 29 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 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. How 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 and once commenced. His 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-singe in 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 skeptical of her tractability. He stored considering me some minutes, then added. She looks sensible, but not at all handsome. She is so ill-singen! 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 dried toast, about, as I suppose, 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. Air-long satiety of repose and desire for action stirred me. I wished to rise, but what could I put on? Only my damp and bemide 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 in 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 fertilized by education. They grow there, firm as weeds among stones. Hannah had been cold and stiff, indeed, at the first. Laterally she had begun to relent a little, and when she saw me come in tidy and well-dressed, she even smiled. What! You have caught up!" she said. You are better then! You may sit you down in my chair and 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, she took some loaves from the oven, she asked bluntly. Did you ever go a-begging before 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 for your young ladies. After a pause, she said, I do not 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 you 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 the basket of the fruit. Mecham into pies? Give them to me, and I'll pick them. Nay, I don't want you to do not. 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. You've not been used to servants' work, I see, by your hands? She remarked. Happen you've been a dress-maker? 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 Marshend, and some calls it Morehouse. And the gentleman who lives here is called Mr. St. John. Nay, he doesn't live here, he's only staying a while. When he is at home, he's in his own parish at Morton. That village a few miles off. I—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. I, old Mr. Rivers, lived here, and his father, and his grandfather, and great-grandfather of Forum. The name, then, of that gentleman is Mr. St. John Rivers. I—Singin is like his Kirsten name. And his sisters are called Diana and Mary Rivers. Yes. Their father is dead. Dead three weeks, son of a stroke. They have no mother. The mistress has been dead this money a year. Have you lived with the family long? I've lived here thirty years, I nursed them all three. That proves you must have been an honest, 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 misstain in my thoughts of you, but there are so many cheats goes about, you must forgive 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 of the children or myself. Poor things! They've liked nobody to take care of them but me. I'm like to look sharpish. I maintained a grave silence for some minutes. You moaned to 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 won't not to consider poverty a crime. No more I ought, said she. Mr. St. John tells me so too, and I see I were wrong, but I have a clear and different notion on you now to what I had. You look a rate down decent little crater. That will do. I forgive you now. Shake hands. She put her flowery and horny hand into mine, another and heartiest 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 a deceased master and mistress, and the children, as she called the young people. Old Mr. Rivers, she said, was a plain enough man, but a gentleman, and of as ancient a family as could be found. Marsh and it belonged to the rivers ever since it was a house, and it was, she affirmed. A bone two hundred year old, for all it looked but a small, humble place, not to compare with Mr. Oliver's grand hall down a morton vale, but she could remember Bill Oliver's father a journeyman-needle-maker, and the rivers were gentry the old days of the Henry's, as anybody might see by looking into the registers in Morton Church vestry. Still she allowed. The old maester was like other folk, not mick of the common way, stark, mad as shooting and farming and such like. The mistress was different. She was a great reader, and studied to deal, and the bands had taken after her. There was nothing like them in these parts, nor never had been. They had liked learning all three, almost from the time they could speak, and they had always been of a make of their own. Mr. Singin, 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 and in 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 threeped. She did not know 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. Singin, 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 to a 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 maul and 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 soulless of 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 work-boxes 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 any 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 and outline, quite a straight, classic nose, quite an Athenian mouth and chin. It is seldom indeed an English face come so near the antique models as did his. He might well be a little shocked at the irregularity of mylonyments, 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, inimpressible, 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, Syngen's eyes, though clear enough in a little real 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 witch-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, Syngen," 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 illusion to marriage. They all saw the embarrassment and the emotion. Diana and Mary relieved me by turning their eyes elsewhere than to my crimson 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, Syngen," 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 Syngen and from 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 necessities of life. I know not whether I am a true philanthropist, yet I am willing to aid you to the utmost of my power and a purpose so honest. First then tell me what you have been accustomed to do, and what you can do." 