CHAPTER XXIX

The recollection of about three days and nights succeeding this is very dim in
my mind. I can recall some sensations felt in that interval; but few thoughts
framed, and no actions performed. I knew I was in a small room and in a narrow
bed. To that bed I seemed to have grown; I lay on it motionless as a stone; and
to have torn me from it would have been almost to kill me. I took no note of
the lapse of time—of the change from morning to noon, from noon to evening. I
observed when any one entered or left the apartment: I could even tell who they
were; I could understand what was said when the speaker stood near to me; but I
could not answer; to open my lips or move my limbs was equally impossible.
Hannah, the servant, was my most frequent visitor. Her coming disturbed me. I
had a feeling that she wished me away: that she did not understand me or my
circumstances; that she was prejudiced against me. Diana and Mary appeared in
the chamber once or twice a day. They would whisper sentences of this sort at
my bedside—

“It is very well we took her in.”

“Yes; she would certainly have been found dead at the door in the morning had
she been left out all night. I wonder what she has gone through?”

“Strange hardships, I imagine—poor, emaciated, pallid wanderer!”

“She is not an uneducated person, I should think, by her manner of speaking;
her accent was quite pure; and the clothes she took off, though splashed and
wet, were little worn and fine.”

“She has a peculiar face; fleshless and haggard as it is, I rather like it; and
when in good health and animated, I can fancy her physiognomy would be
agreeable.”

Never once in their dialogues did I hear a syllable of regret at the
hospitality they had extended to me, or of suspicion of, or aversion to,
myself. I was comforted.

Mr. St. John came but once: he looked at me, and said my state of lethargy was
the result of reaction from excessive and protracted fatigue. He pronounced it
needless to send for a doctor: nature, he was sure, would manage best, left to
herself. He said every nerve had been overstrained in some way, and the whole
system must sleep torpid a while. There was no disease. He imagined my recovery
would be rapid enough when once commenced. These opinions he delivered in a few
words, in a quiet, low voice; and added, after a pause, in the tone of a man
little accustomed to expansive comment, “Rather an unusual physiognomy;
certainly, not indicative of vulgarity or degradation.”

“Far otherwise,” responded Diana. “To speak truth, St. John, my heart rather
warms to the poor little soul. I wish we may be able to benefit her
permanently.”

“That is hardly likely,” was the reply. “You will find she is some young lady
who has had a misunderstanding with her friends, and has probably injudiciously
left them. We may, perhaps, succeed in restoring her to them, if she is not
obstinate: but I trace lines of force in her face which make me sceptical of
her tractability.” He stood considering me some minutes; then added, “She looks
sensible, but not at all handsome.”

“She is so ill, St. John.”

“Ill or well, she would always be plain. The grace and harmony of beauty are
quite wanting in those features.”

On the third day I was better; on the fourth, I could speak, move, rise in bed,
and turn. Hannah had brought me some gruel and dry toast, about, as I supposed,
the dinner-hour. I had eaten with relish: the food was good—void of the
feverish flavour which had hitherto poisoned what I had swallowed. When she
left me, I felt comparatively strong and revived: ere long satiety of repose
and desire for action stirred me. I wished to rise; but what could I put on?
Only my damp and bemired apparel; in which I had slept on the ground and fallen
in the marsh. I felt ashamed to appear before my benefactors so clad. I was
spared the humiliation.

On a chair by the bedside were all my own things, clean and dry. My black silk
frock hung against the wall. The traces of the bog were removed from it; the
creases left by the wet smoothed out: it was quite decent. My very shoes and
stockings were purified and rendered presentable. There were the means of
washing in the room, and a comb and brush to smooth my hair. After a weary
process, and resting every five minutes, I succeeded in dressing myself. My
clothes hung loose on me; for I was much wasted, but I covered deficiencies
with a shawl, and once more, clean and respectable looking—no speck of the
dirt, no trace of the disorder I so hated, and which seemed so to degrade me,
left—I crept down a stone staircase with the aid of the banisters, to a narrow
low passage, and found my way presently to the kitchen.

It was full of the fragrance of new bread and the warmth of a generous fire.
Hannah was baking. Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to
eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by
education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones. Hannah had been cold
and stiff, indeed, at the first: latterly she had begun to relent a little; and
when she saw me come in tidy and well-dressed, she even smiled.

