Desolation and Divine Providence — Jane Eyre

Two days after she leaves Thornfield, the coachman sets Jane down at Whitcross. She has no other shilling. The coach is already a mile off, and she is alone at a crossroads on the moors. She strikes into the heath. One morsel of bread remains, bought at noon with a stray penny, her last coin. She eats it with bilberries gathered off the heath. She finds a moss-blackened granite crag, sits under it, and sleeps with the sky over her. Her heart breaks for Rochester. Then, through tears, she sees the Milky Way and feels the strength of God. She turns the prayer toward thanksgiving and trusts that he is in God's keeping.

Morning brings want, and a church bell shows her a village. At a shop she is seized with shame. She will not offer her half-worn gloves or her creased handkerchief, and she only asks to sit because she is tired. She asks after a dressmaker or a plain-workwoman and is told the village already has as many as it can employ. At the parsonage she hopes the clergyman can advise someone who wants to help herself. He is away at Marsh End, mourning his father, and likely to stay a fortnight. A farmer eating bread and cheese gives her a piece when she says she is hungry.

The next night in a wood is miserable. The day after, rain drives her through the village and she is turned from doors again. She sees a little girl about to throw cold porridge into a pig trough and asks for it. She knows she may die before morning, and she cannot make peace with that, because she still believes her life has a use. She leaves the cultivated fields and draws near the moor. A light shows far off. She crosses a wide bog, splashy even in high summer, and falls twice. At a window she sees candles and two grave young women reading. One is Diana. The book is neither French nor Latin. An old servant, Hannah, knits beside them.

Jane knocks and begs shelter. Hannah offers a penny and tells her to go. Jane says a penny cannot feed her, and she has no strength to go farther. She begs Hannah not to shut the door, and to tell the young ladies. Hannah will not. Jane sinks on the step. She says she can but die, that she believes in God, and that she will wait his will in silence. A voice close by answers that all must die, but not all are condemned to perish of want on a doorstep. The speaker knocks. Hannah cries out, Is it you, Mr St John? He comes in wet from the wild night. His sisters have been uneasy. Diana, known by the long curls between Jane and the fire, breaks bread into milk and feeds her. Jane gives the name Jane Elliott. She will give no details tonight, and she says she expects nothing. Then she trusts Diana: they would not turn a stray dog from the hearth, and she has no fear. St John tells Hannah to let her sit, and in ten minutes to give her the rest of the milk and bread. They put her to bed dry and warm. She sleeps in grateful exhaustion, and she is no longer an outcast.