It was nearly Christmas by the time that all the financial arrangements were settled and I was able to resign from the school. I had told St. John that I would remain as schoolmistress until he could find a replacement. As I closed up the school for the holidays, I promised the girls that I would come every week and teach them for an hour.
Watching my students file out of the school, St. John said to me, "What are you going to do now?"
"I intend to be as active as I can," I replied. "First I must beg you to let Hannah come with me to Moor House. Diana and Mary will be home in a week, and I want to have everything in order for their arrival."
St. John looked puzzled. "I don't understand what employment you're proposing for yourself. What is your aim in life now?"
해석 데이터를 입력해주세요.
"My first aim will be to clean Moor House from top to bottom; my next will be to polish it until everything gleams; my third will be to arrange every piece of furniture with mathematical precision. Afterward Hannah and I will spend two days in the kitchen baking." I smiled with satisfaction. "In short, my aim is to have everything in perfect readiness for Diana and Mary's arrival next Thursday."
St. John smiled but still managed to look dissatisfied. "That's all very well for the present, but I hope you'll soon look beyond household tasks and sisterly society."
I did not understand him. "I'm prepared to be as content as a queen, and you're trying to make me restless. For what purpose?"
"For the purpose of using the talents that God has given you."
해석 데이터를 입력해주세요.
But working alongside Hannah, I was content, and when Thursday came at last, everything was ready. St. John arrived first.
"Are you finished with housemaid's work?" he asked when he found me in the kitchen.
"Come see the results of my labors," I said cheerfully.
With great difficulty I persuaded him to tour the house. As we wandered upstairs and down, he said that I must have gone to a great deal of trouble to have made so much progress in so little time. But he didn't express any pleasure in my improvements. His silence disturbed me. I had replaced some curtains and furniture, and I thought perhaps he was upset by these changes.
"Not at all," he said. "You've been quite respectful of the old house.
해석 데이터를 입력해주세요.
I only fear that you've bestowed more thought on it than it deserves."
Then he asked me where a certain book was. I removed it from a shelf, and he withdrew to a window seat to read. Watching him, I contemplated his lack of pleasure in my improvements to his family home and suddenly realized how trying it would be to be his wife.
Diana and Mary soon arrived, bringing joy to Moor House. Unlike their brother, they were delighted with the new drapery and fresh carpets, and they generously expressed their gratitude.
I'm afraid that the ensuing week tried St. John's patience. It was Christmas week, and we did nothing but spend it in a sort of merry domestic dissipation. St. John did not rebuke us for our high spirits, but he was seldom home.
해석 데이터를 입력해주세요.
He had the unsociable habit of reading at meals, and one morning at breakfast, Diana asked him about his plans.
"I'm planning to leave for India in the coming year," he responded.
"And Rosamond Oliver?" asked Mary.
St. John closed his book and said calmly, "Rosamond Oliver is about to be married."
His sisters and I looked at each other and then at him, but his face remained unchanged.
The next time we were alone, I was tempted to ask if Miss Oliver's marriage distressed him, but he seemed to need little sympathy. As his sisters and I resumed our usual quiet activities, he spent more time with us. He had promised to treat me as a sister, but he confided in me less often than when I had been merely the village schoolmistress.
One afternoon I was not able to make my usual visit to the village school because I had a cold.
해석 데이터를 입력해주세요.
Mary and Diana went in my place. I sat reading German poetry while St. John studied Hindustani, the language he would need as a missionary. When I looked up for a moment, I saw him staring at me.
"Jane, I want you to give up German and learn Hindustani."
"Why?"
He explained that it would greatly help him to have a pupil with whom he could converse. For quite some time he had been considering asking me or his sisters, but he had settled on me because I could sit at a task the longest of the three. He was not a man to be lightly refused, so I consented. When Diana and Mary returned, they said that he never would have been able to persuade them to take such a step, and he agreed.
As the weeks passed, I began to feel that he was taking over my mind.
해석 데이터를 입력해주세요.
I no longer felt that I could talk or laugh freely in front of him because that annoyed him. I wanted to please him more every day, but I also felt that I had to disown half of myself to do so.
Perhaps, reader, you think that I had forgotten Mr. Rochester amid these changes of place and fortune. Not for a moment. The craving to know what had become of him followed me everywhere. When I was the village schoolmistress, I had reentered my cottage every evening wondering about his fate, and now at Moor House, I brooded over it each night in my bedroom.
In the course of my correspondence with Mr. Briggs about my uncle's will, I had inquired if he knew anything about Mr. Rochester's present residence and state of health.
해석 데이터를 입력해주세요.
But as St. John had conjectured, Mr. Briggs knew nothing. I then wrote to Mrs. Fairfax, entreating her for information about Mr. Rochester. I felt sure that my letter would elicit a prompt response.
I was astonished when two weeks passed without a reply. When two months wore away, and day after day the post arrived and brought me nothing, I fell prey to the keenest anxiety. I wrote again because there was a chance that my first letter had gone astray. For a few weeks I was hopeful, but my hope faded when not a word reached me. After six months wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died out completely, and I felt dark indeed.