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 wonderer 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—Lowwood Orphin Asylum—Blankshire. You will have heard of it, Mr. Rivers—the reverend Robert Brockelhurst as the treasurer. I have heard of Mr. Brockelhurst, and I have seen the school. I left Lowwood 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, singin,' said Diana, as I paused. She is evidently not yet fit for excitement. Come to the sofa, and sit down now, Miss Elliot. 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. You said your name was Jane Elliot? 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 awhile. But when singin' had mused a few moments, he reccomensed as imperturbably in with as much ecumen as ever. You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality. You would wish I ceded dispense as soon as may be with my sister's 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? 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 to 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. My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you," said Mr. Singin. 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 county 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 sucker than such as I can offer. She has already said that she is willing to do anything on as she can do," answered Diana for me. And you know, Singin, she has no choice of helpers. She is forced to put up with such crusty people as you. 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. Singin, 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 she 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 XXVIII. The more I knew of the inmates of Moorhouse, 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 furs, all grown as slant under the stress of mountain winds, its garden dark with you and Holly, and where no flowers but of the hard-east species would bloom—found a charm both potent and permanent. They clung to the purple moors behind and around their dwelling, to the hollow veil into which the pebbly bridle-path leading from their gate descended, and which wound between fern-banks first, and then among 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 entachment. 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. In doors 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. Honestly, 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 awhile when the evening commenced, but the first gush of evacity and fluency gone, I was feigned 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. Singin, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally and rapidly between me and his sisters, did not extend to him. One reason of the distance he had 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 and 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 malls 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, and 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 was softened. Without 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 no more had found it, I thought, than had I with my concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol and lost illicium, regrets to which I have latterly avoided referring, but which possessed me and tyrannized over me ruthlessly. Meantime a month was gone. Diana and Mary were soon to leave Morhouse, and returned 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 excellencies, 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 vacation 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 company 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 me 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 roves scathed furs 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 sold descendants of the race, two earn the dependence 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 tire 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 corresponding 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 at degrading, for I see now your habits have been with the world-calls refined. Your tastes lean to the ideal, and your society has at least been among 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 laborer's task of tillage has appointed him, the scantier the mead 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 his scrutiny, he partially expressed in his succeeding observations. I believe you will accept the post I offer you," he said, and hold it for a while. Not permanently, though, any more than I could permanently keep the narrow end the 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 you explain, I urge, 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, an iron foundry in the valley. The same lady pays for the education and clothing of an orphan from the work-house, 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 to have 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. 