He did not leave for Cambridge the next day, as he had said hewould. He deferred his departure a whole week, and during that timehe made me feel what severe punishment a good yet stern, aconscientious yet implacable man can inflict on one who has offendedhim. Without one overt act of hostility, one upbraiding word, hecontrived to impress me momently with the conviction that I was putbeyond the pale of his favour.

Not that St. John harboured a spirit of unchristian vindictiveness--not that he would have injured a hair of my head, if it had beenfully in his power to do so. Both by nature and principle, he wassuperior to the mean gratification of vengeance: he had forgiven mefor saying I scorned him and his love, but he had not forgotten thewords; and as long as he and I lived he never would forget them. Isaw by his look, when he turned to me, that they were always writtenon the air between me and him; whenever I spoke, they sounded in myvoice to his ear, and their echo toned every answer he gave me.

He did not abstain from conversing with me: he even called me asusual each morning to join him at his desk; and I fear the corruptman within him had a pleasure unimparted to, and unshared by, thepure Christian, in evincing with what skill he could, while actingand speaking apparently just as usual, extract from every deed andevery phrase the spirit of interest and approval which had formerlycommunicated a certain austere charm to his language and manner. Tome, he was in reality become no longer flesh, but marble; his eyewas a cold, bright, blue gem; his tongue a speaking instrument--nothing more.

All this was torture to me--refined, lingering torture. It kept upa slow fire of indignation and a trembling trouble of grief, whichharassed and crushed me altogether. I felt how--if I were his wife,this good man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon kill me,without drawing from my veins a single drop of blood, or receivingon his own crystal conscience the faintest stain of crime.Especially I felt this when I made any attempt to propitiate him.No ruth met my ruth. HE experienced no suffering from estrangement--no yearning after reconciliation; and though, more than once, myfast falling tears blistered the page over which we both bent, theyproduced no more effect on him than if his heart had been really amatter of stone or metal. To his sisters, meantime, he was somewhatkinder than usual: as if afraid that mere coldness would notsufficiently convince me how completely I was banished and banned,he added the force of contrast; and this I am sure he did not byforce, but on principle.

The night before he left home, happening to see him walking in thegarden about sunset, and remembering, as I looked at him, that thisman, alienated as he now was, had once saved my life, and that wewere near relations, I was moved to make a last attempt to regainhis friendship. I went out and approached him as he stood leaningover the little gate; I spoke to the point at once.

"St. John, I am unhappy because you are still angry with me. Let usbe friends."

"I hope we are friends," was the unmoved reply; while he stillwatched the rising of the moon, which he had been contemplating as Iapproached.

"No, St. John, we are not friends as we were. You know that."

"Are we not? That is wrong. For my part, I wish you no ill and allgood."

"I believe you, St. John; for I am sure you are incapable of wishingany one ill; but, as I am your kinswoman, I should desire somewhatmore of affection than that sort of general philanthropy you extendto mere strangers."

"Of course," he said. "Your wish is reasonable, and I am far fromregarding you as a stranger."

This, spoken in a cool, tranquil tone, was mortifying and bafflingenough. Had I attended to the suggestions of pride and ire, Ishould immediately have left him; but something worked within memore strongly than those feelings could. I deeply venerated mycousin's talent and principle. His friendship was of value to me:to lose it tried me severely. I would not so soon relinquish theattempt to reconquer it.

"Must we part in this way, St. John? And when you go to India, willyou leave me so, without a kinder word than you have yet spoken?"

He now turned quite from the moon and faced me.

"When I go to India, Jane, will I leave you! What! do you not go toIndia?"

"You said I could not unless I married you."

"And you will not marry me! You adhere to that resolution?"

Reader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can putinto the ice of their questions? How much of the fall of theavalanche is in their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea intheir displeasure?

"No. St. John, I will not marry you. I adhere to my resolution."

The avalanche had shaken and slid a little forward, but it did notyet crash down.

"Once more, why this refusal?" he asked.

"Formerly," I answered, "because you did not love me; now, I reply,because you almost hate me. If I were to marry you, you would killme. You are killing me now."

His lips and cheeks turned white--quite white.

"I SHOULD KILL YOU--I AM KILLING YOU? Your words are such as oughtnot to be used: violent, unfeminine, and untrue. They betray anunfortunate state of mind: they merit severe reproof: they wouldseem inexcusable, but that it is the duty of man to forgive hisfellow even until seventy-and-seven times."

I had finished the business now. While earnestly wishing to erasefrom his mind the trace of my former offence, I had stamped on thattenacious surface another and far deeper impression, I had burnt itin.

"Now you will indeed hate me," I said. "It is useless to attempt toconciliate you: I see I have made an eternal enemy of you."

