Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
not speak and look so calmly if she were.”
I got on to her crib and kissed her: her forehead was cold, and her
cheek both cold and thin, and so were her hand and wrist; but she
smiled as of old.
“Why are you come here, Jane? It is past eleven o’clock: I heard it
strike some minutes since.”
“I came to see you, Helen: I heard you were very ill, and I could not
sleep till I had spoken to you.”
“You came to bid me good-bye, then: you are just in time probably.”
“Are you going somewhere, Helen? Are you going home?”
“Yes; to my long home—my last home.”
“No, no, Helen!” I stopped, distressed. While I tried to devour my
tears, a fit of coughing seized Helen; it did not, however, wake the
nurse; when it was over, she lay some minutes exhausted; then she
whispered—
“Jane, your little feet are bare; lie down and cover yourself with my
quilt.”
I did so: she put her arm over me, and I nestled close to her. After a
long silence, she resumed, still whispering—
“I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead, you must be
sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die
one day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is
gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest. I leave no one to regret me
much: I have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not miss
me. By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not
qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should
have been continually at fault.”
“But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?”
“I believe; I have faith: I am going to God.”
“Where is God? What is God?”
“My Maker and yours, who will never destroy what He created. I rely
implicitly on His power, and confide wholly in His goodness: I count
the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore me to Him,
reveal Him to me.”
“You are sure, then, Helen, that there is such a place as heaven, and
that our souls can get to it when we die?”
“I am sure there is a future state; I believe God is good; I can resign
my immortal part to Him without any misgiving. God is my father; God is
my friend: I love Him; I believe He loves me.”
“And shall I see you again, Helen, when I die?”
“You will come to the same region of happiness: be received by the same
mighty, universal Parent, no doubt, dear Jane.”
Again I questioned, but this time only in thought. “Where is that
region? Does it exist?” And I clasped my arms closer round Helen; she
seemed dearer to me than ever; I felt as if I could not let her go; I
lay with my face hidden on her neck. Presently she said, in the
sweetest tone—
“How comfortable I am! That last fit of coughing has tired me a little;
I feel as if I could sleep: but don’t leave me, Jane; I like to have
you near me.”
“I’ll stay with you, _dear_ Helen: no one shall take me away.”
“Are you warm, darling?”
“Yes.”
“Good-night, Jane.”
“Good-night, Helen.”
She kissed me, and I her, and we both soon slumbered.
When I awoke it was day: an unusual movement roused me; I looked up; I
was in somebody’s arms; the nurse held me; she was carrying me through
the passage back to the dormitory. I was not reprimanded for leaving my
bed; people had something else to think about; no explanation was
afforded then to my many questions; but a day or two afterwards I
learned that Miss Temple, on returning to her own room at dawn, had
found me laid in the little crib; my face against Helen Burns’s
shoulder, my arms round her neck. I was asleep, and Helen was—dead.
Her grave is in Brocklebridge churchyard: for fifteen years after her
death it was only covered by a grassy mound; but now a grey marble
tablet marks the spot, inscribed with her name, and the word
“Resurgam.”
CHAPTER X
Hitherto I have recorded in detail the events of my insignificant
existence: to the first ten years of my life I have given almost as
many chapters. But this is not to be a regular autobiography: I am only
bound to invoke Memory where I know her responses will possess some
degree of interest; therefore I now pass a space of eight years almost
in silence: a few lines only are necessary to keep up the links of
connection.
When the typhus fever had fulfilled its mission of devastation at
Lowood, it gradually disappeared from thence; but not till its
virulence and the number of its victims had drawn public attention on
the school. Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge, and by
degrees various facts came out which excited public indignation in a
high degree. The unhealthy nature of the site; the quantity and quality
of the children’s food; the brackish, fetid water used in its
preparation; the pupils’ wretched clothing and accommodations—all these
things were discovered, and the discovery produced a result mortifying
to Mr. Brocklehurst, but beneficial to the institution.
Several wealthy and benevolent individuals in the county subscribed
largely for the erection of a more convenient building in a better
situation; new regulations were made; improvements in diet and clothing
introduced; the funds of the school were intrusted to the management of
a committee. Mr. Brocklehurst, who, from his wealth and family
connections, could not be overlooked, still retained the post of
treasurer; but he was aided in the discharge of his duties by gentlemen
of rather more enlarged and sympathising minds: his office of
inspector, too, was shared by those who knew how to combine reason with
strictness, comfort with economy, compassion with uprightness. The
school, thus improved, became in time a truly useful and noble
institution. I remained an inmate of its walls, after its regeneration,
for eight years: six as pupil, and two as teacher; and in both
capacities I bear my testimony to its value and importance.
