Jane Eyre 20

JANE EYRE

PART 20

CHAPTER XXVIII

Two days are passed.  It is a summer evening; the coachman has set me down at a place called Whitcross; he could take me no farther for the sum I had given, and I was not possessed of another shilling in the world.  The coach is a mile off by this time; I am alone.  At this moment I discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of the pocket of the coach, where I had placed it for safety; there it remains, there it must remain; and now, I am absolutely destitute.

Whitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet; it is but a stone pillar set up where four roads meet: whitewashed, I suppose, to be more obvious at a distance and in darkness.  Four arms spring from its summit: the nearest town to which these point is, according to the inscription, distant ten miles; the farthest, above twenty.  From the well-known names of these towns I learn in what county I have lighted; a north-midland shire, dusk with moorland, ridged with mountain: this I see.  There are great moors behind and on each hand of me; there are waves of mountains far beyond that deep valley at my feet.  The population here must be thin, and I see no passengers on these roads: they stretch out east, west, north, and south—white, broad, lonely; they are all cut in the moor, and the heather grows deep and wild to their very verge.  Yet a chance traveller might pass by; and I wish no eye to see me now: strangers would wonder what I am doing, lingering here at the sign-post, evidently objectless and lost.  I might be questioned: I could give no answer but what would sound incredible and excite suspicion.  Not a tie holds me to human society at this moment—not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are—none that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me.  I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and ask repose.

I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it.  High banks of moor were about me; the crag protected my head: the sky was over that.

Some time passed before I felt tranquil even here: I had a vague dread that wild cattle might be near, or that some sportsman or poacher might discover me.  If a gust of wind swept the waste, I looked up, fearing it was the rush of a bull; if a plover whistled, I imagined it a man.  Finding my apprehensions unfounded, however, and calmed by the deep silence that reigned as evening declined at nightfall, I took confidence.  As yet I had not thought; I had only listened, watched, dreaded; now I regained the faculty of reflection.

What was I to do?  Where to go?  Oh, intolerable questions, when I could do nothing and go nowhere!—when a long way must yet be measured by my weary, trembling limbs before I could reach human habitation—when cold charity must be entreated before I could get a lodging: reluctant sympathy importuned, almost certain repulse incurred, before my tale could be listened to, or one of my wants relieved!

I touched the heath: it was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the summer day.  I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled just above the chasm ridge.  The dew fell, but with propitious softness; no breeze whispered.  Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness.  To-night, at least, I would be her guest, as I was her child: my mother would lodge me without money and without price.  I had one morsel of bread yet: the remnant of a roll I had bought in a town we passed through at noon with a stray penny—my last coin.  I saw ripe bilberries gleaming here and there, like jet beads in the heath: I gathered a handful and ate them with the bread.  My hunger, sharp before, was, if not satisfied, appeased by this hermit’s meal.  I said my evening prayers at its conclusion, and then chose my couch.

Beside the crag the heath was very deep: when I lay down my feet were buried in it; rising high on each side, it left only a narrow space for the night-air to invade.  I folded my shawl double, and spread it over me for a coverlet; a low, mossy swell was my pillow.  Thus lodged, I was not, at least—at the commencement of the night, cold.

My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it.  It plained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven chords.  It trembled for Mr. Rochester and his doom; it bemoaned him with bitter pity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing; and, impotent as a bird with both wings broken, it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him.

Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees.  Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship of fear.  We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.  I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester.  Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky-way.  Remembering what it was—what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light—I felt the might and strength of God.  Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured.  I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits.  Mr. Rochester was safe; he was God’s, and by God would he be guarded.  I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere long in sleep forgot sorrow.

But next day, Want came to me pale and bare.  Long after the little birds had left their nests; long after bees had come in the sweet prime of day to gather the heath honey before the dew was dried—when the long morning shadows were curtailed, and the sun filled earth and sky—I got up, and I looked round me.