A fresh wrong did these words inflict: the worse, because theytouched on the truth. That bloodless lip quivered to a temporaryspasm. I knew the steely ire I had whetted. I was heart-wrung.

"You utterly misinterpret my words," I said, at once seizing hishand: "I have no intention to grieve or pain you--indeed, I havenot."

Most bitterly he smiled--most decidedly he withdrew his hand frommine. "And now you recall your promise, and will not go to India atall, I presume?" said he, after a considerable pause.

"Yes, I will, as your assistant," I answered.

A very long silence succeeded. What struggle there was in himbetween Nature and Grace in this interval, I cannot tell: onlysingular gleams scintillated in his eyes, and strange shadows passedover his face. He spoke at last.

"I before proved to you the absurdity of a single woman of your ageproposing to accompany abroad a single man of mine. I proved it toyou in such terms as, I should have thought, would have preventedyour ever again alluding to the plan. That you have done so, Iregret--for your sake."

I interrupted him. Anything like a tangible reproach gave mecourage at once. "Keep to common sense, St. John: you are vergingon nonsense. You pretend to be shocked by what I have said. Youare not really shocked: for, with your superior mind, you cannot beeither so dull or so conceited as to misunderstand my meaning. Isay again, I will be your curate, if you like, but never your wife."

Again he turned lividly pale; but, as before, controlled his passionperfectly. He answered emphatically but calmly -

"A female curate, who is not my wife, would never suit me. With me,then, it seems, you cannot go: but if you are sincere in youroffer, I will, while in town, speak to a married missionary, whosewife needs a coadjutor. Your own fortune will make you independentof the Society's aid; and thus you may still be spared the dishonourof breaking your promise and deserting the band you engaged tojoin."

Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formalpromise or entered into any engagement; and this language was allmuch too hard and much too despotic for the occasion. I replied -

"There is no dishonour, no breach of promise, no desertion in thecase. I am not under the slightest obligation to go to India,especially with strangers. With you I would have ventured much,because I admire, confide in, and, as a sister, I love you; but I amconvinced that, go when and with whom I would, I should not livelong in that climate."

"Ah! you are afraid of yourself," he said, curling his lip.

"I am. God did not give me my life to throw away; and to do as youwish me would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committingsuicide. Moreover, before I definitively resolve on quittingEngland, I will know for certain whether I cannot be of greater useby remaining in it than by leaving it."

"What do you mean?"

"It would be fruitless to attempt to explain; but there is a pointon which I have long endured painful doubt, and I can go nowheretill by some means that doubt is removed."

"I know where your heart turns and to what it clings. The interestyou cherish is lawless and unconsecrated. Long since you ought tohave crushed it: now you should blush to allude to it. You thinkof Mr. Rochester?"

It was true. I confessed it by silence.

"Are you going to seek Mr. Rochester?"

"I must find out what is become of him."

"It remains for me, then," he said, "to remember you in my prayers,and to entreat God for you, in all earnestness, that you may notindeed become a castaway. I had thought I recognised in you one ofthe chosen. But God sees not as man sees: HIS will be done--"

He opened the gate, passed through it, and strayed away down theglen. He was soon out of sight.

On re-entering the parlour, I found Diana standing at the window,looking very thoughtful. Diana was a great deal taller than I: sheput her hand on my shoulder, and, stooping, examined my face.

"Jane," she said, "you are always agitated and pale now. I am surethere is something the matter. Tell me what business St. John andyou have on hands. I have watched you this half hour from thewindow; you must forgive my being such a spy, but for a long time Ihave fancied I hardly know what. St. John is a strange being--"

She paused--I did not speak: soon she resumed -

"That brother of mine cherishes peculiar views of some sortrespecting you, I am sure: he has long distinguished you by anotice and interest he never showed to any one else--to what end? Iwish he loved you--does he, Jane?"

I put her cool hand to my hot forehead; "No, Die, not one whit."

"Then why does he follow you so with his eyes, and get you sofrequently alone with him, and keep you so continually at his side?Mary and I had both concluded he wished you to marry him."

"He does--he has asked me to be his wife."

Diana clapped her hands. "That is just what we hoped and thought!And you will marry him, Jane, won't you? And then he will stay inEngland."

"Far from that, Diana; his sole idea in proposing to me is toprocure a fitting fellow-labourer in his Indian toils."

"What! He wishes you to go to India?"

"Yes."

"Madness!" she exclaimed. "You would not live three months there, Iam certain. You never shall go: you have not consented, have you,Jane?"

"I have refused to marry him--"

"And have consequently displeased him?" she suggested.

"Deeply: he will never forgive me, I fear: yet I offered toaccompany him as his sister."

