Chapter Chapter 30 · The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them.

. The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them.

In a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could sit up all

day, and walk out sometimes. I could join with Diana and Mary in all

their occupations; converse with them as much as they wished, and aid

them when and where they would allow me. There was a reviving pleasure

in this intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time—the

pleasure arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and

principles.

I liked to read what they liked to read: what they enjoyed, delighted

me; what they approved, I reverenced. They loved their sequestered

home. I, too, in the grey, small, antique structure, with its low roof,

its latticed casements, its mouldering walls, its avenue of aged

firs—all grown aslant under the stress of mountain winds; its garden,

dark with yew and holly—and where no flowers but of the hardiest

species would bloom—found a charm both potent and permanent. They clung

to the purple moors behind and around their dwelling—to the hollow vale

into which the pebbly bridle-path leading from their gate descended,

and which wound between fern-banks first, and then amongst a few of the

wildest little pasture-fields that ever bordered a wilderness of heath,

or gave sustenance to a flock of grey moorland sheep, with their little

mossy-faced lambs:—they clung to this scene, I say, with a perfect

enthusiasm of attachment. I could comprehend the feeling, and share

both its strength and truth. I saw the fascination of the locality. I

felt the consecration of its loneliness: my eye feasted on the outline

of swell and sweep—on the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell

by moss, by heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken,

and mellow granite crag. These details were just to me what they were

to them—so many pure and sweet sources of pleasure. The strong blast

and the soft breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of

sunrise and sunset; the moonlight and the clouded night, developed for

me, in these regions, the same attraction as for them—wound round my

faculties the same spell that entranced theirs.

Indoors we agreed equally well. They were both more accomplished and

better read than I was; but with eagerness I followed in the path of

knowledge they had trodden before me. I devoured the books they lent

me: then it was full satisfaction to discuss with them in the evening

what I had perused during the day. Thought fitted thought; opinion met

opinion: we coincided, in short, perfectly.

If in our trio there was a superior and a leader, it was Diana.

Physically, she far excelled me: she was handsome; she was vigorous. In

her animal spirits there was an affluence of life and certainty of

flow, such as excited my wonder, while it baffled my comprehension. I

could talk a while when the evening commenced, but the first gush of

vivacity and fluency gone, I was fain to sit on a stool at Diana’s

feet, to rest my head on her knee, and listen alternately to her and

Mary, while they sounded thoroughly the topic on which I had but

touched. Diana offered to teach me German. I liked to learn of her: I

saw the part of instructress pleased and suited her; that of scholar

pleased and suited me no less. Our natures dovetailed: mutual

affection—of the strongest kind—was the result. They discovered I could

draw: their pencils and colour-boxes were immediately at my service. My

skill, greater in this one point than theirs, surprised and charmed

them. Mary would sit and watch me by the hour together: then she would

take lessons; and a docile, intelligent, assiduous pupil she made. Thus

occupied, and mutually entertained, days passed like hours, and weeks

like days.

As to Mr. St John, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally and

rapidly between me and his sisters did not extend to him. One reason of

the distance yet observed between us was, that he was comparatively

seldom at home: a large proportion of his time appeared devoted to

visiting the sick and poor among the scattered population of his

parish.

No weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral excursions: rain or

fair, he would, when his hours of morning study were over, take his

hat, and, followed by his father’s old pointer, Carlo, go out on his

mission of love or duty—I scarcely know in which light he regarded it.

Sometimes, when the day was very unfavourable, his sisters would

expostulate. He would then say, with a peculiar smile, more solemn than

cheerful—

“And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from

these easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for the future I

propose to myself?”

Diana and Mary’s general answer to this question was a sigh, and some

minutes of apparently mournful meditation.

But besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to

friendship with him: he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and even

of a brooding nature. Zealous in his ministerial labours, blameless in

his life and habits, he yet did not appear to enjoy that mental

serenity, that inward content, which should be the reward of every

sincere Christian and practical philanthropist. Often, of an evening,

when he sat at the window, his desk and papers before him, he would

cease reading or writing, rest his chin on his hand, and deliver

himself up to I know not what course of thought; but that it was

perturbed and exciting might be seen in the frequent flash and

changeful dilation of his eye.

