Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
vivacity; but he escaped from it: he was seldom in the house; his
parish was large, the population scattered, and he found daily business
in visiting the sick and poor in its different districts.
One morning at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive for
some minutes, asked him, “If his plans were yet unchanged.”
“Unchanged and unchangeable,” was the reply. And he proceeded to inform
us that his departure from England was now definitively fixed for the
ensuing year.
“And Rosamond Oliver?” suggested Mary, the words seeming to escape her
lips involuntarily: for no sooner had she uttered them, than she made a
gesture as if wishing to recall them. St. John had a book in his
hand—it was his unsocial custom to read at meals—he closed it, and
looked up.
“Rosamond Oliver,” said he, “is about to be married to Mr. Granby, one
of the best connected and most estimable residents in S——, grandson and
heir to Sir Frederic Granby: I had the intelligence from her father
yesterday.”
His sisters looked at each other and at me; we all three looked at him:
he was serene as glass.
“The match must have been got up hastily,” said Diana: “they cannot
have known each other long.”
“But two months: they met in October at the county ball at S——. But
where there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case, where
the connection is in every point desirable, delays are unnecessary:
they will be married as soon as S—— Place, which Sir Frederic gives up
to them, can be refitted for their reception.”
The first time I found St. John alone after this communication, I felt
tempted to inquire if the event distressed him: but he seemed so little
to need sympathy, that, so far from venturing to offer him more, I
experienced some shame at the recollection of what I had already
hazarded. Besides, I was out of practice in talking to him: his reserve
was again frozen over, and my frankness was congealed beneath it. He
had not kept his promise of treating me like his sisters; he
continually made little chilling differences between us, which did not
at all tend to the development of cordiality: in short, now that I was
acknowledged his kinswoman, and lived under the same roof with him, I
felt the distance between us to be far greater than when he had known
me only as the village schoolmistress. When I remembered how far I had
once been admitted to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his
present frigidity.
Such being the case, I felt not a little surprised when he raised his
head suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping, and said—
“You see, Jane, the battle is fought and the victory won.”
Startled at being thus addressed, I did not immediately reply: after a
moment’s hesitation I answered—
“But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors whose
triumphs have cost them too dear? Would not such another ruin you?”
“I think not; and if I were, it does not much signify; I shall never be
called upon to contend for such another. The event of the conflict is
decisive: my way is now clear; I thank God for it!” So saying, he
returned to his papers and his silence.
As our mutual happiness (_i.e._, Diana’s, Mary’s, and mine) settled
into a quieter character, and we resumed our usual habits and regular
studies, St. John stayed more at home: he sat with us in the same room,
sometimes for hours together. While Mary drew, Diana pursued a course
of encyclopædic reading she had (to my awe and amazement) undertaken,
and I fagged away at German, he pondered a mystic lore of his own: that
of some Eastern tongue, the acquisition of which he thought necessary
to his plans.
Thus engaged, he appeared, sitting in his own recess, quiet and
absorbed enough; but that blue eye of his had a habit of leaving the
outlandish-looking grammar, and wandering over, and sometimes fixing
upon us, his fellow-students, with a curious intensity of observation:
if caught, it would be instantly withdrawn; yet ever and anon, it
returned searchingly to our table. I wondered what it meant: I
wondered, too, at the punctual satisfaction he never failed to exhibit
on an occasion that seemed to me of small moment, namely, my weekly
visit to Morton school; and still more was I puzzled when, if the day
was unfavourable, if there was snow, or rain, or high wind, and his
sisters urged me not to go, he would invariably make light of their
solicitude, and encourage me to accomplish the task without regard to
the elements.
“Jane is not such a weakling as you would make her,” he would say: “she
can bear a mountain blast, or a shower, or a few flakes of snow, as
well as any of us. Her constitution is both sound and elastic;—better
calculated to endure variations of climate than many more robust.”
And when I returned, sometimes a good deal tired, and not a little
weather-beaten, I never dared complain, because I saw that to murmur
would be to vex him: on all occasions fortitude pleased him; the
reverse was a special annoyance.
One afternoon, however, I got leave to stay at home, because I really
had a cold. His sisters were gone to Morton in my stead: I sat reading
Schiller; he, deciphering his crabbed Oriental scrolls. As I exchanged
a translation for an exercise, I happened to look his way: there I
found myself under the influence of the ever-watchful blue eye. How
long it had been searching me through and through, and over and over, I
cannot tell: so keen was it, and yet so cold, I felt for the moment
superstitious—as if I were sitting in the room with something uncanny.
“Jane, what are you doing?”
“Learning German.”
“I want you to give up German and learn Hindostanee.”
“You are not in earnest?”
“In such earnest that I must have it so: and I will tell you why.”