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 would 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? Start 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 and 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, paralyzed, 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 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 was 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 the tears 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, Christian, noble, 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, Di? —he replied, maintaining a marble immobility of feature. —What then? —Why nothing? —Read. She 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. —Oh, men, we can yet live! —said Diana at last. —At any rate, it makes us know you're 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 in our mysteries, she said, and think us hard-hearted beings not to be more moved to the death of so near a relation as an uncle, but we had never seen him or known him. He was my mother's brother. My father and he quarreled 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 realized 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 singin', Diana, and Mary Rivers for the purchase of three morning-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 a singin' 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 repair to the posonage, and so the old Grange was abandoned. My home, then, when I at last find a home, is a cottage, a little room with white-washed 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 a 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. Tomorrow, 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 climb among 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 it is better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool's paradise at Marseille, 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 air-long weeping. And why? For the doom which had ref'd 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 dither. At this thought I turned my face aside from the lovely sky of Eve and lonely veil 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 hidden 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 lent 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. River's pointer, as I saw in a moment, was pushing the gate with his nose, and St. John himself lent upon it with folded arms, his brown knit, his gaze, grave almost to displeasure, fixed on me. I asked him to come in. No, I cannot stay. I have only brought to you a little parcel my sister's 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's efficient 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 and oppression. The little house there behind you is dark and empty. I have hardly had time to yet to enjoy a sense of tranquility, much less to go 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. 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 inonition, 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 hue 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 burned 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 lustre after power, beat under my curate's surplus. 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's 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 sawness, 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 veil 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 climb 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 penciled 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 dresses. 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. The creature had surely formed her in a partial mood, and forgetting her usual stinted stepmother doll 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 naive simplicity of tone and manner, pleasing, if childlike. 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. Ant 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 blankth regiment has 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. Syngens underlip 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 laughed a well-became her youth, her roses, her dimples, her bright eyes. As he stood, mute and grave, she again felt 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 somber? 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 Morehouse 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 as 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 wrapped my thoughts from exclusive meditation on my own. Diana Rivers had designated her brother inexorable as death. She had not exaggerated. End of CHAPTER XXXI. CHAPTER XXXII of Jane Eyre. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Jane Eyre. By Charlotte Bronte. CHAPTER XXXII I continued the labours of the village school as actively and faithfully as I could. It was truly hard work at first. Some time elapsed before with all my efforts. I could comprehend my scholars and their nature. Holy untold, with faculties quite torpid, they seemed to me hopelessly dull, and at first sight all dull alike. But I soon found I was mistaken. There was a difference amongst them as amongst the educated, and when I got to know them, and they me, this difference rapidly developed itself. Their amazement at me, my language, my rules, and ways, once subsided I found some of these heavy-looking, gaping rustics wake up into sharp-witted girls enough. Many showed themselves obliging and amiable too, and I discovered amongst them not a few examples of natural politeness and innate self-respect, as well as of excellent capacity, that won both my good will and my admiration. These soon took a pleasure in doing their work well, in keeping their persons neat, in learning their tasks regularly, in acquiring quiet and orderly manners. The rapidity of their progress, in some instances, was even surprising, and an honest and happy pride I took in it. Besides, I began personally to like some of the best girls, and they liked me. I had amongst my scholars several farmers' daughters—young women grown almost. These could already read, write, and so, and to them I taught the elements of grammar, geography, history, and the finer kinds of needlework. I found estimable characters among them—characters' desirous of information and disposed for improvement, with whom I passed many a pleasant evening hour in their own homes. Their parents, then, the farmer and his wife, loaded me with attentions. There was an enjoyment in accepting their simple kindness, and in repaying it by consideration, a scrupulous regard to their feelings, to which they were not, perhaps, at all