That night, after he had kissed his sisters, he thought proper to
forget even to shake hands with me, but left the room in silence. I-
who, though I had no love, had much friendship for him- was hurt by
the marked omission: so much hurt that tears started to my eyes.

'I see you and St. John have been quarrelling, Jane,' said Diana,
'during your walk on the moor. But go after him; he is now lingering
in the passage expecting you- he will make it up.'

I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always
rather be happy than dignified; and I ran after him- he stood at the
foot of the stairs.

'Good-night, St. John,' said I.

'Good-night, Jane,' he replied calmly.

'Then shake hands,' I added.

What a cold, loose touch he impressed on my fingers! He was
deeply displeased by what had occurred that day; cordiality would
not warm, nor tears move him. No happy reconciliation was to be had
with him- no cheering smile or generous word: but still the
Christian was patient and placid; and when I asked him if he forgave
me, he answered that he was not in the habit of cherishing the
remembrance of vexation; that he had nothing to forgive, not having
been offended.

And with that answer he left me. I would much rather he had knocked
me down.

                      CHAPTER XXXV


HE did not leave for Cambridge the next day, as he had said he
would. He deferred his departure a whole week, and during that time he
made me feel what severe punishment a good yet stern, a
conscientious yet implacable man can inflict on one who has offended
him. Without one overt act of hostility, one upbraiding word he
contrived to impress me momently with the conviction that I was put
beyond the pale of his favour.

Not that St. John harboured a spirit of unchristian vindictiveness-
not that he would have injured a hair of my head, if it had been fully
in his power to do so. Both by nature and principle, he was superior
to the mean gratification of vengeance: he had forgiven me for
saying I scorned him and his love, but he had not forgotten the words;
and as long as he and I lived he never would forget them. I saw by his
look, when he turned to me, that they were always written on the air
between me and him; whenever I spoke, they sounded in my voice to
his ear, and their echo toned every answer he gave me.

He did not abstain from conversing with me: he even called me as
usual each morning to join him at his desk; and I fear the corrupt man
within him had a pleasure unimparted to, and unshared by, the pure
Christian, in evincing with what skill he could, while acting and
speaking apparently just as usual, extract from every deed and every
phrase the spirit of interest and approval which had formerly
communicated a certain austere charm to his language and manner. To
me, he was in reality become no longer flesh, but marble; his eye
was a cold, bright, blue gem; his tongue a speaking instrument-
nothing more.

All this was torture to me- refined, lingering torture. It kept
up a slow fire of indignation and a trembling trouble of grief,
which harassed and crushed me altogether. I felt how- if I were his
wife, this good man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon
kill me, without drawing from my veins a single drop of blood, or
receiving on his own crystal conscience the faintest stain of crime.
Especially I felt this when I made any attempt to propitiate him. No
ruth met my ruth. He experienced no suffering from estrangement- no
yearning after reconciliation; and though, more than once, my fast
falling tears blistered the page over which we both bent, they
produced no more effect on him than if his heart had been really a
matter of stone or metal. To his sisters, meantime, he was somewhat
kinder than usual: as if afraid that mere coldness would not
sufficiently convince me how completely I was banished and banned,
he added the force of contrast; and this I am sure he did not by
malice, but on principle.

The night before he left home, happening to see him walking in
the garden about sunset, and remembering, as I looked at him, that
this man, alienated as he now was, had once saved my life, and that we
were near relations, I was moved to make a last attempt to regain
his friendship. I went out and approached him as he stood leaning over
the little gate; I spoke to the point at once.

'St. John, I am unhappy because you are still angry with me. Let us
be friends.'

'I hope we are friends,' was the unmoved reply; while he still
watched the rising of the moon, which he had been contemplating as I
approached.

'No, St. John, we are not friends as we were. You know that.'

'Are we not? That is wrong. For my part, I wish you no ill and
all good.'

'I believe you, St. John; for I am sure you are incapable of
wishing any one ill; but, as I am your kinswoman, I should desire
somewhat more of affection than that sort of general philanthropy
you extend to mere strangers.'

'Of course,' he said. 'Your wish is reasonable, and I am far from
regarding you as a stranger.'

This, spoken in a cool, tranquil tone, was mortifying and
baffling enough. Had I attended to the suggestions of pride and ire, I
should immediately have left him; but something worked within me
more strongly than those feelings could. I deeply venerated my
cousin's talent and principle. His friendship was of value to me: to
lose it tried me severely. I would not so soon relinquish the
attempt to reconquer it.

'Must we part in this way, St. John? And when you go to India, will
you leave me so, without a kinder word than you have yet spoken?'

He now turned quite from the moon and faced me.

'When I go to India, Jane, will I leave you! What! do you not go to
India?'

'You said I could not unless I married you.'

'And you will not marry me! You adhere to that resolution?'

Reader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can put
into the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche
is in their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea in their
displeasure?

'No, St. John, I will not marry you. I adhere to my resolution.'

The avalanche had shaken and slid a little forward, but it did
not yet crash down.

'Once more, why this refusal?' he asked.

'Formerly,' I answered, 'because you did not love me; now, I reply,
because you almost hate me. If I were to marry you, you would kill me.
You are killing me now.'

His lips and cheeks turned white- quite white.

'I should kill you- I am killing you? Your words are such as
ought not to be used: violent, unfeminine, and untrue. They betray
an unfortunate state of mind: they merit severe reproof: they would
seem inexcusable, but that it is the duty of man to forgive his fellow
even until seventy-and-seven times.'

I had finished the business now. While earnestly wishing to erase
from his mind the trace of my former offence, I had stamped on that
tenacious surface another and far deeper impression: I had burnt it
in.

'Now you will indeed hate me,' I said. 'It is useless to attempt to
conciliate you: I see I have made an eternal enemy of you.'

A fresh wrong did these words inflict: the worse, because they
touched on the truth. That bloodless lip quivered to a temporary
spasm. I knew the steely ire I had whetted. I was heart-wrung.

'You utterly misinterpret my words,' I said, at once seizing his
hand: 'I have no intention to grieve or pain you- indeed, I have not.'

Most bitterly he smiled- most decidedly he withdrew his hand from
mine. 'And now you recall your promise, and will not go to India at
all, I presume?' said he, after a considerable pause.

'Yes, I will, as your assistant,' I answered.

A very long silence succeeded. What struggle there was in him
between Nature and Grace in this interval, I cannot tell: only
singular gleams scintillated in his eyes, and strange shadows passed
over his face. He spoke at last.

'I before proved to you the absurdity of a single woman of your age
proposing to accompany abroad a single man of mine. I proved it to you
in such terms as, I should have thought, would have prevented your
ever again alluding to the plan. That you have done so, I regret-
for your sake.'

I interrupted him. Anything like a tangible reproach gave me
courage at once. 'Keep to common sense, St. John: you are verging on
nonsense. You pretend to be shocked by what I have said. You are not
really shocked: for, with your superior mind, you cannot be either
so dull or so conceited as to misunderstand my meaning. I say again, I
will be your curate, if you like, but never your wife.'

Again he turned lividly pale; but, as before, controlled his
passion perfectly. He answered emphatically but calmly-

'A female curate, who is not my wife, would never suit me. With me,
then, it seems, you cannot go: but if you are sincere in your offer, I
will, while in town, speak to a married missionary, whose wife needs a
coadjutor. Your own fortune will make you independent of the Society's
aid; and thus you may still be spared the dishonour of breaking your
promise and deserting the band you engaged to join.'

Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal
promise or entered into any engagement; and this language was all much
too hard and much too despotic for the occasion. I replied-

'There is no dishonour, no breach of promise, no desertion in the
case. I am not under the slightest obligation to go to India,
especially with strangers. With you I would have ventured much,
because I admire, confide in, and, as a sister, I love you; but I am
convinced that, go when and with whom I would, I should not live
long in that climate.'

'Ah! you are afraid of yourself,' he said, curling his lip.

'I am. God did not give me my life to throw away; and to do as
you wish me would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to
committing suicide. Moreover, before I definitely resolve on
quitting England, I will know for certain whether I cannot be of
greater use by remaining in it than by leaving it.'

'What do you mean?'

'It would be fruitless to attempt to explain; but there is a
point on which I have long endured painful doubt, and I can go nowhere
till by some means that doubt is removed.'

'I know where your heart turns and to what it clings. The
interest you cherish is lawless and unconsecrated. Long since you
ought to have crushed it: now you should blush to allude to it. You
think of Mr. Rochester?'

It was true. I confessed it by silence.

'Are you going to seek Mr. Rochester?'

'I must find out what is become of him.'

'It remains for me, then,' he said, 'to remember you in my prayers,
and to entreat God for you, in all earnestness, that you may not
indeed become a castaway. I had thought I recognised in you one of the
chosen. But God sees not as man sees: His will be done.'

He opened the gate, passed through it, and strayed away down the
glen. He was soon out of sight.

On re-entering the parlour, I found Diana standing at the window,
looking very thoughtful. Diana was a great deal taller than I:. she
put her hand on my shoulder, and, stooping, examined my face.

'Jane,' she said, 'you are always agitated and pale now. I am
sure there is something the matter. Tell me what business St. John and
you have on hands. I have watched you this half hour from the
window; you must forgive my being such a spy, but for a long time I
have fancied I hardly know what. St. John is a strange being-'

She paused- I did not speak: soon she resumed-

'That brother of mine cherishes peculiar views of some sort
respecting you, I am sure: he has long distinguished you by a notice
and interest he never showed to any one else- to what end? I wish he
loved you- does he, Jane?'

