Love me, then, or hate me, as you will…

Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs: and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life; because I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist: (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives; asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man.

These things (presentiments, signs, and “sympathies”) are for the most part, the extent of the supernatural occurrences in this book (aside from one or two occasions where there may or may not be ghosts). If one defines “sympathies” as inexplicable connections between relatives, I feel like I fall on the same side as Jane (Bronte?) here. While I’ve never experienced anything of the sort personally, I’ve heard enough stories to not rule out their existence.

Anyhow, Jane brings up an occasion from her childhood when Bessie said she’d been haunted by dreams of a child, and she said that was an omen of trouble for a relative, followed by Bessie having news of her sister’s death.

Of late I had often recalled this saying and this incident; for during the past week scarcely a night had gone over my couch that had not brought with it a dream of an infant: which I sometimes hushed in my arms, sometimes dandled on my knee, sometimes watched playing with daisies on a lawn; or again, dabbling its hands in running water. […]
I did not like this iteration of one idea – this strange recurrence of one image; and I grew nervous as bedtime approached, and the hour of the vision drew near. It was from companionship with this baby-phantom I had been roused on that moonlight night when I heard the cry; and it was on the afternoon of the day following I was summoned downstairs by a message that some one wanted me in Mrs. Fairfax’s room. On repairing thither, I found a man waiting for me, having the appearance of a gentleman’s servant: he was dressed in deep mourning, and the hat he held in his hand was surrounded with a crape band.
“I daresay you hardly remember me, miss,” he said, rising as I entered; “but my name Leaven: I lived coachman with Mrs. Reed when you were at Gateshead eight or nine years since, and I live there still.”

Naturally, she remembers him, because the servants were the closest thing to real family she had at Gateshead.

“Are the family well at the house, Robert?”
“I am sorry I can’t give you better news of them, miss: they are very badly at present – in great trouble.”
“I hope no one is dead,” I said, glancing at the black dress. He too looked down at the crape around his hat and replied, – “Mr. John died yesterday was a week, at his chambers in London.”
[…]
“And how does his mother bear it?”
“Why you see, Miss Eyre, it is not a common mishap: his life was very wild: these last three years he gave himself up to strange ways; and his death was shocking.”
“I heard from Bessie he was not doing well.”
“Doing well! He could not do worse: he ruined his health and his estate amongst the worst men and the worst women. He got into debt and into jail: his mother helped him out twice, but as soon as he was free he returned to his old companions and habits. His head was not strong: the knaves he lived amongst fooled him beyond anything I ever heard. He came down to Gateshead about three weeks ago and wanted missis to give it all up to him. Missis refused: her means have long since been much reduced by his extravagance; so he went back again, and the next news was that he was dead. How he died, God knows! – they say he killed himself.”
I was silent: the tidings were frightful. Robert Leaven resumed:- “Missis had been out of health herself for some time: she had got very stout, but was not strong with it; and the loss of money and fear of poverty were quite breaking her down. The information about Mr. John’s death and the manner of it came too suddenly: it brought on a stroke. She was three days without speaking; but last Tuesday she seemed rather better: she appeared as if she wanted to say something, and kept making signs to my wife and mumbling. It was only yesterday morning, however, that Bessie understood she was pronouncing your name; and at last she made out the words, ‘Bring Jane – fetch Jane Eyre: I want to speak to her.’ Bessie is not sure whether she is in her right mind, or means anything by the words; but she told Miss Reed and Miss Georgiana, and advised them to send for you. The young ladies put it off at first: but their mother grew so restless, and said, ‘Jane, Jane,’ so many times, that at last they consented. I left Gateshead yesterday; and if you are ready, miss, I should like to take you back with me early to-morrow morning.”

Naturally, Jane isn’t so cold as to refuse even Mrs. Reed a final request, so she approaches Mr. Rochester to ask leave of him.

