Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Deluxe Edition Chapter 35.

 

 

 

He did not leave for Cambridge the next day, as he had said he
would. He deferred his departure a whole week, and during that
time he made me feel what severe punishment a good yet stern, a
conscientious yet implacable man can inflict on one who has offended
him. Without one overt act of hostility, one upbraiding word, he
contrived to impress me momently with the conviction that I was
put beyond the pale of his favour. Not that St. John harboured a
spirit of unchristian vindictiveness not that he would have
injured a hair of my head, if it had been fully in his power to
do so. Both by nature and principle, he was superior to the
mean gratification of vengeance: he had forgiven me for saying
I scorned him and his love, but he had not forgotten the words;
and as long as he and I lived he never would forget them. I saw
by his look, when he turned to me, that they were always
written on the air between me and him; whenever I spoke, they
sounded in my voice to his ear, and their echo toned every answer
he gave me.

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

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

The night before he left home, happening to see him walking in the
garden about sunset, and remembering, as I looked at him, that this
man, alienated as he now was, had once saved my life, and that we
were near relations, I was moved to make a last attempt to regain
his friendship. I went out and approached him as he stood leaning
over the little gate; I spoke to the point at once. "St. John, I am
unhappy because you are still angry with me. Let us be friends."
"I hope we are friends," was the unmoved reply; while he still
watched the rising of the moon, which he had been contemplating as
I approached. "No, St. John, we are not friends as we were.
You know that." "Are we not? That is wrong. For my part, I wish
you no ill and all good." "I believe you, St. John; for I am sure you
are incapable of wishing any one ill; but, as I am your kinswoman,
I should desire somewhat more of affection than that sort of general
philanthropy you extend to mere strangers." "Of course," he said.
"Your wish is reasonable, and I am far from regarding you as a stranger."
This, spoken in a cool, tranquil tone, was mortifying and baffling
enough. Had I attended to the suggestions of pride and ire, I
should immediately have left him; but something worked within me
more strongly than those feelings could. I deeply venerated my
cousin's talent and principle. his friendship was of value to me:
to lose it tried me severely. I would not so soon relinquish the
attempt to reconquer it.

 

"Must we part in this way, St. John? And when you go to India, will
you leave me so, without a kinder word than you have yet spoken?"
He now turned quite from the moon and faced me. "When I go to
India, Jane, will I leave you! What! Do you not go to India?"
"You said I could not unless I married you." "And you will not
marry me! You adhere to that resolution?" Reader, do you know,
as I do, what terror those cold people can put into the ice of their
questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche is in their anger?
of the breaking up of the frozen sea in their displeasure?
"No. St. John, I will not marry you. I adhere to my resolution."
The avalanche had shaken and slid a little forward, but it did not
yet crash down. "Once more, why this refusal?" he asked.
"Formerly," I answered, "because you did not love me; now, I reply,
because you almost hate me. If I were to marry you, you would kill
me. You are killing me now." His lips and cheeks turned white quite
white. "I SHOULD KILL YOU I AM KILLING YOU? Your words are
such as ought not to be used: violent, unfeminine, and untrue. They
betray an unfortunate state of mind: they merit severe reproof: they
would seem inexcusable, but that it is the duty of man to forgive his
fellow even until seventy and seven times."

I had finished the business now. While earnestly wishing to erase
from his mind the trace of my former offence, I had stamped on that
tenacious surface another and far deeper impression, I had burnt
it in. "Now you will indeed hate me," I said. "It is useless to attempt
to conciliate you: I see I have made an eternal enemy of you."
A fresh wrong did these words inflict: the worse, because they
touched on the truth. That bloodless lip quivered to a temporary
spasm. I knew the steely ire I had whetted. I was heart wrung.
"You utterly misinterpret my words," I said, at once seizing his
hand: "I have no intention to grieve or pain you indeed, I have
not." Most bitterly he smiled most decidedly he withdrew his hand
from mine. "And now you recall your promise, and will not go to India
at all, I presume?" said he, after a considerable pause. "Yes, I will, as
your assistant," I answered. A very long silence succeeded. What
struggle there was in him between Nature and Grace in this interval,
I cannot tell: only singular gleams scintillated in his eyes, and strange
shadows passed over his face. He spoke at last.

"I before proved to you the absurdity of a single woman of your
age proposing to accompany abroad a single man of mine. I proved
it to you in such terms as, I should have thought, would have
prevented your ever again alluding to the plan. That you have done
so, I regret for your sake."I interrupted him. Anything like a tangible
reproach gave me courage at once. "Keep to common sense, St. John:
you are verging on nonsense. You pretend to be shocked by what I
have said. You are not really shocked: for, with your superior mind, you
cannot be either so dull or so conceited as to misunderstand my meaning.
I say again, I will be your curate, if you like, but never your wife."