times accustomed, and which both charmed and benefited them, because, while it elevated them in their own eyes, it made them emulous to merit the deferential treatment they received. I felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood. Whenever I went out, I heard on all sides cordial salutations, and was welcomed with friendly smiles. To live amidst general regard, though it be but the regard of working people, is like sitting in sunshine, calm and sweet, serene inward feelings burdened bloom under the ray. At this period of my life, my heart far often has swelled with thankfulness than sank with dejection. And yet, reader, to tell you all, in the midst of this calm, this useful existence, after a day passed an honourable exertion amongst my scholars, an evening spent in drawing or reading contentedly alone, I used to rush into strange dreams at night, dreams many coloured, agitated, full of the ideal, the stirring, the stormy, dreams where amidst unusual scenes charged with adventure, with agitating risk and romantic chance, I still again and again met Mr. Rochester, always at some exciting crisis, and then the sense of being in his arms, hearing his voice, meeting his eye, touching his hand and cheek, loving him, being loved by him, the hope of passing a lifetime at his side, would be renewed with all its first force and fire. Then I awoke. Then I recalled where I was and how situated. Then I rose up on my curtainless bed, trembling and quivering, and then the still dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair, and heard the burst of passion. By nine o'clock the next morning I was punctually opening the school, tranquil, settled, prepared for the steady duties of the day. Rosamond Oliver kept her word in coming to visit me. Her call at the school was generally made in the course of her morning ride. She would canter up to the door in her pony, followed by a mounted livery-servant. Anything more exquisite than her appearance in her purple habit, with her Amazon's cap of black velvet placed gracefully above the long curls that kissed a cheek, and floated to her shoulders, can scarcely be imagined. And it was thus she would enter the rustic building, and glide through the dazzled ranks of the village children. She generally came at the hour when Mr. Rivers was engaged in giving his daily catacysing lesson. Keenly, I feared, at the eye of the visitorus pierced the young pastor's heart. Her sort of instinct seemed to warn him of her entrance, even when he did not see it, and when he was looking quite away from the door, if she appeared at it his cheek would glow, and as marble-seeming features, though they refused to relax, changed indescribably, and in their very quiescence became expressive of a repressed fervour stronger than working muscle or darting glands could indicate. Of course, she knew her power. Indeed he did not, because he could not conceal it from her. In spite of his Christian stoicism, when she went up and addressed him, and smiled gaily, encouragingly, even fondly in his face, his hand would tremble and his eye burn. He seemed to say, with his sad and resolute look, if he did not say it with his lips, I love you, and I know you prefer me. It is not despair of success that keeps me dumb. If I offered my heart, I believe you would accept it. But that heart is already laid on a sacred altar, the fire is arranged round it, it will soon be no more than a sacrifice consumed. And then she would pout like a disappointed child, her pensive cloud would soften her radiant vivacity, she would withdraw her hand hastily from his, and turn in transient petulance from his aspect, at once so heroic and so martylike. In no doubt would a given the world to follow, recall, retain her when she thus left him, but he would not give one chance of heaven, nor relinquished for the illicium of her love, one hope of the true eternal paradise. Besides, he could not bind all that he had in his nature—the rover, the aspirant, the poet, the priest—in the limits of a single passion. He could not, he would not, renounce his wild field of mission warfare for the parlours and the peace of Vale Hall. I learnt so much from himself in an in-road I once, despite his reserve, had the daring to make on his confidence. Miss Oliver already honoured me with frequent visits to my cottage. I had learnt a whole character, which was without mystery or disguise. She was coquettish, but not heartless, exacting, but not worthlessly selfish. She had been indulged from her birth, but was not absolutely spoiled. She was hasty, but good-humoured, vain—she could not help it when every glance in the class showed her such a flush of loveliness—but not affected. Liberal-handed, innocent of the pride of wealth, ingenuous, sufficiently intelligent, gay, lively, and unthinking. She was very charming, in short, even to a cool observer of her own sex, like me, but she was not profoundly interesting or thoroughly impressive. A very different sort of mind was hers from that, for instance, of the Sisters of Singin. Still, I liked her almost as much as I liked my pupil Adele—except that, for a child whom we have watched over and taught, her closer affection is engendered than we can give an equally attractive adult acquaintance. She had taken an amiable caprice to me. She said I was like Mr. Rivers—only certainly, she allowed. Not one-tenth so handsome, though I was a nice neat little soul enough, but he was an angel. I was, however, good, clever, composed, and firm, like him. I was a loosest natteray, she affirmed, as a village schoolmistress. She was sure my previous history, if known, would make a delightful romance. One evening, while with her usual childlike activity, and thoughtless yet not offensive inquisitiveness, she was rummaging the cupboard and table-drawer of my little kitchen, she discovered first two French books, a volume of chiller, a