It required some courage to disturb so interesting a party; my errand, however, was one I could not defer, so I approached the master where he stood at Miss Ingram’s side. She turned as I drew near and looked at me haughtily: her eyes seemed to demand, “what can the creeping creature want now?” and when I said in a low voice, “Mr. Rochester,” she made a movement as if tempted to order me away. I remember her appearance at the moment, – it was very graceful and very striking: she wore a morning robe of sky-blue crape; a gauzy azure scarf was twisted in her hair. She had been all animation with the game, and irritated pride did not lower the expression of her haughty lineaments.
“Does that person want you?” she inquired of Mr. Rochester; and Mr. Rochester turned to see who the “person” was. He made a curious grimace – one of his strange and equivocal demonstrations – threw down his cue and followed me from the room.
“Well, Jane?” he said, as he rested his back against the schoolroom door, which he had shut.
“If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two.”
“What to do? – Where to go?”
“To see a sick lady who has sent for me.”
“What sick lady? – Where does she live?”
“At Gateshead, in –shire.”
“–shire? That is a hundred miles off! Who may she be that sends for people to see her that distance?”
“Her name is Reed, sir, – Mrs. Reed.”
“Reed of Gateshead? There was a Reed of Gateshead, a magistrate.”
“She is his widow, sir.”
“And what have you to do with her? How do you know her?”
“Mr. Reed was my uncle, – my mother’s brother.”
“The deuce he was! You never told me before: you always said you had no relations.”
“None that would own me, sir. Mr. Reed is dead, and his wife cast me off.”
“Why?
“Because I was poor, and burdensome, and she disliked me.”

He mentions that he’d heard of her cousins, but questions whether she could really do any good in travelling so far.

“And what good can you do her? Nonsense, Jane! I would never think of running a hundred miles to see an old lady who will, perhaps, be dead before you reach her – besides, you say she cast you off.”
“Yes, sir, but that was long ago; and when her circumstances were very different: I could not be easy to neglect her wishes now.”

“How long will you stay?”
“As short a time as possible, sir.”
“Promise me only to stay a week-“
“I had better not pass my word: I might be obliged to break it.”
“At all events, you will come back: you will not be induced under any pretext to take up permanent residence with her.”
“Oh, no! I shall certainly return if all be well.”

She reassures him that she’d be travelling with a trusted servant, but that still leaves the issue of money.

I drew out my purse; a meagre thing it was. “Five shillings, sir.” He took the purse, poured the hoard into his palm and chuckled over it as if its scantiness pleased him. Soon he produced his pocket-book. “Here,” he said, offering me a note: it was fifty pounds, and he owed me but fifteen. I told him I had no change.
“I don’t want change: you know that. Take your wages.”
I declined accepting more than was my due. He scowled at first; then, as if recollecting something, he said: – “Right, right! Better not give you all now: you would, perhaps, stay away three months if you had fifty pounds. There are ten” is it not plenty?”
“Yes, sir, but now you owe me five.”
“Come back for it, then: I am your banker for forty pounds.”
“Mr. Rochester, I may as well mention another matter of business to you while I have the opportunity.”
“Matter of business? I’m curious to hear it.”
“You have as good as informed me, sir, that you are going shortly to be married?”
“Yes: what then?”
“In that case, sir, Adèle ought to go to school: I am sure you will perceive the necessity of it.”
“To get her out of my bride’s way; who might otherwise walk over her rather too emphatically. There’s sense in the suggestion; not a doubt of it: Adèle, as you say, must go to school; and you, of course, must march straight to – the devil?”
“I hope not, sir: but I must seek another situation somewhere.”
“In course!” he exclaimed, with a twang of voice and a distortion of features equally fantastic and ludicrous. He looked at me some minutes.
“And old Madam Reed, or the Misses, her daughters, will be solicited by you to seek a place, I suppose?”
“No, sir; I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify asking favours of them – but I shall advertise.”
“You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt!” he growled. “At your peril you advertise! I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds. Give me back nine pounds, Jane; I’ve a use for it.”
“And so have I, sir,” I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind me. “I could not spare the money on any account.”
“Little niggard!” said he, “refusing me a pecuniary request! Give me five pounds, Jane.”
“Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence.”
“Just let me look at the cash.”
“No, sir; you are not to be trusted.”
“Jane!”
“Sir?”
“Promise me one thing.”
“I’ll promise you anything, sir, that I think I am likely to perform.”
“Not to advertise: and to trust this quest of situation to me. I’ll find you one in time.”
“I shall be glad to do, sir, if you, in turn, will promise that Adèle and I shall be both safe from the house before your bride enters it.”

