CHAPTER XXXI

It was near Christmas by the time all was settled and the season of general holiday approached. I now closed Morton school and gave my lessons for the last time. I was sad to leave it and my cottage, but happy to retire again to Moor House and live there with my family.

Sweet was the evening that I was reunited with Diana and Mary. We were full of exhilaration and wildly joyful to be together again. I felt something akin to happiness and a little of my dark past that had been clutching at me since I left Thornfield, faded. Thus our lives became a pleasant routine of reading and learning together; sharing our knowledge and delighting in each other’s company. St. John, of course, did not join in with this comfort, there was something cold and hard about his character that I had always noticed, but he appeared content all the same.

Perhaps you think I forgot Mr. Rochester, Reader, amidst these changes of place and fortune. Not for a moment. I still thought of him every night before I slept and every moment of the day that was not filled with another pastime. In the course of my necessary correspondence with Mr. Briggs about the will, I had inquired if he knew anything of Mr. Rochester’s present residence and state of health; but he was quite ignorant of all concerning him. I then wrote to Mrs. Fairfax, entreating information on the subject. I had calculated with certainty on this step answering my end, but I was astonished when a fortnight passed without reply. Two months wore away, and day after day the post arrived and brought nothing for me. I fell a prey to the keenest anxiety.

I wrote again since there was a chance of my first letter having missed. Renewed hope followed renewed effort and it shone like the former for some weeks. But not a line, not a word reached me. When half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died out, and I felt dark indeed.

One evening at bedtime, St. John’s sisters and I stood round him bidding him good-night and he kissed each of them, as was his custom. Diana, who chanced to be in a frolicsome humour, exclaimed, “St. John! You call Jane your third sister, but you don’t treat her as such—you should kiss her too.”

She pushed me towards him and for the first time, I was angry with her. While I was thus thinking and feeling, St. John bent his head, brought his handsome face level with mine, and kissed me. There are no such things as marble kisses or ice kisses, but there may be experiment kisses and his was an experiment kiss. When given, he viewed me to learn the result and I am sure I did not blush; perhaps I might have turned a little pale. He never did it again.

Springtime came and went and then summer approached. One day I happened to be alone in the parlor with St. John when he surprised me by saying, “Jane, you shall take a walk with me.”

“I will call Diana and Mary.”

“No, I want only one companion this morning, and that must be you. Put on your things, go out by the kitchen-door and take the road towards the head of Marsh Glen. I will join you in a moment.”

I was struck by his harsh directions, but I obeyed and in ten minutes I was treading the wild track of the glen, side by side with him.

“Let us rest here,” said St. John, as we reached the first stragglers of a battalion of rocks.

We were completely alone on the moor and all around us was silence. We sat and stared at the wild, reckless landscape.

“Jane, I go in six weeks,” he said suddenly. “I have taken my berth in an East Indiaman which sails on the 20th of June. There I hope to bring God to the masses.”

I was not surprised, I had expected he would do as much.

“I am sure you will be successful,” I said.

“Jane, I believe God intended you for a missionary’s wife.”

I was struck cold and I looked at him in shock. Did he mean me to be his wife? I knew it was so by his expression and I recoiled from the idea. It was not that St. John was repulsive, for he was indeed very handsome, but he was also cold and hard and I had forever pledged my heart to another. I could not marry anyone else.

“I regard you as a brother,” I said levelly, knowing that he did not love for me or care for me as a husband and wife should do. “So let us continue.”

“I seek a wife.”

I shuddered as he spoke and I felt his influence in my marrow. He seemed resolute in this and I knew that he was not one to be denied but deny him I must.

“Seek one elsewhere than in me, St. John, seek one fitted to you.”

“You would be perfect, Jane. You possess all of the qualities that I am looking for. It would be wrong for you to turn me down. Besides, what life awaits you here? Come to India with me and put your talents to good use.”

“St. John!” I exclaimed.

“Well?” he answered icily.

“I freely consent to go with you as your fellow-missionary to India for I should like to see more of the world and there is nothing for me here as you have rightly said, but I cannot go as your wife. I cannot marry you and become part of you.”

“A part of me you must become,” he answered steadily, “otherwise the whole bargain is void. How can I, a man not yet thirty, take out with me to India a girl of nineteen unless she be married to me? How can we be for ever together—sometimes in solitudes, sometimes amidst savage tribes—and unwed?” 

“But I am your sister.”

“Not in the eyes of others! You must marry me!”

“I cannot and I will not. I will never, St. John. You are wasting your time attempting to reason with me. I will not marry you.”

And with that answer he left me; he stormed back across the moor, evidently furious.