Chapter 35

He did not leave for Cambridge the next day, as he had said he would. He deferred his
departure a whole week, and during that time he made me feel what severe punishment
a good yet stern, a conscientious yet implacable man can inflict on one who has offended
him. Without one overt act of hostility, one upbraiding word, he contrived to impress
me momently with the conviction that I was put beyond 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 been fully in his power to do so. Both by nature
and principle, he was superior to the mean gratification of vengeance: he had forgiven
me for saying I scorned him and his love, but he had not forgotten the words; and as
long as he and I lived he never would forget them. I saw by his look, when he turned to
me, that they were always written on the air between me and him; whenever I spoke,
they sounded in my voice to his ear, and their echo toned every answer he gave me.
He did not abstain from conversing with me: he even called me as usual each morning to
join him at his desk; and I fear the corrupt man within him had a pleasure unimparted
to, and unshared by, the pure Christian, in evincing with what skill he could, while
acting and speaking apparently just as usual, extract from every deed and every phrase
the spirit of interest and approval which had formerly communicated a certain austere
charm to his language and manner. To me, he was in reality become no longer flesh, but
marble; his eye was a cold, bright, blue gem; his tongue a speaking instrument—nothing
more.
All this was torture to me—refined, lingering torture. It kept up a slow fire of
indignation and a trembling trouble of grief, which harassed 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 receiving on 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, my fast
falling tears blistered the page over which we both bent, they produced no more effect
on him than if his heart had been really a matter of stone or metal. To his sisters,
meantime, he was somewhat kinder than usual: as if afraid that mere coldness would
not sufficiently convince me how completely I was banished and banned, he added the
force of contrast; and this I am sure he did not by malice, but on principle.
The night before he left home, happening to see him walking in the garden about sunset,
and remembering, as I looked at him, that this man, alienated as he now was, had once
saved my life, and that we were near relations, I was moved to make a last attempt to
regain his friendship. I went out and approached him as he stood leaning over the little
gate; I spoke to the point at once.
“St. John, I am unhappy because you are still angry with me. Let us be friends.”
“I hope we are friends,” was the unmoved reply; while he still watched the rising of the
moon, which he had been contemplating as I approached.

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“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 all good.”
“I believe you, St. John; for I am sure you are incapable of wishing any one ill; but, as I
am your kinswoman, I should desire somewhat more of affection than that sort of
general philanthropy you extend to mere strangers.”
“Of course,” he said. “Your wish is reasonable, and I am far from regarding you as a
stranger.”
This, spoken in a cool, tranquil tone, was mortifying and baffling enough. Had I attended
to the suggestions of pride and ire, I should immediately have left him; but something
worked within me more strongly than those feelings could. I deeply venerated my
cousin’s talent and principle. His friendship was of value to me: to lose it tried me
severely. I would not so soon relinquish the attempt to reconquer it.
“Must we part in this way, St. John? And when you go to India, will you 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 to India?”
“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 put into the ice of their
questions? How much of the fall of the avalanche is in their anger? of the breaking up of
the frozen sea in their 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 not yet 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 kill me. 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 ought not to be used: violent,
unfeminine, and untrue. They betray an unfortunate state of mind: they merit severe
reproof: they would seem inexcusable, but that it is the duty of man to forgive his fellow
even until seventy-and-seven times.”
I had finished the business now. While earnestly wishing to erase from his mind the
trace of my former offence, I had stamped on that tenacious surface another and far
deeper impression: I had burnt it in.
“Now you will indeed hate me,” I said. “It is useless to attempt to conciliate you: I see I
have made an eternal enemy of you.”
A fresh wrong did these words inflict: the worse, because they touched on the truth.
That bloodless lip quivered to a temporary spasm. I knew the steely ire I had whetted. I
was heart-wrung.
“You utterly misinterpret my words,” I said, at once seizing his hand: “I have no
intention to grieve or pain you—indeed, I have not.”

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Most bitterly he smiled—most decidedly he withdrew his hand from mine. “And now
you recall your promise, and will not go to India at all, 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 him between Nature and
Grace in this interval, I cannot tell: only singular gleams scintillated in his eyes, and
strange shadows passed over his face. He spoke at last.
“I before proved to you the absurdity of a single woman of your age proposing to
accompany abroad a single man of mine. I proved it to you in such terms as, I should
have thought, would have prevented your ever again alluding to the plan. That you have
done so, I regret—for your sake.”
I interrupted him. Anything like a tangible reproach gave me courage at once. “Keep to
common sense, St. John: you are verging on nonsense. You pretend to be shocked by
what I have said. You are not really shocked: for, with your superior mind, you cannot
be either so dull or so conceited as to misunderstand my meaning. I say again, I will be
your curate, if you like, but never your wife.”
Again he turned lividly pale; but, as before, controlled his passion perfectly. 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 your offer, I will, while in town, speak to a married
missionary, whose wife needs a coadjutor. Your own fortune will make you independent
of the Society’s aid; and thus you may still be spared the dishonour of breaking your
promise and deserting the band you engaged to join.”
Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal promise or entered into
any engagement; and this language was all much too hard and much too despotic for the
occasion. I replied—
“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?”

