Books: Jane Eyre

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She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative
than usual, that John's conduct, and the threatened ruin of the
family, had been a source of profound affliction to her: but she
had now, she said, settled her mind, and formed her resolution.
Her own fortune she had taken care to secure; and when her mother
died -- and it was wholly improbable, she tranquilly remarked,
that she should either recover or linger long -- she would execute
a long-cherished project: seek a retirement where punctual habits
would be permanently secured from disturbance, and place safe barriers
between herself and a frivolous world. I asked if Georgiana would
accompany her.

"Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common: they
never had had. She would not be burdened with her society for
any consideration. Georgiana should take her own course; and she,
Eliza, would take hers."

Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her
time in lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the house,
and wishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send
her an invitation up to town. "It would be so much better," she
said, "if she could only get out of the way for a month or two, till
all was over." I did not ask what she meant by "all being over,"
but I suppose she referred to the expected decease of her mother
and the gloomy sequel of funeral rites. Eliza generally took no
more notice of her sister's indolence and complaints than if no such
murmuring, lounging object had been before her. One day, however,
as she put away her account-book and unfolded her embroidery,
she suddenly took her up thus -

"Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly
never allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born,
for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with
yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten
your feebleness on some other person's strength: if no one can be
found willing to burden her or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy,
useless thing, you cry out that you are ill-treated, neglected,
miserable. Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of continual
change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon: you must
be admired, you must be courted, you must be flattered -- you must
have music, dancing, and society -- or you languish, you die away.
Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you independent
of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day; share
it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no
stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes
-- include all; do each piece of business in its turn with method,
with rigid regularity. The day will close almost before you are
aware it has begun; and you are indebted to no one for helping you
to get rid of one vacant moment: you have had to seek no one's
company, conversation, sympathy, forbearance; you have lived,
in short, as an independent being ought to do. Take this advice:
the first and last I shall offer you; then you will not want me or
any one else, happen what may. Neglect it -- go on as heretofore,
craving, whining, and idling -- and suffer the results of your
idiocy, however bad and insuperable they may be. I tell you this
plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat what I am
now about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my mother's
death, I wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is carried
to the vault in Gateshead Church, you and I will be as separate as
if we had never known each other. You need not think that because
we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to
fasten me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this --
if the whole human race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and
we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you in the old world,
and betake myself to the new."

She closed her lips.

"You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that
tirade," answered Georgiana. "Everybody knows you are the most
selfish, heartless creature in existence: and I know your spiteful
hatred towards me: I have had a specimen of it before in the
trick you played me about Lord Edwin Vere: you could not bear me
to be raised above you, to have a title, to be received into circles
where you dare not show your face, and so you acted the spy and
informer, and ruined my prospects for ever." Georgiana took out
her handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour afterwards; Eliza
sat cold, impassable, and assiduously industrious.

True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here
were two natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other
despicably savourless for the want of it. Feeling without judgment
is a washy draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is
too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.

It was a wet and windy afternoon: Georgiana had fallen asleep on
the sofa over the perusal of a novel; Eliza was gone to attend a
saint's-day service at the new church -- for in matters of religion
she was a rigid formalist: no weather ever prevented the punctual
discharge of what she considered her devotional duties; fair or foul,
she went to church thrice every Sunday, and as often on week-days
as there were prayers.

I bethought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped,
who lay there almost unheeded: the very servants paid her but a
remittent attention: the hired nurse, being little looked after,
would slip out of the room whenever she could. Bessie was faithful;
but she had her own family to mind, and could only come occasionally
to the hall. I found the sick-room unwatched, as I had expected:
no nurse was there; the patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic;
her livid face sunk in the pillows: the fire was dying in the
grate. I renewed the fuel, re-arranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile
on her who could not now gaze on me, and then I moved away to the
window.

The rain beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously:
"One lies there," I thought, "who will soon be beyond the war of
earthly elements. Whither will that spirit -- now struggling to
quit its material tenement -- flit when at length released?"

In pondering the great mystery, I thought of Helen Burns, recalled
her dying words -- her faith -- her doctrine of the equality
of disembodied souls. I was still listening in thought to her
well-remembered tones -- still picturing her pale and spiritual
aspect, her wasted face and sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid
deathbed, and whispered her longing to be restored to her divine
Father's bosom -- when a feeble voice murmured from the couch
behind: "Who is that?"

I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for days: was she reviving? I
went up to her.

"It is I, Aunt Reed."

"Who -- I?" was her answer. "Who are you?" looking at me with
surprise and a sort of alarm, but still not wildly. "You are quite
a stranger to me -- where is Bessie?"

"She is at the lodge, aunt."

