CHAPTER XXXVIII—CONCLUSION

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

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

“Have you, Miss? Well, for sure!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One morning at the end of the two years, as I was writing a letter to his
dictation, he came and bent over me, and said—“Jane, have you a glittering
ornament round your neck?”

I had a gold watch-chain: I answered “Yes.”

“And have you a pale blue dress on?”

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

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

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

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

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

“My Master,” he says, “has forewarned me. Daily He announces more
distinctly,—‘Surely I come quickly!’ and hourly I more eagerly respond,—‘Amen;
even so come, Lord Jesus!’”