“There is no dishonour, no breach of promise,no desertion in the case.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 am convinced that, go when and with whom I would,I should not live long 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 you wish me would, I begin to think,be almost equivalent to committing suicide. Moreover,before I definitively resolve on quitting England,I will know for certain whether I cannot be of greater use by remaining in it than by leaving it.”
“What do you mean?”
“It would be fruitless to attempt to explain;but there is a point on which I have long endured painful doubt,and I can go nowhere till by some means that doubt is removed. ”
“I know where your heart turns and to what it clings.The interest you cherish is lawless and unconsecrated.Long since you ought to have crushed it:now you should blush to allude to it. You think of 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 not indeed become a castaway.I had thought I recognised in you one of the chosen.But God sees not as man sees: _His_ will be done—”
He opened the gate, passed through it,and strayed away down the glen.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:she put her hand on my shoulder, and, stooping, examined my face.
“Jane,” she said, “you are always agitated and pale now.I am sure there is something the matter.Tell me what business St. John and you have on hands.I have watched you this half hour from the window;you must forgive my being such a spy,but for a long time I have 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 sort respecting you,I am sure: he has long distinguished you by a notice and interest he never showed to any one else—to what end?I wish 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 so frequently 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 in England.”
“Far from that, Diana;his sole idea in proposing to me is to procure 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,I am 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 to accompany him as his sister.”
“It was frantic folly to do so, Jane.Think of the task you undertook—one of incessant fatigue,where fatigue kills even the strong, and you are weak.St. John—you know him—would urge you to impossibilities:with him there would be no permission to rest during the hot hours;and unfortunately, I have noticed, whatever he exacts,you force yourself to perform.I am astonished you found courage 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 too good, to be grilled alive in Calcutta.” And again she earnestly conjured 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 of serving him for a deacon,he expressed himself shocked at my want of decency.He seemed to think I had committed an impropriety in proposing to accompany him unmarried: as if I had not from the first hoped to find in him a brother, and habitually regarded him as such.”
“What makes you say he does not love you, Jane?”
“You should hear himself on the subject.He has again and again explained 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,it follows 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 a useful tool?”
“Insupportable—unnatural—out of the question!”
“And then,” I continued,“though I have only sisterly affection for him now,yet, if forced to be his wife,I can imagine the possibility of conceiving an inevitable,strange, torturing kind of love for him,because he is so talented;and there is often a certain heroic grandeur in his look,manner, and conversation. In that case,my lot would become unspeakably wretched.He would not want me to love him;and if I showed the feeling,he would make me sensible that it was a superfluity,unrequired by him, unbecoming in me. 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, the feelings and claims of little people,in pursuing his own large views. It is better,therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way,lest, in his progress, he should trample them down. Here he comes!I will leave you, Diana.” And I hastened upstairs as I saw him entering the garden.
But I was forced to meet him again at supper.During that meal he appeared just as composed as usual.I had thought he would hardly speak to me,and I was certain he had given up the pursuit of his matrimonial scheme:the sequel showed I was mistaken on both points.He addressed me precisely in his ordinary manner,or what had, of late,been his ordinary manner—one scrupulously polite.No doubt he had invoked the help of the Holy Spirit to subdue the anger I had roused in him, and now believed he had forgiven me once more.
For the evening reading before prayers,he selected the twenty-first chapter of Revelation.It was at all times pleasant to listen while from his lips fell the words of the Bible: never did his fine voice sound at once so sweet and full—never did his manner become so impressive in its noble simplicity, as when he delivered the oracles of God: and to-night that voice took a more solemn tone—that manner a more thrilling meaning—as he sat in the midst of his household circle (the May moon shining in through the uncurtained window, and rendering almost unnecessary the light of the candle on the table): as he sat there, bending over the great old Bible, and described from its page the vision of the new heaven and the new earth—told how God would come to dwell with men, how He would wipe away all tears from their eyes, and promised that there should be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, nor any more pain, because the former things were passed away.
The succeeding words thrilled me strangely as he spoke them:especially as I felt, by the slight,indescribable alteration in sound,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, “the fearful,the unbelieving, &c.,shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone,which is the second death.”
Henceforward, I knew what fate St. John feared for me.