My spirit is willing to do what is right; and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven, when once that is distinctly known to me.

With St. John finally gone, Jane determines to inquire after Mr. Rochester in person.

In the morning, St. John slips a note under Jane’s door, but doesn’t try to engage her in conversation.

“You left me too suddenly last night. Had you stayed but a little longer, you would have laid your hand on the Christian’s cross and the angel’s crown. I shall expect your clear decision when I return this day fortnight. Meantime, watch and pray that you enter not into temptation: the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh, I see, is weak. I shall pray for you hourly, -Yours, St. John.”
“My spirit,” I answered mentally, “is willing to do what is right; and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven, when once that is distinctly known to me. At any rate, it shall be strong enough to search – inquire – to grope an outlet from this cloud of doubt, and find the open day of certainty.”

I can’t help but relate to Jane here, rejecting the traditional “righteous” path to pursue what her conscience tells her is right.

Anyhow, she prepares to journey back to Thornfield to see for herself what’s become of Mr. Rochester. Thus she announces her trip to Mary and Diana.

“Alone, Jane?” they asked.
“Yes; it was to see, or hear news of, a friend about whom I had for some time been uneasy.”
They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they had believed me to be without friends save them: for, indeed, I had often said so; but with their true natural delicacy, they abstained from comment: except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was well enough to travel. I looked very pale, she observed. I replied that nothing ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped soon to alleviate.

She returns by the same coach she fled on (but naturally, with much more confidence). And after a trip of a day and a half, having reached a point two miles away from Thornfield, she determines to walk the rest of the way herself, despite the fact that she could probably just ask someone where Mr. Rochester is.

The suggestion was sensible; and yet I could not force myself to act on it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To prolong doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see the Hall under the ray of her star. There was the stile before me – the very fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted, with a revengeful fury tracking and scourging me, on the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I well knew what course I had resolved to take, I was in the midst of them. How fast I walked! How I ran sometimes! How I looked forward to catch the first view of the well-known woods! With what feelings I welcomed single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill between them!

Then, she approaches the house.

The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this survey. I wonder what they thought: they must have considered I was very careful and timid at first, and that gradually I grew very bold and reckless. A peep, and then a long stare; and then a departure from my niche and a straying out into the meadow; and a sudden stop full in front of the great mansion, and a protracted, hardy gaze towards it. “What affectation of diffidence was this at first?” they might have demanded. “What stupid regardlessness now?”
Hear an illustration, reader.
A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals softly over the grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses – fancying she has stirred: he withdraws; not for worlds would he be seen. All is still: he again advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features: he lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty – warm, and blooming, and lovely in rest. How hurried was their first glance! But how they fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since, touch with his finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden, and gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter – by any movement he can make. He thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone-dead.
I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened ruin.

And now she returns to the inn with many more questions about the fire that burned Thornfield to the ground – which, conveniently, can all be answered by the former butler of Mr. Rochester’s father.

“Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?” I asked, knowing, of course, what the answer would be, yet desirous of deferring the direct question as to where he really was.
“No, ma’am – oh, no! No one is living there. I suppose you are a stranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happened last autumn, – Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about harvest time. A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity of valuable property destroyed: hardly any furniture could be saved. The fire broke out at dead of night, and before the engines arrived from Millcote, the building was one mass of flame. It was a terrible spectacle: I witnessed it myself.”
“At dead of night?” I muttered. Yes, that was ever the hour of fatality at Thornfield. “Was it known how it originated?” I demanded.
“They guessed, ma’am: they guessed. Indeed, I should say it was ascertained beyond a doubt. You are not perhaps aware,” he continued, edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking very low, “that there was a lady, – a-a lunatic, kept in the house?”
“I have heard something of it.”
“She was kept in very close confinement, ma’am; people even for some years was not absolutely certain of her existence. No one saw her: they only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall; and who or what she was it was difficult to conjecture. They said Mr. Edward had brought her from abroad; and some believed she had been his mistress. But a queer thing happened a year since – a very queer thing.”
I feared now to hear my own story. I endeavoured to recall him to the main fact.
“And this lady?”
“This lady, ma’am,” he answered, “turned out to be Mr. Rochester’s wife!”

