Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life?

This chapter is mainly about Jane searching for a new start (and new purpose to keep living).

Two days are passed. It is a summer evening; the coachman has set me down at a place called Whitcross; he could take me no farther for the sum I had given him, and I was not possessed of another shilling in the world. The coach is a mile off by this time; I am alone. At this moment I discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of the pocket of the coach, where I had placed it for safety; there it remains, there it must remain; and now, I am absolutely destitute.

Whitcross turns out to be more of a bus stop than anything else, with the nearest town being ten miles away.

Not a tie holds me to human society at this moment – not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are – none that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me. I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and ask repose.
[…]
I touched the heath: it was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the summer-day. I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled just above the chasm ridge. The dew fell, but with propitious softness; no breeze whispered. Nature seemed to me benign and good: I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness. To-night, at least, I would be her guest – as I was her child: my mother would lodge me without money and without price. I had one morsel of bread yet: the remnant of a roll I had bought in a town we passed through at noon with a stray penny – my last coin. I saw ripe bilberries gleaming here and there, like jet beads in the heath: I gathered a handful and ate them with the bread. My hunger, sharp before, was, if not satisfied, appeased by this hermit’s meal. I said my evening prayers at its conclusion, and then chose my couch.

Since it’s summertime, she’s comfortable enough sleeping outside – or would be, had she not just been forced to flee her home.

My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it. It plained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven chords. It trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom: it bemoaned him with bitter pity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing: and, impotent as a bird with both wings broken, it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him.
Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night; too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us: and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky Way. Remembering what it was – what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light – I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe: he was God’s, and by God would he be guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere long, in sleep, forgot sorrow.

Thus contented with Mr. Rochester’s fate, all she has to worry about now is making a new life for herself when she literally has nothing but the clothes on her back!

[Next] day Want came to me, pale and bare.

She enters a village, finds a little bread shop, and asks after where she might find employment, to little effect. She wanders all over town looking for work, and then she recalls that the local priest often helps strangers find work, but he’s on a leave of absence after the death of his father.

So she returns to the shop again, having eaten nothing since the evening before.

Once more I took off my handkerchief – once more I thought of the cakes of bread in the little shop. Oh, for but a crust! for but one mouthful to allay the pang of famine! Instinctively I turned my face again to the village; I found the shop again, and went in; and though others were there besides the woman, I ventured the request: “Would she give me a roll for this handkerchief?”
She looked at me with evident suspicion: “Nay, she never sold stuff i’ that way.”
Almost desperate, I asked for half a cake; she again refused. “How could she tell where I had got the handkerchief?”
“Would she take my gloves?”
“No! what could she do with them?”
Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral degradation, blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on. I blamed none of those who repulsed me. I felt it was to be expected, and what could not be helped: an ordinary beggar is frequently an object of suspicion; a well-dressed beggar inevitably so. To be sure what I begged was employment: but whose business was it to provide me with employment?

She finally eats something when she begs a farmer for a piece of his sandwich, but that evening she doesn’t get much sleep, mainly because of rain. The day after is spent in much the same way, and all she has to eat is old porridge that the pigs would turn up their noses at.

“My strength is quite failing me,” I said in soliloquy. “I feel I cannot go on much farther. Shall I be an outcast again this night? While the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched ground? I fear I cannot do otherwise: for who will receive me? But it will be very dreadful: with this feeling of hunger, faintness, chill, and this sense of desolation – the total prostration of hope. In all likelihood, though, I should die before morning. And why cannot I reconcile myself to the prospect of death? Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life? Because I know, or believe, Mr. Rochester is still living: and then, to die of want and cold, is a fate to which nature cannot submit passively. Oh, Providence! sustain me a little longer! Aid – direct me!”

Then, when she lifts up her gaze, she sees a light, and follows it to a little house.