I put her cool hand to my hot forehead; 'No, Die, not one whit.'

'Then why does he follow you so with his eyes, and get you so
frequently alone with him, and keep you so continually at his side?
Mary and I had both concluded he wished you to marry him.'

'He does- he has asked me to be his wife.'

Diana clapped her hands. 'That is just what we hoped and thought!
And you will marry him, Jane, won't you? And then he will stay in
England.'

'Far from that, Diana; his sole idea in proposing to me is to
procure a fitting fellow-labourer in his Indian toils.'

'What! He wishes you to go to India?'

'Yes.'

'Madness!' she exclaimed. 'You would not live three months there, I
am certain. You never shall go: you have not consented, have you,
Jane?'

'I have refused to marry him-'

'And have consequently displeased him?' she suggested.

'Deeply: he will never forgive me, I fear: yet I offered to
accompany him as his sister.'

'It was frantic folly to do so, Jane. Think of the task you
undertook- one of incessant fatigue, where fatigue kills even the
strong, and you are weak. St. John- you know him- would urge you to
impossibilities: with him there would be no permission to rest
during the hot hours; and unfortunately, I have noticed, whatever he
exacts, you force yourself to perform. I am astonished you found
courage to refuse his hand. You do not love him then, Jane?'

'Not as a husband.'

'Yet he is a handsome fellow.'

'And I am so plain, you see, Die. We should never suit.'

'Plain! You? Not at all. You are much too pretty, as well as too
good, to be grilled alive in Calcutta.' And again she earnestly
conjured me to give up all thoughts of going out with her brother.

'I must indeed,' I said; 'for when just now I repeated the offer of
serving him for a deacon, he expressed himself shocked at my want of
decency. He seemed to think I had committed an impropriety in
proposing to accompany him unmarried: as if I had not from the first
hoped to find in him a brother, and habitually regarded him as such.'

'What makes you say he does not love you, Jane?'

'You should hear himself on the subject. He has again and again
explained that it is not himself, but his office he wishes to mate. He
has told me I am formed for labour- not for love: which is true, no
doubt. But, in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, it follows
that I am not formed for marriage. Would it not be strange, Die, to be
chained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool?'

'Insupportable- unnatural- out of the question!'

'And then,' I continued, 'though I have only sisterly affection for
him now, yet, if forced to be his wife, I can imagine the
possibility of conceiving an inevitable, strange, torturing kind of
love for him, because he is so talented; and there is often a
certain heroic grandeur in his look, manner, and conversation. In that
case, my lot would become unspeakably wretched. He would not want me
to love him; and if I showed the feeling, he would make me sensible
that it was a superfluity, unrequired by him, unbecoming in me. I know
he would.'

'And yet St. John is a good man,' said Diana.

'He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the
feelings and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views.
It is better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way,
lest, in his progress, he should trample them down. Here he comes! I
will leave you, Diana.' And I hastened upstairs as I saw him
entering the garden.

But I was forced to meet him again at supper. During that meal he
appeared just as composed as usual. I had thought he would hardly
speak to me, and I was certain he had given up the pursuit of his
matrimonial scheme: the sequel showed I was mistaken on both points.
He addressed me precisely in his ordinary manner, or what had, of
late, been his ordinary manner- one scrupulously polite. No doubt he
had invoked the help of the Holy Spirit to subdue the anger I had
roused in him, and now believed he had forgiven me once more.

For the evening reading before prayers, he selected the
twenty-first chapter of Revelation. It was at all times pleasant to
listen while from his lips fell the words of the Bible: never did
his fine voice sound at once so sweet and full- never did his manner
become so impressive in its noble simplicity, as when he delivered the
oracles of God: and to-night that voice took a more solemn tone-
that manner a more thrilling meaning- as he sat in the midst of his
household circle (the May moon shining in through the uncurtained
window, and rendering almost unnecessary the light of the candle on
the table): as he sat there, bending over the great old Bible, and
described from its page the vision of the new heaven and the new
earth- told how God would come to dwell with men, how He would wipe
away all tears from their eyes, and promised that there should be no
more death, neither sorrow nor crying, nor any more pain, because
the former things were passed away.

The succeeding words thrilled me strangely as he spoke them:
especially as I felt, by the slight, indescribable alteration in
sound, that in uttering them, his eye had turned on me.

'He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his
God, and he shall be my son. But,' was slowly, distinctly read, 'the
fearful, the unbelieving, etc., shall have their part in the lake
which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.'

Henceforward, I knew what fate St. John feared for me.

A calm, subdued triumph, blent with a longing earnestness, marked
his enunciation of the last glorious verses of that chapter. The
reader believed his name was already written in the Lamb's book of
life, and he yearned after the hour which should admit him to the city
to which the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour; which
has no need of sun or moon to shine in it, because the glory of God
lightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

In the prayer following the chapter, all his energy gathered- all
his stern zeal woke: he was in deep earnest, wrestling with God, and
resolved on a conquest. He supplicated strength for the
weak-hearted; guidance for wanderers from the fold: a return, even
at the eleventh hour, for those whom the temptations of the world
and the flesh were luring from the narrow path. He asked, he urged, he
claimed the boon of a brand snatched from the burning. Earnestness
is ever deeply solemn: first, as I listened to that prayer, I wondered
at his; then, when it continued and rose, I was touched by it, and
at last awed. He felt the greatness and goodness of his purpose so
sincerely: others who heard him plead for it, could not but feel it
too.

The prayer over, we took leave of him: he was to go at a very early
hour in the morning. Diana and Mary having kissed him, left the
room- in compliance, I think, with a whispered hint from him: I
tendered my hand, and wished him a pleasant journey.

'Thank you, Jane. As I said, I shall return from Cambridge in a
fortnight: that space, then, is yet left you for reflection. If I
listened to human pride, I should say no more to you of marriage
with me; but I listen to my duty, and keep steadily in view my first
aim- to do all things to the glory of God. My Master was
long-suffering: so will I be. I cannot give you up to perdition as a
vessel of wrath: repent- resolve, while there is yet time. Remember,
we are bid to work while it is day- warned that "the night cometh when
no man shall work." Remember the fate of Dives, who had his good
things in this life. God give you strength to choose that better
part which shall not be taken from you!'

He laid his hand on my head as he uttered the last words. He had
spoken earnestly, mildly: his look was not, indeed, that of a lover
beholding his mistress, but it was that of a pastor recalling his
wandering sheep- or better, of a guardian angel watching the soul
for which he is responsible. All men of talent, whether they be men of
feeling or not; whether they be zealots, or aspirants, or despots-
provided only they be sincere- have their sublime moments, when they
subdue and rule. I felt veneration for St. John- veneration so
strong that its impetus thrust me at once to the point I had so long
shunned. I was tempted to cease struggling with him- to rush down
the torrent of his will into the gulf of his existence, and there lose
my own. I was almost as hard beset by him now as I had been once
before, in a different way, by another. I was a fool both times. To
have yielded then would have been an error of principle; to have
yielded now would have been an error of judgment. So I think at this
hour, when I look back to the crisis through the quiet medium of time:
I was unconscious of folly at the instant.

I stood motionless under my hierophant's touch. My refusals were
forgotten- my fears overcome- my wrestlings paralysed. The Impossible-
i.e., my marriage with St. John- was fast becoming the Possible. All
was changing utterly with a sudden sweep. Religion called- Angels
beckoned- God commanded- life rolled together like a scroll- death's
gates opening, showed eternity beyond: it seemed, that for safety
and bliss there, all here might be sacrificed in a second. The dim
room was full of visions.

'Could you decide now?' asked the missionary. The inquiry was put
in gentle tones: he drew me to him as gently. Oh, that gentleness! how
far more potent is it than force! I could resist St. John's wrath: I
grew pliant as a reed under his kindness. Yet I knew all the time,
if I yielded now, I should not the less be made to repent, some day,
of my former rebellion. His nature was not changed by one hour of
solemn prayer: it was only elevated.

'I could decide if I were but certain,' I answered: 'were I but
convinced that it is God's will I should marry you, I could vow to
marry you here and now- come afterwards what would!'

'My prayers are heard!' ejaculated St. John. He pressed his hand
firmer on my head, as if he claimed me: he surrounded me with his arm,
almost as if he loved me (I say almost- I knew the difference- for I
had felt what it was to be loved; but, like him, I had now put love
out of the question, and thought only of duty). I contended with my
inward dimness of vision, before which clouds yet rolled. I sincerely,
deeply, fervently longed to do what was right; and only that. 'Show
me, show me the path!' I entreated of Heaven. I was excited more
than I had ever been; and whether what followed was the effect of
excitement the reader shall judge.

All the house was still; for I believe all, except St. John and
myself, were now retired to rest. The one candle was dying out: the
room was full of moonlight. My heart beat fast and thick: I heard
its throb. Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible feeling that
thrilled it through, and passed at once to my head and extremities.
The feeling was not like an electric shock, but it was quite as sharp,
as strange, as startling: it acted on my senses as if their utmost
activity hitherto had been but torpor, from which they were now
summoned and forced to wake. They rose expectant: eye and ear waited
while the flesh quivered on my bones.