What a still, hot, perfect day!  What a golden desert this spreading moor!  Everywhere sunshine.  I wished I could live in it and on it.  I saw a lizard run over the crag; I saw a bee busy among the sweet bilberries.  I would fain at the moment have become bee or lizard, that I might have found fitting nutriment, permanent shelter here.  But I was a human being, and had a human being’s wants: I must not linger where there was nothing to supply them.  I rose; I looked back at the bed I had left.  Hopeless of the future, I wished but this—that my Maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness.  Life, however, was yet in my possession, with all its requirements, and pains, and responsibilities.  The burden must be carried; the want provided for; the suffering endured; the responsibility fulfilled.  I set out.

Whitcross regained, I followed a road which led from the sun, now fervent and high.  By no other circumstance had I will to decide my choice.  I walked a long time, and when I thought I had nearly done enough, and might conscientiously yield to the fatigue that almost overpowered me—might relax this forced action, and, sitting down on a stone I saw near, submit resistlessly to the apathy that clogged heart and limb—I heard a bell chime—a church bell.

I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the romantic hills, whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an hour ago, I saw a hamlet and a spire.  All the valley at my right hand was full of pasture-fields, and cornfields, and wood; and a glittering stream ran zig-zag through the varied shades of green, the mellowing grain, the sombre woodland, the clear and sunny lea.  Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to the road before me, I saw a heavily-laden waggon labouring up the hill, and not far beyond were two cows and their drover.  Human life and human labour were near.  I must struggle on: strive to live and bend to toil like the rest.

About two o’clock p.m. I entered the village.  At the bottom of its one street there was a little shop with some cakes of bread in the window.  I coveted a cake of bread.  With that refreshment I could perhaps regain a degree of energy: without it, it would be difficult to proceed.  The wish to have some strength and some vigour returned to me as soon as I was amongst my fellow-beings.  I felt it would be degrading to faint with hunger on the causeway of a hamlet.  Had I nothing about me I could offer in exchange for one of these rolls?  I considered.  I had a small silk handkerchief tied round my throat; I had my gloves.  I could hardly tell how men and women in extremities of destitution proceeded.  I did not know whether either of these articles would be accepted: probably they would not; but I must try.

I entered the shop: a woman was there.  Seeing a respectably-dressed person, a lady as she supposed, she came forward with civility.  How could she serve me?  I was seized with shame: my tongue would not utter the request I had prepared.  I dared not offer her the half-worn gloves, the creased handkerchief: besides, I felt it would be absurd.  I only begged permission to sit down a moment, as I was tired.  Disappointed in the expectation of a customer, she coolly acceded to my request.  She pointed to a seat; I sank into it.  I felt sorely urged to weep; but conscious how unseasonable such a manifestation would be, I restrained it.  Soon I asked her “if there were any dressmaker or plain-workwoman in the village?”

“Yes; two or three.  Quite as many as there was employment for.”

I reflected.  I was driven to the point now.  I was brought face to face with Necessity.  I stood in the position of one without a resource, without a friend, without a coin.  I must do something.  What?  I must apply somewhere.  Where?

“Did she know of any place in the neighbourhood where a servant was wanted?”

“Nay; she couldn’t say.”

“What was the chief trade in this place?  What did most of the people do?”

“Some were farm labourers; a good deal worked at Mr. Oliver’s needle-factory, and at the foundry.”

“Did Mr. Oliver employ women?”

“Nay; it was men’s work.”

“And what do the women do?”

“I knawn’t,” was the answer.  “Some does one thing, and some another.  Poor folk mun get on as they can.”

She seemed to be tired of my questions: and, indeed, what claim had I to importune her?  A neighbour or two came in; my chair was evidently wanted.  I took leave.

I passed up the street, looking as I went at all the houses to the right hand and to the left; but I could discover no pretext, nor see an inducement to enter any.  I rambled round the hamlet, going sometimes to a little distance and returning again, for an hour or more.  Much exhausted, and suffering greatly now for want of food, I turned aside into a lane and sat down under the hedge.  Ere many minutes had elapsed, I was again on my feet, however, and again searching something—a resource, or at least an informant.  A pretty little house stood at the top of the lane, with a garden before it, exquisitely neat and brilliantly blooming.  I stopped at it.  What business had I to approach the white door or touch the glittering knocker?  In what way could it possibly be the interest of the inhabitants of that dwelling to serve me?  Yet I drew near and knocked.  A mild-looking, cleanly-attired young woman opened the door.  In such a voice as might be expected from a hopeless heart and fainting frame—a voice wretchedly low and faltering—I asked if a servant was wanted here?