“What, you have got up!” she said. “You are better, then. You may sit you down
in my chair on the hearthstone, if you will.”

She pointed to the rocking-chair: I took it. She bustled about, examining me
every now and then with the corner of her eye. Turning to me, as she took some
loaves from the oven, she asked bluntly—

“Did you ever go a-begging afore you came here?”

I was indignant for a moment; but remembering that anger was out of the
question, and that I had indeed appeared as a beggar to her, I answered
quietly, but still not without a certain marked firmness—

“You are mistaken in supposing me a beggar. I am no beggar; any more than
yourself or your young ladies.”

After a pause she said, “I dunnut understand that: you’ve like no house, nor no
brass, I guess?”

“The want of house or brass (by which I suppose you mean money) does not make a
beggar in your sense of the word.”

“Are you book-learned?” she inquired presently.

“Yes, very.”

“But you’ve never been to a boarding-school?”

“I was at a boarding-school eight years.”

She opened her eyes wide. “Whatever cannot ye keep yourself for, then?”

“I have kept myself; and, I trust, shall keep myself again. What are you going
to do with these gooseberries?” I inquired, as she brought out a basket of the
fruit.

“Mak’ ’em into pies.”

“Give them to me and I’ll pick them.”

“Nay; I dunnut want ye to do nought.”

“But I must do something. Let me have them.”

She consented; and she even brought me a clean towel to spread over my dress,
“lest,” as she said, “I should mucky it.”

“Ye’ve not been used to sarvant’s wark, I see by your hands,” she remarked.
“Happen ye’ve been a dressmaker?”

“No, you are wrong. And now, never mind what I have been: don’t trouble your
head further about me; but tell me the name of the house where we are.”

“Some calls it Marsh End, and some calls it Moor House.”

“And the gentleman who lives here is called Mr. St. John?”

“Nay; he doesn’t live here: he is only staying a while. When he is at home, he
is in his own parish at Morton.”

“That village a few miles off?

“Aye.”

“And what is he?”

“He is a parson.”

I remembered the answer of the old housekeeper at the parsonage, when I had
asked to see the clergyman. “This, then, was his father’s residence?”

“Aye; old Mr. Rivers lived here, and his father, and grandfather, and gurt
(great) grandfather afore him.”

“The name, then, of that gentleman, is Mr. St. John Rivers?”

“Aye; St. John is like his kirstened name.”

“And his sisters are called Diana and Mary Rivers?”

“Yes.”

“Their father is dead?”

“Dead three weeks sin’ of a stroke.”

“They have no mother?”

“The mistress has been dead this mony a year.”

“Have you lived with the family long?”

“I’ve lived here thirty year. I nursed them all three.”

“That proves you must have been an honest and faithful servant. I will say so
much for you, though you have had the incivility to call me a beggar.”

She again regarded me with a surprised stare. “I believe,” she said, “I was
quite mista’en in my thoughts of you: but there is so mony cheats goes about,
you mun forgie me.”

“And though,” I continued, rather severely, “you wished to turn me from the
door, on a night when you should not have shut out a dog.”

“Well, it was hard: but what can a body do? I thought more o’ th’ childer nor
of mysel: poor things! They’ve like nobody to tak’ care on ’em but me. I’m like
to look sharpish.”

I maintained a grave silence for some minutes.

“You munnut think too hardly of me,” she again remarked.

“But I do think hardly of you,” I said; “and I’ll tell you why—not so much
because you refused to give me shelter, or regarded me as an impostor, as
because you just now made it a species of reproach that I had no ‘brass’ and no
house. Some of the best people that ever lived have been as destitute as I am;
and if you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime.”

“No more I ought,” said she: “Mr. St. John tells me so too; and I see I wor
wrang—but I’ve clear a different notion on you now to what I had. You look a
raight down dacent little crater.”

“That will do—I forgive you now. Shake hands.”

She put her floury and horny hand into mine; another and heartier smile
illumined her rough face, and from that moment we were friends.

Hannah was evidently fond of talking. While I picked the fruit, and she made
the paste for the pies, she proceeded to give me sundry details about her
deceased master and mistress, and “the childer,” as she called the young
people.