The money conversation might be cute if Mr. Rochester weren’t so much more powerful than her! To him, even fifty pounds is little more than pocket change, and the fact that she’s so reliant on his generosity (and he’s actively trying to control her movements by withholding her earned wages!!) is yet another red flag.

But he finally permits her to leave.

“Bless you! – I knew you would come!” exclaimed Mrs. Leaven, as I entered.
“Yes, Bessie,” said I, after I had kissed her; “and I trust I am not too late. How is Mrs. Reed? – Alive still, I hope.”
“Yes, she is alive; and more sensible and collected than she was. The doctor says she may linger a week or two yet; but he hardly thinks she will finally recover.”
“Has she mentioned me lately?”
“She was talking of you only this morning, and wishing you would come: but she is sleeping now; or ten minutes ago, when I was up at the house. She generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the afternoon, and wakes up about six or seven. […]”

Bessie invites her to rest in the lodge for a bit before she goes up to the house.

Tea ready, I was ready to approach the table; but she desired me to sit still, quite in her old, peremptory tones. I must be served at the fireside, she said; and she placed before me a little round stand with my cup and a plate of toast, absolutely as she used to accommodate me with some privately purloined dainty on a nursery chair: and I smiled and obeyed her as in bygone days.
She wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall, and what sort of person the mistress was; and when I told her there was only a master, whether he was a nice gentleman, and if I liked him. I told her he was rather an ugly man, but quite a gentleman; and he treated me kindly, and I was content. Then I went on to describe to her the gay company that had lately been staying at the house: and to these details Bessie listened with interest: they were precisely of the kind she relished.

Because this is where Jane’s truly at home, catching up with Bessie.

It was also accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine years ago, walked down the path I was now ascending. On a dark, misty, raw morning in January, I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered heart – a sense of outlawry and almost reprobation -to seek the chilly harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so far away and unexplored. The same hostile roof now again rose before me: my prospects were doubtful yet; and I had an aching heart. I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers, and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs, too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished.

She subsequently greets Georgiana and Eliza in the breakfast-room.

There was every article of furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was first introduced to Mr. Brocklehurst: the very rug he had stood upon still covered the hearth. Glancing at the book-cases, I thought I could distinguish the two volumes of “Bewick’s British Birds” occupying their old place on the third shelf, and “Gulliver’s Travels” and the “Arabian Nights” ranged just above. The inanimate objects were not changed: but the living things had altered past recognition.
Two young ladies appeared before me; one very tall, almost as tall as Miss Ingram, – very thin, too, with a sallow face and severe mien. There was something ascetic in her look, which was augmented by the extreme plainness of a straight-skirted, black, stuff dress, a starched linen collar, hair combed away from the temples, and the nun-like ornament of a string of ebony beads and a crucifix. This I felt sure was Eliza, though I could trace little resemblance to her former self in that elongated and colourless visage.
The other was as certainly Georgiana: but not the Georgiana I remembered – the slim and fairy-like girl of eleven. This was a full-blown, very plump damsel, fair as wax-work; with handsome and regular features, languishing blue eyes, and ringleted yellow hair. The hue of her dress was black too; but its fashion was so different from her sister’s – so much more flowing and becoming – it looked as stylish as the other’s looked puritanical.

Tellingly, the books Jane used to love (which John made such a fuss about) seemed to have been hardly touched in her absence.

Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me, and both addressed me by the name “Miss Eyre.” Eliza’s greeting was delivered in a short, abrupt voice, without a smile; and she seemed to forget me. Georgiana added to her “How d’ye do?” several common-places about my journey, the weather and so on, uttered in a rather drawling tone: and accompanied by sundry side-glances that measured me from head to foot – now traversing the folds of me drab merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain trimming of my cottage bonnet. Young ladies have a remarkable way of letting you know that they think you’re a “quiz” without actually saying the words. A certain superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone, express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing them by any positive rudeness in word or deed.
A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power over me it once possessed: as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi-sarcastic attentions of the other – Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana ruffle me. The fact was, I had other things to think about; within the last few months feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than any they could raise – pains and pleasures so much more acute and exquisite than any it was in their power to inflict or bestow – that their airs gave me no concern either for good or bad.

