Chapter 9 — typhus; Helen dies in Jane's arms

Spring comes to Lowood and brings typhus with it. The cold and the bad food have weakened the girls all winter; the warmer weather, in a building of damp walls and shared dormitories, finishes them. Many girls die. The school empties: some are sent home; some are buried; the survivors, freed from full lessons because the teachers are nursing, run wild through the woods and the moors during the long days. Jane, ironically, has the freest and happiest weeks of her childhood at Lowood during the epidemic.

Helen Burns is not in the typhus ward. Helen has been ill for months with consumption — tuberculosis — and has been kept separately, in a small room down the corridor from Miss Temple's. Jane, who has been allowed to visit her occasionally, gradually understands that Helen is dying and that the dying is close. The household has not told the children directly; Jane works it out from the nurses' faces and from Helen herself, who is calm about it. One evening Jane learns from a nurse that Helen will probably not last another day or two.

That night, after the dormitory is dark, Jane slips out of her bed in her nightgown and walks the cold corridor to Helen's room. Helen is awake and lucid. She tells Jane she is going where she will be free from suffering, that she believes in a God who is good, and that she wants Jane to know she is not afraid. Jane, weeping silently, climbs into the bed and puts her arms around her friend. The two girls talk for a few minutes more. Jane falls asleep with her face against Helen's shoulder. In the morning the nurse finds them: Jane asleep with her arms around Helen, who has died in the night, peacefully, without waking her. The grave is in the churchyard at Lowood; for fifteen years it stays unmarked, and then Jane, with her own money, buys a grey marble tablet: Resurgam. I shall rise again.