Old Mr. Rivers, she said, was a plain man enough, but a gentleman, and of as
ancient a family as could be found. Marsh End had belonged to the Rivers ever
since it was a house: and it was, she affirmed, “aboon two hundred year old—for
all it looked but a small, humble place, naught to compare wi’ Mr. Oliver’s
grand hall down i’ Morton Vale. But she could remember Bill Oliver’s father a
journeyman needlemaker; and th’ Rivers wor gentry i’ th’ owd days o’ th’
Henrys, as onybody might see by looking into th’ registers i’ Morton Church
vestry.” Still, she allowed, “the owd maister was like other folk—naught mich
out o’ t’ common way: stark mad o’ shooting, and farming, and sich like.” The
mistress was different. She was a great reader, and studied a deal; and the
“bairns” had taken after her. There was nothing like them in these parts, nor
ever had been; they had liked learning, all three, almost from the time they
could speak; and they had always been “of a mak’ of their own.” Mr. St. John,
when he grew up, would go to college and be a parson; and the girls, as soon as
they left school, would seek places as governesses: for they had told her their
father had some years ago lost a great deal of money by a man he had trusted
turning bankrupt; and as he was now not rich enough to give them fortunes, they
must provide for themselves. They had lived very little at home for a long
while, and were only come now to stay a few weeks on account of their father’s
death; but they did so like Marsh End and Morton, and all these moors and hills
about. They had been in London, and many other grand towns; but they always
said there was no place like home; and then they were so agreeable with each
other—never fell out nor “threaped.” She did not know where there was such a
family for being united.

Having finished my task of gooseberry picking, I asked where the two ladies and
their brother were now.

“Gone over to Morton for a walk; but they would be back in half-an-hour to
tea.”

They returned within the time Hannah had allotted them: they entered by the
kitchen door. Mr. St. John, when he saw me, merely bowed and passed through;
the two ladies stopped: Mary, in a few words, kindly and calmly expressed the
pleasure she felt in seeing me well enough to be able to come down; Diana took
my hand: she shook her head at me.

“You should have waited for my leave to descend,” she said. “You still look
very pale—and so thin! Poor child!—poor girl!”

Diana had a voice toned, to my ear, like the cooing of a dove. She possessed
eyes whose gaze I delighted to encounter. Her whole face seemed to me full of
charm. Mary’s countenance was equally intelligent—her features equally pretty;
but her expression was more reserved, and her manners, though gentle, more
distant. Diana looked and spoke with a certain authority: she had a will,
evidently. It was my nature to feel pleasure in yielding to an authority
supported like hers, and to bend, where my conscience and self-respect
permitted, to an active will.

“And what business have you here?” she continued. “It is not your place. Mary
and I sit in the kitchen sometimes, because at home we like to be free, even to
license—but you are a visitor, and must go into the parlour.”

“I am very well here.”

“Not at all, with Hannah bustling about and covering you with flour.”

“Besides, the fire is too hot for you,” interposed Mary.

“To be sure,” added her sister. “Come, you must be obedient.” And still holding
my hand she made me rise, and led me into the inner room.

“Sit there,” she said, placing me on the sofa, “while we take our things off
and get the tea ready; it is another privilege we exercise in our little
moorland home—to prepare our own meals when we are so inclined, or when Hannah
is baking, brewing, washing, or ironing.”

She closed the door, leaving me solus with Mr. St. John, who sat opposite, a
book or newspaper in his hand. I examined, first, the parlour, and then its
occupant.

The parlour was rather a small room, very plainly furnished, yet comfortable,
because clean and neat. The old-fashioned chairs were very bright, and the
walnut-wood table was like a looking-glass. A few strange, antique portraits of
the men and women of other days decorated the stained walls; a cupboard with
glass doors contained some books and an ancient set of china. There was no
superfluous ornament in the room—not one modern piece of furniture, save a
brace of workboxes and a lady’s desk in rosewood, which stood on a side-table:
everything—including the carpet and curtains—looked at once well worn and well
saved.

Mr. St. John—sitting as still as one of the dusty pictures on the walls,
keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his lips mutely sealed—was
easy enough to examine. Had he been a statue instead of a man, he could not
have been easier. He was young—perhaps from twenty-eight to thirty—tall,
slender; his face riveted the eye; it was like a Greek face, very pure in
outline: quite a straight, classic nose; quite an Athenian mouth and chin. It
is seldom, indeed, an English face comes so near the antique models as did his.
He might well be a little shocked at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own
being so harmonious. His eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his high
forehead, colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of
fair hair.

