Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
side under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed part of the
pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old
cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in ——shire.) They left a
daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap—cold as
that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to-night. Charity carried
the friendless thing to the house of its rich maternal relations; it
was reared by an aunt-in-law, called (I come to names now) Mrs. Reed of
Gateshead. You start—did you hear a noise? I daresay it is only a rat
scrambling along the rafters of the adjoining schoolroom: it was a barn
before I had it repaired and altered, and barns are generally haunted
by rats.—To proceed. Mrs. Reed kept the orphan ten years: whether it
was happy or not with her, I cannot say, never having been told; but at
the end of that time she transferred it to a place you know—being no
other than Lowood School, where you so long resided yourself. It seems
her career there was very honourable: from a pupil, she became a
teacher, like yourself—really it strikes me there are parallel points
in her history and yours—she left it to be a governess: there, again,
your fates were analogous; she undertook the education of the ward of a
certain Mr. Rochester.”
“Mr. Rivers!” I interrupted.
“I can guess your feelings,” he said, “but restrain them for a while: I
have nearly finished; hear me to the end. Of Mr. Rochester’s character
I know nothing, but the one fact that he professed to offer honourable
marriage to this young girl, and that at the very altar she discovered
he had a wife yet alive, though a lunatic. What his subsequent conduct
and proposals were is a matter of pure conjecture; but when an event
transpired which rendered inquiry after the governess necessary, it was
discovered she was gone—no one could tell when, where, or how. She had
left Thornfield Hall in the night; every research after her course had
been vain: the country had been scoured far and wide; no vestige of
information could be gathered respecting her. Yet that she should be
found is become a matter of serious urgency: advertisements have been
put in all the papers; I myself have received a letter from one Mr.
Briggs, a solicitor, communicating the details I have just imparted. Is
it not an odd tale?”
“Just tell me this,” said I, “and since you know so much, you surely
_can_ tell it me—what of Mr. Rochester? How and where is he? What is he
doing? Is he well?”
“I am ignorant of all concerning Mr. Rochester: the letter never
mentions him but to narrate the fraudulent and illegal attempt I have
adverted to. You should rather ask the name of the governess—the nature
of the event which requires her appearance.”
“Did no one go to Thornfield Hall, then? Did no one see Mr. Rochester?”
“I suppose not.”
“But they wrote to him?”
“Of course.”
“And what did he say? Who has his letters?”
“Mr. Briggs intimates that the answer to his application was not from
Mr. Rochester, but from a lady: it is signed ‘Alice Fairfax.’”
I felt cold and dismayed: my worst fears then were probably true: he
had in all probability left England and rushed in reckless desperation
to some former haunt on the Continent. And what opiate for his severe
sufferings—what object for his strong passions—had he sought there? I
dared not answer the question. Oh, my poor master—once almost my
husband—whom I had often called “my dear Edward!”
“He must have been a bad man,” observed Mr. Rivers.
“You don’t know him—don’t pronounce an opinion upon him,” I said, with
warmth.
“Very well,” he answered quietly: “and indeed my head is otherwise
occupied than with him: I have my tale to finish. Since you won’t ask
the governess’s name, I must tell it of my own accord. Stay! I have it
here—it is always more satisfactory to see important points written
down, fairly committed to black and white.”
And the pocket-book was again deliberately produced, opened, sought
through; from one of its compartments was extracted a shabby slip of
paper, hastily torn off: I recognised in its texture and its stains of
ultra-marine, and lake, and vermillion, the ravished margin of the
portrait-cover. He got up, held it close to my eyes: and I read, traced
in Indian ink, in my own handwriting, the words “JANE EYRE”—the work
doubtless of some moment of abstraction.
“Briggs wrote to me of a Jane Eyre:” he said, “the advertisements
demanded a Jane Eyre: I knew a Jane Elliott.—I confess I had my
suspicions, but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once
resolved into certainty. You own the name and renounce the _alias_?”
“Yes—yes; but where is Mr. Briggs? He perhaps knows more of Mr.
Rochester than you do.”
“Briggs is in London. I should doubt his knowing anything at all about
Mr. Rochester; it is not in Mr. Rochester he is interested. Meantime,
you forget essential points in pursuing trifles: you do not inquire why
Mr. Briggs sought after you—what he wanted with you.”
“Well, what did he want?”
“Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is dead; that
he has left you all his property, and that you are now rich—merely
that—nothing more.”
“I!—rich?”
“Yes, you, rich—quite an heiress.”
Silence succeeded.
“You must prove your identity of course,” resumed St. John presently:
“a step which will offer no difficulties; you can then enter on
immediate possession. Your fortune is vested in the English funds;
Briggs has the will and the necessary documents.”
Here was a new card turned up! It is a fine thing, reader, to be lifted
in a moment from indigence to wealth—a very fine thing; but not a
matter one can comprehend, or consequently enjoy, all at once. And then
there are other chances in life far more thrilling and rapture-giving:
_this_ is solid, an affair of the actual world, nothing ideal about it:
all its associations are solid and sober, and its manifestations are
the same. One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing
one has got a fortune; one begins to consider responsibilities, and to
ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave
cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn
brow.