German grammar and dictionary, and then my drawing materials and some sketches, including a pencil-head of a pretty little cherub-like girl, one of my scholars, and sundry views from nature, taken in the veil of Morton and on the surrounding moors. She was first transfixed with surprise, and then electrified with delight. Had I done these pictures? Did I know French and German? What a love! What a miracle I was! I knew better than her master in the first school than S! Would I sketch a portrait of her to show to papa? With pleasure," I replied, and I felt a thrill of artist's delight at the idea of copying from so perfect and radiant a model. She had then on a dark blue silk dress. Her arms and her neck were bare. Her only ornament was her chestnut tresses, which waved over her shoulders with all the wild grace of natural curls. I took a sheet of fine cardboard and drew a careful outline. I promised myself the pleasure of colouring it, and as it was getting late then, I told her she must come and sit another day. She made such a report of me to her father that Mr. Oliver himself accompanied her next evening, a tall, massive-featured, middle-aged and grey-headed man, at whose side his lovely daughter looked like a bright flower near a hoary turret. He appeared a taciturn, and perhaps a proud, personage, but he was very kind to me. The sketch of Rosman's portrait pleased him highly. He said I must make a finished picture of it. He insisted, too, on my coming the next day to spend the evening at Vale Hall. I went. I found it a large, handsome residence, showing abundant evidences of wealth and the proprietor. Rosman was full of glee and pleasure all the time I stayed. Her father was affable, and when he entered into conversation with me after tea, he expressed in strong terms his approbation of what I had done in Morton School, and said he only feared, from what he saw and heard, I was too good for the place, and would soon quit it for one more suitable. "'Indeed!' cried Rosman, she is clever enough to be a governess in a high family, Papa." I thought I would far rather be where I am than in any high family in the land. Mr. Oliver spoke of Mr. Rivers, of the River's family, with great respect. He said it was a very old name in that neighbourhood, that the ancestors of the house were wealthy, that all Morton had once belonged to them, that even now he considered the representative of that house might, if he liked, make an alliance with the best. He accounted it a pity that so fine and talented a young man should have formed the design of going out as a missionary, it was quite throwing a valuable life away. It appeared, then, that the father would throw no obstacle in the way of Rosman's union with St. John. Mr. Oliver evidently regarded the young clergyman's good birth, old name, and sacred profession as sufficient compensation for the want of fortune. It was the fifth of November, and a holiday. My little servant, after helping me to clean my house, was gone, well satisfied with the fee of a penny for her aid. All about me was spotless and bright, scoured floor, polished grate, and well-rubbed chairs. I had also made myself neat, and had now the afternoon before me to spend as I would. The translation of a few pages of German occupied an hour. Then I got my palette and pencils, and fell to the more soothing, because easy a occupation, of completing Rosamond Oliver's miniature. The head was finished already, there was but the background to tint, and the drapery to shade off, a touch of carmine, too, to add to the ripe lips, a soft curl here and there to the tresses, a deeper tinge to the shadow of the lash under the azure eyelid. I was absorbed in the execution of these nice details, when after one rapid tap, my door unclosed, admitting singin' rivers. I had come to see how you were spending the holiday," he said. Not, I hope, in thought. No, that as well, while you draw you will not feel lonely. You see, I mistrust you still, though you have borne up wonderfully so far. I have brought you a book for evening solace." And he laid on the table a new publication, a poem, one of those genuine productions so often vouchsafed to the fortunate public of those days, the golden age of modern literature. Alas! The readers of our era are less favoured. But courage! I will not pause either to accuse or repine. I know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost, nor has Mammon gained power over either to bind or slay. They will both assert their existence, their presence, their liberty and strength again one day. Powerful angels, safe in heaven! They smile when sordid souls triumph, and feeble ones weep over their destruction. Poetry destroyed! Genius banished! No! Mediocrity, no! Do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No! They not only live, but reign and redeem, and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell, the hell of your own meanness. While I was eagerly glancing at the bright pages of Mammon, for Mammon it was, singe and stoop to examine my drawing. His tall figure sprang erect again with a start. He said nothing. I looked up at him. He shunned my eye. I knew his thoughts well, and could read his heart plainly. At the moment I felt calmer and cooler than he. I had then temporarily the advantage of him, and I conceived an inclination to do him some good if I could. With all his firmness and self-control, thought I, he tasks himself too far, locks every feeling and pang within, expresses, confesses, imparts, nothing. I am sure to benefit him to talk a little about this sweet Rosamond, whom he thinks he ought not to marry. I will make him talk. I said first, take a chair, Mr. Rivers. But he answered as he always did that he could not stay. Very well, I responded mentally, stand, if you like, but you shall not go just yet. I am determined. Solitude is at least as bad for you as it is for me. I'll