This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader? Yet he whom it describes
scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a yielding, an impressible,
or even of a placid nature. Quiescent as he now sat, there was something about
his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which, to my perceptions, indicated elements
within either restless, or hard, or eager. He did not speak to me one word, nor
even direct to me one glance, till his sisters returned. Diana, as she passed
in and out, in the course of preparing tea, brought me a little cake, baked on
the top of the oven.

“Eat that now,” she said: “you must be hungry. Hannah says you have had nothing
but some gruel since breakfast.”

I did not refuse it, for my appetite was awakened and keen. Mr. Rivers now
closed his book, approached the table, and, as he took a seat, fixed his blue
pictorial-looking eyes full on me. There was an unceremonious directness, a
searching, decided steadfastness in his gaze now, which told that intention,
and not diffidence, had hitherto kept it averted from the stranger.

“You are very hungry,” he said.

“I am, sir.” It is my way—it always was my way, by instinct—ever to meet the
brief with brevity, the direct with plainness.

“It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for the last
three days: there would have been danger in yielding to the cravings of your
appetite at first. Now you may eat, though still not immoderately.”

“I trust I shall not eat long at your expense, sir,” was my very
clumsily-contrived, unpolished answer.

“No,” he said coolly: “when you have indicated to us the residence of your
friends, we can write to them, and you may be restored to home.”

“That, I must plainly tell you, is out of my power to do; being absolutely
without home and friends.”

The three looked at me, but not distrustfully; I felt there was no suspicion in
their glances: there was more of curiosity. I speak particularly of the young
ladies. St. John’s eyes, though clear enough in a literal sense, in a
figurative one were difficult to fathom. He seemed to use them rather as
instruments to search other people’s thoughts, than as agents to reveal his
own: the which combination of keenness and reserve was considerably more
calculated to embarrass than to encourage.

“Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that you are completely isolated from every
connection?”

“I do. Not a tie links me to any living thing: not a claim do I possess to
admittance under any roof in England.”

“A most singular position at your age!”

Here I saw his glance directed to my hands, which were folded on the table
before me. I wondered what he sought there: his words soon explained the quest.

“You have never been married? You are a spinster?”

Diana laughed. “Why, she can’t be above seventeen or eighteen years old, St.
John,” said she.

“I am near nineteen: but I am not married. No.”

I felt a burning glow mount to my face; for bitter and agitating recollections
were awakened by the allusion to marriage. They all saw the embarrassment and
the emotion. Diana and Mary relieved me by turning their eyes elsewhere than to
my crimsoned visage; but the colder and sterner brother continued to gaze, till
the trouble he had excited forced out tears as well as colour.

“Where did you last reside?” he now asked.

“You are too inquisitive, St. John,” murmured Mary in a low voice; but he
leaned over the table and required an answer by a second firm and piercing
look.

“The name of the place where, and of the person with whom I lived, is my
secret,” I replied concisely.

“Which, if you like, you have, in my opinion, a right to keep, both from St.
John and every other questioner,” remarked Diana.

“Yet if I know nothing about you or your history, I cannot help you,” he said.
“And you need help, do you not?”

“I need it, and I seek it so far, sir, that some true philanthropist will put
me in the way of getting work which I can do, and the remuneration for which
will keep me, if but in the barest necessaries of life.”

“I know not whether I am a true philanthropist; yet I am willing to aid you to
the utmost of my power in a purpose so honest. First, then, tell me what you
have been accustomed to do, and what you can do.”
can
I had now swallowed my tea. I was mightily refreshed by the beverage; as much
so as a giant with wine: it gave new tone to my unstrung nerves, and enabled me
to address this penetrating young judge steadily.

“Mr. Rivers,” I said, turning to him, and looking at him, as he looked at me,
openly and without diffidence, “you and your sisters have done me a great
service—the greatest man can do his fellow-being; you have rescued me, by your
noble hospitality, from death. This benefit conferred gives you an unlimited
claim on my gratitude, and a claim, to a certain extent, on my confidence. I
will tell you as much of the history of the wanderer you have harboured, as I
can tell without compromising my own peace of mind—my own security, moral and
physical, and that of others.