“No,” said she; “we do not keep a servant.”

“Can you tell me where I could get employment of any kind?” I continued.  “I am a stranger, without acquaintance in this place.  I want some work: no matter what.”

But it was not her business to think for me, or to seek a place for me: besides, in her eyes, how doubtful must have appeared my character, position, tale.  She shook her head, she “was sorry she could give me no information,” and the white door closed, quite gently and civilly: but it shut me out.  If she had held it open a little longer, I believe I should have begged a piece of bread; for I was now brought low.

I could not bear to return to the sordid village, where, besides, no prospect of aid was visible.  I should have longed rather to deviate to a wood I saw not far off, which appeared in its thick shade to offer inviting shelter; but I was so sick, so weak, so gnawed with nature’s cravings, instinct kept me roaming round abodes where there was a chance of food.  Solitude would be no solitude—rest no rest—while the vulture, hunger, thus sank beak and talons in my side.

I drew near houses; I left them, and came back again, and again I wandered away: always repelled by the consciousness of having no claim to ask—no right to expect interest in my isolated lot.  Meantime, the afternoon advanced, while I thus wandered about like a lost and starving dog.  In crossing a field, I saw the church spire before me: I hastened towards it.  Near the churchyard, and in the middle of a garden, stood a well-built though small house, which I had no doubt was the parsonage.  I remembered that strangers who arrive at a place where they have no friends, and who want employment, sometimes apply to the clergyman for introduction and aid.  It is the clergyman’s function to help—at least with advice—those who wished to help themselves.  I seemed to have something like a right to seek counsel here.  Renewing then my courage, and gathering my feeble remains of strength, I pushed on.  I reached the house, and knocked at the kitchen-door.  An old woman opened: I asked was this the parsonage?

“Yes.”

“Was the clergyman in?”

“No.”

“Would he be in soon?”

“No, he was gone from home.”

“To a distance?”

“Not so far—happen three mile.  He had been called away by the sudden death of his father: he was at Marsh End now, and would very likely stay there a fortnight longer.”

“Was there any lady of the house?”

“Nay, there was naught but her, and she was housekeeper;” and of her, reader, I could not bear to ask the relief for want of which I was sinking; I could not yet beg; and again I crawled away.

Once more I took off my handkerchief—once more I thought of the cakes of bread in the little shop.  Oh, for but a crust! for but one mouthful to allay the pang of famine!  Instinctively I turned my face again to the village; I found the shop again, and I went in; and though others were there besides the woman I ventured the request—“Would she give me a roll for this handkerchief?”

She looked at me with evident suspicion: “Nay, she never sold stuff i’ that way.”

Almost desperate, I asked for half a cake; she again refused.  “How could she tell where I had got the handkerchief?” she said.

“Would she take my gloves?”

“No! what could she do with them?”

Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details.  Some say there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral degradation, blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on.  I blamed none of those who repulsed me.  I felt it was what was to be expected, and what could not be helped: an ordinary beggar is frequently an object of suspicion; a well-dressed beggar inevitably so.  To be sure, what I begged was employment; but whose business was it to provide me with employment?  Not, certainly, that of persons who saw me then for the first time, and who knew nothing about my character.  And as to the woman who would not take my handkerchief in exchange for her bread, why, she was right, if the offer appeared to her sinister or the exchange unprofitable.  Let me condense now.  I am sick of the subject.

A little before dark I passed a farm-house, at the open door of which the farmer was sitting, eating his supper of bread and cheese.  I stopped and said—

“Will you give me a piece of bread? for I am very hungry.”  He cast on me a glance of surprise; but without answering, he cut a thick slice from his loaf, and gave it to me.  I imagine he did not think I was a beggar, but only an eccentric sort of lady, who had taken a fancy to his brown loaf.  As soon as I was out of sight of his house, I sat down and ate it.

