Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (59 page)

One day I had come to my studies in lower spirits than usual; the ebb was occasioned by a poignantly felt disappointment.  Hannah had told me in the morning there was a letter for me, and when I went down to take it, almost certain that the long-looked for tidings were vouchsafed me at last, I found only an unimportant note from Mr. Briggs on business.  The bitter check had wrung from me some tears; and now, as I sat poring over the crabbed characters and flourishing tropes of an Indian scribe, my eyes filled again.

St. John called me to his side to read; in attempting to do this my voice failed me: words were lost in sobs.  He and I were the only occupants of the parlour: Diana was practising her music in the drawing-room, Mary was gardening — it was a very fine May day, clear, sunny, and breezy.  My companion expressed no surprise at this emotion, nor did he question me as to its cause; he only said —

“We will wait a few minutes, Jane, till you are more composed.”  And while I smothered the paroxysm with all haste, he sat calm and patient, leaning on his desk, and looking like a physician watching with the eye of science an expected and fully understood crisis in a patient’s malady.  Having stifled my sobs, wiped my eyes, and muttered something about not being very well that morning, I resumed my task, and succeeded in completing it.  St. John put away my books and his, locked his desk, and said —

“Now, Jane, you shall take a walk; and 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: take the road towards the head of Marsh Glen: I will join you in a moment.”

I know no medium: I never in my life have known any medium in my dealings with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own, between absolute submission and determined revolt.  I have always faithfully observed the one, up to the very moment of bursting, sometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other; and as neither present circumstances warranted, nor my present mood inclined me to mutiny, I observed careful obedience to St. John’s directions; and in ten minutes I was treading the wild track of the glen, side by side with him.

The breeze was from the west: it came over the hills, sweet with scents of heath and rush; the sky was of stainless blue; the stream descending the ravine, swelled with past spring rains, poured along plentiful and clear, catching golden gleams from the sun, and sapphire tints from the firmament.  As we advanced and left the track, we trod a soft turf, mossy fine and emerald green, minutely enamelled with a tiny white flower, and spangled with a star-like yellow blossom: the hills, meantime, shut us quite in; for the glen, towards its head, wound to their very core.

“Let us rest here,” said St. John, as we reached the first stragglers of a battalion of rocks, guarding a sort of pass, beyond which the beck rushed down a waterfall; and where, still a little farther, the mountain shook off turf and flower, had only heath for raiment and crag for gem — where it exaggerated the wild to the savage, and exchanged the fresh for the frowning — where it guarded the forlorn hope of solitude, and a last refuge for silence.

I took a seat: St. John stood near me.  He looked up the pass and down the hollow; his glance wandered away with the stream, and returned to traverse the unclouded heaven which coloured it: he removed his hat, let the breeze stir his hair and kiss his brow.  He seemed in communion with the genius of the haunt: with his eye he bade farewell to something.

“And I shall see it again,” he said aloud, “in dreams when I sleep by the Ganges: and again in a more remote hour — when another slumber overcomes me — on the shore of a darker stream!”

Strange words of a strange love!  An austere patriot’s passion for his fatherland!  He sat down; for half-an-hour we never spoke; neither he to me nor I to him: that interval past, he recommenced —

“Jane, I go in six weeks; I have taken my berth in an East Indiaman which sails on the 20th of June.”

“God will protect you; for you have undertaken His work,” I answered.

“Yes,” said he, “there is my glory and joy.  I am the servant of an infallible Master.  I am not going out under human guidance, subject to the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms: my king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect.  It seems strange to me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner, — to join in the same enterprise.”

“All have not your powers, and it would be folly for the feeble to wish to march with the strong.”

“I do not speak to the feeble, or think of them: I address only such as are worthy of the work, and competent to accomplish it.”

“Those are few in number, and difficult to discover.”

“You say truly; but when found, it is right to stir them up — to urge and exhort them to the effort — to show them what their gifts are, and why they were given — to speak Heaven’s message in their ear, — to offer them, direct from God, a place in the ranks of His chosen.”

“If they are really qualified for the task, will not their own hearts be the first to inform them of it?”

I felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over me: I trembled to hear some fatal word spoken which would at once declare and rivet the spell.

“And what does
your
heart say?” demanded St. John.

“My heart is mute, — my heart is mute,” I answered, struck and thrilled.

“Then I must speak for it,” continued the deep, relentless voice.  “Jane, come with me to India: come as my helpmeet and fellow-labourer.”

The glen and sky spun round: the hills heaved!  It was as if I had heard a summons from Heaven — as if a visionary messenger, like him of Macedonia, had enounced, “Come over and help us!”  But I was no apostle, — I could not behold the herald, — I could not receive his call.

“Oh, St. John!” I cried, “have some mercy!”

I appealed to one who, in the discharge of what he believed his duty, knew neither mercy nor remorse.  He continued —

“God and nature intended you for a missionary’s wife.  It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labour, not for love.  A missionary’s wife you must — shall be.  You shall be mine: I claim you — not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s service.”