During these eight years my life was uniform: but not unhappy, because
it was not inactive. I had the means of an excellent education placed
within my reach; a fondness for some of my studies, and a desire to
excel in all, together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers,
especially such as I loved, urged me on: I availed myself fully of the
advantages offered me. In time I rose to be the first girl of the first
class; then I was invested with the office of teacher; which I
discharged with zeal for two years: but at the end of that time I
altered.
Miss Temple, through all changes, had thus far continued superintendent
of the seminary: to her instruction I owed the best part of my
acquirements; her friendship and society had been my continual solace;
she had stood me in the stead of mother, governess, and, latterly,
companion. At this period she married, removed with her husband (a
clergyman, an excellent man, almost worthy of such a wife) to a distant
county, and consequently was lost to me.
From the day she left I was no longer the same: with her was gone every
settled feeling, every association that had made Lowood in some degree
a home to me. I had imbibed from her something of her nature and much
of her habits: more harmonious thoughts: what seemed better regulated
feelings had become the inmates of my mind. I had given in allegiance
to duty and order; I was quiet; I believed I was content: to the eyes
of others, usually even to my own, I appeared a disciplined and subdued
character.
But destiny, in the shape of the Rev. Mr. Nasmyth, came between me and
Miss Temple: I saw her in her travelling dress step into a post-chaise,
shortly after the marriage ceremony; I watched the chaise mount the
hill and disappear beyond its brow; and then retired to my own room,
and there spent in solitude the greatest part of the half-holiday
granted in honour of the occasion.
I walked about the chamber most of the time. I imagined myself only to
be regretting my loss, and thinking how to repair it; but when my
reflections were concluded, and I looked up and found that the
afternoon was gone, and evening far advanced, another discovery dawned
on me, namely, that in the interval I had undergone a transforming
process; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple—or
rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been
breathing in her vicinity—and that now I was left in my natural
element, and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions. It did not
seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone:
it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason
for tranquillity was no more. My world had for some years been in
Lowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I
remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of
hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had
courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life
amidst its perils.
I went to my window, opened it, and looked out. There were the two
wings of the building; there was the garden; there were the skirts of
Lowood; there was the hilly horizon. My eye passed all other objects to
rest on those most remote, the blue peaks; it was those I longed to
surmount; all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed
prison-ground, exile limits. I traced the white road winding round the
base of one mountain, and vanishing in a gorge between two; how I
longed to follow it farther! I recalled the time when I had travelled
that very road in a coach; I remembered descending that hill at
twilight; an age seemed to have elapsed since the day which brought me
first to Lowood, and I had never quitted it since. My vacations had all
been spent at school: Mrs. Reed had never sent for me to Gateshead;
neither she nor any of her family had ever been to visit me. I had had
no communication by letter or message with the outer world:
school-rules, school-duties, school-habits and notions, and voices, and
faces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies—such
was what I knew of existence. And now I felt that it was not enough; I
tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired
liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it
seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and
framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition,
too, seemed swept off into vague space: “Then,” I cried, half
desperate, “grant me at least a new servitude!”
Here a bell, ringing the hour of supper, called me downstairs.
I was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections till
bedtime: even then a teacher who occupied the same room with me kept me
from the subject to which I longed to recur, by a prolonged effusion of
small talk. How I wished sleep would silence her. It seemed as if,
could I but go back to the idea which had last entered my mind as I
stood at the window, some inventive suggestion would rise for my
relief.
Miss Gryce snored at last; she was a heavy Welshwoman, and till now her
habitual nasal strains had never been regarded by me in any other light
than as a nuisance; to-night I hailed the first deep notes with
satisfaction; I was debarrassed of interruption; my half-effaced
thought instantly revived.
“A new servitude! There is something in that,” I soliloquised
(mentally, be it understood; I did not talk aloud). “I know there is,
because it does not sound too sweet; it is not like such words as
Liberty, Excitement, Enjoyment: delightful sounds truly; but no more
than sounds for me; and so hollow and fleeting that it is mere waste of
time to listen to them. But Servitude! That must be matter of fact. Any
one may serve: I have served here eight years; now all I want is to
serve elsewhere. Can I not get so much of my own will? Is not the thing
feasible? Yes—yes—the end is not so difficult; if I had only a brain