I could not hope to get a lodging under a roof, and sought it in the wood I have before alluded to.  But my night was wretched, my rest broken: the ground was damp, the air cold: besides, intruders passed near me more than once, and I had again and again to change my quarters; no sense of safety or tranquillity befriended me.  Towards morning it rained; the whole of the following day was wet.  Do not ask me, reader, to give a minute account of that day; as before, I sought work; as before, I was repulsed; as before, I starved; but once did food pass my lips.  At the door of a cottage I saw a little girl about to throw a mess of cold porridge into a pig trough.  “Will you give me that?” I asked.

She stared at me.  “Mother!” she exclaimed, “there is a woman wants me to give her these porridge.”

“Well lass,” replied a voice within, “give it her if she’s a beggar.  T’ pig doesn’t want it.”

The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured it ravenously.

As the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary bridle-path, which I had been pursuing an hour or more.

“My strength is quite failing me,” I said in a soliloquy.  “I feel I cannot go much farther.  Shall I be an outcast again this night?  While the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched ground?  I fear I cannot do otherwise: for who will receive me?  But it will be very dreadful, with this feeling of hunger, faintness, chill, and this sense of desolation—this total prostration of hope.  In all likelihood, though, I should die before morning.  And why cannot I reconcile myself to the prospect of death?  Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life?  Because I know, or believe, Mr. Rochester is living: and then, to die of want and cold is a fate to which nature cannot submit passively.  Oh, Providence! sustain me a little longer!  Aid!—direct me!”

My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape.  I saw I had strayed far from the village: it was quite out of sight.  The very cultivation surrounding it had disappeared.  I had, by cross-ways and by-paths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland; and now, only a few fields, almost as wild and unproductive as the heath from which they were scarcely reclaimed, lay between me and the dusky hill.

“Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented road,” I reflected.  “And far better that crows and ravens—if any ravens there be in these regions—should pick my flesh from my bones, than that they should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin and moulder in a pauper’s grave.”

To the hill, then, I turned.  I reached it.  It remained now only to find a hollow where I could lie down, and feel at least hidden, if not secure.  But all the surface of the waste looked level.  It showed no variation but of tint: green, where rush and moss overgrew the marshes; black, where the dry soil bore only heath.  Dark as it was getting, I could still see these changes, though but as mere alternations of light and shade; for colour had faded with the daylight.

My eye still roved over the sullen swell and along the moor-edge, vanishing amidst the wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far in among the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up.  “That is an ignis fatuus,” was my first thought; and I expected it would soon vanish.  It burnt on, however, quite steadily, neither receding nor advancing.  “Is it, then, a bonfire just kindled?” I questioned.  I watched to see whether it would spread: but no; as it did not diminish, so it did not enlarge.  “It may be a candle in a house,” I then conjectured; “but if so, I can never reach it.  It is much too far away: and were it within a yard of me, what would it avail?  I should but knock at the door to have it shut in my face.”

And I sank down where I stood, and hid my face against the ground.  I lay still a while: the night-wind swept over the hill and over me, and died moaning in the distance; the rain fell fast, wetting me afresh to the skin.  Could I but have stiffened to the still frost—the friendly numbness of death—it might have pelted on; I should not have felt it; but my yet living flesh shuddered at its chilling influence.  I rose ere long.

The light was yet there, shining dim but constant through the rain.  I tried to walk again: I dragged my exhausted limbs slowly towards it.  It led me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog, which would have been impassable in winter, and was splashy and shaking even now, in the height of summer.  Here I fell twice; but as often I rose and rallied my faculties.  This light was my forlorn hope: I must gain it.