"It was frantic folly to do so, Jane. Think of the task youundertook--one of incessant fatigue, where fatigue kills even thestrong, and you are weak. St. John--you know him--would urge you toimpossibilities: with him there would be no permission to restduring the hot hours; and unfortunately, I have noticed, whatever heexacts, you force yourself to perform. I am astonished you foundcourage to refuse his hand. You do not love him then, Jane?"

"Not as a husband."

"Yet he is a handsome fellow."

"And I am so plain, you see, Die. We should never suit."

"Plain! You? Not at all. You are much too pretty, as well as toogood, to be grilled alive in Calcutta." And again she earnestlyconjured me to give up all thoughts of going out with her brother.

"I must indeed," I said; "for when just now I repeated the offer ofserving him for a deacon, he expressed himself shocked at my want ofdecency. He seemed to think I had committed an impropriety inproposing to accompany him unmarried: as if I had not from thefirst hoped to find in him a brother, and habitually regarded him assuch."

"What makes you say he does not love you, Jane?"

"You should hear himself on the subject. He has again and againexplained that it is not himself, but his office he wishes to mate.He has told me I am formed for labour--not for love: which is true,no doubt. But, in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, itfollows that I am not formed for marriage. Would it not be strange,Die, to be chained for life to a man who regarded one but as auseful tool?"

"Insupportable--unnatural--out of the question!"

"And then," I continued, "though I have only sisterly affection forhim now, yet, if forced to be his wife, I can imagine thepossibility of conceiving an inevitable, strange, torturing kind oflove for him, because he is so talented; and there is often acertain heroic grandeur in his look, manner, and conversation. Inthat case, my lot would become unspeakably wretched. He would notwant me to love him; and if I showed the feeling, he would make mesensible that it was a superfluity, unrequired by him, unbecoming inme. I know he would."

"And yet St. John is a good man," said Diana.

"He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, thefeelings and claims of little people, in pursuing his own largeviews. It is better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep outof his way, lest, in his progress, he should trample them down.Here he comes! I will leave you, Diana." And I hastened upstairsas I saw him entering the garden.

But I was forced to meet him again at supper. During that meal heappeared just as composed as usual. I had thought he would hardlyspeak to me, and I was certain he had given up the pursuit of hismatrimonial scheme: the sequel showed I was mistaken on bothpoints. He addressed me precisely in his ordinary manner, or whathad, of late, been his ordinary manner--one scrupulously polite. Nodoubt he had invoked the help of the Holy Spirit to subdue the angerI had roused in him, and now believed he had forgiven me once more.

For the evening reading before prayers, he selected the twenty-firstchapter of Revelation. It was at all times pleasant to listen whilefrom his lips fell the words of the Bible: never did his fine voicesound at once so sweet and full--never did his manner become soimpressive in its noble simplicity, as when he delivered the oraclesof God: and to-night that voice took a more solemn tone--thatmanner a more thrilling meaning--as he sat in the midst of hishousehold circle (the May moon shining in through the uncurtainedwindow, and rendering almost unnecessary the light of the candle onthe table): as he sat there, bending over the great old Bible, anddescribed from its page the vision of the new heaven and the newearth--told how God would come to dwell with men, how He would wipeaway all tears from their eyes, and promised that there should be nomore death, neither sorrow nor crying, nor any more pain, becausethe former things were passed away.

The succeeding words thrilled me strangely as he spoke them:especially as I felt, by the slight, indescribable alteration insound, that in uttering them, his eye had turned on me.

"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God,and he shall be my son. But," was slowly, distinctly read, "thefearful, the unbelieving, &c., shall have their part in the lakewhich burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."

Henceforward, I knew what fate St. John feared for me.

A calm, subdued triumph, blent with a longing earnestness, markedhis enunciation of the last glorious verses of that chapter. Thereader believed his name was already written in the Lamb's book oflife, and he yearned after the hour which should admit him to thecity to which the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour;which has no need of sun or moon to shine in it, because the gloryof God lightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

In the prayer following the chapter, all his energy gathered--allhis stern zeal woke: he was in deep earnest, wrestling with God,and resolved on a conquest. He supplicated strength for the weak-hearted; guidance for wanderers from the fold: a return, even atthe eleventh hour, for those whom the temptations of the world andthe flesh were luring from the narrow path. He asked, he urged, heclaimed the boon of a brand snatched from the burning. Earnestnessis ever deeply solemn: first, as I listened to that prayer, Iwondered at his; then, when it continued and rose, I was touched byit, and at last awed. He felt the greatness and goodness of hispurpose so sincerely: others who heard him plead for it, could notbut feel it too.

The prayer over, we took leave of him: he was to go at a very earlyhour in the morning. Diana and Mary having kissed him, left theroom--in compliance, I think, with a whispered hint from him: Itendered my hand, and wished him a pleasant journey.

