My new home then was a cottage; a little room with whitewashed walls and a sanded floor containing four painted chairs and a table, a clock, and a cupboard. Above, there was a chamber of the same dimensions as the kitchen with a deal bedstead and chest of drawers. I settled in there immediately and was pleased to have a place, however small, to call my own. I soon too settled into my new life and position as a teacher at the school. I grew to love my students and I believe they were fond of me also.
One evening, after dismissing the little orphan who served me as a handmaid, I sat alone on the hearth. As was usual, my thoughts wandered painfully to Mr. Rochester.
You may have supposed, Reader, that since I have not mentioned him, I did not think of my lover, but in truth, he was with me every moment of every day. I tried hard as I might to push him from my mind, but he sprang back to it more often than not, his dark, beautiful eyes searing into my heart. I wept every night, remembering his hot, feverish hands over me, remembering the pleasure of having him inside me and the comfort that I received in his arms. I could not bear to wonder what had become of him and I spent many a sleepless night tossing and turning in my bed, disturbed by dreams of a lover I could not touch. He was lost to me and I did not know if I would ever be whole again.
In the meantime, I continued the labours of the village-school as actively and faithfully as I could. It was truly hard work at first and some time elapsed before, with all my efforts, I could comprehend my scholars and their nature. The rapidity of their progress, in some instances, was even surprising and an honest and happy pride I took in it.
I felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood. Whenever I went out, I heard on all sides cordial salutations and was welcomed with friendly smiles. Time began to pass me by and although my sufferings and heart never healed, I relaxed into routine. I liked my little cottage and the solitude it allowed me.
One snowy night in November, Mr. St. John came to visit as he was wont to do. I had just closed my shutter, laid a mat to the door to prevent the snow from blowing in under it and was sitting by the hearth listening to the muffled fury of the tempest, when he came in out of the frozen hurricane— the howling darkness—and stood before me. I was almost in consternation, so little had I expected any guest from the blocked-up vale that night.
“Any ill news?” I demanded. “Has anything happened?”
“No. How very easily alarmed you are!” he answered, removing his cloak and hanging it up against the door, towards which he again coolly pushed the mat which his entrance had deranged. He stamped the snow from his boots.
“But why are you come?” I could not forbear saying.
He sat down. I had never seen that handsome-featured face of his look more like chiselled marble than it did just now, as he put aside his snow-wet hair from his forehead and let the firelight shine free on his pale brow and cheek. I waited, but his hand was now at his chin, his finger on his lip and he was thinking deeply.
I was about to give up hope of his speaking when he said, “I have a story to tell.”
I was puzzled but I said, “Then I should like to hear it.”
“Twenty years ago, a poor curate fell in love with a rich man’s daughter and they married against the advice of all her friends, who consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before two years passed, the rash pair were both dead and laid quietly side by side under one slab. They left a daughter, a friendless thing, which was sent to the house of its rich maternal relations and reared by an aunt-in-law, called Mrs. Reed of Gateshead.”
I gasped slightly, but tried to control myself.
“You start—did you hear a noise?” said St. John. “I daresay it is only a rat scrambling along the rafters of the ad-joining schoolroom. To proceed, Mrs. Reed kept the orphan ten years, but at the end of that time she transferred it to a place called Lowood School. I remember you telling Diana once that you believe you went there yourself, although you said your memory was uncertain. Well it seems her career there was very honourable since from a pupil she became a teacher like yourself—it really it strikes me there are parallel points in her history and yours—and she left it to be a governess. She undertook the education of the ward of a certain Mr. Rochester.”
“Mr. Rivers!” I interrupted.
“I can guess your feelings,” he said, “but restrain them for a while for I have nearly finished. Of Mr. Rochester’s character I know nothing, but the one fact that he professed to offer honourable marriage to this young girl and that at the very altar she discovered he had a wife yet alive, though a lunatic. The next day, the governess, it was discovered, had gone. No one could tell when, where, or how. She had left Thornfield Hall in the night and every research after her course had been vain. Yet that she should be found has become a matter of serious urgency and advertisements have been put in all the papers. I myself have received a letter from one Mr. Briggs, a solicitor, communicating the details I have just imparted. Is it not an odd tale?”
“Just tell me this,” said I. “Since you know so much, you surely can tell it me what of Mr. Rochester? How and where is he? What is he doing? Is he well?”
“I am ignorant of all concerning Mr. Rochester. You should rather ask the name of the governess and the nature of the event which requires her appearance.”
“Did no one go to Thornfield Hall, then? Did no one see Mr. Rochester?”
“I suppose not.”
“But they wrote to him?”
“Of course.”
“And what did he say? Who has his letters?”
“Mr. Briggs intimates that the answer to his application was not from Mr. Rochester, but from a lady, it is signed ‘Alice Fairfax.’“
I felt cold and dismayed for my worst fears then were probably true—he had in all probability left England and rushed in reckless desperation to some former haunt on the Continent. And what opiate for his severe sufferings had he sought there? I dared not answer the question. Oh, my poor master.
“He must have been a bad man,” observed Mr. Rivers.
“You don’t know him—don’t pronounce an opinion upon him,” I said, with warmth.