Again he turned lividly pale; but, as before, controlled his passion
perfectly. He answered emphatically but calmly, "A female curate,
who is not my wife, would never suit me. With me, then, it seems,
you cannot go: but if you are sincere in your offer, I will, while in
town, speak to a married missionary, whose wife needs a coadjutor.
Your own fortune will make you independent of the Society's aid;
and thus you may still be spared the dishonour of breaking your
promise and deserting the band you engaged to join." Now I never
had, as the reader knows, either given any formal promise or
entered into any engagement; and this language was all much too
hard and much too despotic for the occasion. I replied "There is no
dishonour, no breach of promise, no desertion in the case. I am not
under the slightest obligation to go to India, especially with
strangers. With you I would have ventured much, because I admire,
confide in, and, as a sister, I love you; but I am convinced that, go
when and with whom I would, I should not live long in that climate."
"Ah! you are afraid of yourself," he said, curling his lip. "I am. God
did not give me my life to throw away; and to do as you wish me
would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committing
suicide. Moreover, before I definitively resolve on quitting England,
I will know for certain whether I cannot be of greater use by
remaining in it than by leaving it." "What do you mean?"

"It would be fruitless to attempt to explain; but there is a point
on which I have long endured painful doubt, and I can go nowhere
till by some means that doubt is removed." "I know where your
heart turns and to what it clings. The interest you cherish
is lawless and unconsecrated. Long since you ought to
have crushed it: now you should blush to allude to it. You think
of Mr. Rochester?" It was true. I confessed it by silence. "Are you
going to seek Mr. Rochester?" "I must find out what is become of him."
"It remains for me, then," he said, "to remember you in my prayers,
and to entreat god for you, in all earnestness, that you may not
indeed become a castaway. I had thought I recognised in you one of
the chosen. But god sees not as man sees: HIS will be done." He
opened the gate, passed through it, and strayed away down the
glen. He was soon out of sight. On re entering the parlour, I found
Diana standing at the window, looking very thoughtful. Diana
was a great deal taller than I: she put her hand on my shoulder,
and, stooping, examined my face. "Jane," she said, "you are always
agitated and pale now. I am sure there is something the matter.
Tell me what business St. John and you have on hands. I have
watched you this half hour from the window; you must forgive
my being such a spy, but for a long time I have fancied I hardly
know what. St. John is a strange being." She paused I did not
speak: soon she resumed, "That brother of mine cherishes
peculiar views of some sort respecting you, I am sure: he has
long distinguished you by a notice and interest he never
showed to any one else to what end?

I wish he loved you does he, Jane?" I put her cool hand to my
hot forehead; "No, Die, not one whit." "Then why does he follow
you so with his eyes, and get you so frequently alone with him,
and keep you so continually at his side? Mary and I had both
concluded he wished you to marry him." "He does he has asked
me to be his wife." Diana clapped her hands. "That is just what
we hoped and thought! And you will marry him, Jane, won't you?
And then he will stay in England." "Far from that, Diana; his sole
idea in proposing to me is to procure a fitting fellow labourer in
his Indian toils." "What! He wishes you to go to India?" "Yes."
"Madness!" she exclaimed. "You would not live three months there,
I am certain. You never shall go: you have not consented, have
you, Jane?" "I have refused to marry him." "And have consequently
displeased him?" she suggested. "Deeply: he will never forgive me,
I fear: yet I offered to accompany him as his sister." "It was frantic
folly to do so, Jane. Think of the task you undertook one of incessant
fatigue, where fatigue kills even the strong, and you are weak.
St. John you know him would urge you to impossibilities: with
him there would be no permission to rest during the hot hours;
and unfortunately, I have noticed, whatever he exacts, you force
yourself to perform. I am astonished you found courage to refuse
his hand. You do not love him then, Jane?" "Not as a husband."