Having crossed the marsh, I saw a trace of white over the moor.  I approached it; it was a road or a track: it led straight up to the light, which now beamed from a sort of knoll, amidst a clump of trees—firs, apparently, from what I could distinguish of the character of their forms and foliage through the gloom.  My star vanished as I drew near: some obstacle had intervened between me and it.  I put out my hand to feel the dark mass before me: I discriminated the rough stones of a low wall—above it, something like palisades, and within, a high and prickly hedge.  I groped on.  Again a whitish object gleamed before me: it was a gate—a wicket; it moved on its hinges as I touched it.  On each side stood a sable bush-holly or yew.

Entering the gate and passing the shrubs, the silhouette of a house rose to view, black, low, and rather long; but the guiding light shone nowhere.  All was obscurity.  Were the inmates retired to rest?  I feared it must be so.  In seeking the door, I turned an angle: there shot out the friendly gleam again, from the lozenged panes of a very small latticed window, within a foot of the ground, made still smaller by the growth of ivy or some other creeping plant, whose leaves clustered thick over the portion of the house wall in which it was set.  The aperture was so screened and narrow, that curtain or shutter had been deemed unnecessary; and when I stooped down and put aside the spray of foliage shooting over it, I could see all within.  I could see clearly a room with a sanded floor, clean scoured; a dresser of walnut, with pewter plates ranged in rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a glowing peat-fire.  I could see a clock, a white deal table, some chairs.  The candle, whose ray had been my beacon, burnt on the table; and by its light an elderly woman, somewhat rough-looking, but scrupulously clean, like all about her, was knitting a stocking.

I noticed these objects cursorily only—in them there was nothing extraordinary.  A group of more interest appeared near the hearth, sitting still amidst the rosy peace and warmth suffusing it.  Two young, graceful women—ladies in every point—sat, one in a low rocking-chair, the other on a lower stool; both wore deep mourning of crape and bombazeen, which sombre garb singularly set off very fair necks and faces: a large old pointer dog rested its massive head on the knee of one girl—in the lap of the other was cushioned a black cat.

A strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants!  Who were they?  They could not be the daughters of the elderly person at the table; for she looked like a rustic, and they were all delicacy and cultivation.  I had nowhere seen such faces as theirs: and yet, as I gazed on them, I seemed intimate with every lineament.  I cannot call them handsome—they were too pale and grave for the word: as they each bent over a book, they looked thoughtful almost to severity.  A stand between them supported a second candle and two great volumes, to which they frequently referred, comparing them, seemingly, with the smaller books they held in their hands, like people consulting a dictionary to aid them in the task of translation.  This scene was as silent as if all the figures had been shadows and the firelit apartment a picture: so hushed was it, I could hear the cinders fall from the grate, the clock tick in its obscure corner; and I even fancied I could distinguish the click-click of the woman’s knitting-needles.  When, therefore, a voice broke the strange stillness at last, it was audible enough to me.

“Listen, Diana,” said one of the absorbed students; “Franz and old Daniel are together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream from which he has awakened in terror—listen!”  And in a low voice she read something, of which not one word was intelligible to me; for it was in an unknown tongue—neither French nor Latin.  Whether it were Greek or German I could not tell.

“That is strong,” she said, when she had finished: “I relish it.”  The other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated, while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read.  At a later day, I knew the language and the book; therefore, I will here quote the line: though, when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on sounding brass to me—conveying no meaning:—

“‘Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.’  Good! good!” she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled.  “There you have a dim and mighty archangel fitly set before you!  The line is worth a hundred pages of fustian.  ‘Ich wäge die Gedanken in der Schale meines Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.’  I like it!”

Both were again silent.

“Is there ony country where they talk i’ that way?” asked the old woman, looking up from her knitting.

“Yes, Hannah—a far larger country than England, where they talk in no other way.”

“Well, for sure case, I knawn’t how they can understand t’ one t’other: and if either o’ ye went there, ye could tell what they said, I guess?”

“We could probably tell something of what they said, but not all—for we are not as clever as you think us, Hannah.  We don’t speak German, and we cannot read it without a dictionary to help us.”

“And what good does it do you?”

“We mean to teach it some time—or at least the elements, as they say; and then we shall get more money than we do now.”

