Chapter: 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
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 cathedral of an overgrown
manufacturing town in ---shire.)  They left a 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 vermillion, 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 I am a hard woman,--impossible to put off: p369.jpg}

"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, justice--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 lifelong 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.





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.

 St. John and Jane have a long talk. He has discovered her true identity, for the strip of paper that he tore off one of her sketches had her name 'Jane Eyre' on it. He recounts Jane's life story and then continues the tale after she fled from Thornfield, saying that a lawyer, Mr. Briggs, is urgently seeking Jane concerning her uncle John Eyre of Madeira. He has died leaving her a legacy of '20,000 and he is the same Uncle John that the Rivers family recently mourned, so they are in fact cousins. Jane is excited, firstly because the Rivers are related to her, and secondly because she will be financially independent. She immediately declares that her inheritance can be easily shared four ways, and she wishes that her three cousins shared in her fortune. St. John is impressed with his new cousin's Christian attitude to this good fortune. She advises St. John that she will continue at the school until a substitute administrator can be found, and she presses ahead with the legal transfer of the inheritance to her cousins. Christmas approaches and Jane and Hannah the maid, work hard in preparing the house for the return of Diana and Mary. Jane takes it upon herself to carry out some renovation to the old house, and although St. John has reservations about this, Diana and Mary are delighted when they return home. Whilst the three young ladies and Hannah enjoy the holiday break, St. John continues his pastoral care often being out until late at night, visiting the sick and poor. They learn that Rosamond is to marry someone else. St. John wants Jane to stop her study of German and practice Hindustani. Spring arrives and Jane decides to write to Mrs. Fairfax and Mr. Briggs for news of Rochester, but she receives no reply. St. John wishes to marry Jane so that they can both work in India together. She agrees to go with him to India, but as his sister and not his wife. St. John is hurt by Jane's refusal to marry him, and he shuns her.

