Who is ambitious? I know I am: but how did you find that out?

Jane becomes acquainted with the Rivers, and (eventually) takes up a new vocation.

The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them. In a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could sit up all day, and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana and Mary in all their occupations; converse with them as much as they wished, and aid them when and where they would allow me. There was a reviving pleasure in this intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time – the pleasure arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles.
I liked to read what they liked to read: what they enjoyed, delighted me; what they approved, I reverenced. They loved their sequestered home. I, too, in the grey, small, antique structure, with its low roof, its latticed casements, its mouldering walls, its avenue of aged firs – all grown aslant under the stress of mountain winds; its garden, dark with yew and holly – and where no flowers but of the hardiest species would bloom – found a charm both potent and permanent. They clung to the purple moors behind and around their dwelling – to the hollow vale into which the pebbly bridle-path leading from their gate descended; and which wound between fern-banks first, and then amongst a few of the wildest little pasture-fields that ever bordered a wilderness of heath, or gave sustenance to a flock of grey moorland sheep, with their little mossy-faced lambs: – they clung to this scene, I say, with a perfect enthusiasm of attachment. I could comprehend the feeling, and share both its strength and truth. I saw the fascination of the locality. I felt the consecration of its loneliness: my eye feasted the outline of swell and sweep – on the wild colouring communicated to the ridge and dell by moss, by heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken, and mellow granite craig. These details were just to me what they were to them – so pure and sweet a source of pleasure. The strong blast and the soft breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of sunrise and sunset; the moonlight and clouded night, developed for me, in these regions, the same attraction as for them – wound round my faculties the same spell that entranced theirs.
Indoors we agreed equally well. They were both more accomplished and better read than I was: but with eagerness I followed in the path of knowledge they had trodden before me. I devoured the books they lent me: then it was full satisfaction to discuss with them in the evening what I had perused during the day. Thought fitted thought; opinion met opinion; we coincided, in short, perfectly.

This is the first time Jane’s really experienced friendship on equal terms (aside from Helen, but even there, she was an upperclassman in a very different situation).

Diana offered to teach me German. I liked to learn of her: I saw the part of instructress pleased and suited her; that of a scholar pleased and suited me no less. Our natures dovetailed: mutual affection – of the strongest kind – was the result. They discovered I could draw: their pencils and colour-boxes were immediately at my service. My skill, greater in this one point than theirs, surprised and charmed them. Mary would sit and watch me by the hour together: then she would take lessons; and a docile, intelligent, assiduous pupil she made. Thus occupied, and mutually entertained, days passed like hours and weeks like days.

But despite experiencing such a close bond with the sisters, Jane hasn’t managed to really get to know their brother.

One reason of the distance yet observed between us was that he was comparatively seldom at home: a large portion of his time appeared devoted to visiting the sick and poor among the scattered population of his parish.
No weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral excursions: rain or fair, he would, when his hours of morning study were over, take his hat, and, followed by his father’s faithful old pointer Carlo, go out on his mission of love and duty – I scarcely know in which light he regarded it. Sometimes, when the day was very unfavourable, his sisters would expostulate. He would then say, with a peculiar smile, more solemn than cheerful – “And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from these easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for the future I propose for myself?”
Diana and Mary’s general answer to this question was a sigh, and some minutes of apparently mournful meditation.

It soon becomes apparent that St. John intends to become a missionary, whenever he can settle business in England and raise enough money to fund his expedition.

Incommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had an opportunity of gauging his mind. I first got an idea of its calibre when I heard him preach in his own church at Morton. I wish I could describe that sermon; but it is past my power. I cannot even render faithfully the effect it produced on me.
I began calm – and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice, it was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly restrained zeal breathed soon in distinct accents, and prompted nervous language. This grew to force – compressed, condensed, controlled. The heart was thrilled, the mind astonished, by the power of the preacher: neither was softened. Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an absence of consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic doctrines – election, predestination, reprobation – were frequent; and each reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom. When he had done, instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened by his discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it seemed to me – I know not whether equally so to others – that the eloquence to which I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of disappointment – where moved troubling impulses of insatiate yearnings and disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John Rivers – pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was – had not yet found that peace of God which passeth all understanding; he had no more found it, thought I, than had I; with my concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol and lost elysium – regrets to which I have latterly avoided referring; but which possessed me and tyrannised over me ruthlessly.

St. John’s antithetical nature to Mr. Rochester is being fleshed out. While Mr. Rochester encountered hardship at a relatively young age, fueling his worldly lifestyle, St. John seems to have had no more hardship than a meager inheritance. He was raised in a “godly” family, where all ambitions must be submitted to God, hence his great desire to go to a “heathen” land, spread the Gospel, and probably die a martyr. He’s a passionate person, but rarely permits himself to express that passion except in service of the Lord.

But anyhow, after a month, Jane’s anxious to know if St. John found a job for her.

Looking up as I drew near – “You have a question to ask of me?” he said.
“Yes; I wish to know whether you have heard of any service I can offer myself to undertake.”
“I found or devised something for you three weeks ago; but as you seemed both useful and happy here – as my sisters had evidently become attached to you, and your society gave them unusual pleasure – I deemed it inexpedient to break in on your mutual comfort till their approaching departure from Marsh End should render yours necessary.”