"Thank you, Jane. As I said, I shall return from Cambridge in afortnight: that space, then, is yet left you for reflection. If Ilistened to human pride, I should say no more to you of marriagewith me; but I listen to my duty, and keep steadily in view my firstaim--to do all things to the glory of God. My Master was long-suffering: so will I be. I cannot give you up to perdition as avessel of wrath: repent--resolve, while there is yet time.Remember, we are bid to work while it is day--warned that 'the nightcometh when no man shall work.' Remember the fate of Dives, who hadhis good things in this life. God give you strength to choose thatbetter part which shall not be taken from you!"

He laid his hand on my head as he uttered the last words. He hadspoken earnestly, mildly: his look was not, indeed, that of a loverbeholding his mistress, but it was that of a pastor recalling hiswandering sheep--or better, of a guardian angel watching the soulfor which he is responsible. All men of talent, whether they be menof feeling or not; whether they be zealots, or aspirants, ordespots--provided only they be sincere--have their sublime moments,when they subdue and rule. I felt veneration for St. John--veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me at once to the pointI had so long shunned. I was tempted to cease struggling with him--to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf of his existence,and there lose my own. I was almost as hard beset by him now as Ihad been once before, in a different way, by another. I was a foolboth times. To have yielded then would have been an error ofprinciple; to have yielded now would have been an error of judgment.So I think at this hour, when I look back to the crisis through thequiet medium of time: I was unconscious of folly at the instant.

I stood motionless under my hierophant's touch. My refusals wereforgotten--my fears overcome--my wrestlings paralysed. TheImpossible--I.E., my marriage with St. John--was fast becoming thePossible. All was changing utterly with a sudden sweep. Religioncalled--Angels beckoned--God commanded--life rolled together like ascroll--death's gates opening, showed eternity beyond: it seemed,that for safety and bliss there, all here might be sacrificed in asecond. The dim room was full of visions.

"Could you decide now?" asked the missionary. The inquiry was putin gentle tones: he drew me to him as gently. Oh, that gentleness!how far more potent is it than force! I could resist St. John'swrath: I grew pliant as a reed under his kindness. Yet I knew allthe time, if I yielded now, I should not the less be made to repent,some day, of my former rebellion. His nature was not changed by onehour of solemn prayer: it was only elevated.

"I could decide if I were but certain," I answered: "were I butconvinced that it is God's will I should marry you, I could vow tomarry you here and now--come afterwards what would!"

"My I prayers are heard!" ejaculated St. John. He pressed his handfirmer on my head, as if he claimed me: he surrounded me with hisarm, ALMOST as if he loved me (I say ALMOST--I knew the difference--for I had felt what it was to be loved; but, like him, I had now putlove out of the question, and thought only of duty). I contendedwith my inward dimness of vision, before which clouds yet rolled. Isincerely, deeply, fervently longed to do what was right; and onlythat. "Show me, show me the path!" I entreated of Heaven. I wasexcited more than I had ever been; and whether what followed was theeffect of excitement the reader shall judge.

All the house was still; for I believe all, except St. John andmyself, were now retired to rest. The one candle was dying out:the room was full of moonlight. My heart beat fast and thick: Iheard its throb. Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressiblefeeling that thrilled it through, and passed at once to my head andextremities. The feeling was not like an electric shock, but it wasquite as sharp, as strange, as startling: it acted on my senses asif their utmost activity hitherto had been but torpor, from whichthey were now summoned and forced to wake. They rose expectant:eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered on my bones.

"What have you heard? What do you see?" asked St. John. I sawnothing, but I heard a voice somewhere cry -

"Jane! Jane! Jane!"--nothing more.

"O God! what is it?" I gasped.

I might have said, "Where is it?" for it did not seem in the room--nor in the house--nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air--nor from under the earth--nor from overhead. I had heard it--where, or whence, for ever impossible to know! And it was the voiceof a human being--a known, loved, well-remembered voice--that ofEdward Fairfax Rochester; and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly,eerily, urgently.

"I am coming!" I cried. "Wait for me! Oh, I will come!" I flew tothe door and looked into the passage: it was dark. I ran out intothe garden: it was void.

"Where are you?" I exclaimed.

The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back--"Where areyou?" I listened. The wind sighed low in the firs: all wasmoorland loneliness and midnight hush.

"Down superstition!" I commented, as that spectre rose up black bythe black yew at the gate. "This is not thy deception, nor thywitchcraft: it is the work of nature. She was roused, and did--nomiracle--but her best."

I broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have detained me.It was MY time to assume ascendency. MY powers were in play and inforce. I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him toleave me: I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once. Wherethere is energy to command well enough, obedience never fails. Imounted to my chamber; locked myself in; fell on my knees; andprayed in my way--a different way to St. John's, but effective inits own fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit;and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet. I rose from thethanksgiving--took a resolve--and lay down, unscared, enlightened--eager but for the daylight.