Chapter 35
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He did not leave for Cambridge the 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 stious yet implacable man infli one who has offended him. W<mark>９９ｌｉb.</mark>ithout one overt act of hostility, one upbraiding word, he trived to impress me momently with the vi that I ut 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 fiven me for saying I sed him and his love, but he had not fotten the words; and as long as he and I lived he never would fet them. I saw by his look, wheuro 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 versing with me: he even called me as usual each m 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 eving with what skill he could, while ag and speaking apparently just as usual, extract from every deed and every phrase the spirit of i and approval which had formerly unicated a certain austere charm to his language and mao me, he was iy bee 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 sce the fai stain of crime. Especially I felt this when I made any attempt to propitiate him. No ruth met my ruth. He experieno suffering from estra—no yearning after reciliation; and though, more than once, my fast falling tears blistered the page over which we both bent, they produo more effe him than if his heart had been really a matter of stone or metal. To his sisters, meantime, he was somewhat kihan usual: as if afraid that mere ess would not suffitly vince me how pletely I was banished and banned, he added the force of trast; 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 su, 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 tain 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 plating as I approached.
“No,>?9９lib?</a> 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 affe than that sort of general philanthropy you extend to mere strangers.”
“Of course,” he said. “Your wish is reasonable, and I am far frarding you as a stranger.”
This, spoken in a cool, tranquil tone, was mortifying and baffling enough. Had I atteo 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 veed 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 requer 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 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 uhey betray an unfortuate of mind: they merit severe reproof: they would seem inexcusable, but that it is the duty of man tive his fellow even until seventy-and-seven times.”
I had fihe business now. While early wishing to erase from his mind the tray former offence, I had stamped on that tenacious surfaother and far deeper impression, I had burnt it in.
“Now you will indeed hate me,” I said. “It is useless to attempt to ciliate you: I see I have made aernal enemy of you.”
A fresh wrong did these words inflict: the worse, because they touched oruth. That bloodless lip quivered to a temporary spasm. I khe steely ire I had whetted. I was heart-wrung.
“You utterly misinterpret my words,” I said, at once seizing his hand: “I have no iion 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 siderable pause.
“Yes, I will, as your assistant,” I answered.
A very long silence succeeded. What struggle there was in him between Nature and Gra this interval, I ot tell: only singular gleams stillated 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 ye proposing to apany 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 ce at once. “Keep to on se. 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 ot be either so dull or so ceited as to misuand my meaning. I say again, I will be your curate, if you like, but never your wife.”
Agaiurned lividly pale; but, as before, trolled 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 ot 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 indepe of the Society’s aid; and thus you may still be spared the dishonour of breaking your promise aing the band you eo join.”
Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal promise or entered into any e; 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, ion in the case. I am not uhe slightest obligation to go to India, especially with strangers. With you I would have ventured much, because I admire, fide in, and, as a sister, I love you; but I am vihat, 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 itting suicide. Moreover, before I definitively resolve on quitting England, I will know for certaiher I ot 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 go ill by some means that doubt is removed.”
“I know where your heart turns and to what it gs. The i you cherish is lawless and unsecrated. 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 fessed it by silence.
“Are you going to seek Mr. Rochester?”
“I must find out what is bee of him.”
“It remains for me, then,” he said, “to remember you in my prayers, and to e God for you, in all earness, that you may not indeed bee a castaway. I had thought I reised in you one of the chosen. But God sees not as man sees: His will be done—”
He opehe gate, passed through it, and strayed away down the glen. He was soon out of sight.
Oering the parlour, I found Diana standing at the window, lookihoughtful. 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 five 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 respeg you, I am sure: he has long distinguished you by a notid i 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, a you so frequently aloh him, and keep you so tinually at his side? Mary and I had both cluded 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 sented, have you, Jane?”
“I have refused to marry him—”
“And have sequently displeased him?” she suggested.