try if I cannot deliver the secret spring of your confidence, and find an aperture and that marble breast through which I can shed one drop of the balm of sympathy. Is this portrait like? I asked bluntly. Like? Like whom? I did not observe it closely. You did, Mr. Rivers. He almost started at my sudden and strange abruptness. He looked at me astonished. Oh, that is nothing yet! I muttered within. I don't mean to be baffled by a little stiffness on your part. I am prepared to go to considerable lengths. I continued, you observed it closely and distinctly, but I have no objection to your looking at it again. And I rose and placed it in his hand. A well-executed picture, he said, very soft, clear colouring, very graceful and correct drawing. Yes, yes, I know all that, but what of the resemblance? Who is it like? Mastering some hesitation, he answered, Miss Oliver, I presume. Of course! And now, sir, to reward you for the accurate guess, I will promise to paint you a careful and faithful duplicate of this very picture, provided you admit that the gift would be acceptable to you. I don't wish to throw away my time and trouble on an offering you would deem worthless. He continued to gaze at the picture. The longer he looked, the firmer he held it, the more he seemed to covet it. It is like, he murmured, the eyes well managed, the colour, light, expression are perfect. He smiled. Would it comfort, or would it wound you to have a similar painting? Tell me that, when you are at Madagascar, at the Cape, or in India, would it be a consolation to have that memento in your possession, or would the sight of it bring recollections calculated to innovate and distress? He now furtively raised his eyes. He glanced at me, irresolute, disturbed. He again surveyed the picture. But I should like to have it, is certain—whether it would be judicious or wise, is another question. Since I had ascertained that Rosamond really preferred him, and that her father was not likely to oppose the match, I, less exalted in my views than St. John, had been strongly disposed in my own heart to advocate their union. It seemed to me that, should he become the possessor of Mr. Oliver's large fortune, he might do as much good with it as if he went and laid his genius out to wither, and his strength to waste under a tropical sun. With this persuasion, I now answered, as far as I can see it would be wiser and more judicious if you were to take to yourself the original at once. By this time he had sat down. He had laid the picture on the table before him, and with his brow supported on both hands, hung fondly over it. I discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my audacity. I saw even that to be thus frankly addressed on a subject he had deemed unapproachable, to hear it thus freely handled, was beginning to be felt by him as a new pleasure, an unhoped for relief. Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive. The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all, and to burst with boldness and goodwill into the silency of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations. She likes you, I am sure," said I, as I stood behind his chair, and her father respects you. Moreover, she is a sweet girl—rather thoughtless—but she would have sufficient thought for both yourself and her. You ought to marry her." "'Does she like me?' he asked. "'Certainly! Better than she likes any one else. She talks of you continually. There is no subject she enjoys so much or tutters upon so often.' It is very pleasant to hear this,' he said. "'Very. Go on, for another quarter of an hour.' And he actually took out his watch, and laid it upon the table to measure the time. "'But where is the use of going on?' I asked, when you are probably preparing some iron blow of contradiction, or forging a fresh chain to fetter your heart. Don't imagine such hard things. Fancy me yielding and melting as I am doing. Then love rising like a freshly opened fountain in my mind, and overflowing with sweet inundation all the field I have so carefully, and with such labour prepared. So residuously sown with the seeds of good intentions, have self-denying plans. And now it is deluged with a nectarous flood. The young germs swamped, delicious poison cankering them. Now I see myself stretched on an ottoman in the drawing-room at Bale Hall, that my bride, Rosamund Oliver's feet, she is talking to me with a sweet voice, gazing down on me with those eyes or skillful hand as copied so well, smiling at me with those coral lips. She is mine. I am hers. This present life and passing world suffice to me. Hush! Say nothing. My heart is full of delight. My senses are entranced. Let the time I marked pass in peace.' I humoured him. The watch ticked on. He breathed fast and low. I stood silent. Amidst this hush the quartet sped. He replaced the watch, laid the picture down, rose, and stood on the hearth. Now, said he, that little space was given to delirium and delusion, I rested my temples on the breast of temptation, and put my neck voluntarily under her yoke of flowers. I tasted her cup. The pillow was burning. There is an asp in the garland. The wine has a bitter taste. Her promises are hollow. Her offers false. I see and know all this. I gazed at him in wonder. It is strange, pursued he, that while I love Rosamond Oliver so wildly, with all the intensity indeed of a first passion, the object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, fascinating, I experienced at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that she would not make me a good wife, that she is not the partner suited to me, that I should discover this within a year after marriage, and that a twelve-month rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know. Strange indeed! I could not help ejaculating. While something in me, he went on, is acutely sensible to her charms, something else is as