Jane manages to get along with these two only because she no longer cares what they think of her (and it also can’t hurt that John was her primary antagonist).

Since they don’t bother to lift a finger to help her settle in, Jane just talks to the housekeeper herself to make arrangements for her lodgings, then goes to see if Mrs. Reed is available.

I did not need to be guided to the well-known room: to which I had so often been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days. I hastened before Bessie, I softly opened the door: a shaded light stood on the table, for it was now getting dark. There was the great four-post bed with amber hangings as of old: there the toilet-table, the arm-chair, and the foot-stool: at which I had a hundred times been sentenced to kneel, to ask pardon for offences, by me, uncommitted. I looked into a certain corner near, half-expecting to see the slim outline of a once-dreaded switch; which used to lurk there, waiting to leap out imp-like and lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck. I approached the bed; I opened the curtains and leant over the high-piled pillows.
Well did I remember Mrs. Reed’s face, and I eagerly sought the familiar image. It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance, and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion: I had left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries – to be reconciled and clasp hands in amity.
The well-known face was there: stern, relentless as ever – there was that peculiar eye which nothing could melt; and the somewhat raised, imperious, despotic eyebrow. How often it had lowered on me menace and hate! and how the recollection of childhood’s terrors and sorrows revived as I traced its harsh line now! And yet I stooped down and kissed her: she looked at me.

As with her cousins, the pain Mrs. Reed caused her has faded with time, and since the summons seems to indicate that she wants some sort of reconciliation, Jane’s happy to oblige now.

“Is this Jane Eyre?” she said.
“Yes, aunt Reed. How are you, dear aunt?”
I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again: I thought it no sin to forget and break that vow now. My fingers had fastened on her hand which lay outside the sheet: had she pressed mine kindly, I should at that moment have experienced true pleasure. But unimpressionable natures are not so soon softened, nor are natural antipathies so readily eradicated: Mrs. Reed took her hand away, and turning her face rather from me, she remarked that the night was warm. Again she regarded me icily, I felt at once that her opinion of me – her feelings towards me – was unchanged and unchangeable. I knew by her stony eye – opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to tears – that she was resolved to consider me bad to the last; because to believe me good, would give her no generous pleasure: only a sense of mortification.
I felt pain, and then I felt ire; and then I felt a determination to subdue her – to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will. My tears had arisen, just as in childhood: I ordered them back to their source.

Unlike with her cousins, Mrs. Reed regards her the same as ever – Jane may be looking to forgive and forget, but Mrs. Reed has a more unyielding nature, but she does finally explain why she always hated Jane so much (because she doesn’t quite realize Jane’s actually there).

“Sit up!” said she; “don’t annoy me with holding the clothes fast – are you Jane Eyre?”
“I am Jane Eyre.”
“I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe. Such a burden to be left on my hands – and so much annoyance as she caused me, daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden starts of temper, and her continual, her unnatural watchings of one’s movements! I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or like a fiend – no child ever spoke or looked as she did; I was glad to get her away from the house. What did they do with her at Lowood? The fever broke out there, and many pupils died. She, however, did not die: but I said she did – I wish she had died!”
“A strange wish, Mrs. Reed: why do you hate her so?”
“I had a dislike to her mother always; for she was my husband’s only sister, and a great favourite with him: he opposed the family’s disowning her when she made her low marriage; and when news came of her death, he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I entreated him rather to put it out to a nurse and pay for its maintenance. I hated it the first time I set eyes on it – a sickly, whining, pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all night long – not screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering and moaning. Reed pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it as if it was his own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed his own at that age. He would try to make my children friendly to the little beggar: the darlings could not bear it, and he was angry with them when they showed their dislike. In his last illness, he had it brought continually to his bedside; and but an hour before he died, he bound me by a vow to keep the creature. I would as soon have been charged with a pauper brat out of a workhouse: but he was weak, naturally weak. John does not at all resemble his father, and I am glad of it: John is like me and like my brothers – he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish he would cease tormenting me with letters for money! I have no more money to give him: we are getting poor. I must send away half the servants and shut up part of the house; or let it off. I can never submit to that – yet how are we going to get on? Two-thirds of my income goes in paying the interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully, and always loses – poor boy! He is beset by sharpers: John is sunk and degraded – his look is frightful – I feel ashamed for him to see him.

