Jane Eyre

air of the moors, the freedom of home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Diana and Mary's spirits like some life-giving elixir: they were gay from morning till noon, and from noon till night. They could always talk; and their discourse, witty, pithy, original, had such charms for me, that I preferred listening to, and sharing in it, to doing anything else. St John did not rebuke our vivacity; but he escaped from it: he was seldom in the house; his parish was large, the population scattered, and he found daily business in visiting the sick and poor in its different districts.
    One morning, at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive for some minutes, asked him, »If his plans were yet unchanged?«
    »Unchanged and unchangeable,« was the reply. And he proceeded to inform us that his departure from England was now definitively fixed for the ensuing year.
    »And Rosamond Oliver?« suggested Mary: the words seeming to escape her lips involuntarily: for no sooner had she uttered them, than she made a gesture as if wishing to recall them. St John had a book in his hand – it was his unsocial custom to read at meals – he closed it, and looked up.
    »Rosamond Oliver,« said he, »is about to be married to Mr. Granby; one of the best connected and most estimable residents in S––, grandson and heir to Sir Frederic Granby: I had the intelligence from her father yesterday.«
    His sisters looked at each other, and at me; we all three looked at him: he was serene as glass.
    »The match must have been got up hastily,« said Diana: »they cannot have known each other long.«
    »But two months: they met in October at the county ball at S––. But where there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case, where the connection is in every point desirable, delays are unnecessary: they will be married as soon as S–– Place, which Sir Frederic gives up to them, can be refitted for their reception.«
    The first time I found St John alone after this communication, I felt tempted to inquire if the event distressed him: but he seemed so little to need sympathy, that, so far from venturing to offer him more, I experienced some shame at the recollection of what I had already hazarded. Besides, I was out of practice in talking to him: his reserve was again frozen over, and my frankness was congealed beneath it. He had not kept his promise of treating me like his sisters; he continually made little, chilling differences between us, which did not at all tend to the development of cordiality: in short, now that I was acknowledged his kinswoman, and lived under the same roof with him, I felt the distance between us to be far greater than when he had known me only as the village schoolmistress. When I remembered how far I had once been admitted to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his present frigidity.
    Such being the case, I felt not a little surprised when he raised his head suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping, and said: –
    »You see, Jane, the battle is fought and the victory won.«
    Startled at being thus addressed, I did not immediately reply: after a moment's hesitation I answered: –
    »But are you sure, you are not in the position of those conquerors whose triumphs have cost them too dear? Would not such another ruin you?«
    »I think not; and if I were, it does not much signify; I shall never be called upon to contend for such another. The event of the conflict is decisive: my way is now clear; I thank God for it!« So saying, he returned to his papers and his silence.
    As our mutual happiness (
i.e.
Diana's, Mary's, and mine) settled into a quieter character, and we resumed our usual habits and regular studies, St John stayed more at home: he sat with us in the same room, sometimes for hours together. While Mary drew, Diana pursued a course of Encyclopædic reading she had (to my awe and amazement) undertaken, and I fagged away at German, he pondered a mystic lore of his own: that of some Eastern tongue, the acquisition of which he thought necessary to his plans.
    Thus engaged, he appeared, sitting in his own recess, quiet and absorbed enough; but that blue eye of his had a habit of leaving the outlandish-looking grammar, and wandering over, and sometimes fixing upon us, his fellow-students, with a curious intensity of observation: if caught, it would be instantly withdrawn; yet ever and anon, it returned searchingly to our table. I wondered what it meant: I wondered, too, at the punctual