I think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of delight

it was to his sisters. He expressed once, and but once in my hearing, a

strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and an inborn affection

for the dark roof and hoary walls he called his home; but there was

more of gloom than pleasure in the tone and words in which the

sentiment was manifested; and never did he seem to roam the moors for

the sake of their soothing silence—never seek out or dwell upon the

thousand peaceful delights they could yield.

Incommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had an

opportunity of gauging his mind. I first got an idea of its calibre

when I heard him preach in his own church at Morton. I wish I could

describe that sermon: but it is past my power. I cannot even render

faithfully the effect it produced on me.

It began calm—and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice went,

it was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly restrained zeal

breathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted the nervous

language. This grew to force—compressed, condensed, controlled. The

heart was thrilled, the mind astonished, by the power of the preacher:

neither were softened. Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an

absence of consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic

doctrines—election, predestination, reprobation—were frequent; and each

reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom.

When he had done, instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened

by his discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it seemed

to me—I know not whether equally so to others—that the eloquence to

which I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid

dregs of disappointment—where moved troubling impulses of insatiate

yearnings and disquieting aspirations. I was sure St. John

Rivers—pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was—had not yet found

that peace of God which passeth all understanding: he had no more found

it, I thought, than had I with my concealed and racking regrets for my

broken idol and lost elysium—regrets to which I have latterly avoided

referring, but which possessed me and tyrannised over me ruthlessly.

Meantime a month was gone. Diana and Mary were soon to leave Moor

House, and return to the far different life and scene which awaited

them, as governesses in a large, fashionable, south-of-England city,

where each held a situation in families by whose wealthy and haughty

members they were regarded only as humble dependents, and who neither

knew nor sought out their innate excellences, and appreciated only

their acquired accomplishments as they appreciated the skill of their

cook or the taste of their waiting-woman. Mr. St. John had said nothing

to me yet about the employment he had promised to obtain for me; yet it

became urgent that I should have a vocation of some kind. One morning,

being left alone with him a few minutes in the parlour, I ventured to

approach the window-recess—which his table, chair, and desk consecrated

as a kind of study—and I was going to speak, though not very well

knowing in what words to frame my inquiry—for it is at all times

difficult to break the ice of reserve glassing over such natures as

his—when he saved me the trouble by being the first to commence a

dialogue.

Looking up as I drew near—“You have a question to ask of me?” he said.

“Yes; I wish to know whether you have heard of any service I can offer

myself to undertake?”

“I found or devised something for you three weeks ago; but as you

seemed both useful and happy here—as my sisters had evidently become

attached to you, and your society gave them unusual pleasure—I deemed

it inexpedient to break in on your mutual comfort till their

approaching departure from Marsh End should render yours necessary.”

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

“Yes; and when they go, I shall return to the parsonage at Morton:

Hannah will accompany me; and this old house will be shut up.”

I waited a few moments, expecting he would go on with the subject first

broached: but he seemed to have entered another train of reflection:

his look denoted abstraction from me and my business. I was obliged to

recall him to a theme which was of necessity one of close and anxious

interest to me.

“What is the employment you had in view, Mr. Rivers? I hope this delay

will not have increased the difficulty of securing it.”

“Oh, no; since it is an employment which depends only on me to give,

and you to accept.”

He again paused: there seemed a reluctance to continue. I grew

impatient: a restless movement or two, and an eager and exacting glance

fastened on his face, conveyed the feeling to him as effectually as

words could have done, and with less trouble.

“You need be in no hurry to hear,” he said: “let me frankly tell you, I

have nothing eligible or profitable to suggest. Before I explain,

recall, if you please, my notice, clearly given, that if I helped you,

it must be as the blind man would help the lame. I am poor; for I find

that, when I have paid my father’s debts, all the patrimony remaining

to me will be this crumbling grange, the row of scathed firs behind,

and the patch of moorish soil, with the yew-trees and holly-bushes in

front. I am obscure: Rivers is an old name; but of the three sole

descendants of the race, two earn the dependent’s crust among

strangers, and the third considers himself an alien from his native

country—not only for life, but in death. Yes, and deems, and is bound

to deem, himself honoured by the lot, and aspires but after the day

when the cross of separation from fleshly ties shall be laid on his

shoulders, and when the Head of that church-militant of whose humblest

members he is one, shall give the word, ‘Rise, follow Me!’”