“I am not fit for it: I have no vocation,” I said.

He had calculated on these first objections: he was not irritated by them.  Indeed, as he leaned back against the crag behind him, folded his arms on his chest, and fixed his countenance, I saw he was prepared for a long and trying opposition, and had taken in a stock of patience to last him to its close — resolved, however, that that close should be conquest for him.

“Humility, Jane,” said he, “is the groundwork of Christian virtues: you say right that you are not fit for the work.  Who is fit for it?  Or who, that ever was truly called, believed himself worthy of the summons?  I, for instance, am but dust and ashes.  With St. Paul, I acknowledge myself the chiefest of sinners; but I do not suffer this sense of my personal vileness to daunt me.  I know my Leader: that He is just as well as mighty; and while He has chosen a feeble instrument to perform a great task, He will, from the boundless stores of His providence, supply the inadequacy of the means to the end.  Think like me, Jane — trust like me.  It is the Rock of Ages I ask you to lean on: do not doubt but it will bear the weight of your human weakness.”

“I do not understand a missionary life: I have never studied missionary labours.”

“There I, humble as I am, can give you the aid you want: I can set you your task from hour to hour; stand by you always; help you from moment to moment.  This I could do in the beginning: soon (for I know your powers) you would be as strong and apt as myself, and would not require my help.”

“But my powers — where are they for this undertaking?  I do not feel them.  Nothing speaks or stirs in me while you talk.  I am sensible of no light kindling — no life quickening — no voice counselling or cheering.  Oh, I wish I could make you see how much my mind is at this moment like a rayless dungeon, with one shrinking fear fettered in its depths — the fear of being persuaded by you to attempt what I cannot accomplish!”

“I have an answer for you — hear it.  I have watched you ever since we first met: I have made you my study for ten months.  I have proved you in that time by sundry tests: and what have I seen and elicited?  In the village school I found you could perform well, punctually, uprightly, labour uncongenial to your habits and inclinations; I saw you could perform it with capacity and tact: you could win while you controlled.  In the calm with which you learnt you had become suddenly rich, I read a mind clear of the vice of Demas: — lucre had no undue power over you.  In the resolute readiness with which you cut your wealth into four shares, keeping but one to yourself, and relinquishing the three others to the claim of abstract justice, I recognised a soul that revelled in the flame and excitement of sacrifice.  In the tractability with which, at my wish, you forsook a study in which you were interested, and adopted another because it interested me; in the untiring assiduity with which you have since persevered in it — in the unflagging energy and unshaken temper with which you have met its difficulties — I acknowledge the complement of the qualities I seek.  Jane, you are docile, diligent, disinterested, faithful, constant, and courageous; very gentle, and very heroic: cease to mistrust yourself — I can trust you unreservedly.  As a conductress of Indian schools, and a helper amongst Indian women, your assistance will be to me invaluable.”

My iron shroud contracted round me; persuasion advanced with slow sure step.  Shut my eyes as I would, these last words of his succeeded in making the way, which had seemed blocked up, comparatively clear.  My work, which had appeared so vague, so hopelessly diffuse, condensed itself as he proceeded, and assumed a definite form under his shaping hand.  He waited for an answer.  I demanded a quarter of an hour to think, before I again hazarded a reply.

“Very willingly,” he rejoined; and rising, he strode a little distance up the pass, threw himself down on a swell of heath, and there lay still.

“I
can
do what he wants me to do: I am forced to see and acknowledge that,” I meditated, — “that is, if life be spared me.  But I feel mine is not the existence to be long protracted under an Indian sun.  What then?  He does not care for that: when my time came to die, he would resign me, in all serenity and sanctity, to the God who gave me.  The case is very plain before me.  In leaving England, I should leave a loved but empty land — Mr. Rochester is not there; and if he were, what is, what can that ever be to me?  My business is to live without him now: nothing so absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day, as if I were waiting some impossible change in circumstances, which might reunite me to him.  Of course (as St. John once said) I must seek another interest in life to replace the one lost: is not the occupation he now offers me truly the most glorious man can adopt or God assign?  Is it not, by its noble cares and sublime results, the one best calculated to fill the void left by uptorn affections and demolished hopes?  I believe I must say, Yes — and yet I shudder.  Alas!  If I join St. John, I abandon half myself: if I go to India, I go to premature death.  And how will the interval between leaving England for India, and India for the grave, be filled?  Oh, I know well!  That, too, is very clear to my vision.  By straining to satisfy St. John till my sinews ache, I
shall
satisfy him — to the finest central point and farthest outward circle of his expectations.  If I
do
go with him — if I
do
make the sacrifice he urges, I will make it absolutely: I will throw all on the altar — heart, vitals, the entire victim.  He will never love me; but he shall approve me; I will show him energies he has not yet seen, resources he has never suspected.  Yes, I can work as hard as he can, and with as little grudging.