'What have you heard? What do you see?' asked St. John. I saw
nothing, but I heard a voice somewhere cry-

'Jane! Jane! Jane!'- nothing more.

'O God! what is it?' I gasped.

I might have said, 'Where is it?' for it did not seem in the
room- nor in the house- nor in the garden; it did not come out of
the air- nor from under the earth- nor from overhead. I had heard
it- where, or whence, for ever impossible to know! And it was the
voice of a human being- a known, loved, well-remembered voice- that of
Edward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly,
eerily, urgently.

'I am coming!' I cried. 'Wait for me! Oh, I will come!' I flew to
the door and looked into the passage: it was dark. I ran out into
the garden: it was void.

'Where are you?' I exclaimed.

The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back- 'Where
are you?' I listened. The wind sighed low in the firs: all was
moorland loneliness and midnight hush.

'Down superstition!' I commented, as that spectre rose up black
by the black yew at the gate. 'This is not thy deception, nor thy
witchcraft: it is the work of nature. She was roused, and did- no
miracle- but her best.'

I broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have detained
me. It was my time to assume ascendency. My powers were in play and in
force. I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him to
leave me: I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once. Where there is
energy to command well enough, obedience never fails. I mounted to
my chamber; locked myself in; fell on my knees; and prayed in my
way- a different way to St. John's, but effective in its own
fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit; and my
soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet. I rose from the
thanksgiving- took a resolve- and lay down, unscared, enlightened-
eager but for the daylight.

                     CHAPTER XXXVI


THE daylight came. I rose at dawn. I busied myself for an hour or
two with arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and wardrobe,
in the order wherein I should wish to leave them during a brief
absence. Meantime, I heard St. John quit his room. He stopped at my
door: I feared he would knock- no, but a slip of paper was passed
under the door. I took it up. It bore these words-

'You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a little
longer, you would have laid your hand on the Christian's cross and the
angel's crown. I shall expect your clear decision when I return this
day fortnight. Meantime, watch and pray that you enter not into
temptation: the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh, I see,
is weak. I shall pray for you hourly.- Yours, ST. JOHN.'

'My spirit,' I answered mentally, 'is willing to do what is
right; and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will
of Heaven, when once that will is distinctly known to me. At any rate,
it shall be strong enough to search- inquire- to grope an outlet
from this cloud of doubt, and find the open day of certainty.'

It was the first of June; yet the morning was overcast and
chilly: rain beat fast on my casement. I heard the front-door open,
and St. John pass out. Looking through the window, I saw him
traverse the garden. He took the way over the misty moors in the
direction of Whitcross- there he would meet the coach.

'In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin,'
thought I: 'I too have a coach to meet at Whitcross. I too have some
to see and ask after in England, before I depart for ever.'

It wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time. I filled the interval in
walking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which had
given my plans their present bent. I recalled that inward sensation
I had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable
strangeness. I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned
whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in me- not in the
external world. I asked was it a mere nervous impression- a
delusion? I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an
inspiration. The wondrous shock of feeling had come like the
earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas's prison;
it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosed its bands- it
had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang trembling,
listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my startled ear,
and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which neither feared
nor shook but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it
had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous body.

'Ere many days,' I said, as I terminated my musings, 'I will know
something of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me. Letters
have proved of no avail- personal inquiry shall replace them.'

At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a
journey, and should be absent at least four days.

'Alone, Jane?' they asked.

'Yes; it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had for
some time been uneasy.'

They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they
had believed me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed, I
had often said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, they
abstained from comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was
well enough to travel. I looked very pale, she observed. I replied,
that nothing ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped soon to
alleviate.

It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled
with no inquiries- no surmises. Having once explained to them that I
could not now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely
acquiesced in the silence with which I pursued them, according to me
the privilege of free action I should under similar circumstances have
accorded them.

I left Moor House at three o'clock P.M., and soon after four I
stood at the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival
of the coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amidst the
silence of those solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it
approach from a great distance. It was the same vehicle whence, a year
ago, I had alighted one summer evening on this very spot- how
desolate, and hopeless, and objectless! It stopped as I beckoned. I
entered- not now obliged to part with my whole fortune as the price of
its accommodation. Once more on the road to Thornfield, I felt like
the messenger-pigeon flying home.

It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from
Whitcross on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding Thursday
morning the coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn,
situated in the midst of scenery whose green hedges and large fields
and low pastoral hills (how mild of feature and verdant of hue
compared with the stern North-Midland moors of Morton!) met my eye
like the lineaments of a once familiar face. Yes, I knew the character
of this landscape: I was sure we were near my bourne.

'How far is Thornfield Hall from here?' I asked of the ostler.

'Just two miles, ma'am, across the fields.'

'My journey is closed,' I thought to myself. I got out of the
coach, gave a box I had into the ostler's charge, to be kept till I
called for it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going:
the brightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I read in gilt
letters, 'The Rochester Arms.' My heart leapt up: I was already on
my master's very lands. It fell again: the thought struck it:-

'Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught
you know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you
hasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife: and you have
nothing to do with him: you dare not speak to him or seek his
presence. You have lost your labour- you had better go no farther,'
urged the monitor. 'Ask information of the people at the inn; they can
give you all you seek: they can solve your doubts at once. Go up to
that man, and inquire if Mr. Rochester be at home.'

The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force self to
act on it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To
prolong doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see the
Hall under the ray of her star. There was the stile before me- the
very fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted
with a revengeful fury tracking and scourging me, on the morning I
fled from Thornfield: ere I well knew what course I had resolved to
take, I was in the midst of them. How fast I walked! How I ran
sometimes? How I looked forward to catch the first view of the
well-known woods! With what feelings I welcomed single trees I knew,
and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill between them!

At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing
broke the morning stillness. Strange delight inspired me: on I
hastened. Another field crossed- a lane threaded- and there were the
courtyard walls- the back offices: the house itself, the rookery still
hid. 'My first view of it shall be in front,' I determined, 'where its
bold battlements will strike the eye nobly at once, and where I can
single out my master's very window: perhaps he will be standing at it-
he rises early: perhaps he is now walking in the orchard, or on the
pavement in front. Could I but see him!- but a moment? Surely, in that
case, I should not be so mad as to run to him? I cannot tell- I am not
certain. And if I did- what then? God bless him! What then? Who
would be hurt by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me?
I rave: perhaps at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the
Pyrenees, or on the tideless sea of the south.'

I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard- turned its
angle: there was a gate just there, opening into the meadow, between
two stone pillars crowned by stone balls. From behind one pillar I
could peep round quietly at the full front of the mansion. I
advanced my head with precaution, desirous to ascertain if any bedroom
window-blinds were yet drawn up: battlements, windows, long front- all
from this sheltered station were at my command.

The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this
survey. I wonder what they thought. They must have considered I was
very careful and timid at first, and that gradually I grew very bold
and reckless. A peep, and then a long stare; and then a departure from
my niche and a straying out into the meadow; and a sudden stop full in
front of the great mansion, and a protracted, hardy gaze towards it.
'What affectation of diffidence was this at first?' they might have
demanded; 'what stupid regardlessness now?'

Hear an illustration, reader.

A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to
catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals
softly over the grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses- fancying
she has stirred: he withdraws; not for worlds would he be seen. All is
still: he again advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on
her features: he lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the
vision of beauty- warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How hurried
was their first glance! But how they fix! How he starts! How he
suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not, a
moment since, touch with his finger! How he calls aloud a name, and
drops his burden, and gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries,
and gazes, because he no longer fears to waken by any sound he can
utter- by any movement he can make. He thought his love slept sweetly:
he finds she is stone dead.

I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a
blackened ruin.

No need to cower behind a gate-post, indeed!- to peep up at chamber
lattices, fearing life was astir behind them! No need to listen for
doors opening- to fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel-walk!
The lawn, the grounds were trodden and waste: the portal yawned
void. The front was, as I had once seen it in a dream, but a
shell-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking, perforated with
paneless windows: no roof, no battlements, no chimneys- all had
crashed in.

And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of a
lonesome wild. No wonder that letters addressed to people here had
never received an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault in a
church aisle. The grim blackness of the stones told by what fate the
Hall had fallen- by conflagration: but how kindled? What story
belonged to this disaster? What loss, besides mortar and marble and
woodwork had followed upon it? Had life been wrecked as well as
property? If so, whose? Dreadful question: there was no one here to
answer it- not even dumb sign, mute token.

In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated
interior, I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late
occurrence. Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through that void
arch, winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements; for, amidst
the drenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation:
grass and weed grew here and there between the stones and fallen
rafters. And oh! where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck?
In what land? Under what auspices? My eye involuntarily wandered to
the grey church tower near the gates, and I asked, 'Is he with Damer
de Rochester, sharing the shelter of his narrow marble house?'

Some answer must be had to these questions. I could find it nowhere
but at the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned. The host himself
brought my breakfast into the parlour. I requested him to shut the
door and sit down: I had some questions to ask him. But when he
complied, I scarcely knew how to begin; such horror had I of the
possible answers. And yet the spectacle of desolation I had just
left prepared me in a measure for a tale of misery. The host was a
respectable-looking, middle-aged man.

'You know Thornfield Hall, of course?' I managed to say at last.

'Yes, ma'am; I lived there once.'

'Did you?' Not in my time, I thought: you are a stranger to me.