Mr. Reed, perhaps, understood that baby Jane needed more attention because of the early trauma of losing her parents, but because her cousins knew how their mother felt about her, they felt free to express their dislike for her, too. Mr. Reed was more empathetic than his wife, and yet she still took solace in the fact that John was more callous than him, more like a “real man,” despite all the pain and shame he brought her.

Then, Jane goes to leave (seeing as the conversation is agitating Mrs. Reed).

I rose. “Stop!” exclaimed Mrs. Reed. “There is another thing I wished to say. He threatens me – he continually threatens me with his own death, or mine: and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great would in his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face. I am come to a strange pass: I have heavy troubles. What is to be done? How is the money to be had?”

She brought all this trouble on herself, but maybe she prefers believing she controls her own destiny, even if it’s terrible.

Mrs. Reed tells Jane that she has something more to discuss with her, but puts it off. Meanwhile, Eliza mostly just sticks to self-appointed chores and routines, hardly acknowledging either Jane or Georgiana. After a while, Georgiana warms up to her when she notices Jane’s artistic talent (and she offers to contribute to her portfolio). Georgiana is constantly pining for the days when she was the talk of the town, and wishing that someone would invite her back to London.

[Eliza] told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than usual, that John’s conduct, and the threatened ruin of the family, had been a source of profound affliction to her: but she had now, she said, settled in her mind, and formed a resolution. Her own fortune she had taken care to secure; and when her mother died, – and it was wholly improbable, she tranquilly remarked, that she should either recover or linger long – she would execute a long-cherished project: seek a retirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured from disturbance, and place safe barriers between herself and a frivolous world. I asked if Georgiana would accompany her.
“Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common: they never had had. She would not be burdened with her society for any consideration. Georgiana should take her own course; and she, Eliza, would take hers.”
Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her time lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the house, and wishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an invitation up to town. “It would be so much better,” she said, “if she could only get out of the way for a month or two, till all was over.” I did not ask what she meant by “all being over,” but I suppose she referred to the expected decease of her mother and the gloomy sequel of funeral rites. Eliza generally took no more notice of her sister’s complaints than if no such murmuring, lounging object had been before her. One day, however, as she put away her account book, and unfolded her embroidery, she suddenly took her up thus: – “Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born: for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person’s strength: if no one can be found willing to burden her or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you cry out that you are ill-treated, neglected, miserable. Then, too, existence for you must be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be flattered – you must have music, dancing, and society – or you languish, you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day; share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes, include all; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid regularity. The day will close almost before you are aware it has begun; and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant moment; you have has to seek no one’s company, conversation, sympathy, forbearance: you have lived, in short, as an independent being ought to do. Take this advice: the first and last I shall offer to you; then you will not want me or anyone else, happen what may. Neglect it – go on as heretofore, craving, whining, and idling – and suffer the results of your idiocy, however bad and insufferable they may be. I tell you this plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat what I am now about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my mother’s death, I wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is carried to the vault in Gateshead Church, you and I will be as separate as if we had never known each other. You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim; I can tell you this – if the whole human race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you to in the old world, and betake myself to the new.”
She closed her lips.
“You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that tirade,” answered Georgiana. “Everybody knows you are the most selfish, heartless creature in existence: and I know your spiteful hatred towards me; I have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played me about Lord Edwin Vere: you could not bear me to be raised above you, to have a title, to be received into circles where you dare not show your face, and so you acted the spy and informer, and ruined my prospects for ever.” Georgiana took out her handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour afterwards; Eliza sat cold, impassible, and assiduously industrious.

Eliza seems the epitome of a selfish introvert, believing that if she can make do on her own, then anyone can. And similarly, Georgiana is a selfish extrovert, believing she’s owed the adoration of others. It’s inevitable that they’d find each other dull.

Then one day, when Mrs. Reed is unattended, Jane drops in to check on her.