St. John said these words as he pronounced his sermons, with a quiet,

deep voice; with an unflushed cheek, and a coruscating radiance of

glance. He resumed—

“And since I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a service

of poverty and obscurity. _You_ may even think it degrading—for I see

now your habits have been what the world calls refined: your tastes

lean to the ideal, and your society has at least been amongst the

educated; but _I_ consider that no service degrades which can better

our race. I hold that the more arid and unreclaimed the soil where the

Christian labourer’s task of tillage is appointed him—the scantier the

meed his toil brings—the higher the honour. His, under such

circumstances, is the destiny of the pioneer; and the first pioneers of

the Gospel were the Apostles—their captain was Jesus, the Redeemer,

Himself.”

“Well?” I said, as he again paused—“proceed.”

He looked at me before he proceeded: indeed, he seemed leisurely to

read my face, as if its features and lines were characters on a page.

The conclusions drawn from this scrutiny he partially expressed in his

succeeding observations.

“I believe you will accept the post I offer you,” said he, “and hold it

for a while: not permanently, though: any more than I could permanently

keep the narrow and narrowing—the tranquil, hidden office of English

country incumbent; for in your nature is an alloy as detrimental to

repose as that in mine, though of a different kind.”

“Do explain,” I urged, when he halted once more.

“I will; and you shall hear how poor the proposal is,—how trivial—how

cramping. I shall not stay long at Morton, now that my father is dead,

and that I am my own master. I shall leave the place probably in the

course of a twelve-month; but while I do stay, I will exert myself to

the utmost for its improvement. Morton, when I came to it two years

ago, had no school: the children of the poor were excluded from every

hope of progress. I established one for boys: I mean now to open a

second school for girls. I have hired a building for the purpose, with

a cottage of two rooms attached to it for the mistress’s house. Her

salary will be thirty pounds a year: her house is already furnished,

very simply, but sufficiently, by the kindness of a lady, Miss Oliver;

the only daughter of the sole rich man in my parish—Mr. Oliver, the

proprietor of a needle-factory and iron-foundry in the valley. The same

lady pays for the education and clothing of an orphan from the

workhouse, on condition that she shall aid the mistress in such menial

offices connected with her own house and the school as her occupation

of teaching will prevent her having time to discharge in person. Will

you be this mistress?”

He put the question rather hurriedly; he seemed half to expect an

indignant, or at least a disdainful rejection of the offer: not knowing

all my thoughts and feelings, though guessing some, he could not tell

in what light the lot would appear to me. In truth it was humble—but

then it was sheltered, and I wanted a safe asylum: it was plodding—but

then, compared with that of a governess in a rich house, it was

independent; and the fear of servitude with strangers entered my soul

like iron: it was not ignoble—not unworthy—not mentally degrading, I

made my decision.

“I thank you for the proposal, Mr. Rivers, and I accept it with all my

heart.”

“But you comprehend me?” he said. “It is a village school: your

scholars will be only poor girls—cottagers’ children—at the best,

farmers’ daughters. Knitting, sewing, reading, writing, ciphering, will

be all you will have to teach. What will you do with your

accomplishments? What, with the largest portion of your

mind—sentiments—tastes?”

“Save them till they are wanted. They will keep.”

“You know what you undertake, then?”

“I do.”

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

and deeply gratified.

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

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

next week.”

“Very well: so be it.”

He rose and walked through the room. Standing still, he again looked at

me. He shook his head.

“What do you disapprove of, Mr. Rivers?” I asked.

“You will not stay at Morton long: no, no!”

“Why? What is your reason for saying so?”

“I read it in your eye; it is not of that description which promises

the maintenance of an even tenor in life.”

“I am not ambitious.”

He started at the word “ambitious.” He repeated, “No. What made you

think of ambition? Who is ambitious? I know I am: but how did you find

it out?”

“I was speaking of myself.”