"Aunt," she repeated. "Who calls me aunt? You are not one of the
Gibsons; and yet I know you -- that face, and the eyes and forehead,
are quiet familiar to me: you are like -- why, you are like Jane
Eyre!"

I said nothing: I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring
my identity.

"Yet," said she, "I am afraid it is a mistake: my thoughts deceive
me. I wished to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none
exists: besides, in eight years she must be so changed." I now
gently assured her that I was the person she supposed and desired
me to be: and seeing that I was understood, and that her senses
were quite collected, I explained how Bessie had sent her husband
to fetch me from Thornfield.

"I am very ill, I know," she said ere long. "I was trying to turn
myself a few minutes since, and find I cannot move a limb. It is
as well I should ease my mind before I die: what we think little
of in health, burdens us at such an hour as the present is to me.
Is the nurse here? or is there no one in the room but you?"

I assured her we were alone.

"Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was
in breaking the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as
my own child; the other -- " she stopped. "After all, it is of no
great importance, perhaps," she murmured to herself: "and then I
may get better; and to humble myself so to her is painful."

She made an effort to alter her position, but failed: her face
changed; she seemed to experience some inward sensation -- the
precursor, perhaps, of the last pang.

"Well, I must get it over. Eternity is before me: I had better
tell her. -- Go to my dressing-case, open it, and take out a letter
you will see there."

I obeyed her directions. "Read the letter," she said.

It was short, and thus conceived:-

"Madam, -- Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my
niece, Jane Eyre, and to tell me how she is? It is my intention to
write shortly and desire her to come to me at Madeira. Providence
has blessed my endeavours to secure a competency; and as I am
unmarried and childless, I wish to adopt her during my life, and
bequeath her at my death whatever I may have to leave. -- I am,
Madam, &c., &c.,

"JOHN EYRE, Madeira."

It was dated three years back.

"Why did I never hear of this?" I asked.

"Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a
hand in lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct
to me, Jane -- the fury with which you once turned on me; the tone
in which you declared you abhorred me the worst of anybody in the
world; the unchildlike look and voice with which you affirmed that
the very thought of me made you sick, and asserted that I had treated
you with miserable cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations
when you thus started up and poured out the venom of your mind: I
felt fear as if an animal that I had struck or pushed had looked
up at me with human eyes and cursed me in a man's voice. -- Bring
me some water! Oh, make haste!"

"Dear Mrs. Reed," said I, as I offered her the draught she
required, "think no more of all this, let it pass away from your
mind. Forgive me for my passionate language: I was a child then;
eight, nine years have passed since that day."

She heeded nothing of what I said; but when she had tasted
the water and drawn breath, she went on thus -

"I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for
you to be adopted by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease
and comfort, was what I could not endure. I wrote to him; I said
I was sorry for his disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she
had died of typhus fever at Lowood. Now act as you please: write
and contradict my assertion -- expose my falsehood as soon as you
like. You were born, I think, to be my torment: my last hour is
racked by the recollection of a deed which, but for you, I should
never have been tempted to commit."

"If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and
to regard me with kindness and forgiveness"

"You have a very bad disposition," said she, "and one to this day
I feel it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could
be patient and quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth
break out all fire and violence, I can never comprehend."

"My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but
not vindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been
glad to love you if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to
be reconciled to you now: kiss me, aunt."

I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She
said I oppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded
water. As I laid her down -- for I raised her and supported her
on my arm while she drank -- I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand
with mine: the feeble fingers shrank from my touch -- the glazing
eyes shunned my gaze.

"Love me, then, or hate me, as you will," I said at last, "you have
my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God's, and be at peace."

Poor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the
effort to change her habitual frame of mind: living, she had ever
hated me -- dying, she must hate me still.

The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed. I yet lingered
half-an-hour longer, hoping to see some sign of amity: but she
gave none. She was fast relapsing into stupor; nor did her mind
again rally: at twelve o'clock that night she died. I was not
present to close her eyes, nor were either of her daughters. They
came to tell us the next morning that all was over. She was by
that time laid out. Eliza and I went to look at her: Georgiana,
who had burst out into loud weeping, said she dared not go. There
was stretched Sarah Reed's once robust and active frame, rigid and
still: her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid; her brow
and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul.
A strange and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it
with gloom and pain: nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying,
or hopeful, or subduing did it inspire; only a grating anguish
for HER woes -- not MY loss -- and a sombre tearless dismay at the
fearfulness of death in such a form.

Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence of some
minutes she observed -

"With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age:
her life was shortened by trouble." And then a spasm constricted
her mouth for an instant: as it passed away she turned and left
the room, and so did I. Neither of us had dropt a tear.