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“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.”

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“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

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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.
A calm, subdued triumph, blent with a longing earnestness, marked his enunciation of
the last glorious verses of that chapter. The reader believed his name was already
written in the Lamb’s book of life, and he yearned after the hour which should admit
him to the city 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 glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb
is the light thereof.
In the prayer following the chapter, all his energy gathered—all his 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 at
the eleventh hour, for those whom the temptations of the world and the flesh were
luring from the narrow path. He asked, he urged, he claimed the boon of a brand
snatched from the burning. Earnestness is ever deeply solemn: first, as I listened to that
prayer, I wondered at his; then, when it continued and rose, I was touched by it, and at
last awed. He felt the greatness and goodness of his purpose so sincerely: others who
heard him plead for it, could not but feel it too.
The prayer over, we took leave of him: he was to go at a very early hour in the morning.
Diana and Mary having kissed him, left the room—in compliance, I think, with a
whispered hint from him: I tendered my hand, and wished him a pleasant journey.
“Thank you, Jane. As I said, I shall return from Cambridge in a fortnight: that space, then,
is yet left you for reflection. If I listened to human pride, I should say no more to you of
marriage with me; but I listen to my duty, and keep steadily in view my first aim—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 a vessel of wrath: repent—resolve, while there is yet time.
Remember, we are bid to work while it is day—warned that ‘the night cometh when no
man shall work.’ Remember the fate of Dives, who had his good things in this life. God
give you strength to choose that better part which shall not be taken from you!”
He laid his hand on my head as he uttered the last words. He had spoken earnestly,
mildly: his look was not, indeed, that of a lover beholding his mistress, but it was that of
a pastor recalling his wandering sheep—or better, of a guardian angel watching the soul
for which he is responsible. All men of talent, whether they be men of feeling or not;
whether they be zealots, or aspirants, or despots—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 point I 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 I had been once before, in a different way, by another. I was a fool both
times. To have yielded then would have been an error of principle; to have yielded now

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would have been an error of judgment. So I think at this hour, when I look back to the
crisis through the quiet medium of time: I was unconscious of folly at the instant.
I stood motionless under my hierophant’s touch. My refusals were forgotten—my fears
overcome—my wrestlings paralysed. The Impossible—i.e., my marriage with St. John—
was fast becoming the Possible. All was changing utterly with a sudden sweep. Religion
called—Angels beckoned—God commanded—life rolled together like a scroll—death’s
gates opening, showed eternity beyond: it seemed, that for safety and bliss there, all
here might be sacrificed in a second. The dim room was full of visions.
“Could you decide now?” asked the missionary. The inquiry was put in 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’s wrath: I grew pliant as a reed under his kindness. Yet I knew all
the 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 one hour of solemn prayer: it was only
elevated.
“I could decide if I were but certain,” I answered: “were I but convinced that it is God’s
will I should marry you, I could vow to marry you here and now—come afterwards
what would!”
“My prayers are heard!” ejaculated St. John. He pressed his hand firmer on my head, as if
he claimed me: he surrounded me with his arm, 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 put
love out of the question, and thought only of duty). I contended with my inward dimness
of vision, before which clouds yet rolled. I sincerely, deeply, fervently longed to do what
was right; and only that. “Show me, show me the path!” I entreated of Heaven. I was
excited more than I had ever been; and whether what followed was the effect of
excitement the reader shall judge.
All the house was still; for I believe all, except St. John and myself, were now retired to
rest. The one candle was dying out: the room was full of moonlight. My heart beat fast
and thick: I heard its throb. Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible feeling that
thrilled it through, and passed at once to my head and extremities. The feeling was not
like an electric shock, but it was quite as sharp, as strange, as startling: it acted on my
senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had been but torpor, from which they 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 saw nothing, 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 voice of a human being—a known, loved, well-remembered voice—that of Edward
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 to the door and looked into
the passage: it was dark. I ran out into the garden: it was void.

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“Where are you?” I exclaimed.
The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back—“Where are you?” I listened.
The wind sighed low in the firs: all was moorland loneliness and midnight hush.
“Down superstition!” I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the black yew at the
gate. “This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft: it is the work of nature. She was
roused, and did—no miracle—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 in force. I told him to forbear question
or remark; I desired him to leave me: I must and would be alone. He obeyed at once.
Where there is energy to command well enough, obedience never fails. I mounted to my
chamber; locked myself in; fell on my knees; and prayed in my way—a different way to
St. John’s, but effective in its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty
Spirit; and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet. I rose from the thanksgiving—
took a resolve—and lay down, unscared, enlightened—eager but for the daylight.