“I am an orphan, the daughter of a clergyman. My parents died before I could
know them. I was brought up a dependent; educated in a charitable institution.
I will even tell you the name of the establishment, where I passed six years as
a pupil, and two as a teacher—Lowood Orphan Asylum, ——shire: you will have
heard of it, Mr. Rivers?—the Rev. Robert Brocklehurst is the treasurer.”

“I have heard of Mr. Brocklehurst, and I have seen the school.”

“I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess. I obtained a
good situation, and was happy. This place I was obliged to leave four days
before I came here. The reason of my departure I cannot and ought not to
explain: it would be useless, dangerous, and would sound incredible. No blame
attached to me: I am as free from culpability as any one of you three.
Miserable I am, and must be for a time; for the catastrophe which drove me from
a house I had found a paradise was of a strange and direful nature. I observed
but two points in planning my departure—speed, secrecy: to secure these, I had
to leave behind me everything I possessed except a small parcel; which, in my
hurry and trouble of mind, I forgot to take out of the coach that brought me to
Whitcross. To this neighbourhood, then, I came, quite destitute. I slept two
nights in the open air, and wandered about two days without crossing a
threshold: but twice in that space of time did I taste food; and it was when
brought by hunger, exhaustion, and despair almost to the last gasp, that you,
Mr. Rivers, forbade me to perish of want at your door, and took me under the
shelter of your roof. I know all your sisters have done for me since—for I have
not been insensible during my seeming torpor—and I owe to their spontaneous,
genuine, genial compassion as large a debt as to your evangelical charity.”

“Don’t make her talk any more now, St. John,” said Diana, as I paused; “she is
evidently not yet fit for excitement. Come to the sofa and sit down now, Miss
Elliott.”

I gave an involuntary half start at hearing the alias: I had forgotten
my new name. Mr. Rivers, whom nothing seemed to escape, noticed it at once.
alias
“You said your name was Jane Elliott?” he observed.

“I did say so; and it is the name by which I think it expedient to be called at
present, but it is not my real name, and when I hear it, it sounds strange to
me.”

“Your real name you will not give?”

“No: I fear discovery above all things; and whatever disclosure would lead to
it, I avoid.”

“You are quite right, I am sure,” said Diana. “Now do, brother, let her be at
peace a while.”

But when St. John had mused a few moments he recommenced as imperturbably and
with as much acumen as ever.

“You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality—you would wish, I
see, to dispense as soon as may be with my sisters’ compassion, and, above all,
with my charity (I am quite sensible of the distinction drawn, nor do I
resent it—it is just): you desire to be independent of us?”
charity
“I do: I have already said so. Show me how to work, or how to seek work: that
is all I now ask; then let me go, if it be but to the meanest cottage; but till
then, allow me to stay here: I dread another essay of the horrors of homeless
destitution.”

“Indeed you shall stay here,” said Diana, putting her white hand on my
head. “You shall,” repeated Mary, in the tone of undemonstrative
sincerity which seemed natural to her.
shallshall
“My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you,” said Mr. St. John, “as
they would have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing a half-frozen bird some
wintry wind might have driven through their casement. I feel more
inclination to put you in the way of keeping yourself, and shall endeavour to
do so; but observe, my sphere is narrow. I am but the incumbent of a poor
country parish: my aid must be of the humblest sort. And if you are inclined to
despise the day of small things, seek some more efficient succour than such as
I can offer.”
I
“She has already said that she is willing to do anything honest she can
do,” answered Diana for me; “and you know, St. John, she has no choice of
helpers: she is forced to put up with such crusty people as you.”
can
“I will be a dressmaker; I will be a plain-workwoman; I will be a servant, a
nurse-girl, if I can be no better,” I answered.

“Right,” said Mr. St. John, quite coolly. “If such is your spirit, I promise to
aid you, in my own time and way.”

He now resumed the book with which he had been occupied before tea. I soon
withdrew, for I had talked as much, and sat up as long, as my present strength
would permit.

CHAPTER XXX

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 on the outline of swell and sweep—on the wild colouring communicated to
ridge and dell by moss, by heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant
bracken, and mellow granite crag. These details were just to me what they were
to them—so many pure and sweet sources of pleasure. The strong blast and the
soft breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of sunrise and sunset;
the moonlight and the 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.