CHAPTER XXII

Mr. Rochester had given me but one week's leave of absence: yet
a month elapsed before I quitted Gateshead. I wished to leave
immediately after the funeral, but Georgiana entreated me to stay
till she could get off to London, whither she was now at last
invited by her uncle, Mr. Gibson, who had come down to direct his
sister's interment and settle the family affairs. Georgiana said
she dreaded being left alone with Eliza; from her she got neither
sympathy in her dejection, support in her fears, nor aid in her
preparations; so I bore with her feeble-minded wailings and selfish
lamentations as well as I could, and did my best in sewing for
her and packing her dresses. It is true, that while I worked, she
would idle; and I thought to myself, "If you and I were destined
to live always together, cousin, we would commence matters on a
different footing. I should not settle tamely down into being the
forbearing party; I should assign you your share of labour, and
compel you to accomplish it, or else it should be left undone: I
should insist, also, on your keeping some of those drawling,
half-insincere complaints hushed in your own breast. It is only
because our connection happens to be very transitory, and comes at
a peculiarly mournful season, that I consent thus to render it so
patient and compliant on my part."

At last I saw Georgiana off; but now it was Eliza's turn to
request me to stay another week. Her plans required all her time
and attention, she said; she was about to depart for some unknown
bourne; and all day long she stayed in her own room, her door
bolted within, filling trunks, emptying drawers, burning papers,
and holding no communication with any one. She wished me to look
after the house, to see callers, and answer notes of condolence.

One morning she told me I was at liberty. "And," she added, "I
am obliged to you for your valuable services and discreet conduct!
There is some difference between living with such an one as you
and with Georgiana: you perform your own part in life and burden
no one. To-morrow," she continued, "I set out for the Continent.
I shall take up my abode in a religious house near Lisle -- a
nunnery you would call it; there I shall be quiet and unmolested.
I shall devote myself for a time to the examination of the Roman
Catholic dogmas, and to a careful study of the workings of their
system: if I find it to be, as I half suspect it is, the one best
calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently and in order,
I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and probably take the veil."

I neither expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to
dissuade her from it. "The vocation will fit you to a hair," I
thought: "much good may it do you!"

When we parted, she said: "Good-bye, cousin Jane Eyre; I wish you
well: you have some sense."

I then returned: "You are not without sense, cousin Eliza; but
what you have, I suppose, in another year will be walled up alive
in a French convent. However, it is not my business, and so it
suits you, I don't much care."

"You are in the right," said she; and with these words we each went
our separate way. As I shall not have occasion to refer either to
her or her sister again, I may as well mention here, that Georgiana
made an advantageous match with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion,
and that Eliza actually took the veil, and is at this day superior
of the convent where she passed the period of her novitiate, and
which she endowed with her fortune.

How people feel when they are returning home from an absence, long
or short, I did not know: I had never experienced the sensation.
I had known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after
a long walk, to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy; and later,
what it was to come back from church to Lowood, to long for
a plenteous meal and a good fire, and to be unable to get either.
Neither of these returnings was very pleasant or desirable: no
magnet drew me to a given point, increasing in its strength of
attraction the nearer I came. The return to Thornfield was yet to
be tried.

My journey seemed tedious -- very tedious: fifty miles one day, a
night spent at an inn; fifty miles the next day. During the first
twelve hours I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments; I saw her
disfigured and discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered
voice. I mused on the funeral day, the coffin, the hearse, the black
train of tenants and servants -- few was the number of relatives
-- the gaping vault, the silent church, the solemn service. Then
I thought of Eliza and Georgiana; I beheld one the cynosure of a
ball-room, the other the inmate of a convent cell; and I dwelt on
and analysed their separate peculiarities of person and character.
The evening arrival at the great town of -- scattered these thoughts;
night gave them quite another turn: laid down on my traveller's
bed, I left reminiscence for anticipation.

I was going back to Thornfield: but how long was I to stay there?
Not long; of that I was sure. I had heard from Mrs. Fairfax in
the interim of my absence: the party at the hall was dispersed;
Mr. Rochester had left for London three weeks ago, but he was then
expected to return in a fortnight. Mrs. Fairfax surmised that he
was gone to make arrangements for his wedding, as he had talked of
purchasing a new carriage: she said the idea of his marrying Miss
Ingram still seemed strange to her; but from what everybody said,
and from what she had herself seen, she could no longer doubt
that the event would shortly take place. "You would be strangely
incredulous if you did doubt it," was my mental comment. "I don't
doubt it."

The question followed, "Where was I to go?" I dreamt of Miss
Ingram all the night: in a vivid morning dream I saw her closing
the gates of Thornfield against me and pointing me out another
road; and Mr. Rochester looked on with his arms folded -- smiling
sardonically, as it seemed, at both her and me.

