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.”
YouI
“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.”
might have
beenis
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.

CHAPTER XXXI

My home, then, when I at last find a home,—is a cottage; a little room with
whitewashed walls and a sanded floor, containing four painted chairs and a
table, a clock, a cupboard, with two or three plates and dishes, and a set of
tea-things in delf. Above, a chamber of the same dimensions as the kitchen,
with a deal bedstead and chest of drawers; small, yet too large to be filled
with my scanty wardrobe: though the kindness of my gentle and generous friends
has increased that, by a modest stock of such things as are necessary.

It is evening. I have dismissed, with the fee of an orange, the little orphan
who serves me as a handmaid. I am sitting alone on the hearth. This morning,
the village school opened. I had twenty scholars. But three of the number can
read: none write or cipher. Several knit, and a few sew a little. They speak
with the broadest accent of the district. At present, they and I have a
difficulty in understanding each other’s language. Some of them are unmannered,
rough, intractable, as well as ignorant; but others are docile, have a wish to
learn, and evince a disposition that pleases me. I must not forget that these
coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of
gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement,
intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those
of the best-born. My duty will be to develop these germs: surely I shall find
some happiness in discharging that office. Much enjoyment I do not expect in
the life opening before me: yet it will, doubtless, if I regulate my mind, and
exert my powers as I ought, yield me enough to live on from day to day.

Was I very gleeful, settled, content, during the hours I passed in yonder bare,
humble schoolroom this morning and afternoon? Not to deceive myself, I must
reply—No: I felt desolate to a degree. I felt—yes, idiot that I am—I felt
degraded. I doubted I had taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the
scale of social existence. I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty,
the coarseness of all I heard and saw round me. But let me not hate and despise
myself too much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong—that is a great
step gained; I shall strive to overcome them. To-morrow, I trust, I shall get
the better of them partially; and in a few weeks, perhaps, they will be quite
subdued. In a few months, it is possible, the happiness of seeing progress, and
a change for the better in my scholars may substitute gratification for
disgust.

Meantime, let me ask myself one question—Which is better?—To have surrendered
to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort—no struggle;—but to
have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it;
wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have
been now living in France, Mr. Rochester’s mistress; delirious with his love
half my time—for he would—oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He
did love me—no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know
the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace—for never to any one else
shall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me—it is what no
man besides will ever be.—But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and
above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool’s
paradise at Marseilles—fevered with delusive bliss one hour—suffocating with
the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next—or to be a
village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the
healthy heart of England?

Yes; I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law, and
scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment. God directed me
to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the guidance!

Having brought my eventide musings to this point, I rose, went to my door, and
looked at the sunset of the harvest-day, and at the quiet fields before my
cottage, which, with the school, was distant half a mile from the village. The
birds were singing their last strains—

“The air was mild, the dew was balm.”

While I looked, I thought myself happy, and was surprised to find myself ere
long weeping—and why? For the doom which had reft me from adhesion to my
master: for him I was no more to see; for the desperate grief and fatal
fury—consequences of my departure—which might now, perhaps, be dragging him
from the path of right, too far to leave hope of ultimate restoration thither.
At this thought, I turned my face aside from the lovely sky of eve and lonely
vale of Morton—I say lonely, for in that bend of it visible to me there
was no building apparent save the church and the parsonage, half-hid in trees,
and, quite at the extremity, the roof of Vale Hall, where the rich Mr. Oliver
and his daughter lived. I hid my eyes, and leant my head against the stone
frame of my door; but soon a slight noise near the wicket which shut in my tiny
garden from the meadow beyond it made me look up. A dog—old Carlo, Mr. Rivers’
pointer, as I saw in a moment—was pushing the gate with his nose, and St. John
himself leant upon it with folded arms; his brow knit, his gaze, grave almost
to displeasure, fixed on me. I asked him to come in.

“No, I cannot stay; I have only brought you a little parcel my sisters left for
you. I think it contains a colour-box, pencils, and paper.”

I approached to take it: a welcome gift it was. He examined my face, I thought,
with austerity, as I came near: the traces of tears were doubtless very visible
upon it.

“Have you found your first day’s work harder than you expected?” he asked.

“Oh, no! On the contrary, I think in time I shall get on with my scholars very
well.”

“But perhaps your accommodations—your cottage—your furniture—have disappointed
your expectations? They are, in truth, scanty enough; but—” I interrupted—

“My cottage is clean and weather-proof; my furniture sufficient and commodious.
All I see has made me thankful, not despondent. I am not absolutely such a fool
and sensualist as to regret the absence of a carpet, a sofa, and silver plate;
besides, five weeks ago I had nothing—I was an outcast, a beggar, a vagrant;
now I have acquaintance, a home, a business. I wonder at the goodness of God;
the generosity of my friends; the bounty of my lot. I do not repine.”