'I was the late Mr. Rochester's butler,' he added.

The late! I seem to have received, with full force, the blow I
had been trying to evade.

'The late!' I gasped. 'Is he dead?'

'I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward's father,' he
explained. I breathed again: my blood resumed its flow. Fully
assured by these words that Mr. Edward- my Mr. Rochester (God bless
him, wherever he was!)- was at least alive: was, in short, 'the
present gentleman.' Gladdening words! It seemed I could hear all
that was to come- whatever the disclosures might be- with
comparative tranquillity. Since he was not in the grave, I could bear,
I thought, to learn that he was at the Antipodes.

'Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?' I asked, knowing,
of course, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring the
direct question as to where he really was.

'No, ma'am- oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you are a
stranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happened last
autumn,- Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about
harvest-time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity of
valuable property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture could be
saved. The fire broke out at dead of night, and before the engines
arrived from Millcote, the building was one mass of flame. It was a
terrible spectacle: I witnessed it myself.'

'At dead of night!' I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour of
fatality at Thornfield. 'Was it known how it originated?' I demanded.

'They guessed, ma'am: they guessed. Indeed, I should say it was
ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware,' he
continued, edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking
low, 'that there was a lady- a- a lunatic, kept in the house?'

'I have heard something of it.'

'She was kept in very close confinement, ma'am; people even for
some years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one saw
her: they only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall;
and who or what she was it was difficult to conjecture. They said
Mr. Edward had brought her from abroad, and some believed she had been
his mistress. But a queer thing happened a year since- a very queer
thing.'

I feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him to
the main fact.

'And this lady?'

'This lady, ma'am,' he answered, 'turned out to be Mr.
Rochester's wife! The discovery was brought about in the strangest
way. There was a young lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr.
Rochester fell in-'

'But the fire,' I suggested.

'I'm coming to that, ma'am- that Mr. Edward fell in love with.
The servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was:
he was after her continually. They used to watch him- servants will,
you know, ma'am- and he set store on her past everything: for all,
nobody but him thought her so very handsome. She was a little small
thing, they say, almost like a child. I never saw her myself; but I've
heard Leah, the housemaid, tell of her. Leah liked her well enough.
Mr. Rochester was about forty, and this governess not twenty; and
you see, when gentlemen of his age fall in love with girls, they are
often like as if they were bewitched. Well, he would marry her.'

'You shall tell me this part of the story another time,' I said;
'but now I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about
the fire. Was it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had
any hand in it?'

'You've hit it, ma'am: it's quite certain that it was her, and
nobody but her, that set it going. She had a woman to take care of her
called Mrs. Poole- an able woman in her line, and very trustworthy,
but for one fault- a fault common to a deal of them nurses and
matrons- she kept a private bottle of gin by her, and now and then
took a drop over-much. It is excusable, for she had a hard life of it:
but still it was dangerous; for when Mrs. Poole was fast asleep
after the gin and water, the mad lady, who was as cunning as a
witch, would take the keys out of her pocket, let herself out of her
chamber, and go roaming about the house, doing any wild mischief
that came into her head. They say she had nearly burnt her husband
in his bed once: but I don't know about that. However, on this
night, she set fire first to the hangings of the room next her own,
and then she got down to a lower Storey, and made her way to the
chamber that had been the governess's- (she was like as if she knew
somehow how matters had gone on, and had a spite at her)- and she
kindled the bed there; but there was nobody sleeping in it,
fortunately. The governess had run away two months before; and for all
Mr. Rochester sought her as if she had been the most precious thing he
had in the world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew
savage- quite savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man,
but he got dangerous after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He
sent Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance;
but he did it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life:
and she deserved it- she was a very good woman. Miss Adele, a ward
he had, was put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the
gentry, and shut himself up like a hermit at the Hall.'

'What! did he not leave England?'

'Leave England? Bless you, no! He would not cross the door-stones
of the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost
about the grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses-
which it is my opinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keener
gentleman than he was before that midge of a governess crossed him,
you never saw, ma'am. He was not a man given to wine, or cards, or
racing, as some are, and he was not so very handsome; but he had a
courage and a will of his own, if ever man had. I knew him from a boy,
you see: and for my part, I have often wished that Miss Eyre had
been sunk in the sea before she came to Thornfield Hall.'

'Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?'

'Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was
burning above and below, and got the servants out of their beds and
helped them down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out of her
cell. And then they called out to him that she was on the roof,
where she was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and
shouting out till they could hear her a mile off: I saw her and
heard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman, and had long black
hair: we could see it streaming against the flames as she stood. I
witnessed, and several more witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend through
the skylight on to the roof; we heard him call "Bertha!" We saw him
approach her; and then, ma'am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the
next minute she lay smashed on the pavement.'

'Dead?'

'Dead! Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were
scattered.'

'Good God!'

'You may well say so, ma'am: it was frightful!'

He shuddered.

'And afterwards?' I urged.

'Well, ma'am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground: there
are only some bits of walls standing now.'

'Were any other lives lost?'

'No- perhaps it would have been better if there had.'

'What do you mean?'

'Poor Mr. Edward!' he ejaculated, 'I little thought ever to have
seen it? Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his
first marriage secret, and wanting to take another wife while he had
one living: but I pity him, for my part.'

'You said he was alive?' I exclaimed.

'Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better be dead.'

'Why? How?' My blood was again running cold. 'Where is he?' I
demanded. 'Is he in England?'

'Ay- ay- he's in England; he can't get out of England, I fancy-
he's a fixture now.'

What agony was this! And the man seemed resolved to protract it.

'He is stone-blind,' he said at last. 'Yes, he is stone-blind, is
Mr. Edward.'

I had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned
strength to ask what had caused this calamity.

'It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a
way, ma'am: he wouldn't leave the house till every one else was out
before him. As he came down the great staircase at last, after Mrs.
Rochester had flung herself from the battlements, there was a great
crash- all fell. He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, but
sadly hurt: a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him
partly; but one eye was knocked out, and one hand so crushed that
Mr. Carter, the surgeon, had to amputate it directly. The other eye
inflamed: he lost the sight of that also. He is now helpless,
indeed- blind and a cripple.'

'Where is he? Where does he now live?'

'At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles
off: quite a desolate spot.'

'Who is with him?'

'Old John and his wife: he would have none else. He is quite broken
down, they say.'

'Have you any sort of conveyance?'

'We have a chaise, ma'am, a very handsome chaise.'

'Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive me
to Ferndean before dark this day, I'll pay both you and him twice
the hire you usually demand.'

                     CHAPTER XXXVII


THE manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable
antiquity, moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep
buried in a wood. I had heard of it before. Mr. Rochester often
spoke of it, and sometimes went there. His father had purchased the
estate for the sake of the game covers. He would have let the house,
but could find no tenant, in consequence of its ineligible and
insalubrious site. Ferndean then remained uninhabited and unfurnished,
with the exception of some two or three rooms fitted up for the
accommodation of the squire when he went there in the season to shoot.

To this house I came just ere dark on an evening marked by the
characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small penetrating
rain. The last mile I performed on foot, having dismissed the chaise
and driver with the double remuneration I had promised. Even when
within a very short distance of the manor-house, you could see nothing
of it, so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood about
it. Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where to enter, and
passing through them, I found myself at once in the twilight of
close-ranked trees. There was a grass-grown track descending the
forest aisle between hoar and knotty shafts and under branched arches.
I followed it, expecting soon to reach the dwelling; but it
stretched on and on, it wound far and farther: no sign of habitation
or grounds was visible.

I thought I had taken a wrong direction and lost my way. The
darkness of natural as well as of sylvan dusk gathered over me. I
looked round in search of another road. There was none: all was
interwoven stem, columnar trunk, dense summer foliage- no opening
anywhere.

I proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little;
presently I beheld a railing, then the house- scarce, by this dim
light, distinguishable from the trees, so dank and green were its
decaying walls. Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood
amidst a space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a
semicircle. There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad
gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame
of the forest. The house presented two pointed gables in its front;
the windows were latticed and narrow: the front door was narrow too,
one step led up to it. The whole looked, as the host of the
Rochester Arms had said, 'quite a desolate spot.' It was as still as a
church on a week-day: the pattering rain on the forest leaves was
the only sound audible in its vicinage.

'Can there be life here?' I asked.

Yes, life of some kind there was; for I heard a movement- that
narrow front-door was unclosing, and some shape was about to issue
from the grange.

It opened slowly: a figure came out into the twilight and stood
on the step; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to
feel whether it rained. Dusk as it was, I had recognised him- it was
my master, Edward Fairfax Rochester, and no other.

I stayed my step, almost my breath, and stood to watch him- to
examine him, myself unseen, and alas! to him invisible. It was a
sudden meeting, and one in which rapture was kept well in check by
pain. I had no difficulty in restraining my voice from exclamation, my
step from hasty advance.

His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever: his
port was still erect, his hair was still raven black; nor were his
features altered or sunk: not in one year's space, by any sorrow,
could his athletic strength be quelled or his vigorous prime blighted.
But in his countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and
brooding- that reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast
or bird, dangerous to approach in his sullen woe. The caged eagle,
whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished, might look as
looked that sightless Samson.

And, reader, do you think I feared him in his blind ferocity?- if
you do, you little know me. A soft hope blent with my sorrow that soon
I should dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and on those lips
so sternly sealed beneath it: but not yet. I would not accost him yet.