The rain beat down strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously: “One lies there,” I thought, “who will soon be beyond the war of earthly elements. Whither will that spirit – now struggling to quit its material tenement – flit when at length released?”
In pondering the great mystery, I thought of Helen Burns, and recalled her dying words – her faith – her doctrine of the equality of disembodied souls. I was still listening in thought to her well-remembered tones – still picturing her pale and spiritual aspect, her wasted face and sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid deathbed, and whispered her longing to be restored to her divine Father’s bosom – when a feeble voice murmured from the couch behind: “Who is that?”
I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for days: was she reviving? I went up to her.
“It is I, aunt Reed.”
“Who – I?” was her answer. “Who are you?” looking at me with surprise and a sort of alarm, but still not wildly. “You are quite a stranger to me – where is Bessie?”
“She is at the lodge, aunt.”
“Aunt!” she repeated. “Who calls me aunt? You are not one of the Gibsons; and yet I know you – that face, and the eyes and forehead are quite familiar to me: you are like – why, you are like Jane Eyre!”
I said nothing: I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring my identity.
“Yet,” said she, “I am afraid it is a mistake: my thoughts deceive me. I wished to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none exists: besides, in eight years she must be so changed.“

Jane finally admits that she’s the very same, seeing as she now appears to be wanted.

“I am very ill, I know,” she said ere long. “I was trying to turn myself a few minutes since, and I find I cannot move a limb. It is as well I should ease my mind before I die: what we think little of in health, burdens us at such an hour as the present is to me. Is the nurse here? or is there no one in the room but you?”
I assured her we were alone.
“Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was breaking the promise which I gave to my husband to bring you up as my own child; the other-” she stopped. “After all, it is of no great importance, perhaps,” she murmured to herself: “and then I may get better; and to humble myself so to her is painful.”
She made an effort to alter her position, but failed: her face changed; she seemed to experience some inward sensation – the precursor, perhaps, of the last pang,
“Well: I must get it over. Eternity is before me: I had better tell her. – Go to my dressing-case, open it, and take out a letter you will see there.”

She then asks Jane to read the letter aloud.

“Madam, –
“Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my niece, Jane Eyre, and to tell me how she is: it is my intention to write shortly and desire her to come to me at Madeira. Providence has blessed my endeavours to secure a competency; and as I am unmarried and childless, I wish to adopt her during my life, and bequeath her at my death whatever I may have to leave.
“I am, Madam, &c. &.
“John Eyre, Madeira.”
It was dated three years back.
“Why did I never hear of this?” I asked.
“Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand in lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct to me, Jane – the fury with which you once turned on me; the tone in which you declared you abhorred me the worst of anybody in the world; the unchildlike look and voice with which you affirmed that the very thought of me made you sick, and asserted that I had treated you with miserable cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when you thus started up and poured out the venom of your mind: I felt fear, as if an animal that I had struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes and cursed me in a man’s voice. – Bring me some water! Oh, make haste!”
“Dear Mrs. Reed,” said I, as I offered her the draught she required, “think no more of all this, let it pass away from your mind. Forgive me for my passionate language: I was a child then; eight, nine years have passed since that day.”
She heeded nothing of what I said; but when she had tasted the water and drawn breath, she went on thus: – “I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for you to be adopted by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease and comfort, was what I could not endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she died of typhus fever at Lowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my assertion – expose my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think, to my torment: my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed which, but for you, I should never have been tempted to commit.”
“If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it aunt, and to regard me with kindness and forgiveness-“
“You have a very bad disposition,” said she, ” and one to this day I feel it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be patient and quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and violence, I can never comprehend.”
“My disposition is not as bad as you think: I am passionate, but not vindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to love you if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be reconciled to you now: kiss me, aunt.”
I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She said I oppressed her by leaning over the bed; and again demanded water. As I laid her down – for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she drank – I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine: the feeble fingers shrank from my touch – the glazing eyes shunned my gaze.
“Love me, then, or hate me, as you will,” I said at last; “you have my full and free forgiveness: ask now for God’s; and be at peace.”
Poor, suffering woman! it was too late now for her to make now the effort to change her habitual frame of mind: living, she ever hated me – dying, she must hate me still.

Shortly after, she finally dies, and Georgiana is the only one to cry (and it’s not even clear whether she’s crying for her mother, or just the loss of a position).

A strange and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with gloom and pain: nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or hopeful, or subduing, did it inspire; only a grating anguish for her woes – not my loss – and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a form.

Until next time…