Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
was occasioned by a poignantly felt disappointment. Hannah had told me
in the morning there was a letter for me, and when I went down to take
it, almost certain that the long-looked for tidings were vouchsafed me
at last, I found only an unimportant note from Mr. Briggs on business.
The bitter check had wrung from me some tears; and now, as I sat poring
over the crabbed characters and flourishing tropes of an Indian scribe,
my eyes filled again.
St. John called me to his side to read; in attempting to do this my
voice failed me: words were lost in sobs. He and I were the only
occupants of the parlour: Diana was practising her music in the
drawing-room, Mary was gardening—it was a very fine May day, clear,
sunny, and breezy. My companion expressed no surprise at this emotion,
nor did he question me as to its cause; he only said—
“We will wait a few minutes, Jane, till you are more composed.” And
while I smothered the paroxysm with all haste, he sat calm and patient,
leaning on his desk, and looking like a physician watching with the eye
of science an expected and fully understood crisis in a patient’s
malady. Having stifled my sobs, wiped my eyes, and muttered something
about not being very well that morning, I resumed my task, and
succeeded in completing it. St. John put away my books and his, locked
his desk, and said—
“Now, Jane, you shall take a walk; and with me.”
“I will call Diana and Mary.”
“No; I want only one companion this morning, and that must be you. Put
on your things; go out by the kitchen-door: take the road towards the
head of Marsh Glen: I will join you in a moment.”
I know no medium: I never in my life have known any medium in my
dealings with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own,
between absolute submission and determined revolt. I have always
faithfully observed the one, up to the very moment of bursting,
sometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other; and as neither
present circumstances warranted, nor my present mood inclined me to
mutiny, I observed careful obedience to St. John’s directions; and in
ten minutes I was treading the wild track of the glen, side by side
with him.
The breeze was from the west: it came over the hills, sweet with scents
of heath and rush; the sky was of stainless blue; the stream descending
the ravine, swelled with past spring rains, poured along plentiful and
clear, catching golden gleams from the sun, and sapphire tints from the
firmament. As we advanced and left the track, we trod a soft turf,
mossy fine and emerald green, minutely enamelled with a tiny white
flower, and spangled with a star-like yellow blossom: the hills,
meantime, shut us quite in; for the glen, towards its head, wound to
their very core.
“Let us rest here,” said St. John, as we reached the first stragglers
of a battalion of rocks, guarding a sort of pass, beyond which the beck
rushed down a waterfall; and where, still a little farther, the
mountain shook off turf and flower, had only heath for raiment and crag
for gem—where it exaggerated the wild to the savage, and exchanged the
fresh for the frowning—where it guarded the forlorn hope of solitude,
and a last refuge for silence.
I took a seat: St. John stood near me. He looked up the pass and down
the hollow; his glance wandered away with the stream, and returned to
traverse the unclouded heaven which coloured it: he removed his hat,
let the breeze stir his hair and kiss his brow. He seemed in communion
with the genius of the haunt: with his eye he bade farewell to
something.
“And I shall see it again,” he said aloud, “in dreams when I sleep by
the Ganges: and again in a more remote hour—when another slumber
overcomes me—on the shore of a darker stream!”
Strange words of a strange love! An austere patriot’s passion for his
fatherland! He sat down; for half-an-hour we never spoke; neither he to
me nor I to him: that interval past, he recommenced—
“Jane, I go in six weeks; I have taken my berth in an East Indiaman
which sails on the 20th of June.”
“God will protect you; for you have undertaken His work,” I answered.
“Yes,” said he, “there is my glory and joy. I am the servant of an
infallible Master. I am not going out under human guidance, subject to
the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms: my
king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect. It seems strange to
me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner,—to
join in the same enterprise.”
“All have not your powers, and it would be folly for the feeble to wish
to march with the strong.”
“I do not speak to the feeble, or think of them: I address only such as
are worthy of the work, and competent to accomplish it.”
“Those are few in number, and difficult to discover.”
“You say truly; but when found, it is right to stir them up—to urge and
exhort them to the effort—to show them what their gifts are, and why
they were given—to speak Heaven’s message in their ear,—to offer them,
direct from God, a place in the ranks of His chosen.”
“If they are really qualified for the task, will not their own hearts
be the first to inform them of it?”
I felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over me: I
trembled to hear some fatal word spoken which would at once declare and
rivet the spell.
“And what does _your_ heart say?” demanded St. John.
“My heart is mute,—my heart is mute,” I answered, struck and thrilled.
“Then I must speak for it,” continued the deep, relentless voice.
“Jane, come with me to India: come as my helpmeet and fellow-labourer.”
The glen and sky spun round: the hills heaved! It was as if I had heard
a summons from Heaven—as if a visionary messenger, like him of
Macedonia, had enounced, “Come over and help us!” But I was no
apostle,—I could not behold the herald,—I could not receive his call.