“Varry like: but give ower studying; ye’ve done enough for to-night.”

“I think we have: at least I’m tired.  Mary, are you?”

“Mortally: after all, it’s tough work fagging away at a language with no master but a lexicon.”

“It is, especially such a language as this crabbed but glorious Deutsch.  I wonder when St. John will come home.”

“Surely he will not be long now: it is just ten (looking at a little gold watch she drew from her girdle).  It rains fast, Hannah: will you have the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour?”

The woman rose: she opened a door, through which I dimly saw a passage: soon I heard her stir a fire in an inner room; she presently came back.

“Ah, childer!” said she, “it fair troubles me to go into yond’ room now: it looks so lonesome wi’ the chair empty and set back in a corner.”

She wiped her eyes with her apron: the two girls, grave before, looked sad now.

“But he is in a better place,” continued Hannah: “we shouldn’t wish him here again.  And then, nobody need to have a quieter death nor he had.”

“You say he never mentioned us?” inquired one of the ladies.

“He hadn’t time, bairn: he was gone in a minute, was your father.  He had been a bit ailing like the day before, but naught to signify; and when Mr. St. John asked if he would like either o’ ye to be sent for, he fair laughed at him.  He began again with a bit of a heaviness in his head the next day—that is, a fortnight sin’—and he went to sleep and niver wakened: he wor a’most stark when your brother went into t’ chamber and fand him.  Ah, childer! that’s t’ last o’ t’ old stock—for ye and Mr. St. John is like of different soart to them ‘at’s gone; for all your mother wor mich i’ your way, and a’most as book-learned.  She wor the pictur’ o’ ye, Mary: Diana is more like your father.”

I thought them so similar I could not tell where the old servant (for such I now concluded her to be) saw the difference.  Both were fair complexioned and slenderly made; both possessed faces full of distinction and intelligence.  One, to be sure, had hair a shade darker than the other, and there was a difference in their style of wearing it; Mary’s pale brown locks were parted and braided smooth: Diana’s duskier tresses covered her neck with thick curls.  The clock struck ten.

“Ye’ll want your supper, I am sure,” observed Hannah; “and so will Mr. St. John when he comes in.”

And she proceeded to prepare the meal.  The ladies rose; they seemed about to withdraw to the parlour.  Till this moment, I had been so intent on watching them, their appearance and conversation had excited in me so keen an interest, I had half-forgotten my own wretched position: now it recurred to me.  More desolate, more desperate than ever, it seemed from contrast.  And how impossible did it appear to touch the inmates of this house with concern on my behalf; to make them believe in the truth of my wants and woes—to induce them to vouchsafe a rest for my wanderings!  As I groped out the door, and knocked at it hesitatingly, I felt that last idea to be a mere chimera.  Hannah opened.

“What do you want?” she inquired, in a voice of surprise, as she surveyed me by the light of the candle she held.

“May I speak to your mistresses?” I said.

“You had better tell me what you have to say to them.  Where do you come from?”

“I am a stranger.”

“What is your business here at this hour?”

“I want a night’s shelter in an out-house or anywhere, and a morsel of bread to eat.”

Distrust, the very feeling I dreaded, appeared in Hannah’s face.  “I’ll give you a piece of bread,” she said, after a pause; “but we can’t take in a vagrant to lodge.  It isn’t likely.”

“Do let me speak to your mistresses.”

“No, not I.  What can they do for you?  You should not be roving about now; it looks very ill.”

“But where shall I go if you drive me away?  What shall I do?”

“Oh, I’ll warrant you know where to go and what to do.  Mind you don’t do wrong, that’s all.  Here is a penny; now go—”

“A penny cannot feed me, and I have no strength to go farther.  Don’t shut the door:—oh, don’t, for God’s sake!”

“I must; the rain is driving in—”

“Tell the young ladies.  Let me see them—”

“Indeed, I will not.  You are not what you ought to be, or you wouldn’t make such a noise.  Move off.”

“But I must die if I am turned away.”

