prompt:
Chapter: 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."

"The best things the world has!" I interrupted.

"No, Jane, no: this world is not the scene of fruition; do not attempt to
make it so: nor of rest; do not turn slothful."

"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.  Goodbye!"

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 chaos ourselves had made.
I had previously taken a journey to S--- 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 crest-fallen 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
conducting 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 definitively 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 S-, grandson and heir
to Sir Frederic Granby: I had the intelligence 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 two months: they met in October at the county ball at S-.  But where
there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case, where the
connection is in every point desirable, delays are unnecessary: they will
be married as soon as S--- Place, which Sir Frederic gives up to them,
can he 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 at 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.

{He threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay still:
p389.jpg}

"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, caring 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 serve 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.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: By Christmas everything is settled. Jane has left the school to a substitute, and promises to visit and teach, as she sees that some of the students do like her. Mr. St. John asks Jane what she will do now, and she replies that she is going to get the house ready for Diana and Mary's return by cleaning it thoroughly and buying some new things. He says that this will not keep her busy long and she will have to do more after, and she wonders why he is trying to stir up restlessness in her. St. John arrives first on the day all are to come home. He does not speak much to Jane or say anything pleasurable about what she has done with the house. Jane realizes that he would not make a good husband, and that it is a good thing that he and Miss Oliver did not marry. Jane relates that he does not treat her like a sister as he said he would, but that the distance between them has grown. Diana and Mary arrive home, and all are happy to see each other. They compliment Jane on what she had done to the home. A few days later when they are all studying in the library, St. John tells Jane that he wants her to stop learning German and to learn Hindustani instead. He says that it is the language he is learning for his missionary work, and that it would be a help to him to remember how it was when he started learning the language. She complies, but soon feels that she is doing only what he wants and burying a part of herself. Jane often thinks of Mr. Rochester and even writes to the solicitor to see if he knows anything about him. When he writes back that he does not, Jane writes to Mrs. Fairfax. When she does not receive a reply, she writes again, thinking perhaps her letter was lost, but again she gets no reply. One day St. John tells Jane that she will take a walk with him. St. John asks Jane to come to India with him, and tells her that God had intended her to be a missionary's wife. Jane makes many excuses, but St. John has an answer for all of them, continuing to try to convince her. After a few thoughts, Jane tells him that she will go with him, but as his sister, not his wife. He replies that this is impossible, and that she must marry him. She continues to refuse, saying that they do not love each other, and he replies that she is not refusing him, but God. He tells her that he will be going away for a fortnight to bid farewell to friends and that she should think about it. Later in the evening, when Jane asks if he forgives her, he replies that he had not been offended


prompt:
Chapter: 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 force, 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 definitively 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, &c., 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.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: St. John does not leave for Cambridge the next day as he said he was going to, but he stays another week. During this time Jane sees that he had not forgotten all she said to him. The night before he was to leave for Cambridge, Jane asks him to be friends with her. He says that he thought they were friends, but is not moved. When Jane asks if he will leave her to go to India like this, he is startled, and asks then if she does not mean to go with him. She tells him again that she will not marry him, and when again he asks for a reason, she says that he almost hates her and that he should kill her if they were to be married. She tries to explain what she means, but he does not understand. He continues to try to talk her into marrying him and leaving with him, but she refuses, saying that there are things in England that she must find out about. He understands that she is talking about Rochester, and says he will pray for her so that she does not become a castaway. Diana has seen them talking and asks Jane if St. John is in love with her. Jane tells her no, but that he has asked her to marry him and be a companion to him on his voyage. Diana agrees that it would be out of the question to marry a man who regarded her only as a useful tool. After supper they say their good-byes, and St. John tells Jane that she should reflect while he is gone. He lays his hand on Jane's head, and at that moment she feels such veneration for him that she almost yields to him and forgets her refusals. But just at the moment that she would perhaps tell him so, her heart beats faster, and she gets a strange feeling. Suddenly she hears someone calling "Jane. Jane. Jane. She recognizes the voice and yells, "I am coming. Where are you. Of course she does not find Rochester, but bids goodbye to St. John and goes to her room