“Oh, St. John!” I cried, “have some mercy!”
I appealed to one who, in the discharge of what he believed his duty,
knew neither mercy nor remorse. He continued—
“God and nature intended you for a missionary’s wife. It is not
personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for
labour, not for love. A missionary’s wife you must—shall be. You shall
be mine: I claim you—not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s
service.”
“I am not fit for it: I have no vocation,” I said.
He had calculated on these first objections: he was not irritated by
them. Indeed, as he leaned back against the crag behind him, folded his
arms on his chest, and fixed his countenance, I saw he was prepared for
a long and trying opposition, and had taken in a stock of patience to
last him to its close—resolved, however, that that close should be
conquest for him.
“Humility, Jane,” said he, “is the groundwork of Christian virtues: you
say right that you are not fit for the work. Who is fit for it? Or who,
that ever was truly called, believed himself worthy of the summons? I,
for instance, am but dust and ashes. With St. Paul, I acknowledge
myself the chiefest of sinners; but I do not suffer this sense of my
personal vileness to daunt me. I know my Leader: that He is just as
well as mighty; and while He has chosen a feeble instrument to perform
a great task, He will, from the boundless stores of His providence,
supply the inadequacy of the means to the end. Think like me,
Jane—trust like me. It is the Rock of Ages I ask you to lean on: do not
doubt but it will bear the weight of your human weakness.”
“I do not understand a missionary life: I have never studied missionary
labours.”
“There I, humble as I am, can give you the aid you want: I can set you
your task from hour to hour; stand by you always; help you from moment
to moment. This I could do in the beginning: soon (for I know your
powers) you would be as strong and apt as myself, and would not require
my help.”
“But my powers—where are they for this undertaking? I do not feel them.
Nothing speaks or stirs in me while you talk. I am sensible of no light
kindling—no life quickening—no voice counselling or cheering. Oh, I
wish I could make you see how much my mind is at this moment like a
rayless dungeon, with one shrinking fear fettered in its depths—the
fear of being persuaded by you to attempt what I cannot accomplish!”
“I have an answer for you—hear it. I have watched you ever since we
first met: I have made you my study for ten months. I have proved you
in that time by sundry tests: and what have I seen and elicited? In the
village school I found you could perform well, punctually, uprightly,
labour uncongenial to your habits and inclinations; I saw you could
perform it with capacity and tact: you could win while you controlled.
In the calm with which you learnt you had become suddenly rich, I read
a mind clear of the vice of Demas:—lucre had no undue power over you.
In the resolute readiness with which you cut your wealth into four
shares, keeping but one to yourself, and relinquishing the three others
to the claim of abstract justice, I recognised a soul that revelled in
the flame and excitement of sacrifice. In the tractability with which,
at my wish, you forsook a study in which you were interested, and
adopted another because it interested me; in the untiring assiduity
with which you have since persevered in it—in the unflagging energy and
unshaken temper with which you have met its difficulties—I acknowledge
the complement of the qualities I seek. Jane, you are docile, diligent,
disinterested, faithful, constant, and courageous; very gentle, and
very heroic: cease to mistrust yourself—I can trust you unreservedly.
As a conductress of Indian schools, and a helper amongst Indian women,
your assistance will be to me invaluable.”
My iron shroud contracted round me; persuasion advanced with slow sure
step. Shut my eyes as I would, these last words of his succeeded in
making the way, which had seemed blocked up, comparatively clear. My
work, which had appeared so vague, so hopelessly diffuse, condensed
itself as he proceeded, and assumed a definite form under his shaping
hand. He waited for an answer. I demanded a quarter of an hour to
think, before I again hazarded a reply.
“Very willingly,” he rejoined; and rising, he strode a little distance
up the pass, threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay
still.
He threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay still
“I _can_ do what he wants me to do: I am forced to see and acknowledge
that,” I meditated,—“that is, if life be spared me. But I feel mine is
not the existence to be long protracted under an Indian sun. What then?
He does not care for that: when my time came to die, he would resign
me, in all serenity and sanctity, to the God who gave me. The case is
very plain before me. In leaving England, I should leave a loved but
empty land—Mr. Rochester is not there; and if he were, what is, what
can that ever be to me? My business is to live without him now: nothing
so absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting
some impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him.
Of course (as St. John once said) I must seek another interest in life
to replace the one lost: is not the occupation he now offers me truly
the most glorious man can adopt or God assign? Is it not, by its noble
cares and sublime results, the one best calculated to fill the void
left by uptorn affections and demolished hopes? I believe I must say,
Yes—and yet I shudder. Alas! If I join St. John, I abandon half myself:
if I go to India, I go to premature death. And how will the interval
between leaving England for India, and India for the grave, be filled?
Oh, I know well! That, too, is very clear to my vision. By straining to
satisfy St. John till my sinews ache, I _shall_ satisfy him—to the