“But you feel solitude an oppression? The little house there behind you is dark
and empty.”

“I have hardly had time yet to enjoy a sense of tranquillity, much less to grow
impatient under one of loneliness.”

“Very well; I hope you feel the content you express: at any rate, your good
sense will tell you that it is too soon yet to yield to the vacillating fears
of Lot’s wife. What you had left before I saw you, of course I do not know; but
I counsel you to resist firmly every temptation which would incline you to look
back: pursue your present career steadily, for some months at least.”

“It is what I mean to do,” I answered. St. John continued—

“It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent of
nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience. God has given us, in a
measure, the power to make our own fate; and when our energies seem to demand a
sustenance they cannot get—when our will strains after a path we may not
follow—we need neither starve from inanition, nor stand still in despair: we
have but to seek another nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden
food it longed to taste—and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous
foot a road as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us,
if rougher than it.

“A year ago I was myself intensely miserable, because I thought I had made a
mistake in entering the ministry: its uniform duties wearied me to death. I
burnt for the more active life of the world—for the more exciting toils of a
literary career—for the destiny of an artist, author, orator; anything rather
than that of a priest: yes, the heart of a politician, of a soldier, of a
votary of glory, a lover of renown, a luster after power, beat under my
curate’s surplice. I considered; my life was so wretched, it must be changed,
or I must die. After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and
relief fell: my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without
bounds—my powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength,
spread their wings, and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me; to bear
which afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and eloquence, the
best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator, were all needed: for
these all centre in the good missionary.

“A missionary I resolved to be. From that moment my state of mind changed; the
fetters dissolved and dropped from every faculty, leaving nothing of bondage
but its galling soreness—which time only can heal. My father, indeed, imposed
the determination, but since his death, I have not a legitimate obstacle to
contend with; some affairs settled, a successor for Morton provided, an
entanglement or two of the feelings broken through or cut asunder—a last
conflict with human weakness, in which I know I shall overcome, because I have
vowed that I will overcome—and I leave Europe for the East.”

He said this, in his peculiar, subdued, yet emphatic voice; looking, when he
had ceased speaking, not at me, but at the setting sun, at which I looked too.
Both he and I had our backs towards the path leading up the field to the
wicket. We had heard no step on that grass-grown track; the water running in
the vale was the one lulling sound of the hour and scene; we might well then
start when a gay voice, sweet as a silver bell, exclaimed—

“Good evening, Mr. Rivers. And good evening, old Carlo. Your dog is quicker to
recognise his friends than you are, sir; he pricked his ears and wagged his
tail when I was at the bottom of the field, and you have your back towards me
now.”

It was true. Though Mr. Rivers had started at the first of those musical
accents, as if a thunderbolt had split a cloud over his head, he stood yet, at
the close of the sentence, in the same attitude in which the speaker had
surprised him—his arm resting on the gate, his face directed towards the west.
He turned at last, with measured deliberation. A vision, as it seemed to me,
had risen at his side. There appeared, within three feet of him, a form clad in
pure white—a youthful, graceful form: full, yet fine in contour; and when,
after bending to caress Carlo, it lifted up its head, and threw back a long
veil, there bloomed under his glance a face of perfect beauty. Perfect beauty
is a strong expression; but I do not retrace or qualify it: as sweet features
as ever the temperate clime of Albion moulded; as pure hues of rose and lily as
ever her humid gales and vapoury skies generated and screened, justified, in
this instance, the term. No charm was wanting, no defect was perceptible; the
young girl had regular and delicate lineaments; eyes shaped and coloured as we
see them in lovely pictures, large, and dark, and full; the long and shadowy
eyelash which encircles a fine eye with so soft a fascination; the pencilled
brow which gives such clearness; the white smooth forehead, which adds such
repose to the livelier beauties of tint and ray; the cheek oval, fresh, and
smooth; the lips, fresh too, ruddy, healthy, sweetly formed; the even and
gleaming teeth without flaw; the small dimpled chin; the ornament of rich,
plenteous tresses—all advantages, in short, which, combined, realise the ideal
of beauty, were fully hers. I wondered, as I looked at this fair creature: I
admired her with my whole heart. Nature had surely formed her in a partial
mood; and, forgetting her usual stinted step-mother dole of gifts, had endowed
this, her darling, with a grand-dame’s bounty.