“Not you.  I’m fear’d you have some ill plans agate, that bring you about folk’s houses at this time o’ night.  If you’ve any followers—housebreakers or such like—anywhere near, you may tell them we are not by ourselves in the house; we have a gentleman, and dogs, and guns.”  Here the honest but inflexible servant clapped the door to and bolted it within.

This was the climax.  A pang of exquisite suffering—a throe of true despair—rent and heaved my heart.  Worn out, indeed, I was; not another step could I stir.  I sank on the wet doorstep: I groaned—I wrung my hands—I wept in utter anguish.  Oh, this spectre of death!  Oh, this last hour, approaching in such horror!  Alas, this isolation—this banishment from my kind!  Not only the anchor of hope, but the footing of fortitude was gone—at least for a moment; but the last I soon endeavoured to regain.

“I can but die,” I said, “and I believe in God.  Let me try to wait His will in silence.”

These words I not only thought, but uttered; and thrusting back all my misery into my heart, I made an effort to compel it to remain there—dumb and still.

“All men must die,” said a voice quite close at hand; “but all are not condemned to meet a lingering and premature doom, such as yours would be if you perished here of want.”

“Who or what speaks?” I asked, terrified at the unexpected sound, and incapable now of deriving from any occurrence a hope of aid.  A form was near—what form, the pitch-dark night and my enfeebled vision prevented me from distinguishing.  With a loud long knock, the new-comer appealed to the door.

“Is it you, Mr. St. John?” cried Hannah.

“Yes—yes; open quickly.”

“Well, how wet and cold you must be, such a wild night as it is!  Come in—your sisters are quite uneasy about you, and I believe there are bad folks about.  There has been a beggar-woman—I declare she is not gone yet!—laid down there.  Get up! for shame!  Move off, I say!”

“Hush, Hannah!  I have a word to say to the woman.  You have done your duty in excluding, now let me do mine in admitting her.  I was near, and listened to both you and her.  I think this is a peculiar case—I must at least examine into it.  Young woman, rise, and pass before me into the house.”

With difficulty I obeyed him.  Presently I stood within that clean, bright kitchen—on the very hearth—trembling, sickening; conscious of an aspect in the last degree ghastly, wild, and weather-beaten.  The two ladies, their brother, Mr. St. John, the old servant, were all gazing at me.

“St. John, who is it?” I heard one ask.

“I cannot tell: I found her at the door,” was the reply.

“She does look white,” said Hannah.

“As white as clay or death,” was responded.  “She will fall: let her sit.”

And indeed my head swam: I dropped, but a chair received me.  I still possessed my senses, though just now I could not speak.

“Perhaps a little water would restore her.  Hannah, fetch some.  But she is worn to nothing.  How very thin, and how very bloodless!”

“A mere spectre!”

“Is she ill, or only famished?”

“Famished, I think.  Hannah, is that milk?  Give it me, and a piece of bread.”

Diana (I knew her by the long curls which I saw drooping between me and the fire as she bent over me) broke some bread, dipped it in milk, and put it to my lips.  Her face was near mine: I saw there was pity in it, and I felt sympathy in her hurried breathing.  In her simple words, too, the same balm-like emotion spoke: “Try to eat.”

“Yes—try,” repeated Mary gently; and Mary’s hand removed my sodden bonnet and lifted my head.  I tasted what they offered me: feebly at first, eagerly soon.

“Not too much at first—restrain her,” said the brother; “she has had enough.”  And he withdrew the cup of milk and the plate of bread.

“A little more, St. John—look at the avidity in her eyes.”

“No more at present, sister.  Try if she can speak now—ask her her name.”

I felt I could speak, and I answered—“My name is Jane Elliott.”  Anxious as ever to avoid discovery, I had before resolved to assume an alias.

“And where do you live?  Where are your friends?”

I was silent.

“Can we send for any one you know?”

I shook my head.

“What account can you give of yourself?”

Somehow, now that I had once crossed the threshold of this house, and once was brought face to face with its owners, I felt no longer outcast, vagrant, and disowned by the wide world.  I dared to put off the mendicant—to resume my natural manner and character.  I began once more to know myself; and when Mr. St. John demanded an account—which at present I was far too weak to render—I said after a brief pause—

“Sir, I can give you no details to-night.”