He descended the one step, and advanced slowly and gropingly
towards the grass-plat. Where was his daring stride now? Then he
paused, as if he knew not which way to turn. He lifted his hand and
opened his eyelids; gazed blank, and with a straining effort, on the
sky, and toward the amphitheatre of trees: one saw that all to him was
void darkness. He stretched his right hand (the left arm, the
mutilated one, he kept hidden in his bosom); he seemed to wish by
touch to gain an idea of what lay around him: he met but vacancy
still; for the trees were some yards off where he stood. He
relinquished the endeavour, folded his arms, and stood quiet and
mute in the rain, now falling fast on his uncovered head. At this
moment John approached him from some quarter.

'Will you take my arm, sir?' he said; 'there is a heavy shower
coming on: had you not better go in?'

'Let me alone,' was the answer.

John withdrew without having observed me. Mr. Rochester now tried
to walk about: vainly,- all was too uncertain. He groped his way
back to the house, and, re-entering it, closed the door.

I now drew near and knocked: John's wife opened for me. 'Mary,' I
said, 'how are you?'

She started as if she had seen a ghost: I calmed her. To her
hurried 'Is it really you, miss, come at this late hour to this lonely
place?' I answered by taking her hand; and then I followed her into
the kitchen, where John now sat by a good fire. I explained to them,
in a few words, that I had heard all which had happened since I left
Thornfield, and that I was come to see Mr. Rochester. I asked John
to go down to the turnpike-house, where I had dismissed the chaise,
and bring my trunk, which I had left there: and then, while I
removed my bonnet and shawl, I questioned Mary as to whether I could
be accommodated at the Manor House for the night; and finding that
arrangements to that effect, though difficult, would not be
impossible, I informed her I should stay. just at this moment the
parlour-bell rang.

'When you go in,' said I, 'tell your master that a person wishes to
speak to him, but do not give my name.'

'I don't think he will see you,' she answered; 'he refuses
everybody.'

When she returned, I inquired what he had said.

'You are to send in your name and your business,' she replied.
She then proceeded to fill a glass with water, and place it on a tray,
together with candles.

'Is that what he rang for?' I asked.

'Yes: he always has candles brought in at dark, though he is
blind.'

'Give the tray to me; I will carry it in.'

I took it from her hand: she pointed me out the parlour door. The
tray shook as I held it; the water spilt from the glass; my heart
struck my ribs loud and fast. Mary opened the door for me, and shut it
behind me.

This parlour looked gloomy: a neglected handful of fire burnt low
in the grate; and, leaning over it, with his head supported against
the high, old-fashioned mantelpiece, appeared the blind tenant of
the room. His old dog, Pilot, lay on one side, removed out of the way,
and coiled up as if afraid of being inadvertently trodden upon.
Pilot pricked up his ears when I came in: then he jumped up with a
yelp and a whine, and bounded towards me: he almost knocked the tray
from my hands. I set it on the table; then patted him, and said
softly, 'Lie down!' Mr. Rochester turned mechanically to see what
the commotion was: but as he saw nothing, he returned and sighed.

'Give me the water, Mary,' he said.

I approached him with the now only half-filled glass; Pilot
followed me, still excited.

'What is the matter?' he inquired.

'Down, Pilot!' I again said. He checked the water on its way to his
lips, and seemed to listen: he drank, and put the glass down. 'This is
you, Mary, is it not?'

'Mary is in the kitchen,' I answered.

He put out his hand with a quick gesture, but not seeing where I
stood, he did not touch me. 'Who is this? Who is this?' he demanded,
trying, as it seemed, to see with those sightless eyes- unavailing and
distressing attempt! 'Answer me- speak again!' he ordered, imperiously
and aloud.

'Will you have a little more water, sir? I spilt half of what was
in the glass,' I said.

'Who is it? What is it? Who speaks?'

'Pilot knows me, and John and Mary know I am here. I came only this
evening,' I answered.

'Great God!- what delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has
seized me?'

'No delusion- no madness: your mind, sir, is too strong for
delusion, your health too sound for frenzy.'

'And where is the speaker? Is it only a voice? Oh! I cannot see,
but I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst. Whatever-
whoever you are- be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live!'

He groped; I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both
mine.

'Her very fingers!' he cried; 'her small, slight fingers! If so
there must be more of her.'

The muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my
shoulder- neck- waist- I was entwined and gathered to him.

'Is it Jane? What is it? This is her shape- this is her size-'

'And this her voice,' I added. 'She is all here: her heart, too.
God bless you, sir! I am glad to be so near you again.'

'Jane Eyre!- Jane Eyre,' was all he said.

'My dear master,' I answered, 'I am Jane Eyre: I have found you
out- I am come back to you.'

'In truth?- in the flesh? My living Jane?'

'You touch me, sir,- you hold me, and fast enough: I am not cold
like a corpse, nor vacant like air, am I?'

'My living darling! These are certainly her limbs, and these her
features; but I cannot be so blest, after all my misery. It is a
dream; such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once
more to my heart, as I do now; and kissed her, as thus- and felt
that she loved me, and trusted that she would not leave me.'

'Which I never will, sir, from this day.'

'Never will, says the vision? But I always woke and found it an
empty mockery; and I was desolate and abandoned- my life dark, lonely,
hopeless- my soul athirst and forbidden to drink- my heart famished
and never to be fed. Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now,
you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but
kiss me before you go- embrace me, Jane.'

'There, sir- and there!'

I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes- I
swept his hair from his brow, and kissed that too. He suddenly
seemed to arouse himself: the conviction of the reality of all this
seized him.

'It is you- is it, Jane? You are come back to me then?'

'I am.'

'And you do not lie dead in some ditch under some stream? And you
are not a pining outcast amongst strangers?'

'No, sir! I am an independent woman now.'

'Independent! What do you mean, Jane?'

'My uncle in Madeira is dead, and he left me five thousand pounds.'

'Ah! this is practical- this is real!' he cried: 'I should never
dream that. Besides, there is that peculiar voice of hers, so
animating and piquant, as well as soft: it cheers my withered heart;
it puts life into it.- What, Janet! Are you an independent woman? A
rich woman?'

'Quite rich, sir. If you won't let me live with you, I can build
a house of my own close up to your door, and you may come and sit in
my parlour when you want company of an evening.'

'But as you are rich, Jane, you have now, no doubt, friends who
will look after you, and not suffer you to devote yourself to a
blind lameter like me?'

'I told you I am independent, sir, as well as rich: I am my own
mistress.'

'And you will stay with me?'

'Certainly- unless you object. I will be your neighbour, your
nurse, your housekeeper. I find you lonely: I will be your
companion- to read to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to
wait on you, to be eyes and hands to you. Cease to look so melancholy,
my dear master; you shall not be left desolate, so long as I live.'

He replied not: he seemed serious- abstracted; he sighed; he
half-opened his lips as if to speak: he closed them again. I felt a
little embarrassed. Perhaps I had too rashly overleaped
conventionalities; and he, like St. John, saw impropriety in my
inconsiderateness. I had indeed made my proposal from the idea that he
wished and would ask me to be his wife: an expectation, not the less
certain because unexpressed, had buoyed me up, that he would claim
me at once as his own. But no hint to that effect escaping him and his
countenance becoming more overcast, I suddenly remembered that I might
have been all wrong, and was perhaps playing the fool unwittingly; and
I began gently to withdraw myself from his arms- but he eagerly
snatched me closer.

'No- no- Jane; you must not go. No- I have touched you, heard
you, felt the comfort of your presence- the sweetness of your
consolation: I cannot give up these joys. I have little left in
myself- I must have you. The world may laugh- may call me absurd,
selfish- but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be
satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.'

'Well, sir, I will stay with you: I have said so.'

'Yes- but you understand one thing by staying with me; and I
understand another. You, perhaps, could make up your mind to be
about my hand and chair- to wait on me as a kind little nurse (for you
have an affectionate heart and a generous spirit, which prompt you
to make sacrifices for those you pity), and that ought to suffice
for me no doubt. I suppose I should now entertain none but fatherly
feelings for you: do you think so? Come- tell me.'

'I will think what you like, sir: I am content to be only your
nurse, if you think it better.'

'But you cannot always be my nurse, Janet: you are young- you
must marry one day.'

'I don't care about being married.'

'You should care, Janet: if I were what I once was, I would try
to make you care- but- a sightless block!'

He relapsed again into gloom. I, on the contrary, became more
cheerful, and took fresh courage: these last words gave me an
insight as to where the difficulty lay; and as it was no difficulty
with me, I felt quite relieved from my previous embarrassment. I
resumed a livelier vein of conversation.

'It is time some one undertook to rehumanise you,' said I,
parting his thick and long uncut locks; 'for I see you are being
metamorphosed into a lion, or something of that sort. You have a "faux
air" of Nebuchadnezzar in the fields about you, that is certain:
your hair reminds me of eagles' feathers; whether your nails are grown
like birds' claws or not, I have not yet noticed.'

'On this arm, I have neither hand nor nails,' he said, drawing
the mutilated limb from his breast, and showing it to me. 'It is a
mere stump- a ghastly sight! Don't you think so, Jane?'

'It is a pity to see it; and a pity to see your eyes- and the
scar of fire on your forehead: and the worst of it is, one is in
danger of loving you too well for all this; and making too much of
you.'