If in our trio there was a superior and a leader, it was Diana. Physically, she
far excelled me: she was handsome; she was vigorous. In her animal spirits
there was an affluence of life and certainty of flow, such as excited my
wonder, while it baffled my comprehension. I could talk a while when the
evening commenced, but the first gush of vivacity and fluency gone, I was fain
to sit on a stool at Diana’s feet, to rest my head on her knee, and listen
alternately to her and Mary, while they sounded thoroughly the topic on which I
had but touched. Diana offered to teach me German. I liked to learn of her: I
saw the part of instructress pleased and suited her; that of 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.

As to Mr. St John, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally and rapidly
between me and his sisters did not extend to him. One reason of the distance
yet observed between us was, that he was comparatively seldom at home: a large
proportion 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 old pointer, Carlo, go out on his mission of love or 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 to
myself?”

Diana and Mary’s general answer to this question was a sigh, and some minutes
of apparently mournful meditation.

But besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to friendship with
him: he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and even of a brooding nature.
Zealous in his ministerial labours, blameless in his life and habits, he yet
did not appear to enjoy that mental serenity, that inward content, which should
be the reward of every sincere Christian and practical philanthropist. Often,
of an evening, when he sat at the window, his desk and papers before him, he
would cease reading or writing, rest his chin on his hand, and deliver himself
up to I know not what course of thought; but that it was perturbed and exciting
might be seen in the frequent flash and changeful dilation of his eye.

I think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of delight it was
to his sisters. He expressed once, and but once in my hearing, a strong sense
of the rugged charm of the hills, and an inborn affection for the dark roof and
hoary walls he called his home; but there was more of gloom than pleasure in
the tone and words in which the sentiment was manifested; and never did he seem
to roam the moors for the sake of their soothing silence—never seek out or
dwell upon the thousand peaceful delights they could yield.

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.

It began calm—and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice went, it was
calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly restrained zeal breathed soon
in the distinct accents, and prompted the nervous language. This grew to
force—compressed, condensed, controlled. The heart was thrilled, the mind
astonished, by the power of the preacher: neither were 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, I thought, 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.

Meantime a month was gone. Diana and Mary were soon to leave Moor House, and
return to the far different life and scene which awaited them, as governesses
in a large, fashionable, south-of-England city, where each held a situation in
families by whose wealthy and haughty members they were regarded only as humble
dependents, and who neither knew nor sought out their innate excellences, and
appreciated only their acquired accomplishments as they appreciated the skill
of their cook or the taste of their waiting-woman. Mr. St. John had said
nothing to me yet about the employment he had promised to obtain for me; yet it
became urgent that I should have a vocation of some kind. One morning, being
left alone with him a few minutes in the parlour, I ventured to approach the
window-recess—which his table, chair, and desk consecrated as a kind of
study—and I was going to speak, though not very well knowing in what words to
frame my inquiry—for it is at all times difficult to break the ice of reserve
glassing over such natures as his—when he saved me the trouble by being the
first to commence a dialogue.

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.”

“And they will go in three days now?” I said.

“Yes; and when they go, I shall return to the parsonage at Morton: Hannah will
accompany me; and this old house will be shut up.”

I waited a few moments, expecting he would go on with the subject first
broached: but he seemed to have entered another train of reflection: his look
denoted abstraction from me and my business. I was obliged to recall him to a
theme which was of necessity one of close and anxious interest to me.

“What is the employment you had in view, Mr. Rivers? I hope this delay will not
have increased the difficulty of securing it.”

“Oh, no; since it is an employment which depends only on me to give, and you to
accept.”

He again paused: there seemed a reluctance to continue. I grew impatient: a
restless movement or two, and an eager and exacting glance fastened on his
face, conveyed the feeling to him as effectually as words could have done, and
with less trouble.

“You need be in no hurry to hear,” he said: “let me frankly tell you, I have
nothing eligible or profitable to suggest. Before I explain, recall, if you
please, my notice, clearly given, that if I helped you, it must be as the blind
man would help the lame. I am poor; for I find that, when I have paid my
father’s debts, all the patrimony remaining to me will be this crumbling
grange, the row of scathed firs behind, and the patch of moorish soil, with the
yew-trees and holly-bushes in front. I am obscure: Rivers is an old name; but
of the three sole descendants of the race, two earn the dependent’s crust among
strangers, and the third considers himself an alien from his native country—not
only for life, but in death. Yes, and deems, and is bound to deem, himself
honoured by the lot, and aspires but after the day when the cross of separation
from fleshly ties shall be laid on his shoulders, and when the Head of that
church-militant of whose humblest members he is one, shall give the word,
‘Rise, follow Me!’”