What did St. John Rivers think of this earthly angel? I naturally asked myself
that question as I saw him turn to her and look at her; and, as naturally, I
sought the answer to the inquiry in his countenance. He had already withdrawn
his eye from the Peri, and was looking at a humble tuft of daisies which grew
by the wicket.

“A lovely evening, but late for you to be out alone,” he said, as he crushed
the snowy heads of the closed flowers with his foot.

“Oh, I only came home from S——” (she mentioned the name of a large town some
twenty miles distant) “this afternoon. Papa told me you had opened your school,
and that the new mistress was come; and so I put on my bonnet after tea, and
ran up the valley to see her: this is she?” pointing to me.

“It is,” said St. John.

“Do you think you shall like Morton?” she asked of me, with a direct and naïve
simplicity of tone and manner, pleasing, if child-like.

“I hope I shall. I have many inducements to do so.”

“Did you find your scholars as attentive as you expected?”

“Quite.”

“Do you like your house?”

“Very much.”

“Have I furnished it nicely?”

“Very nicely, indeed.”

“And made a good choice of an attendant for you in Alice Wood?”

“You have indeed. She is teachable and handy.” (This then, I thought, is Miss
Oliver, the heiress; favoured, it seems, in the gifts of fortune, as well as in
those of nature! What happy combination of the planets presided over her birth,
I wonder?)

“I shall come up and help you to teach sometimes,” she added. “It will be a
change for me to visit you now and then; and I like a change. Mr. Rivers, I
have been so gay during my stay at S——. Last night, or rather this
morning, I was dancing till two o’clock. The ——th regiment are stationed there
since the riots; and the officers are the most agreeable men in the world: they
put all our young knife-grinders and scissor merchants to shame.”

It seemed to me that Mr. St. John’s under lip protruded, and his upper lip
curled a moment. His mouth certainly looked a good deal compressed, and the
lower part of his face unusually stern and square, as the laughing girl gave
him this information. He lifted his gaze, too, from the daisies, and turned it
on her. An unsmiling, a searching, a meaning gaze it was. She answered it with
a second laugh, and laughter well became her youth, her roses, her dimples, her
bright eyes.

As he stood, mute and grave, she again fell to caressing Carlo. “Poor Carlo
loves me,” said she. “He is not stern and distant to his friends; and if
he could speak, he would not be silent.”

As she patted the dog’s head, bending with native grace before his young and
austere master, I saw a glow rise to that master’s face. I saw his solemn eye
melt with sudden fire, and flicker with resistless emotion. Flushed and kindled
thus, he looked nearly as beautiful for a man as she for a woman. His chest
heaved once, as if his large heart, weary of despotic constriction, had
expanded, despite the will, and made a vigorous bound for the attainment of
liberty. But he curbed it, I think, as a resolute rider would curb a rearing
steed. He responded neither by word nor movement to the gentle advances made
him.

“Papa says you never come to see us now,” continued Miss Oliver, looking up.
“You are quite a stranger at Vale Hall. He is alone this evening, and not very
well: will you return with me and visit him?”

“It is not a seasonable hour to intrude on Mr. Oliver,” answered St. John.

“Not a seasonable hour! But I declare it is. It is just the hour when papa most
wants company: when the works are closed and he has no business to occupy him.
Now, Mr. Rivers, do come. Why are you so very shy, and so very sombre?”
She filled up the hiatus his silence left by a reply of her own.

“I forgot!” she exclaimed, shaking her beautiful curled head, as if shocked at
herself. “I am so giddy and thoughtless! Do excuse me. It had slipped my
memory that you have good reasons to be indisposed for joining in my chatter.
Diana and Mary have left you, and Moor House is shut up, and you are so lonely.
I am sure I pity you. Do come and see papa.”

“Not to-night, Miss Rosamond, not to-night.”

Mr. St. John spoke almost like an automaton: himself only knew the effort it
cost him thus to refuse.

“Well, if you are so obstinate, I will leave you; for I dare not stay any
longer: the dew begins to fall. Good evening!”

She held out her hand. He just touched it. “Good evening!” he repeated, in a
voice low and hollow as an echo. She turned, but in a moment returned.

“Are you well?” she asked. Well might she put the question: his face was
blanched as her gown.

“Quite well,” he enunciated; and, with a bow, he left the gate. She went one
way; he another. She turned twice to gaze after him as she tripped fairy-like
down the field; he, as he strode firmly across, never turned at all.

This spectacle of another’s suffering and sacrifice rapt my thoughts from
exclusive meditation on my own. Diana Rivers had designated her brother
“inexorable as death.” She had not exaggerated.