He then went on to explain that Hindostanee was the language he was
himself at present studying; that, as he advanced, he was apt to forget
the commencement; that it would assist him greatly to have a pupil with
whom he might again and again go over the elements, and so fix them
thoroughly in his mind; that his choice had hovered for some time
between me and his sisters; but that he had fixed on me because he saw
I could sit at a task the longest of the three. Would I do him this
favour? I should not, perhaps, have to make the sacrifice long, as it
wanted now barely three months to his departure.
St. John was not a man to be lightly refused: you felt that every
impression made on him, either for pain or pleasure, was deep-graved
and permanent. I consented. When Diana and Mary returned, the former
found her scholar transferred from her to her brother: she laughed, and
both she and Mary agreed that St. John should never have persuaded them
to such a step. He answered quietly—
“I know it.”
I found him a very patient, very forbearing, and yet an exacting
master: he expected me to do a great deal; and when I fulfilled his
expectations, he, in his own way, fully testified his approbation. By
degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my
liberty of mind: his praise and notice were more restraining than his
indifference. I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was by,
because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that vivacity (at
least in me) was distasteful to him. I was so fully aware that only
serious moods and occupations were acceptable, that in his presence
every effort to sustain or follow any other became vain: I fell under a
freezing spell. When he said “go,” I went; “come,” I came; “do this,” I
did it. But I did not love my servitude: I wished, many a time, he had
continued to neglect me.
One evening when, at bedtime, his sisters and I stood round him,
bidding him good-night, he kissed each of them, as was his custom; and,
as was equally his custom, he gave me his hand. Diana, who chanced to
be in a frolicsome humour (_she_ was not painfully controlled by his
will; for hers, in another way, was as strong), exclaimed—
“St. John! you used to call Jane your third sister, but you don’t treat
her as such: you should kiss her too.”
She pushed me towards him. I thought Diana very provoking, and felt
uncomfortably confused; and while I was thus thinking and feeling, St.
John bent his head; his Greek face was brought to a level with mine,
his eyes questioned my eyes piercingly—he kissed me. There are no such
things as marble kisses or ice kisses, or I should say my
ecclesiastical cousin’s salute belonged to one of these classes; but
there may be experiment kisses, and his was an experiment kiss. When
given, he viewed me to learn the result; it was not striking: I am sure
I did not blush; perhaps I might have turned a little pale, for I felt
as if this kiss were a seal affixed to my fetters. He never omitted the
ceremony afterwards, and the gravity and quiescence with which I
underwent it, seemed to invest it for him with a certain charm.
As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt
daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my
faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to
the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation. He wanted
to train me to an elevation I could never reach; it racked me hourly to
aspire to the standard he uplifted. The thing was as impossible as to
mould my irregular features to his correct and classic pattern, to give
to my changeable green eyes the sea-blue tint and solemn lustre of his
own.
Not his ascendancy alone, however, held me in thrall at present. Of
late it had been easy enough for me to look sad: a cankering evil sat
at my heart and drained my happiness at its source—the evil of
suspense.
Perhaps you think I had forgotten Mr. Rochester, reader, amidst these
changes of place and fortune. Not for a moment. His idea was still with
me, because it was not a vapour sunshine could disperse, nor a
sand-traced effigy storms could wash away; it was a name graven on a
tablet, fated to last as long as the marble it inscribed. The craving
to know what had become of him followed me everywhere; when I was at
Morton, I re-entered my cottage every evening to think of that; and now
at Moor House, I sought my bedroom each night to brood over it.
In the course of my necessary correspondence with Mr. Briggs about the
will, I had inquired if he knew anything of Mr. Rochester’s present
residence and state of health; but, as St. John had conjectured, he was
quite ignorant of all concerning him. I then wrote to Mrs. Fairfax,
entreating information on the subject. I had calculated with certainty
on this step answering my end: I felt sure it would elicit an early
answer. I was astonished when a fortnight passed without reply; but
when two months wore away, and day after day the post arrived and
brought nothing for me, I fell a prey to the keenest anxiety.
I wrote again: there was a chance of my first letter having missed.
Renewed hope followed renewed effort: it shone like the former for some
weeks, then, like it, it faded, flickered: not a line, not a word
reached me. When half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died
out, and then I felt dark indeed.
A fine spring shone round me, which I could not enjoy. Summer
approached; Diana tried to cheer me: she said I looked ill, and wished
to accompany me to the sea-side. This St. John opposed; he said I did
not want dissipation, I wanted employment; my present life was too
purposeless, I required an aim; and, I suppose, by way of supplying
deficiencies, he prolonged still further my lessons in Hindostanee, and
grew more urgent in requiring their accomplishment: and I, like a fool,
never thought of resisting him—I could not resist him.
One day I had come to my studies in lower spirits than usual; the ebb