St. John said these words as he pronounced his sermons, with a quiet, deep
voice; with an unflushed cheek, and a coruscating radiance of glance. He
resumed—

“And 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 looked at me before he proceeded: indeed, he seemed leisurely to read my
face, as if its features and lines were characters on a page. The conclusions
drawn from this scrutiny he partially expressed in his succeeding observations.

“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 at 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 to it 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 with her own house and
the school as her occupation of teaching will prevent her having time to
discharge in person. Will you be this mistress?”

He put the question rather hurriedly; he seemed half to expect an indignant, or
at least a disdainful rejection of the offer: not knowing all my thoughts and
feelings, though guessing some, he could not tell in what light the lot would
appear to me. In truth it was humble—but then it was sheltered, and I wanted a
safe asylum: it was plodding—but then, compared with that of a governess in a
rich house, it was independent; and the fear of servitude with strangers
entered my soul like iron: it was not 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, ciphering, will be all you will 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.”

“You know what you undertake, then?”

“I do.”

He now smiled: and not a bitter or a sad smile, but one well pleased and deeply
gratified.

“And when will you commence the exercise of your function?”

“I will go to my house to-morrow, and open the school, if you like, next week.”

“Very well: so be it.”

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 it 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 mountains—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 in the whole
previous month: yet still he puzzled me.

Diana and Mary Rivers became more sad and silent as the day approached for
leaving their brother and their home. They both tried to appear as usual; but
the sorrow they had to struggle against was one that could not be entirely
conquered or concealed. Diana intimated that this would be a different parting
from any they had ever yet known. It would probably, as far as St. John was
concerned, be a parting for years: it might be a parting for life.

“He will sacrifice all to his long-framed resolves,” she 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 father: we shall soon be without home and brother,” she
murmured.

At that moment a little accident supervened, which seemed decreed by fate
purposely to prove the truth of the adage, that “misfortunes never come
singly,” and to add to their distresses the vexing one of the slip between the
cup and the lip. St. John passed the window reading a letter. He entered.

“Our uncle John is dead,” said he.

Both the sisters seemed struck: not shocked or appalled; the tidings appeared
in their eyes rather momentous than afflicting.

“Dead?” repeated Diana.

“Yes.”

She riveted a searching gaze on her brother’s face. “And what then?” she
demanded, in a low voice.

“What then, Die?” he replied, maintaining a marble immobility of feature. “What
then? Why—nothing. Read.”

He threw the letter into her lap. She glanced over it, and handed it to Mary.
Mary perused it in silence, and returned it to her brother. All three looked at
each other, and all three smiled—a dreary, pensive smile enough.

“Amen! We can yet live,” said Diana at last.

“At any rate, it makes us no worse off than we were before,” remarked Mary.

“Only it forces rather strongly on the mind the picture of what might have
been,” said Mr. Rivers, “and contrasts it somewhat too vividly with what
is.”

He folded the letter, locked it in his desk, and again went out.

For some minutes no one spoke. Diana then turned to me.

“Jane, you will wonder at us and our mysteries,” she said, “and think us
hard-hearted beings not to be more moved at the death of so near a relation as
an uncle; but we have never seen him or known him. He was my mother’s brother.
My father and he quarrelled long ago. It was by his advice that my father
risked most of his property in the speculation that ruined him. Mutual
recrimination passed between them: they parted in anger, and were never
reconciled. My uncle engaged afterwards in more prosperous undertakings: it
appears he realised a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. He was never married,
and had no near kindred but ourselves and one other person, not more closely
related than we. My father always cherished the idea that he would atone for
his error by leaving his possessions to us; that letter informs us that he has
bequeathed every penny to the other relation, with the exception of thirty
guineas, to be divided between St. John, Diana, and Mary Rivers, for the
purchase of three mourning rings. He had a right, of course, to do as he
pleased: and yet a momentary damp is cast on the spirits by the receipt of such
news. Mary and I would have esteemed ourselves rich with a thousand pounds
each; and to St. John such a sum would have been valuable, for the good it
would have enabled him to do.”

This explanation given, the subject was dropped, and no further reference made
to it by either Mr. Rivers or his sisters. 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.