deeply impressed with her defects. They are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to, co-operate in nothing I undertook. Rosamond, a sufferer, a labourer, a female apostle, Rosamond, a missionary's wife? No. But you need not be a missionary. You might relinquish that scheme. Relinquish? What? My vocation? My great work? My foundation laid on earth for a mansion in heaven? My hopes of being numbered in the band, who have merged all the ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their race, of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance, of substituting peace for war, freedom for bondage, religion for superstition, the hope of heaven for the fear of hell? Must I relinquish that? It is dearer than the blood in my veins. It is what I have to look forward to and to live for. After a considerable pause, I said, and Miss Oliver, are her disappointment and sorrow of no interest to you? Miss Oliver is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers. In less than a month my image will be effaced from her heart. She will forget me, and will marry probably someone who will make her far happier than I should do. You speak coolly enough, but you suffer in the conflict. You are wasting away. No. If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects yet unsettled. My departure continually procrastinated. Only this morning I received intelligence that the successor, whose arrival I have been so long expecting, cannot be ready to replace me for three months to come yet, and perhaps the three months may extend as six. You tremble and become flushed when ever Miss Oliver enters the schoolroom. Again the surprised expression crossed his face. He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man. For me I felt at home in this sort of discourse. I could never rest in communication with strong, discreet and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart's very hearthstone. You are original," said he, and not timid. There is something brave in your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye. But allow me to assure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions. You think them more profound and potent than they are. You give me a larger allowance of sympathy than I have a just claim to. When I colour and when I shade before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself. I scorn the weakness. I know it is ignoble. I may a fever of the flesh. Not I declare the convulsion of the soul. That is just as fixed as a rock, firm set in the depths of a restless sea. Know me to be what I am—a cold, hard man." I smiled incredulously. You have taken my confidence by storm," he continued, and now it is much at your service. I am simply in my original state, stripped of that blood-bleached robe with which Christianity covers human deformity—a cold, hard, ambitious man. Natural affection only, of all the sentiments, has permanent power over me. Reason and not feeling is my guide. My ambition is unlimited. My desire to rise higher, to do more than others, insatiable. I honour endurance, perseverance, industry, talent, because these are the means by which men achieve great ends and mount to lofty eminence. I watch your career with interest, because I consider you a specimen of a diligent, orderly, energetic woman—not because I deeply compassionate what you have gone through, or what you still suffer. You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher," I said. No. There is this difference between me and deistic philosophers. I believe, and I believe the gospel. You missed your epithet. I am not a pagan, but a Christian philosopher—a follower of the sect of Jesus. As his disciple, I adopt his pure, his merciful, his benign doctrines. I advocate them. I am sworn to spread them. One in youth to religion, she has cultivated my original qualities thus. From the minute germ, natural affection, she has developed the overshadowing tree, Philanthropy. From the wild, stringy root of human uprightness, she has reared a due sense of the divine justice. Of the ambition to win power and renown for my wretched self, she has formed the ambition to spread my master's kingdom—to achieve victories for the standard of the cross. So much has religion done for me, turning the original materials to the best account, pruning and training nature. But she could not eradicate nature, nor will it be eradicated till this mortal shall put on immortality. Having said this, he took his hat, which lay on the table beside my pallet. Once more he looked at the portrait. She is lovely, he murmured. She is well-named the Rose of the World indeed. And may I not paint one like it for you? Cui bono? No. He drew over the picture the sheet of thin paper on which I was accustomed to rest my hand in painting, to prevent the cardboard from being sullied. What he suddenly saw on this blank paper, it was impossible for me to tell, but something had caught his eye. He took it up with a snatch, he looked at the edge, then shot a glance at me inexpressibly peculiar, and quite incomprehensible—a glance that seemed to take and make note of every point in my shape, face, and dress, for it traversed all, quick, keen as lightning. His lips part as if to speak, but he checked the coming sentence, whatever it was. What is the matter? I asked. Nothing in the world, was the reply, and replacing the paper I saw him dexterously tear a narrow slip from the margin. It disappeared in his glove, and with one hasty nod, and—good-afternoon—he vanished. Well—I exclaimed, using the expression of the district—that caps the globe, however. I in my turn scrutinized the paper, but saw nothing on it save a few dingy stains of paint where I had tried the tint in my pencil. I pondered the mystery a minute or two, but finding it insolvable, and being certain it could not be of much moment, I dismissed, and soon forgot it. End of Chapter 32