Then he proceeds to tell her story anyway, but of course, Jane just wants to hear the news.

“You shall tell me this part of the story another time,” I said; “but now I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about the fire. Was it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had any hand in it?”
“You’ve hit it, ma’am: it’s quite certain that it was her and nobody but her, that set it going. She had a woman to take care of her called Mrs. Poole – an able woman in her line, and very trustworthy, but for her one fault – a fault common to a deal of them nurses and matrons – she kept a private bottle of gin by her, and now and then took a drop over much. It is excusable, for she had a hard life of it: but still it was dangerous; for when Mrs. Poole was fast asleep, after the gin-and-water, the mad lady, who was cunning as a witch, would take the keys out of her pocket, let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the house, doing any wild mischief that came into her head. They say she had nearly burnt her husband in his bed once: but I don’t know about that. However, on the night she set fire first to the hangings of the room next to her own; and then she got down to a lower story, and made her way to the chamber that had been the governess’s (she was like as if she knew how matters had gone on and had a spite at her) – and she kindled the bed there; but there was nobody sleeping in it fortunately. The governess had run away two months before; and for all Mr. Rochester sought her as if she was the most precious thing he had in the world, he never could hear a word of her; he grew savage – quite savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but he got dangerous after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but he did it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her life: and she deserved it – she was a very good woman. Miss Adèle, a ward he had, was put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry, and shut himself up, like a hermit, at the Hall.”

Clearly, rather than go on a hedonistic rampage across the Continent (as she’d feared), Mr. Rochester opted to stay put where he knew Jane could find him.

“What! did he not leave England?”
“Leave England? Bless you, no! He would not cross the door-stones of the house; except at night, when he walked just like a ghost about the grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses – which it is my opinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he was before that midge of a governess crossed him, you never saw, ma’am. He was not a man given to wine, or cards, or racing, as some are, and he was not so very handsome; but he had a courage and a will of his own, if ever a man had. I knew him from a boy, you see: and for my part I have often wished that Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she came to Thornfield Hall.”

because they naturally blame the governess for ruining his life, not the other way around

“Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?”
“Yes, indeed, was he; and he went up to the attics when all was burning above and below, and got the servants out of their beds and helped them down himself – and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And then they called out to him that she was on the roof; where she was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and shouting out till they could hear her a mile off; I saw her and heard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman, and had long black hair: we could see it streaming against the flames as she stood. I witnessed, and several more witnessed Mr. Rochester ascend through the skylight on to the roof: we heard him call ‘Bertha!’ We saw him approach her; and then, ma’am, she yelled, and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement.”

and thus mrs. rochester conveniently removes herself from the equation, with no guilt on either of the heroes’ hands!

“Where is he?” I demanded. “Is he in England?”
“Ay – ay – he’s in England; he can’t get out of England, I fancy – he’s a fixture now.”
What agony was this! And the man seemed resolved to protract it.
“He is stone-blind,” he said at last. “Yes – he is stone-blind – is Mr. Edward.”
I had dreaded worse. I had dreaded he was mad. I summoned strength to ask what had caused this calamity.
“It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a way, ma’am: he wouldn’t leave the house till every one else was out before him. As he came down the great staircase at last, after Mrs. Rochester had flung herself from the battlements, there was a great crash – all fell. he was taken out from under the ruins alive, but sadly hurt: a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him partly; but one eye was knocked out, and one hand crushed so that Mr. Carter, the surgeon, had to amputate it directly. The other eye inflamed: he lost sight of that also. He is now helpless, indeed – blind and a cripple.”
“Where is he? Where does he now live?”
“At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles off: quite a desolate spot.”

He clearly intended to commit a socially acceptable suicide by removing to Ferndean – a place he’d never sent Bertha to because of the unhealthy environment.

Notably, the loss of an eye and a hand is clearly framed as a karmic punishment for Mr. Rochester’s sins. Those are body parts that Jesus specifically said should be removed if they caused you to sin.

And so, Jane prepares to finally reunite with Mr. Rochester (with his wife conveniently out of the way)…

…next time.