'I thought you would be revolted, Jane, when you saw my arm, and my
cicatrised visage.'

'Did you? Don't tell me so- lest I should say something disparaging
to your judgment. Now, let me leave you an instant, to make a better
fire, and have the hearth swept up. Can you tell when there is a
good fire?'

'Yes; with the right eye I see a glow- a ruddy haze.'

'And you see the candles?'

'Very dimly- each is a luminous cloud.'

'Can you see me?'

'No, my fairy: but I am only too thankful to hear and feel you.'

'When do you take supper?'

'I never take supper.'

'But you shall have some to-night. I am hungry: so are you, I
daresay, only you forget.'

Summoning Mary, I soon had the room in more cheerful order: I
prepared him, likewise, a comfortable repast. My spirits were excited,
and with pleasure and ease I talked to him during supper, and for a
long time after. There was no harassing restraint, no repressing of
glee and vivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease,
because I knew I suited him; all I said or did seemed either to
console or revive him. Delightful consciousness! It brought to life
and light my whole nature: in his presence I thoroughly lived; and
he lived in mine. Blind as he was, smiles played over his face, joy
dawned on his forehead: his lineaments softened and warmed.

After supper, he began to ask me many questions, of where I had
been, what I had been doing, how I had found him out; but I gave him
only very partial replies: it was too late to enter into particulars
that night. Besides, I wished to touch no deep-thrilling chord- to
open no fresh well of emotion in his heart: my sole present aim was to
cheer him. Cheered, as I have said, he was: and yet but by fits. If
a moment's silence broke the conversation, he would turn restless,
touch me, then say, 'Jane.'

'You are altogether a human being, Janet? You are certain of that?'

'I conscientiously believe so, Mr. Rochester.'

'Yet how, on this dark and doleful evening, could you so suddenly
rise on my lone hearth? I stretched my hand to take a glass of water
from a hireling, and it was given me by you: I asked a question,
expecting John's wife to answer me, and your voice spoke at my ear.'

'Because I had come in, in Mary's stead, with the tray.'

'And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with
you. Who can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged on
for months past? Doing nothing, expecting nothing; merging night in
day; feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go out,
of hunger when I forgot to eat: and then a ceaseless sorrow, and, at
times, a very delirium of desire to behold my Jane again. Yes: for her
restoration I longed, far more than for that of my lost sight. How can
it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart
as suddenly as she came? To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more.'

A commonplace, practical reply, out of the train of his own
disturbed ideas, was, I was sure, the best and most reassuring for him
in this frame of mind. I passed my finger over his eyebrows, and
remarked that they were scorched, and that I would apply something
which would make them grow as broad and black as ever.

'Where is the use of doing me good in any way, beneficent spirit,
when, at some fatal moment, you will again desert me- passing like a
shadow, whither and how to me unknown, and for me remaining afterwards
undiscoverable?'

'Have you a pocket-comb about you, sir?'

'What for, Jane?'

'Just to comb out this shaggy black mane. I find you rather
alarming, when I examine you close at hand: you talk of my being a
fairy, but I am sure, you are more like a brownie.'

'Am I hideous, Jane?'

'Very, sir: you always were, you know.'

'Humph! The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever
you have sojourned.'

'Yet I have been with good people; far better than you: a hundred
times better people; possessed of ideas and views you never
entertained in your life: quite more refined and exalted.'

'Who the deuce have you been with?'

'If you twist in that way you will make me pull the hair out of
your head; and then I think you will cease to entertain doubts of my
substantiality.'

'Who have you been with, Jane?'

'You shall not get it out of me to-night, sir; you must wait till
to-morrow; to leave my tale half told, will, you know, be a sort of
security that I shall appear at your breakfast table to finish it.
By the bye, I must mind not to rise on your hearth with only a glass
of water then: I must bring an egg at the least, to say nothing of
fried ham.'

'You mocking changeling- fairy-born and human-bred! You make me
feel as I have not felt these twelve months. If Saul could have had
you for his David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without
the aid of the harp.'

'There, sir, you are redd up and made decent. Now I'll leave you: I
have been travelling these last three days, and I believe I am
tired. Good night.'

'Just one word, Jane: were there only ladies in the house where you
have been?'

I laughed and made my escape, still laughing as I ran upstairs.
'A good idea!' I thought with glee. 'I see I have the means of
fretting him out of his melancholy for some time to come.'

Very early the next morning I heard him up and astir, wandering
from one room to another. As soon as Mary came down I heard the
question: 'Is Miss Eyre here?' Then: 'Which room did you put her into?
Was it dry? Is she up? Go and ask if she wants anything; and when
she will come down.'

I came down as soon as I thought there was a prospect of breakfast.
Entering the room very softly, I had a view of him before he
discovered my presence. It was mournful, indeed, to witness the
subjugation of that vigorous spirit to a corporeal infirmity. He sat
in his chair- still, but not at rest: expectant evidently; the lines
of now habitual sadness marking his strong features. His countenance
reminded one of a lamp quenched, waiting to be re-lit- and alas! it
was not himself that could now kindle the lustre of animated
expression: he was dependent on another for that office! I had meant
to be gay and careless, but the powerlessness of the strong man
touched my heart to the quick: still I accosted him with what vivacity
I could.

'It is a bright, sunny morning, sir,' I said. 'The rain is over and
gone, and there is a tender shining after it: you shall have a walk
soon.'

I had wakened the glow: his features beamed.

'Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark! Come to me. You are not
gone: not vanished? I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high
over the wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the
rising sun had rays. All the melody on earth is concentrated in my
Jane's tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent
one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence.'

The water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence;
just as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to
entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor. But I would not be
lachrymose: I dashed off the salt drops, and busied myself with
preparing breakfast.

Most of the morning was spent in the open air. I led him out of the
wet and wild wood into some cheerful fields: I described to him how
brilliantly green they were; how the flowers and hedges looked
refreshed; how sparklingly blue was the sky. I sought a seat for him
in a hidden and lovely spot, a dry stump of a tree; nor did I refuse
to let him, when seated, place me on his knee. Why should I, when both
he and I were happier near than apart? Pilot lay beside us: all was
quiet. He broke out suddenly while clasping me in his arms-

'Cruel, cruel deserter! Oh, Jane, what did I feel when I discovered
you had fled from Thornfield, and when I could nowhere find you;
and, after examining your apartment, ascertained that you had taken no
money, nor anything which could serve as an equivalent! A pearl
necklace I had given you lay untouched in its little casket; your
trunks were left corded and locked as they had been prepared for the
bridal tour. What could my darling do, I asked, left destitute and
penniless? And what did she do? Let me hear now.'

Thus urged, I began the narrative of my experience for the last
year. I softened considerably what related to the three days of
wandering and starvation, because to have told him all would have been
to inflict unnecessary pain: the little I did say lacerated his
faithful heart deeper than I wished.

I should not have left him thus, he said, without any means of
making my way: I should have told him my intention. I should have
confided in him: he would never have forced me to be his mistress.
Violent as he had seemed in his despair, he, in truth, loved me far
too well and too tenderly to constitute himself my tyrant: he would
have given me half his fortune, without demanding so much as a kiss in
return, rather than I should have flung myself friendless on the
wide world. I had endured, he was certain, more than I had confessed
to him.

'Well, whatever my sufferings had been, they were very short,' I
answered: and then I proceeded to tell him how I had been received
at Moor House; how I had obtained the office of schoolmistress, etc.
The accession of fortune, the discovery of my relations, followed in
due order. Of course, St. John Rivers' name came in frequently in
the progress of my tale. When I had done, that name was immediately
taken up.

'This St. John, then, is your cousin?'

'Yes.'

'You have spoken of him often: do you like him?'

'He was a very good man, sir; I could not help liking him.'

'A good man. Does that mean a respectable well-conducted man of
fifty? Or what does it mean?'

'St. John was only twenty-nine, sir.'

'"Jeune encore," as the French say. Is he a person of low
stature, phlegmatic, and plain? A person whose goodness consists
rather in his guiltlessness of vice, than in his prowess in virtue?'

'He is untiringly active. Great and exalted deeds are what he lives
to perform.'

'But his brain? That is probably rather soft? He means well: but
you shrug your shoulders to hear him talk?'

'He talks little, sir: what he does say is ever to the point. His
brain is first-rate, I should think not impressible, but vigorous.'

'Is he an able man, then?'

'Truly able.'

'A thoroughly educated man?'

'St. John is an accomplished and profound scholar.'

'His manners, I think, you said are not to your taste?- priggish
and parsonic?'

'I never mentioned his manners; but, unless I had a very bad taste,
they must suit it; they are polished, calm, and gentlemanlike.'

'His appearance,- I forget what description you gave of his
appearance;- a sort of raw curate, half strangled with his white
neckcloth, and stilted up on his thick-soled high-lows, eh?'

'St. John dresses well. He is a handsome man: tall, fair, with blue
eyes, and a Grecian profile.'

(Aside.) 'Damn him!'- (To me.) 'Did you like him, Jane?'

'Yes, Mr. Rochester, I liked him: but you asked me that before.'

I perceived, of course, the drift of my interlocutor. Jealousy
had got hold of him: she stung him; but the sting was salutary: it
gave him respite from the gnawing fang of melancholy. I would not,
therefore, immediately charm the snake.