“Very well,” he answered quietly. “Since you won’t ask the governess’s name, I must tell it of my own accord. Briggs wrote to me of a Jane Eyre and the advertisements demanded a Jane Eyre. I knew a Jane Elliott and I confess I had my suspicions, but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once resolved into certainty. You own the name and renounce the alias?”
“Yes, yes, but where is Mr. Briggs? He perhaps knows more of Mr. Rochester than you do.”
“Briggs is in London. I should doubt his knowing anything at all about Mr. Rochester for it is not in Mr. Rochester he is interested. Meantime, you forget essential points in pursuing trifles—you do not inquire why Mr. Briggs sought after you and what he wanted with you.”
“Well, what did he want?”
“Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is dead and that he has left you all his property. You are now rich.”
“I! Rich?”
“Yes, you. Rich and quite an heiress.”
Silence succeeded and I thought this over, my heart racing. I was neither overjoyed nor sad. I was merely shocked.
“You unbend your forehead at last,” said Mr. Rivers. “Perhaps now you will ask how much you are worth?”
“How much am I worth?”
“Twenty thousand pounds.”
Here was a new stunner for I had been calculating on four or five thousand. This news actually took my breath for a moment and Mr. St. John, whom I had never heard laugh before, laughed now.
“It is a large sum—don’t you think there is a mistake?”
“No mistake at all.”
“Perhaps you have read the figures wrong, it may be two thousand!”
“It is written in letters, not figures, and it says twenty thousand.”
I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions for a hundred.
“It puzzles me to know why Mr. Briggs wrote to you about me,” I said suddenly.
“Oh! I am a clergyman,” he said, “and the clergy are often appealed to about odd matters.”
“No, that does not satisfy me!” I exclaimed. There was something in his hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever. He looked as though he held a secret and he said, “I would rather Diana or Mary informed you.”
Of course this objection wrought my eagerness to a climax and gratified it must be. Without delay, I told him so.
He was silent for a moment before saying, “Your name is Jane Eyre?”
“Of course, that was all settled before.”
“You are not, perhaps, aware that I am your namesake? That I was christened St. John Eyre Rivers?”
“No, indeed! But what then? Surely—” I stopped for I could not trust myself to entertain, much less to express, the thought that rushed upon me. I knew by instinct how the matter stood before St. John had said another word, but I cannot expect the reader to have the same intuitive perception, so I must repeat his explanation.
“My mother’s name was Eyre and she had two brothers—one a clergyman, who married Miss Jane Reed, of Gateshead and the other, John Eyre, Esq., merchant, late of Funchal, Madeira. Mr. Briggs, being Mr. Eyre’s solicitor, wrote to us last August to inform us of our uncle’s death and to say that he had left his property to his brother the clergyman’s orphan daughter, overlooking us in consequence of a quarrel never forgiven between him and my father. He wrote again a few weeks since to intimate that the heiress was lost and asking if we knew anything of her. A name casually written on a slip of paper has enabled me to find her out. You know the rest.”
“Your mother was my father’s sister?” I gasped.
“Yes.”
“You three, then, are my cousins; half our blood on each side flows from the same source?”
“We are cousins; yes.”
I surveyed him. It seemed I had found a family and one I could be proud of. The two girls, who I had watched through the latticed window of Moor House kitchen, were my near kinswomen, and the young and stately gentleman who had found me almost dying at his threshold was my blood relation. Glorious discovery to a lonely wretch! This was wealth indeed! This was a blessing, bright, vivid, and exhilarating. I now clapped my hands in sudden joy and my pulse bounded, my veins thrilled.
“Oh, I am glad! I am glad!” I exclaimed.
St. John smiled. “You were serious when I told you you had got a fortune; and now, for a matter of no moment, you are excited.”
“What can you mean? It may be of no moment to you for you have sisters and don’t care for a cousin, but I had nobody and now three relations. I say again, I am glad!”
I paced across my little room, a plan forming in my mind.
“Jane, are you all well?” asked St. John, looking concerned.
“I wish to divide my fortune,” I said suddenly. “Twenty thousand pounds between the nephew and three nieces of our uncle will give five thousand to each.”
“We cannot accept—”
“It would please and benefit me to have five thousand pounds but it would torment and oppress me to have twenty thousand, which could never be mine in justice, though it might in law. Let there be no opposition and no discussion about it, let us agree amongst each other, and decide the point at once.”
“This is acting on first impulses; you must take days to consider such a matter.”
“You cannot at all imagine the craving I have for fraternal and sisterly love,” I cried. “I never had a home, I never had brothers or sisters and I must and will have them now.”
“Jane, I will be your brother and my sisters will be your sisters without stipulating for this sacrifice of your just rights.”
“Accept it, I beg of you! Nothing would please me more and it is yours to do with what you wish.”
St. John looked as though he was battling inwardly with himself. “I will come and speak to you tomorrow, when the news is not so fresh to you.”
“My answer will be no more.”
He smiled. “What of the school, Miss Eyre? It must now be shut up, I suppose?”
“No. I will retain my post of mistress till you get a substitute.”
He smiled again and we shook hands before he took leave.
I need not narrate in detail the further struggles I had, and arguments I used, to get matters regarding the legacy settled as I wished. My task was a very hard one, but as I was absolutely resolved and as my cousins saw at length that my mind was really and immutably fixed, they finally yielded to my wishes. The instruments of transfer were eventually drawn out and St. John, Diana, Mary, and I each became possessed of a competency.