I had not notified to Mrs. Fairfax the exact day of my return; for
I did not wish either car or carriage to meet me at Millcote. I
proposed to walk the distance quietly by myself; and very quietly,
after leaving my box in the ostler's care, did I slip away from
the George Inn, about six o'clock of a June evening, and take the
old road to Thornfield: a road which lay chiefly through fields,
and was now little frequented.

It was not a bright or splendid summer evening, though fair and soft:
the haymakers were at work all along the road; and the sky, though
far from cloudless, was such as promised well for the future: its
blue -- where blue was visible -- was mild and settled, and its
cloud strata high and thin. The west, too, was warm: no watery
gleam chilled it -- it seemed as if there was a fire lit, an altar
burning behind its screen of marbled vapour, and out of apertures
shone a golden redness.

I felt glad as the road shortened before me: so glad that I stopped
once to ask myself what that joy meant: and to remind reason that
it was not to my home I was going, or to a permanent resting-place,
or to a place where fond friends looked out for me and waited my
arrival. "Mrs. Fairfax will smile you a calm welcome, to be sure,"
said I; "and little Adele will clap her hands and jump to see you:
but you know very well you are thinking of another than they, and
that he is not thinking of you."

But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience?
These affirmed that it was pleasure enough to have the privilege
of again looking on Mr. Rochester, whether he looked on me or not;
and they added -- "Hasten! hasten! be with him while you may:
but a few more days or weeks, at most, and you are parted from him
for ever!" And then I strangled a new-born agony -- a deformed
thing which I could not persuade myself to own and rear -- and ran
on.

They are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows: or rather, the
labourers are just quitting their work, and returning home with
their rakes on their shoulders, now, at the hour I arrive. I have
but a field or two to traverse, and then I shall cross the road and
reach the gates. How full the hedges are of roses! But I have no
time to gather any; I want to be at the house. I passed a tall
briar, shooting leafy and flowery branches across the path; I
see the narrow stile with stone steps; and I see -- Mr. Rochester
sitting there, a book and a pencil in his hand; he is writing.

Well, he is not a ghost; yet every nerve I have is unstrung: for
a moment I am beyond my own mastery. What does it mean? I did
not think I should tremble in this way when I saw him, or lose my
voice or the power of motion in his presence. I will go back as
soon as I can stir: I need not make an absolute fool of myself.
I know another way to the house. It does not signify if I knew
twenty ways; for he has seen me.

"Hillo!" he cries; and he puts up his book and his pencil. "There
you are! Come on, if you please."

I suppose I do come on; though in what fashion I know not; being
scarcely cognisant of my movements, and solicitous only to appear
calm; and, above all, to control the working muscles of my face
-- which I feel rebel insolently against my will, and struggle to
express what I had resolved to conceal. But I have a veil -- it
is down: I may make shift yet to behave with decent composure.

"And this is Jane Eyre? Are you coming from Millcote, and on foot?
Yes -- just one of your tricks: not to send for a carriage, and
come clattering over street and road like a common mortal, but to
steal into the vicinage of your home along with twilight, just as
if you were a dream or a shade. What the deuce have you done with
yourself this last month?"

"I have been with my aunt, sir, who is dead."

"A true Janian reply! Good angels be my guard! She comes from the
other world -- from the abode of people who are dead; and tells me
so when she meets me alone here in the gloaming! If I dared, I'd
touch you, to see if you are substance or shadow, you elf! -- but
I'd as soon offer to take hold of a blue ignis fatuus light in a
marsh. Truant! truant!" he added, when he had paused an instant.
"Absent from me a whole month, and forgetting me quite, I'll be
sworn!"

I knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again, even
though broken by the fear that he was so soon to cease to be my
master, and by the knowledge that I was nothing to him: but there
was ever in Mr. Rochester (so at least I thought) such a wealth
of the power of communicating happiness, that to taste but of the
crumbs he scattered to stray and stranger birds like me, was to
feast genially. His last words were balm: they seemed to imply
that it imported something to him whether I forgot him or not.
And he had spoken of Thornfield as my home -- would that it were
my home!

He did not leave the stile, and I hardly liked to ask to go by. I
inquired soon if he had not been to London.

"Yes; I suppose you found that out by second-sight."

"Mrs. Fairfax told me in a letter."

"And did she inform you what I went to do?"

"Oh, yes, sir! Everybody knew your errand."

"You must see the carriage, Jane, and tell me if you don't think it
will suit Mrs. Rochester exactly; and whether she won't look like
Queen Boadicea, leaning back against those purple cushions. I wish,
Jane, I were a trifle better adapted to match with her externally.
Tell me now, fairy as you are -- can't you give me a charm, or a
philter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?"