'Perhaps you would rather not sit any longer on my knee, Miss
Eyre?' was the next somewhat unexpected observation.

'Why not, Mr. Rochester?'

'The picture you have just drawn is suggestive of a rather too
overwhelming contrast. Your words have delineated very prettily a
graceful Apollo: he is present to your imagination,- tall, fair,
blue-eyed, and with a Grecian profile. Your eyes dwell on a Vulcan,- a
real blacksmith, brown, broad-shouldered: and blind and lame into
the bargain.'

'I never thought of it, before; but you certainly are rather like
Vulcan, sir.'

Well, you can leave me, ma'am: but before you go' (and he
retained me by a firmer grasp than ever), 'you will be pleased just to
answer me a question or two.' He paused.

'What questions, Mr. Rochester?'

Then followed this cross-examination.

'St. John made you schoolmistress of Morton before he knew you were
his cousin?'

'Yes.'

'You would often see him? He would visit the school sometimes?'

'Daily.'

'He would approve of your plans, Jane? I know they would be clever,
for you are a talented creature!'

'He approved of them- yes.'

'He would discover many things in you he could not have expected to
find? Some of your accomplishments are not ordinary.'

'I don't know about that.'

'You had a little cottage near the school, you say: did he ever
come there to see you?'

'Now and then.'

'Of an evening?'

'Once or twice.'

A pause.

'How long did you reside with him and his sisters after the
cousinship was discovered?'

'Five months.'

'Did Rivers spend much time with the ladies of his family?'

'Yes; the back parlour was both his study and ours: he sat near the
window, and we by the table.'

'Did he study much?'

'A good deal.'

'What?'

'Hindostanee.'

'And what did you do meantime?'

'I learnt German, at first.'

'Did he teach you?'

'He did not understand German.'

'Did he teach you nothing?'

'A little Hindostanee.'

'Rivers taught you Hindostanee?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And his sisters also?'

'No.'

'Only you?'

'Only me.'

'Did you ask to learn?'

'No.'

'He wished to teach you?'

'Yes.'

A second pause.

'Why did he wish it? Of what use could Hindostanee be to you?'

'He intended me to go with him to India.'

'Ah! here I reach the root of the matter. He wanted you to marry
him?'

'He asked me to marry him.'

'That is a fiction- an impudent invention to vex me.'

'I beg your pardon, it is the literal truth: he asked me more
than once, and was as stiff about urging his point as ever you could
be.'

'Miss Eyre, I repeat it, you can leave me. How often am I to say
the same thing? Why do you remain pertinaciously perched on my knee,
when I have given you notice to quit?'

'Because I am comfortable there.'

'No, Jane, you are not comfortable there, because your heart is not
with me: it is with this cousin- this St. John. Oh, till this
moment, I thought my little Jane was all mine! I had a belief she
loved me even when she left me: that was an atom of sweet in much
bitter. Long as we have been parted, hot tears as I have wept over our
separation, I never thought that while I was mourning her, she was
loving another! But it is useless grieving. Jane, leave me: go and
marry Rivers.'

'Shake me off, then, sir,- push me away, for I'll not leave you
of my own accord.'

'Jane, I ever like your tone of voice: it still renews hope, it
sounds so truthful. When I hear it, it carries me back a year. I
forget that you have formed a new tie. But I am not a fool-'

'Where must I go, sir?'

'Your own way- with the husband you have chosen.'

'Who is that?'

'You know- this St. John Rivers.'

'He is not my husband, nor ever will be. He does not love me: I
do not love him. He loves (as he can love, and that is not as you
love) a beautiful young lady called Rosamond. He wanted to marry me
only because he thought I should make a suitable missionary's wife,
which she would not have done. He is good and great, but severe;
and, for me, cold as an iceberg. He is not like you, sir: I am not
happy at his side, nor near him, nor with him. He has no indulgence
for me- no fondness. He sees nothing attractive in me; not even youth-
only a few useful mental points- Then I must leave you, sir, to go
to him?'

I shuddered involuntarily, and clung instinctively closer to my
blind but beloved master. He smiled.

'What, Jane! Is this true? Is such really the state of matters
between you and Rivers?'

'Absolutely, sir! Oh, you need not be jealous! I wanted to tease
you a little to make you less sad: I thought anger would be better
than grief. But if you wish me to love you, could you but see how much
I do love you, you would be proud and content. All my heart is
yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate
to exile the rest of me from your presence for ever.'

Again, as he kissed me, painful thoughts darkened his aspect.

'My seared vision! My crippled strength!' he murmured regretfully.

I caressed, in order to soothe him. I knew of what he was thinking,
and wanted to speak for him, but dared not. As he turned aside his
face a minute, I saw a tear slide from under the sealed eyelid, and
trickle down the manly cheek. My heart swelled.

'I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in
Thornfield orchard,' he remarked ere long. 'And what right would
that ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with
freshness?'

'You are no ruin, sir- no lightning-struck tree: you are green
and vigorous. Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask
them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and
as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because
your strength offers them so safe a prop.'

Again he smiled: I gave him comfort.

'You speak of friends, Jane?' he asked.

'Yes, of friends,' I answered rather hesitatingly: for I knew I
meant more than friends, but could not tell what other word to employ.
He helped me.

'Ah! Jane. But I want a wife.'

'Do you, sir?'

'Yes: is it news to you?'

'Of course: you said nothing about it before.'

'Is it unwelcome news?'

'That depends on circumstances, sir- on your choice.'

'Which you shall make for me, Jane. I will abide by your decision.'

'Choose then, sir- her who loves you best.'

'I will at least choose- her I love best. Jane, will you marry me?'

'Yes, sir.'

'A poor blind man, whom you will have to lead about by the hand?'

'Yes, sir.'

'A crippled man, twenty years older than you, whom you will have to
wait on?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Truly, Jane?'

'Most truly, sir.'

'Oh! my darling! God bless you and reward you!'

'Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life- if ever I
thought a good thought- if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless
prayer- if ever I wished a righteous wish,- I am rewarded now. To be
your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth.'

'Because you delight in sacrifice.'

'Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for
content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value- to
press my lips to what I love- to repose on what I trust: is that to
make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice.'

'And to bear with my infirmities, Jane: to overlook my
deficiencies.'

'Which are none, sir, to me. I love you better now, when I can
really be useful to you, than I did in your state of proud
independence, when you disdained every part but that of the giver
and protector.'

'Hitherto I have hated to be helped- to be led: henceforth, I
feel I shall hate it no more. I did not like to put my hand into a
hireling's, but it is pleasant to feel it circled by Jane's little
fingers. I preferred utter loneliness to the constant attendance of
servants; but Jane's soft ministry will be a perpetual joy. Jane suits
me: do I suit her?'

'To the finest fibre of my nature, sir.'

'The case being so, we have nothing in the world to wait for: we
must be married instantly.'

He looked and spoke with eagerness: his old impetuosity was rising.

'We must become one flesh without any delay, Jane: there is but the
licence to get- then we marry.'

'Mr. Rochester, I have just discovered the sun is far declined from
its meridian, and Pilot is actually gone home to his dinner. Let me
look at your watch.'

'Fasten it into your girdle, Janet, and keep it henceforward: I
have no use for it.'

'It is nearly four o'clock in the afternoon, sir. Don't you feel
hungry?'

'The third day from this must be our wedding-day, Jane. Never
mind fine clothes and jewels, now: all that is not worth a fillip.'

'The sun has dried up all the rain-drops, sir. The breeze is still:
it is quite hot.'

'Do you know, Jane, I have your little pearl necklace at this
moment fastened round my bronze scrag under my cravat? I have worn
it since the day I lost my only treasure, as a memento of her.'

'We will go home through the wood: that will be the shadiest way.'

He pursued his own thoughts without heeding me.

'Jane! you think me, I daresay, an irreligious dog: but my heart
swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He
sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges, but
far more wisely. I did wrong: I would have sullied my innocent flower-
breathed guilt on its purity: the Omnipotent snatched it from me. I,
in my stiff-necked rebellion, almost cursed the dispensation:
instead of bending to the decree, I defied it. Divine justice
pursued its course; disasters came thick on me: I was forced to pass
through the valley of the shadow of death. His chastisements are
mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever. You know I was
proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over
to foreign guidance, as a child does its weakness? Of late, Jane-
only- only of late- I began to see and acknowledge the hand of God
in my doom. I began to experience remorse, repentance; the wish for
reconcilement to my Maker. I began sometimes to pray: very brief
prayers they were, but very sincere.

'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. Late that
night- perhaps it might be between eleven and twelve o'clock- ere I
retired to my dreary rest, I supplicated God, that, if it seemed
good to Him, I might soon be taken from this life, and admitted to
that world to come, where there was still hope of rejoining Jane.

'I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open:
it soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no
stars, and only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a
moon. I longed for thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul
and flesh! I asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had
not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not
soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I endured,
I acknowledged- that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and
the alpha and omega of my heart's wishes broke involuntarily from my
lips in the words- "Jane! Jane! Jane!"'

'Did you speak these words aloud?'

'I did, Jane. If any listener had heard me, he would have thought
me mad: I pronounced them with such frantic energy.'

'And it was last Monday night, somewhere near midnight?'

'Yes; but the time is of no consequence: what followed is the
strange point. You will think me superstitious- some superstition I
have in my blood, and always had: nevertheless, this is true- true
at least it is that I heard what I now relate.

