CHAPTER XXXIV

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

Mr. Rivers came up as, having seen the classes, now numbering sixty girls, file
out before me, and locked the door, I stood with the key in my hand, exchanging
a few words of special farewell with some half-dozen of my best scholars: as
decent, respectable, modest, and well-informed young women as could be found in
the ranks of the British peasantry. And that is saying a great deal; for after
all, the British peasantry are the best taught, best mannered, most
self-respecting of any in Europe: since those days I have seen paysannes and
Bäuerinnen; 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.”
clean downclean down
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.”
then
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!”
will
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.
carte blanche
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 be refitted for their
reception.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

As our mutual happiness (i.e., Diana’s, Mary’s, and mine) settled into a
quieter character, and we resumed our usual habits and regular studies, St.
John stayed more at home: he sat with us in the same room, sometimes for hours
together. While Mary drew, Diana pursued a course of encyclopædic 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.
i.e.
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—
she
“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.
your
“My heart is mute,—my heart is mute,” I answered, struck and thrilled.

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

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

“Oh, St. John!” I cried, “have some mercy!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I can do what he wants me to do: I am forced to see and acknowledge
that,” I meditated,—“that is, if life be spared me. But I feel mine is not the
existence to be long protracted under an Indian sun. What then? He does not
care for that: when my time came to die, he would resign me, in all serenity
and sanctity, to the God who gave me. The case is very plain before me. In
leaving England, I should leave a loved but empty land—Mr. Rochester is not
there; and if he were, what is, what can that ever be to me? My business is to
live without him now: nothing so absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day,
as if I were waiting some impossible change in circumstances, which might
reunite me to him. Of course (as St. John once said) I must seek another
interest in life to replace the one lost: is not the occupation he now offers
me truly the most glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its noble
cares and sublime results, the one best calculated to fill the void left by
uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say, Yes—and yet I
shudder. Alas! If I join St. John, I abandon half myself: if I go to India, I
go to premature death. And how will the interval between leaving England for
India, and India for the grave, be filled? Oh, I know well! That, too, is very
clear to my vision. By straining to satisfy St. John till my sinews ache, I
shall satisfy him—to the finest central point and farthest outward
circle of his expectations. If I do go with him—if I do make the
sacrifice he urges, I will make it absolutely: I will throw all on the
altar—heart, vitals, the entire victim. He will never love me; but he shall
approve me; I will show him energies he has not yet seen, resources he has
never suspected. Yes, I can work as hard as he can, and with as little
grudging.
canshalldodo
“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.”
You
I will not swear, reader, that there was not something of repressed sarcasm
both in the tone in which I uttered this sentence, and in the feeling that
accompanied it. I had silently feared St. John till now, because I had not
understood him. He had held me in awe, because he had held me in doubt. How
much of him was saint, how much mortal, I could not heretofore tell: but
revelations were being made in this conference: the analysis of his nature was
proceeding before my eyes. I saw his fallibilities: I comprehended them. I
understood that, sitting there where I did, on the bank of heath, and with that
handsome form before me, I sat at the feet of a man, erring as I. The veil fell
from his hardness and despotism. Having felt in him the presence of these
qualities, I felt his imperfection and took courage. I was with an equal—one
with whom I might argue—one whom, if I saw good, I might resist.

He was silent after I had uttered the last sentence, and I presently risked an
upward glance at his countenance. His eye, bent on me, expressed at once stern
surprise and keen inquiry. “Is she sarcastic, and sarcastic to me!” it
seemed to say. “What does this signify?”
me!
“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.
his wifethis
“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.”
must
“I scorn your idea of love,” I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood
before him, leaning my back against the rock. “I scorn the counterfeit
sentiment you offer: yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it.”

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

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

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

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

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

He had done. Turning from me, he once more

“Looked to river, looked to hill.”

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

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

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

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

“Good-night, St. John,” said I.

“Good-night, Jane,” he replied calmly.

“Then shake hands,” I added.

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

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

CHAPTER XXXV

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He now turned quite from the moon and faced me.

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

“You said I could not unless I married you.”

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

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

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

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

“Once more, why this refusal?” he asked.

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

His lips and cheeks turned white—quite white.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, I will, as your assistant,” I answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I am. God did not give me my life to throw away; and to do as you wish me
would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committing suicide. Moreover,
before I 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.