 

 

"Yet he is a handsome fellow." "And I am so plain, you see, Die.
We should never suit." "Plain! You? Not at all. You are much too
pretty, as well as too good, to be grilled alive in Calcutta." And
again she earnestly conjured me to give up all thoughts of going
out with her brother. "I must indeed," I said; "for when just now
I repeated the offer of serving him for a deacon, he expressed
himself shocked at my want of decency. He seemed to think I
had committed an impropriety in proposing to accompany him
unmarried: as if I had not from the first hoped to find in him
a brother, and habitually regarded him as such." "What makes
you say he does not love you, Jane?" "You should hear himself
on the subject. He has again and again explained that it is not
himself, but his office he wishes to mate. He has told me I am
formed for labour not for love: which is true, no doubt. But,
in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, it follows that I am
not formed for marriage. Would it not be strange, Die, to be
chained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool?"
"Insupportable unnatural out of the question!"

"And then," I continued, "though I have only sisterly affection
for him now, yet, if forced to be his wife, I can imagine the
possibility of conceiving an inevitable, strange, torturing kind
of love for him, because he is so talented; and there is often a
certain heroic grandeur in his look, manner, and conversation. In
that case, my lot would become unspeakably wretched. He would not
want me to love him; and if I showed the feeling, he would make me
sensible that it was a superfluity, unrequired by him, unbecoming
in me. I know he would." "And yet St. John is a good man," said Diana.
"He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings
and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views. It is
better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way, lest,
in his progress, he should trample them down. Here he comes!
I will leave you, Diana." And I hastened upstairs as I saw him
entering the garden. But I was forced to meet him again at supper.
During that meal he appeared just as composed as usual. I had
thought he would hardly speak to me, and I was certain he had
given up the pursuit of his matrimonial scheme: the sequel showed
I was mistaken on both points. He addressed me precisely in his
ordinary manner, or what had, of late, been his ordinary manner
one scrupulously polite. No doubt he had invoked the help of the
Holy Spirit to subdue the anger I had roused in him, and now
believed he had forgiven me once more.

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

The succeeding words thrilled me strangely as he spoke them:
especially as I felt, by the slight, indescribable alteration in
sound, that in uttering them, his eye had turned on me.
"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his
god, and he shall be my son. But," was slowly, distinctly read,
"the fearful, the unbelieving, etc., shall have their part in the
lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second
death." Henceforward, I knew what fate St. John feared for me.
A calm, subdued triumph, blent with a longing earnestness, marked
his enunciation of the last glorious verses of that chapter. The
reader believed his name was already written in the Lamb's book of
life, and he yearned after the hour which should admit him to the
city to which the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour;
which has no need of sun or moon to shine in it, because the glory
of god lightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

 

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

The prayer over, we took leave of him: he was to go at a very
early hour in the morning. Diana and Mary having kissed him, left
the room in compliance, I think, with a whispered hint from him:
I tendered my hand, and wished him a pleasant journey.
"Thank you, Jane. As I said, I shall return from Cambridge in a
fortnight: that space, then, is yet left you for reflection. If
I listened to human pride, I should say no more to you of marriage
with me; but I listen to my duty, and keep steadily in view my
first aim to do all things to the glory of god. My Master was
long suffering: so will I be. I cannot give you up to perdition
as a vessel of wrath: repent resolve, while there is yet time.
Remember, we are bid to work while it is day warned that 'the
night cometh when no man shall work.' Remember the fate of Dives,
who had his good things in this life. god give you strength to
choose that better part which shall not be taken from you!"

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

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

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

 

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

All the house was still; for I believe all, except St. John and
myself, were now retired to rest. The one candle was dying out:
the room was full of moonlight. My heart beat fast and thick: I
heard its throb. Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible
feeling that thrilled it through, and passed at once to my head
and extremities. The feeling was not like an electric shock, but
it was quite as sharp, as strange, as startling: it acted on my
senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had been but torpor,
from which they were now summoned and forced to wake. They rose
expectant: eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered on my bones.
"What have you heard? What do you see?" asked St. John. I
saw nothing, but I heard a voice somewhere cry "Jane! Jane! Jane!"
Nothing more. "O god! what is it?" I gasped. I might have said,
"Where is it?" for it did not seem in the room nor in the house
nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air nor from under
the earth nor from overhead. I had heard it where, or whence,
for ever impossible to know! And it was the voice of a human
being a known, loved, well remembered voice that of Edward
Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly,
eerily, urgently.

"I am coming!" I cried. "Wait for me! Oh, I will come!" I flew
to the door and looked into the passage: it was dark. I ran out
into the garden: it was void. "Where are you?" I exclaimed.
The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back "Where
are you?" I listened. The wind sighed low in the firs: all was
moorland loneliness and midnight hush. "Down superstition!"
I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the black yew
at the gate. "This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft: it
is the work of nature. She was roused, and did no miracle but
her best."

 

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

 

 

 

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Deluxe Edition Chapter 36.>