Entering the gate and passing the shrubs, the silhouette of a house rase to view; black, low, rather long; but the guiding light shone nowhere. All was obscurity. Were the inmates retired to rest? I feared it must be so. In seeking the door, I turned an angle: there shot out the friendly gleam again, from the lozenged panes of a very small latticed window, within a foot of the ground; made still smaller by the growth of ivy or some other creeping plant, whose leaves clustered thick over the portion of the house wall in which it was set. The aperture was so screened and narrow that curtain or shutter had been deemed unnecessary; and when I stooped down and put aside the spray of foliage shooting over it, I could see all within. I could see clearly a room with sanded floor, clean scoured; a dresser of walnut, with pewter plates ranged in rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a glowing peat-fire. I could see a clock, a white deal table, some chairs. The candle, whose ray had been my beacon, burnt on the table; and by its light an elderly woman, somewhat rough-looking, but scrupulously clean like all about her, was knitting a stocking.
I noticed these objects cursorily only – in them there was nothing extraordinary. A group of more interest appeared near the hearth, sitting still amidst the rosy peace and warmth suffusing it. Two young, graceful women – ladies in every point – sat, one in a low rocking-chair, the other on a lower stool; both wore deep mourning of crape and bombazeen, which sombre garb singularly set off very fair necks and faces: a large old pointer dog rested its massive head on the knee of one girl – in the lap of the other was cushioned a black cat.
A strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants! Who were they? They could not be the daughters of the elderly person at the table; for she looked like a rustic, and they were all delicacy and cultivation. I had nowhere seen such faces as theirs: and yet, as I gazed on them, I seemed intimate with every lineament. I cannot call them handsome – they were too pale and grave for the word: as they each bent over a book, they looked thoughtful almost to severity.

They are rather cozy, with pets at hand and perusing what turns out to be a book based on a German play (The Robbers), frequently consulting a dictionary because they’re not solid on the language yet.

“That is strong,” she said, when she had finished: “I relish it.” The other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated, while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read. At a later day, I knew the language and the book: though when I first heard it it was like a stroke on sounding brass to me – conveying no meaning: – “‘Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht. [Then one came forward, looking like the starry night.]’ Good, good!” she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled. “There you have dim and mighty archangel fitly sat before you! The line is worth a hundred pages of fustian. ‘Ich wage die Gedanken in der Schale meines Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms. [I venture thoughts in the bowl of my wrath, and my works with the weight of my fury.]‘ I like it!”

But it’s late in the evening, so they wrap up the reading/study.

“Ah, childer!” said [the servant], “it fair troubles me to go into yond’ room now: it looks so lonesome wi’ the chair empty and set back in a corner.”
She wiped her eyes with her apron: the two girls, grave before, looked sad now.
“But he is in a better place,” continued Hannah: “We shouldn’t wish him here again. And then, nobody need have a quieter death nor he had.”
“You say he never mentioned us?” inquired one of the ladies.
“He hadn’t time, bairn: he was gone in a minute – was gone in a minute – was your father. He had been a bit ailing like the day before, but naught to signify; and when Mr. St. John asked if he would like either of you to be sent for, he fair laughed at him. He began again with a bit of heaviness in his head and the next day – that is, a fortnight sin’ – and he went to sleep and niver wakened: he wor a’most stark when your brother went into t’ chamber and fand him. Ah, childer! that’s t’ last o’ t’ old stock – for ye and Mr. St. John is like a different soart to them ‘at’s gone; for all your mother wor mich i’ your way; and a’most as book-learned. She wor the pictur’ o’ ye, Mary: Diana is more like your father.”

Note that a “fortnight” is two weeks. And St. John is pronounced like “sinjin”, for those who care.

And she then proceeded to prepare the meal. The ladies rose; they seemed about to withdraw to the parlour. Till this moment I had been so intent on watching them, their appearance and conversation had excited in me so keen an interest, I had half-forgotten my own wretched position: now it recurred to me. More desolate, more desperate than ever, it seemed from contrast. And how impossible did it appear to touch the inmates of this house with concern on my behalf; to make them believe the truth of my wants and woes – to induce them to vouchsafe a rest for my wanderings! As I groped out the door, and knocked at it hesitatingly, I felt that last idea to be a mere chimera. Hannah opened.
“What do you want?” she inquired, in a voice of surprise, as she surveyed me by the light of the candle she held.
“May I speak to your mistresses?” I said.
“You had better tell me what you have to say to them. Where do you come from?”
“I am a stranger.”
“What is your business at this hour?”
“I want a night’s shelter in an outhouse or anywhere, and a morsel of bread to eat.”
Disgust, the very feeling I dreaded, appeared in Hannah’s face. “I’ll give you a piece of bread,” she said, after a pause; “but we can’t take a vagrant to lodge. It isn’t likely.”
“Do let me speak to your mistresses.”
“No; not I. What can they do for you? You should not be roving about now; it looks very ill.”
“But where shall I go if you drive me away? What shall I do?”
“Oh, I’ll warrant you know where to go, and what to do. Mind you don’t do wrong, that’s all. Here is a penny; now go”-
“A penny cannot feed me, and I have no strength to go farther. Don’t shut the door: – oh, don’t, for God’s sake!”
“I must; the rain is driving in” –
“Tell the young ladies. – Let me see them” –
“Indeed I will not. You are not what you ought to be, or you wouldn’t make such a noise. Move off.”
“But I must die if I am turned away.”
“Not you. I’m fear’d you have some ill plans agate, that bring you about folk’s houses at this time o’ night. If you’ve any followers – housebreakers or such like – anywhere near, you may tell them we are not by ourselves in the house; we have a gentleman, and dogs, and guns.” Here the honest but inflexible servant clapped the door to and bolted it within.