“Deeply: he will never five me, I fear: yet I offered to apany him as his sister.”
“It was frantic folly to do so, Jahink of the task you uook—one of incessant fatigue, where fatigue kills everong, 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 ce 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 early jured 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 dea, he expressed himself shocked at my want of decy. He seemed to think I had itted an impropriety in proposing to apany 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 explaihat it is not himse..lf, 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 ed for life to a man wharded o as a useful tool?”
“Insupportable—unnatural—out of the question!”
“And then,” I tinued, “though I have only sisterly affe for him now, yet, if forced to be his wife, I imagihe possibility of ceiving aable, stra kind of love for him, because he is so talented; and there is often a certain heroic grandeur in his look, manner, and versation. In that case, my lot would bee unspeakably wretched. He would not wao love him; and if I showed the feeling, he would make me sensible that it erfluity, unrequired by him, unbeing in me. I know he would.”
“A. John is a good man,” said Diana.
“He is a good and a great man; but he fets, pitilessly, the feelings and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views. It is better, therefore, for the insignifit to keep out of his way, lest, in his progress, he should trample them down. Here he es! 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 posed as usual. I had thought he would hardly speak to me, and I was certain he<bdi>９9ｌｉｂ?</bdi> 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 ihe help of the Holy Spirit to subdue the anger I had roused in him, and now believed he had fiven 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 bee so impressive in its noble simplicity, as when he delivered the oracles of God: and to-night that voice took a more solemn tohat 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 dle oable): as he sat there, bending over the great old Bible, and described from its page the vision of the new heaven and the h—told how God would e to dwell with men, how He would wipe away all tears from their eyes, and promised that there should be no more death, her sorrow n, 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 overeth shall i 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 burh with fire and brimstone, which is the sed death.”
Henceforward, I knew what fate St. John feared for me.
A calm, subdued triumph, blent with a longing earness, 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 ear, wrestling with God, and resolved on a quest. 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. Earness is ever deeply solemn: first, as I listeo that prayer, I wo his; then, when it tinued 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 m. Diana and Mary having kissed him, left the room—in pliance, 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 fht: that space, then, is yet left you for refle. If I listeo 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 ot 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—warhat ‘the night eth 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 early, mildly: his look was not, ihat of a lover beholding his mistress, but it was that of a pastor recalling his wandering sheep—or better, of a guardian angel watg the soul for which he is responsible. All men of talent, whether they be men of feeling or not; whether they be zealots, or aspirant<var></var>s, or despots—provided only they be sincere—have their sublime moments, when they subdue and rule. I felt veion for St. John— veion s that its impetus thrust me at oo the point I had so long shunned. I was tempted to cease struggling with him— to rush doworrent 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 unscious of folly at the instant.
I stood motionless under my hierophant’s touch. My refusals were fotten—my fears overy wrestlings paralysed. The Impossible—i.e., my marriage with St. John—was fast being the Possible. All was ging utterly with a sudden sweep. Religion called—Angels beed—God anded—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 sed. The dim room was full of visions.
“Could you decide now?” asked the missionary. The inquiry ut ile 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 ged by one hour of solemn prayer: it was only elevated.
“I could decide if I were but certain,” I answered: “were I but vihat it is God’s will I should marry you, I could vow to marry you here and now—e afterwards what would!”
“My I 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 khe 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 tended with my inward dimness of vision, before which clouds yet rolled. I sincerely, deeply, fervently loo do what was right; and only that. “Show me, show me the path!” I eed 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 dle 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 oo my head aremities. The feeling was not like aric 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 expet: 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 voiewhere 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 e out of the air—nor from uhe 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 ing!” I cried. “Wait for me! Oh, I will e!” 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 Glehe answer faintly back—“Where are you?” I listehe wind sighed low in the firs: all was moorland loneliness and midnight hush.
“Down superstition!” I ented, 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 asdency. 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 and well enough, obedienever fails. I mouo 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 pee 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.
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