'As I exclaimed "Jane! Jane! Jane!" a voice- I cannot tell whence
the voice came, but I know whose voice it was- replied, "I am
coming: wait for me;" and a moment after, went whispering on the
wind the words- "Where are you?"

'I'll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words
opened to my mind: yet it is difficult to express what I want to
express. Ferndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, where
sound falls dull, and dies unreverberating. "Where are you?" seemed
spoken amongst mountains; for I heard a hill-sent echo repeat the
words. Cooler and fresher at the moment the gale seemed to visit my
brow: I could have deemed that in some wild, lone scene, I and Jane
were meeting. In spirit, I believe we must have met. You no doubt
were, at that hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane: perhaps your soul
wandered from its cell to comfort mine; for those were your accents-
as certain as I live- they were yours!'

Reader, it was on Monday night- near midnight- that I too had
received the mysterious summons: those were the very words by which
I replied to it. I listened to Mr. Rochester's narrative, but made
no disclosure in return. The coincidence struck me as too awful and
inexplicable to be communicated or discussed. If I told anything, my
tale would be such as must necessarily make a profound impression on
the mind of my hearer: and that mind, yet from its sufferings too
prone to gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural. I
kept these things then, and pondered them in my heart.

'You cannot now wonder,' continued my master, 'that when you rose
upon me so unexpectedly last night, I had difficulty in believing
you any other than a mere voice and vision, something that would
melt to silence and annihilation, as the midnight whisper and mountain
echo had melted before. Now, I thank God! I know it to be otherwise.
Yes, I thank God!'

He put me off his knee, rose, and reverently lifting his hat from
his brow, and bending his sightless eyes to the earth, he stood in
mute devotion. Only the last words of the worship were audible.

'I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, he has
remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength
to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto!'

Then he stretched his hand out to be led. I took that dear hand,
held it a moment to my lips, then let it pass round my shoulder: being
so much lower of stature than he, I served both for his prop and
guide. We entered the wood, and wended homeward.

                    CHAPTER XXXVIII


                      CONCLUSION


READER, I married him. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson
and clerk, were alone present. When we got back from church, I went
into the kitchen of the manor-house, where Mary was cooking the dinner
and John cleaning the knives, and I said-

'Mary, I have been married to Mr. Rochester this morning.' The
housekeeper and her husband were both of that decent phlegmatic
order of people, to whom one may at any time safely communicate a
remarkable piece of news without incurring the danger of having
one's ears pierced by some shrill ejaculation, and subsequently
stunned by a torrent of wordy wonderment. Mary did look up, and she
did stare at me: the ladle with which she was basting a pair of
chickens roasting at the fire, did for some three minutes hang
suspended in air; and for the same space of time John's knives also
had rest from the polishing process: but Mary, bending again over
the roast, said only-

'Have you, Miss? Well, for sure!'

A short time after she pursued- 'I seed you go out with the master,
but I didn't know you were gone to church to be wed;' and she basted
away. John, when I turned to him, was grinning from ear to ear.

'I telled Mary how it would be,' he said: 'I knew what Mr.
Edward' (John was an old servant, and had known his master when he was
the cadet of the house, therefore, he often gave him his Christian
name)- 'I knew what Mr. Edward would do; and I was certain he would
not wait long neither: and he's done right, for aught I know. I wish
you joy, Miss!' and he politely pulled his forelock.

'Thank you, John. Mr. Rochester told me to give you and Mary this.'
I put into his hand a five-pound note. Without waiting to hear more, I
left the kitchen. In passing the door of that sanctum some time after,
I caught the words-

'She'll happen do better for him nor ony o' t' grand ladies.' And
again, 'If she ben't one o' th' handsomest, she's noan faal and
varry good-natured; and i' his een she's fair beautiful, onybody may
see that.'

I wrote to Moor House and to Cambridge immediately, to say what I
had done: fully explaining also why I had thus acted. Diana and Mary
approved the step unreservedly. Diana announced that she would just
give me time to get over the honeymoon, and then she would come and
see me.

'She had better not wait till then, Jane,' said Mr. Rochester, when
I read her letter to him; 'if she does, she will be too late, for
our honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade
over your grave or mine.'

How St. John received the news, I don't know: he never answered the
letter in which I communicated it: yet six months after he wrote to
me, without, however, mentioning Mr. Rochester's name or alluding to
my marriage. His letter was then calm, and, though very serious, kind.
He has maintained a regular, though not frequent, correspondence
ever since: he hopes I am happy, and trusts I am not of those who live
without God in the world, and only mind earthly things.

You have not quite forgotten little Adele, have you, reader? I
had not; I soon asked and obtained leave of Mr. Rochester, to go and
see her at the school where he had placed her. Her frantic joy at
beholding me again moved me much. She looked pale and thin: she said
she was not happy. I found the rules of the establishment were too
strict, its course of study too severe for a child of her age: I
took her home with me. I meant to become her governess once more,
but I soon found this impracticable; my time and cares were now
required by another- my husband needed them all. So I sought out a
school conducted on a more indulgent system, and near enough to permit
of my visiting her often, and bringing her home sometimes. I took care
she should never want for anything that could contribute to her
comfort: she soon settled in her new abode, became very happy there,
and made fair progress in her studies. As she grew up, a sound English
education corrected in a great measure her French defects; and when
she left school, I found in her a pleasing and obliging companion:
docile, good-tempered, and well-principled. By her grateful
attention to me and mine, she has long since well repaid any little
kindness I ever had it in my power to offer her.

My tale draws to its close: one word respecting my experience of
married life, and one brief glance at the fortunes of those whose
names have most frequently recurred in this narrative, and I have
done.

I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live
entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself
supremely blest- blest beyond what language can express; because I
am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever
nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone
and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward's society: he
knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the
heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever
together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in
solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to
talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All
my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me;
we are precisely suited in character-perfect concord is the result.

Mr. Rochester continued blind the first two years of our union:
perhaps it was that circumstance that drew us so very near- that
knit us so very close: for I was then his vision, as I am still his
right hand. Literally, I was (what he often called me) the apple of
his eye. He saw nature- he saw books through me; and never did I weary
of gazing for his behalf, and of putting into words the effect of
field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam- of the landscape before
us; of the weather round us- and impressing by sound on his ear what
light could no longer stamp on his eye. Never did I weary of reading
to him; never did I weary of conducting him where he wished to go:
of doing for him what he wished to be done. And there was a pleasure
in my services, most full, most exquisite, even though sad- because he
claimed these services without painful shame or damping humiliation.
He loved me so truly, that he knew no reluctance in profiting by my
attendance: he felt I loved him so fondly, that to yield that
attendance was to indulge my sweetest wishes.

One morning at the end of the two years, as I was writing a
letter to his dictation, he came and bent over me, and said-

'Jane, have you a glittering ornament round your neck?'

I had a gold watch-chain: I answered 'Yes.'

'And have you a pale-blue dress on?'

I had. He informed me then, that for some time he had fancied the
obscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense; and that now he
was sure of it.

He and I went up to London. He had the advice of an eminent
oculist; and he eventually recovered the sight of that one eye. He
cannot now see very distinctly: he cannot read or write much; but he
can find his way without being led by the hand: the sky is no longer a
blank to him- the earth no longer a void. When his first-born was
put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own
eyes, as they once were- large, brilliant, and black. On that
occasion, he again, with a full heart, acknowledged that God had
tempered judgment with mercy.

My Edward and I, then, are happy: and the more so, because those we
most love are happy likewise. Diana and Mary Rivers are both
married: alternately, once every year, they come to see us, and we
go to see them. Diana's husband is a captain in the navy, a gallant
officer and a good man. Mary's is a clergyman, a college friend of her
brother's, and, from his attainments and principles, worthy of the
connection. Both Captain Fitzjames and Mr. Wharton love their wives,
and are loved by them.

As to St. John Rivers, he left England: he went to India. He
entered on the path he had marked for himself; he pursues it still.
A more resolute, indefatigable pioneer never wrought amidst rocks
and dangers. Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy, and zeal,
and truth, he labours for his race; he clears their painful way to
improvement; he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and
caste that encumber it. He may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be
ambitious yet; but his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who
guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon. His is the
exaction of the apostle, who speaks but for Christ, when he says-
'Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his
cross and follow me.' His is the ambition of the high master-spirit,
which aims to fill a place in the first rank of those who are redeemed
from the earth- who stand without fault before the throne of God,
who share the last mighty victories of the Lamb, who are called, and
chosen, and faithful.

St. John is unmarried: he never will marry now. Himself has
hitherto sufficed to the toil, and the toil draws near its close:
his glorious sun hastens to its setting. The last letter I received
from him drew from my eyes human tears, and yet filled my heart with
divine joy: he anticipated his sure reward, his incorruptible crown. I
know that a stranger's hand will write to me next, to say that the
good and faithful servant has been called at length into the joy of
his Lord. And why weep for this? No fear of death will darken St.
John's last hour: his mind will be unclouded, his heart will be
undaunted, his hope will be sure, his faith steadfast. His own words
are a pledge of this-

'My Master,' he says, 'has forewarned me. Daily He announces more
distinctly,- "Surely I come quickly!" and hourly I more eagerly
respond,- "Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!"'



                       THE END