Of course, if the servant would stop and think rationally, I doubt there’d bands of housebreakers running around in the pouring rain, or at least not ones so insistent about being let into an occupied house (maybe if they were looking for an empty house). But she’s not paid to think.

This was the climax. A pang of exquisite suffering – a throe of true despair – rent and heaved my heart. Worn out, indeed, I was; not another step could I stir. I sank on the wet door-step: I groaned – I wrung my hands – I wept in utter anguish. Oh, this spectre of death! Oh, this last hour, approaching in such horror! Alas, this isolation – this banishment from my own kind! Not only the anchor of home, but the footing of fortitude was gone – at least for a moment: but the last I soon endeavoured to regain.
“I can but die,” I said, “and believe in God. Let me try to wait His will in silence.”
These words I not only thought, but uttered; and thrusting back all my misery into my heart, I made an effort to compel it to remain there – dumb and still.
“All men must die,” said a voice quite close at hand; “but all are not condemned to meet a lingering and premature doom, such as yours would be if you perished here of want.”

I can’t help but wonder what might have happened had Jane acted less piously, or even if she didn’t say anything at all…

“Who or what speaks?” I asked, terrified at the unexpected sound, and incapable now of deriving from any occurrence a hope of aid. A form was near – what form the pitch-dark night and my enfeebled vision prevented me from distinguishing. With a loud knock the new comer appealed to the door.
“Is it you, Mr. St. John?” cried Hannah.
“Yes – yes; open quickly.”
“Well, how wet and cold you must be, such a wild night as it is! Come in – your sisters are quite uneasy about you, and I believe there are bad folks about. There has been a beggar-woman – I declare she is not gone yet! – laid down there. Get up! for shame! Move off, I say!”
“Hush, Hannah! I have a word to say to the woman. You have done your duty in excluding, now let me do mine in admitting her. I was near, and listened both to you and her. I think this is a peculiar case – I must at least examine into it. Young woman, rise, and pass before me into the house.”

Spoilers: Mr. St. John is the local parson, so I don’t imagine he’d let someone die on his doorstep, but would he not have taken an interest in her if she HAD been only a vagabond?

Anyhow, Jane’s practically fainting through the door.

“Perhaps a little water would restore her. Hannah, fetch some. But she is worn to nothing. How very thin, and how very bloodless!”
“A mere spectre!”
“Is she ill, or only famished?”
“Famished, I think. Hannah, is that milk? Give it me and a piece of bread.”

So they give her something to eat, but not too much, because she’s literally starving.

“No more at present, sister. Try if she can speak now – ask her name.”
I felt I could speak, and I answered – “My name is Jane Elliot.” Anxious as ever to avoid discovery, I had before resolved to assume an alias.
“Where do you live? Where are your friends?”
I was silent.
“Can you send for any one you know?”
I shook my head.
“What account can you give of yourself?”
Somehow, now that I had once crossed the threshold of this house, and once brought face to face with its owners, I felt no longer outcast, vagrant, and disowned by the wide world. I dared to put off the mendicant – to resume my natural manner and character. I began once more to know myself; and when Mr. St. John demanded an account – which at present I was far too weak to render – I said after a brief pause, – “Sir, I can give you no details to-night.”
“But what, then,” said he, “do you expect me to do for you?”
“Nothing,” I replied. My strength sufficed for but short answers. Diana took the word: –
“Do you mean,” she asked, “that we have now given you what aid you require? and we may dismiss you to the moor and the rainy night?”
I looked at her. She had, I thought, a remarkable countenance; instinct both with power and goodness. I took sudden courage. Answering her compassionate gaze with a smile, I said: “I will trust you. If I were a masterless and stray dog, I know that you would not turn me from your hearth to-night: as it is, I really have no fear. Do with me and for me as you like; but excuse me from much discourse – my breath is short – I feel a spasm when I speak.” All three surveyed me, and all three were silent.

They at least agree to let Jane stay the night.

A kind of pleasant stupor was stealing over me as I sat by the genial fire. In an undertone she gave some directions to Hannah. Ere long, with the servant’s aid, I contrived to mount the staircase; my dripping clothes were removed; soon a warm, dry bed received me. I thanked God – experienced amidst unutterable exhaustion a glow of grateful joy – and slept.

Next time: A new start…