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 needle-maker; 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' th' 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
