CHAPTER XXXV / CHAPTER XXXVII
The week before St. John’s departure to Cambridge stretched like a sentence of penance. Without overt hostility or upbraiding words, he punished Jane with cold, marble-like composure. To her, he became no longer flesh but marble; his eye a cold, bright, blue gem; his tongue a speaking instrument and nothing more. This refined, lingering torture kept up a slow fire of indignation and grief within her. She felt that if she were his wife, this good man could kill her without drawing a single drop of blood.
On the night before he left, Jane made a final attempt at reconciliation in the garden. St. John remained unmoved, his gaze fixed on the rising moon. When Jane refused his proposal once more, telling him he would kill her as his wife, his lips turned white with controlled anger. He accused her of clinging unlawfully to Mr. Rochester. Jane confessed the truth by silence and admitted she must find out what had become of him. St. John departed down the glen with a final prayer that she not become a castaway.
Diana Rivers questioned Jane about her brother’s conduct, and Jane revealed that St. John had asked her to marry him only to procure a fellow-labourer for his Indian missionary work. Diana was horrified, urging Jane to refuse and recognising the madness of sending her delicate constitution to such a climate.
At evening prayers, St. John read from the twenty-first chapter of Revelation, his solemn delivery turning toward Jane as he described the fate reserved for the fearful and unbelieving. During a moment of private prayer afterward, when Jane was on the very verge of yielding to his missionary call, she heard a supernatural cry pierce the silence: “Jane! Jane! Jane!” It was the voice of Edward Rochester, speaking in anguish and woe. Jane broke from St. John’s grasp, declaring she must be alone, and prayed for guidance in her own fashion. By dawn, she had resolved to seek Rochester.
Jane departed Moor House with a brief explanation to Diana and Mary, taking the coach from Whitcross toward Thornfield. The journey took thirty-six hours. When she arrived, she discovered Thornfield Hall reduced to a blackened ruin, a shell-like wall perforated with paneless windows. The landlord of the Rochester Arms revealed the devastating history: Bertha Mason, Rochester’s wife, had set fire to the house, perished on the pavement when she leaped from the roof, and Rochester had been left blind and maimed, losing one hand and both eyes in his desperate rescue attempts. He now lived at Ferndean Manor, thirty miles distant, a broken man who shut himself up like a hermit.
Jane secured a chaise and travelled through rain to Ferndean, a desolate manor-house buried deep in a wood. She arrived at dusk, dismissing her conveyance at the gate. In the twilight, she observed Rochester emerge from the house, his strong form unchanged but his countenance desperate and brooding, like a sightless Samson or caged eagle whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty had extinguished. He groped his way across the grass-plat, rain falling on his uncovered head.
Jane presented herself at the door, asking that her name not be given. When she carried the tray of water and candles into the parlour, Pilot the dog recognised her with a bound and a whine, but Rochester, blind, could not see who had entered. When she spoke, he cried out in bewildered hope, grasping for confirmation that this was no dream. Their reunion was explosive: he seized her, unable to believe she was real. Jane revealed she was now an independent woman, having inherited five thousand pounds from her uncle in Madeira.
When Rochester lapsed into gloom about his infirmities, calling himself a sightless block, Jane rallied him with cheerful mockery, combing his shaggy hair and preparing supper. Their conversation turned to the year apart. Rochester grew jealous when Jane mentioned St. John Rivers, interrogating her with pointed questions about their time together and his lessons in Hindostanee. Jane teased him to relieve his melancholy, then reassured him that her heart was entirely his own.
Rochester proposed marriage, and Jane accepted with radiant joy. He spoke of his spiritual awakening in suffering and recounted the night he had cried out her name and heard a mysterious voice reply, “I am coming: wait for me.” Jane recognised the coincidence with her own experience but kept it hidden, fearing to deepen his gloom with the supernatural.
The narrative closes with a transition into the novel’s conclusion. Jane and Rochester married quietly, with only the parson and clerk present. Jane wrote to the Rivers sisters, who approved warmly, though St. John never answered her letter about the marriage, later corresponding with calm, though serious, kindness. Jane brought Adèle home from the harsh school Rochester had chosen, eventually placing her in a gentler establishment nearby.
Ten years of married happiness followed. Rochester remained blind for two years before recovering partial sight in one eye, sufficient to see his firstborn son, who inherited his own once-brilliant black eyes. Diana married a naval captain, and Mary married a clergyman, a college friend of St. John’s. St. John himself pursued his missionary path in India with unwavering zeal, never marrying, living entirely for his work, and anticipating his heavenly reward with the words: “My Master has forewarned me. Daily He announces more distinctly, ‘Surely I come quickly!’ and hourly I more eagerly respond, ‘Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!’”
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