Mary and Diana are set to return to their posts as governesses in a town outside London soon, and St. John explains that he’ll be taking Hannah and returning to the parsonage as well…then he beats around the bush a little longer.

“[Since] I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a service of poverty and obscurity. you may even think it degrading – for I see now your habits have been what the world calls refined: your tastes lean to the ideal; and your society has at least been amongst the educated – but I consider that no service degrades which can better our race. I hold that the more arid and unreclaimed the soil where the Christian labourer’s task of tillage is appointed him – the scantier the meed his toil brings – the higher the honour. His, under such circumstances, is the destiny of the pioneer; and the first pioneers of the Gospel were the Apostles – their captain was Jesus the Redeemer, Himself.”
“Well?” I said, as he again paused – “proceed.”

he’s one of those annoying people who take forever to get to the point

“I believe you will accept the post I offer you,” said he; “and hold it for a while; not permanently, though: any more than I could permanently keep the narrow and narrowing – the tranquil, hidden office of English country incumbent: for in your nature is an alloy as detrimental to repose as that in mine; though of a different kind.”
“Do explain,” I urged, when he halted once more
“I will; and you shall hear how poor the proposal is, – how trivial – how cramping. I shall not stay long in Morton. Now that my father is dead, and that I am my own master. I shall leave the place probably in the course of a twelve-month: but while I do stay I will exert myself to the utmost for its improvement. Morton, when I came here two years ago, had no school: the children of the poor were excluded from every hope of progress. I established one for boys: I mean now to open a second school for girls. I have hired a building for the purpose, with a cottage of two rooms attached to it for the mistress’s house. Her salary will be thirty pounds a year; her house is already furnished, very simply, but sufficiently, by the kindness of a lady, Miss Oliver; the only daughter of the sole rich man in my parish – Mr. Oliver, the proprietor of a needle-factory and iron-foundry in the valley. The same lady pays for the education and clothing of an orphan from the workhouse; on condition that she shall aid the mistress in such menial offices connected to her own house and the school as her occupation of teaching will prevent her from having time to discharge in person. Will you be this mistress?”

So he’s offering a position as a schoolteacher, at more or less the same salary as she was first offered for the role of governess, but with much simpler accommodations.

In truth it was humble – but then it was sheltered, and I wanted safe asylum: it was plodding – but then, compared with that of a governess in a rich house, it was independent; and fear of servitude with strangers entered my soul like iron: it was ignoble – not unworthy – not mentally degrading. I made my decision.
“I thank you for the proposal, Mr. Rivers; and I accept it with all my heart.”
“But you comprehend me?” he said. “It is a village school; your scholars will be only poor girls – cottagers’ children – at the best, farmers’ daughters. Knitting, sewing, reading, writing, cyphering, will be all you have to teach. What will you do with your accomplishments? What with the largest portion of your mind – sentiments – tastes?”
“Save them till they are wanted. They will keep.”

I mean, it seems like she’d be teaching a lot of the same things she did at Lowood.

He rose and walked through the room. Standing still, he again looked at me. He shook his head.
“What do you disapprove of, Mr. Rivers?” I asked.
“You will not stay at Morton long: no, no!”
“Why! What is your reason for saying so?”
“I read it in your eye; it is not of that description which promises the maintenance of an even tenor in life.”
“I am not ambitious.”
He started at the word “ambitious.” He repeated, “No. What made you think of ambition? Who is ambitious? I know I am: but how did you find that out?”
“I was speaking of myself.”
“Well, if you are not ambitious, you are” — He paused.
“What?”
“I was going to say, impassioned: but perhaps you would have misunderstood the word, and been displeased. I mean, that human affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you. I am sure you cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude, and to devote your working hours to a monotonous labour, wholly void of stimulus; any more than I can be content,” he added, with emphasis, “to live here buried in morass, pent in with mountain – my nature, that God gave me, contravened; my faculties, heaven-bestowed, paralysed – made useless. You hear now how I contradict myself. I, who preached contentment with a humble lot, and justified the vocation even of hewers of wood, and drawers of water, in God’s service – I, His ordained minister, almost rave in my restlessness. Well, propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means.”
He left the room. In this brief hour I had learnt more of him than the whole previous month: yet still he puzzled me.

He seems to understand Jane much better than Mr. Rochester did on some level – Mr. Rochester was constantly misreading her silences, while St. John understands her well after only a month.

Meanwhile, Diana and Mary are sad to leave the house, largely because they believe it might be the last time they see their brother (he meant to leave within a year, if you’ll recall).

“He will sacrifice all to his long-framed resolves,” [Diana] said: “natural affection and feelings more potent still. St. John looks quiet, Jane; but he hides a fever in his vitals. You would think him gentle, yet in some things he is inexorable as death; and the worst of it is, my conscience will hardly permit me to dissuade him from his severe decision: certainly, I cannot for a moment blame him for it. It is right, noble, Christian: yet it breaks my heart.” And the tears gushed to her fine eyes. Mary bent her head low over her work.
“We are now without a father: we shall soon be without a home and brother,” she murmured.

But before they leave the house, news comes of an Uncle John’s death, whom they’d hoped would give them a decent inheritance, but he had a falling-out with their father, so all he leaves them is money to buy memorial rings for themselves.

The next day I left Marsh End for Morton. The day after, Diana and Mary quitted it for distant B–. In a week, Mr. Rivers and Hannah repaired to the parsonage: and so the old grange was abandoned.

Until next time…