“Well, if you are not ambitious, you are—” He paused.

“What?”

“I was going to say, impassioned: but perhaps you would have

misunderstood the word, and been displeased. I mean, that human

affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you. I am sure

you cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude, and to

devote your working hours to a monotonous labour wholly void of

stimulus: any more than I can be content,” he added, with emphasis, “to

live here buried in morass, pent in with mountains—my nature, that God

gave me, contravened; my faculties, heaven-bestowed, paralysed—made

useless. You hear now how I contradict myself. I, who preached

contentment with a humble lot, and justified the vocation even of

hewers of wood and drawers of water in God’s service—I, His ordained

minister, almost rave in my restlessness. Well, propensities and

principles must be reconciled by some means.”

He left the room. In this brief hour I had learnt more of him than in

the whole previous month: yet still he puzzled me.

Diana and Mary Rivers became more sad and silent as the day approached

for leaving their brother and their home. They both tried to appear as

usual; but the sorrow they had to struggle against was one that could

not be entirely conquered or concealed. Diana intimated that this would

be a different parting from any they had ever yet known. It would

probably, as far as St. John was concerned, be a parting for years: it

might be a parting for life.

“He will sacrifice all to his long-framed resolves,” she said: “natural

affection and feelings more potent still. St. John looks quiet, Jane;

but he hides a fever in his vitals. You would think him gentle, yet in

some things he is inexorable as death; and the worst of it is, my

conscience will hardly permit me to dissuade him from his severe

decision: certainly, I cannot for a moment blame him for it. It is

right, noble, Christian: yet it breaks my heart!” And the tears gushed

to her fine eyes. Mary bent her head low over her work.

“We are now without father: we shall soon be without home and brother,”

she murmured.

At that moment a little accident supervened, which seemed decreed by

fate purposely to prove the truth of the adage, that “misfortunes never

come singly,” and to add to their distresses the vexing one of the slip

between the cup and the lip. St. John passed the window reading a

letter. He entered.

“Our uncle John is dead,” said he.

Both the sisters seemed struck: not shocked or appalled; the tidings

appeared in their eyes rather momentous than afflicting.

“Dead?” repeated Diana.

“Yes.”

She riveted a searching gaze on her brother’s face. “And what then?”

she demanded, in a low voice.

“What then, Die?” he replied, maintaining a marble immobility of

feature. “What then? Why—nothing. Read.”

He threw the letter into her lap. She glanced over it, and handed it to

Mary. Mary perused it in silence, and returned it to her brother. All

three looked at each other, and all three smiled—a dreary, pensive

smile enough.

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

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

Mary.

“Only it forces rather strongly on the mind the picture of what _might

have been_,” said Mr. Rivers, “and contrasts it somewhat too vividly

with what _is_.”

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

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

“Jane, you will wonder at us and our mysteries,” she said, “and think

us hard-hearted beings not to be more moved at the death of so near a

relation as an uncle; but we have never seen him or known him. He was

my mother’s brother. My father and he quarrelled long ago. It was by

his advice that my father risked most of his property in the

speculation that ruined him. Mutual recrimination passed between them:

they parted in anger, and were never reconciled. My uncle engaged

afterwards in more prosperous undertakings: it appears he realised a

fortune of twenty thousand pounds. He was never married, and had no

near kindred but ourselves and one other person, not more closely

related than we. My father always cherished the idea that he would

atone for his error by leaving his possessions to us; that letter

informs us that he has bequeathed every penny to the other relation,

with the exception of thirty guineas, to be divided between St. John,

Diana, and Mary Rivers, for the purchase of three mourning rings. He

had a right, of course, to do as he pleased: and yet a momentary damp

is cast on the spirits by the receipt of such news. Mary and I would

have esteemed ourselves rich with a thousand pounds each; and to St.

John such a sum would have been valuable, for the good it would have

enabled him to do.”

This explanation given, the subject was dropped, and no further

reference made to it by either Mr. Rivers or his sisters. The next day

I left Marsh End for Morton. The day after, Diana and Mary quitted it

for distant B——. In a week, Mr. Rivers and Hannah repaired to the

parsonage: and so the old grange was abandoned.