“But what, then,” said he, “do you expect me to do for you?”

“Nothing,” I replied.  My strength sufficed for but short answers.  Diana took the word—

“Do you mean,” she asked, “that we have now given you what aid you require? and that we may dismiss you to the moor and the rainy night?”

I looked at her.  She had, I thought, a remarkable countenance, instinct both with power and goodness.  I took sudden courage.  Answering her compassionate gaze with a smile, I said—“I will trust you.  If I were a masterless and stray dog, I know that you would not turn me from your hearth to-night: as it is, I really have no fear.  Do with me and for me as you like; but excuse me from much discourse—my breath is short—I feel a spasm when I speak.”  All three surveyed me, and all three were silent.

“Hannah,” said Mr. St. John, at last, “let her sit there at present, and ask her no questions; in ten minutes more, give her the remainder of that milk and bread.  Mary and Diana, let us go into the parlour and talk the matter over.”

They withdrew.  Very soon one of the ladies returned—I could not tell which.  A kind of pleasant stupor was stealing over me as I sat by the genial fire.  In an undertone she gave some directions to Hannah.  Ere long, with the servant’s aid, I contrived to mount a staircase; my dripping clothes were removed; soon a warm, dry bed received me.  I thanked God—experienced amidst unutterable exhaustion a glow of grateful joy—and slept.

CHAPTER XXIX

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

“It is very well we took her in.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“She is so ill, St. John.”       

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, very.”

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

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

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

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

“Mak’ ’em into pies.”

“Give them to me and I’ll pick them.”

“Nay; I dunnut want ye to do nought.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That village a few miles off?

“Aye.”

“And what is he?”

“He is a parson.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

“Their father is dead?”

“Dead three weeks sin’ of a stroke.”

“They have no mother?”

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

“Have you lived with the family long?”

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

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

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

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

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

I maintained a grave silence for some minutes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I am very well here.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You are very hungry,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A most singular position at your age!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know not whether I am a true philanthropist; yet I am willing to aid you to the utmost of my power in a purpose so honest.  First, then, tell me what you have been accustomed to do, and what you can do.”

I had now swallowed my tea.  I was mightily refreshed by the beverage; as much so as a giant with wine: it gave new tone to my unstrung nerves, and enabled me to address this penetrating young judge steadily.

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

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

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

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

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

I gave an involuntary half start at hearing the alias: I had forgotten my new name.  Mr. Rivers, whom nothing seemed to escape, noticed it at once.

“You said your name was Jane Elliott?” he observed.

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

“Your real name you will not give?”

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

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

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

“You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality—you would wish, I see, to dispense as soon as may be with my sisters’ compassion, and, above all, with my charity (I am quite sensible of the distinction drawn, nor do I resent it—it is just): you desire to be independent of us?”

“I do: I have already said so.  Show me how to work, or how to seek work: that is all I now ask; then let me go, if it be but to the meanest cottage; but till then, allow me to stay here: I dread another essay of the horrors of homeless destitution.”

“Indeed you shall stay here,” said Diana, putting her white hand on my head.  “You shall,” repeated Mary, in the tone of undemonstrative sincerity which seemed natural to her.

“My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you,” said Mr. St. John, “as they would have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing a half-frozen bird, some wintry wind might have driven through their casement.  I feel more inclination to put you in the way of keeping yourself, and shall endeavour to do so; but observe, my sphere is narrow.  I am but the incumbent of a poor country parish: my aid must be of the humblest sort.  And if you are inclined to despise the day of small things, seek some more efficient succour than such as I can offer.”

“She has already said that she is willing to do anything honest she can do,” answered Diana for me; “and you know, St. John, she has no choice of helpers: she is forced to put up with such crusty people as you.”

“I will be a dressmaker; I will be a plain-workwoman; I will be a servant, a nurse-girl, if I can be no better,” I answered.

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

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

To be continued

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