Besides, the words Legacy, Bequest, go side by side with the words,
Death, Funeral. My uncle I had heard was dead—my only relative; ever
since being made aware of his existence, I had cherished the hope of
one day seeing him: now, I never should. And then this money came only
to me: not to me and a rejoicing family, but to my isolated self. It
was a grand boon doubtless; and independence would be glorious—yes, I
felt that—_that_ thought swelled my heart.
“You unbend your forehead at last,” said Mr. Rivers. “I thought Medusa
had looked at you, and that you were turning to stone. Perhaps now you
will ask how much you are worth?”
“How much am I worth?”
“Oh, a trifle! Nothing of course to speak of—twenty thousand pounds, I
think they say—but what is that?”
“Twenty thousand pounds?”
Here was a new stunner—I had been calculating on four or five thousand.
This news actually took my breath for a moment: Mr. St. John, whom I
had never heard laugh before, laughed now.
“Well,” said he, “if you had committed a murder, and I had told you
your crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast.”
“It is a large sum—don’t you think there is a mistake?”
“No mistake at all.”
“Perhaps you have read the figures wrong—it may be two thousand!”
“It is written in letters, not figures,—twenty thousand.”
I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical
powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions
for a hundred. Mr. Rivers rose now and put his cloak on.
“If it were not such a very wild night,” he said, “I would send Hannah
down to keep you company: you look too desperately miserable to be left
alone. But Hannah, poor woman! could not stride the drifts so well as
I: her legs are not quite so long: so I must e’en leave you to your
sorrows. Good-night.”
He was lifting the latch: a sudden thought occurred to me.
“Stop one minute!” I cried.
“Well?”
“It puzzles me to know why Mr. Briggs wrote to you about me; or how he
knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the-way
place, had the power to aid in my discovery.”
“Oh! I am a clergyman,” he said; “and the clergy are often appealed to
about odd matters.” Again the latch rattled.
“No; that does not satisfy me!” I exclaimed: and indeed there was
something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of
allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever.
“It is a very strange piece of business,” I added; “I must know more
about it.”
“Another time.”
“No; to-night!—to-night!” and as he turned from the door, I placed
myself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed.
“You certainly shall not go till you have told me all,” I said.
“I would rather not just now.”
“You shall!—you must!”
“I would rather Diana or Mary informed you.”
Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax: gratified
it must be, and that without delay; and I told him so.
“But I apprised you that I was a hard man,” said he, “difficult to
persuade.”
“And I am a hard woman,—impossible to put off.”
And I am a hard woman,—impossible to put off
“And then,” he pursued, “I am cold: no fervour infects me.”
“Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice. The blaze there has thawed
all the snow from your cloak; by the same token, it has streamed on to
my floor, and made it like a trampled street. As you hope ever to be
forgiven, Mr. Rivers, the high crime and misdemeanour of spoiling a
sanded kitchen, tell me what I wish to know.”
“Well, then,” he said, “I yield; if not to your earnestness, to your
perseverance: as stone is worn by continual dropping. Besides, you must
know some day,—as well now as later. Your name is Jane Eyre?”
“Of course: that was all settled before.”
“You are not, perhaps, aware that I am your namesake?—that I was
christened St. John Eyre Rivers?”
“No, indeed! I remember now seeing the letter E. comprised in your
initials written in books you have at different times lent me; but I
never asked for what name it stood. But what then? Surely—”
I stopped: I could not trust myself to entertain, much less to express,
the thought that rushed upon me—that embodied itself,—that, in a
second, stood out a strong, solid probability. Circumstances knit
themselves, fitted themselves, shot into order: the chain that had been
lying hitherto a formless lump of links was drawn out straight,—every
ring was perfect, the connection complete. I knew, by instinct, how the
matter stood, before St. John had said another word; but I cannot
expect the reader to have the same intuitive perception, so I must
repeat his explanation.
“My mother’s name was Eyre; she had two brothers; one a clergyman, who
married Miss Jane Reed, of Gateshead; the other, John Eyre, Esq.,
merchant, late of Funchal, Madeira. Mr. Briggs, being Mr. Eyre’s
solicitor, wrote to us last August to inform us of our uncle’s death,
and to say that he had left his property to his brother the clergyman’s
orphan daughter, overlooking us, in consequence of a quarrel, never
forgiven, between him and my father. He wrote again a few weeks since,
to intimate that the heiress was lost, and asking if we knew anything
of her. A name casually written on a slip of paper has enabled me to
find her out. You know the rest.” Again he was going, but I set my back
against the door.
“Do let me speak,” I said; “let me have one moment to draw breath and
reflect.” I paused—he stood before me, hat in hand, looking composed
enough. I resumed—
“Your mother was my father’s sister?”
“Yes.”