entirely, with old mahogany and crimson upholstery: I laid canvas on
the passage, and carpets on the stairs. When all was finished, I
thought Moor House as complete a model of bright modest snugness
within, as it was, at this season, a specimen of wintry waste and
desert dreariness without.
The eventful Thursday at length came. They were expected about
dark, and ere dusk fires were lit upstairs and below; the kitchen
was in perfect trim; Hannah and I were dressed, and all was in
readiness.
St. John arrived first. I had entreated him to keep quite clear
of the house till everything was arranged: and, indeed, the bare
idea of the commotion, at once sordid and trivial, going on within its
walls sufficed to scare him to estrangement. He found me in the
kitchen, watching the progress of certain cakes for tea, then
baking. Approaching the hearth, he asked, 'If I was at last
satisfied with housemaid's work?' I answered by inviting him to
accompany me on a general inspection of the result of my labours. With
some difficulty, I got him to make the tour of the house. He just
looked in at the doors I opened; and when he had wandered upstairs and
downstairs, he said I must have gone through a great deal of fatigue
and trouble to have effected such considerable changes in so short a
time: but not a syllable did he utter indicating pleasure in the
improved aspect of his abode.
This silence damped me. I thought perhaps the alterations had
disturbed some old associations he valued. I inquired whether this was
the case: no doubt in a somewhat crestfallen tone.
'Not at all; he had, on the contrary, remarked that I had
scrupulously respected every association: he feared, indeed, I must
have bestowed more thought on the matter than it was worth. How many
minutes, for instance, had I devoted to studying the arrangement of
this very room?- By the bye, could I tell him where such a book was?'
I showed him the volume on the shelf: he took it down, and
withdrawing to his accustomed window recess, he began to read it.
Now, I did not like this, reader. St. John was a good man; but I
began to feel he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was
hard and cold. The humanities and amenities of life had no
attraction for him- its peaceful enjoyments no charm. Literally, he
lived only to aspire- after what was good and great, certainly; but
still he would never rest, nor approve of others resting round him. As
I looked at his lofty forehead, still and pale as a white stone- at
his fine lineaments fixed in study- I comprehended all at once that he
would hardly make a good husband: that it would be a trying thing to
be his wife. I understood, as by inspiration, the nature of his love
for Miss Oliver; I agreed with him that it was but a love of the
senses. I comprehended how he should despise himself for the
feverish influence it exercised over him; how he should wish to stifle
and destroy it; how he should mistrust its ever conducing
permanently to his happiness or hers. I saw he was of the material
from which nature hews her heroes- Christian and Pagan- her lawgivers,
her statesmen, her conquerors: a steadfast bulwark for great interests
to rest upon; but, at the fireside, too often a cold cumbrous
column, gloomy and out of place.
'This parlour is not his sphere,' I reflected: 'the Himalayan ridge
or Caffre bush, even the plague-cursed Guinea Coast swamp would suit
him better. Well may he eschew the calm of domestic life; it is not
his element: there his faculties stagnate- they cannot develop or
appear to advantage. It is in scenes of strife and danger- where
courage is proved, and energy exercised, and fortitude tasked- that he
will speak and move, the leader and superior. A merry child would have
the advantage of him on this hearth. He is right to choose a
missionary's career- I see it now.'
'They are coming! they are coming!' cried Hannah, throwing open the
parlour door. At the same moment old Carlo barked joyfully. Out I ran.
It was now dark; but a rumbling of wheels was audible. Hannah soon had
a lantern lit. The vehicle had stopped at the wicket; the driver
opened the door: first one well-known form, then another, stepped out.
In a minute I had my face under their bonnets, in contact first with
Mary's soft cheek, then with Diana's flowing curls. They laughed-
kissed me- then Hannah: patted Carlo, who was half wild with
delight; asked eagerly if all was well; and being assured in the
affirmative, hastened into the house.
They were stiff with their long and jolting drive from Whitcross,
and chilled with the frosty night air; but their pleasant countenances
expanded to the cheerful firelight. While the driver and Hannah
brought in the boxes, they demanded St. John. At this moment he
advanced from the parlour. They both threw their arms round his neck
at once. He gave each one quiet kiss, said in a low tone a few words
of welcome, stood a while to be talked to, and then, intimating that
he supposed they would soon rejoin him in the parlour, withdrew
there as to a place of refuge.
I had lit their candles to go upstairs, but Diana had first to give
hospitable orders respecting the driver; this done, both followed
me. They were delighted with the renovation and decorations of their
rooms; with the new drapery, and fresh carpets, and rich tinted
china vases: they expressed their gratification ungrudgingly. I had
the pleasure of feeling that my arrangements met their wishes exactly,
and that what I had done added a vivid charm to their joyous return
home.
Sweet was that evening. My cousins, full of exhilaration, were so
eloquent in narrative and comment, that their fluency covered St.
John's taciturnity: he was sincerely glad to see his sisters; but in
their glow of fervour and flow of joy he could not sympathise. The
event of the day- that is, the return of Diana and Mary- pleased
him; but the accompaniments of that event, the glad tumult, the
garrulous glee of reception irked him: I saw he wished the calmer
morrow was come. In the very meridian of the night's enjoyment,
about an hour after tea, a rap was heard at the door. Hannah entered
with the intimation that 'a poor lad was come, at that unlikely
time, to fetch Mr. Rivers to see his mother, who was drawing away.'
'Where does she live, Hannah?'
'Clear up at Whitcross Brow, almost four miles off, and moor and
moss all the way.'
'Tell him I will go.'
'I'm sure, sir, you had better not. It's the worst road to travel
after dark that can be: there's no track at all over the bog. And then
it is such a bitter night- the keenest wind you ever felt. You had
better send word, sir, that you will be there in the morning.'
But he was already in the passage, putting on his cloak; and
without one objection, one murmur, he departed. It was then nine
o'clock: he did not return till midnight. Starved and tired enough
he was: but he looked happier than when he set out. He had performed
an act of duty; made an exertion; felt his own strength to do and
deny, and was on better terms with himself.
I am afraid the whole of the ensuing week tried his patience. It
was Christmas week: we took to no settled employment, but spent it
in a sort of merry domestic dissipation. The air of the moors, the
freedom of home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Diana and Mary's
spirits like some life-giving elixir: they were gay from morning
till noon, and from noon till night. They could always talk; and their
discourse, witty, pithy, original, had such charms for me, that I
preferred listening to, and sharing in it, to doing anything else. St.
John did not rebuke our vivacity; but he escaped from it: he was
seldom in the house; his parish was large, the population scattered,
and he found daily business in visiting the sick and poor in its
different districts.
One morning at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive for
some minutes, asked him, 'If his plans were yet unchanged.'
'Unchanged and unchangeable,' was the reply. And he proceeded to
inform us that his departure from England was now definitely fixed for
the ensuing year.
'And Rosamond Oliver?' suggested Mary, the words seeming to
escape her lips involuntarily: for no sooner had she uttered them,
than she made a gesture as if wishing to recall them. St. John had a
book in his hand- it was his unsocial custom to read at meals- he
closed it, and looked up.
'Rosamond Oliver,' said he, 'is about to be married to Mr.
Granby, one of the best connected and most estimable residents in
from her father yesterday.'
His sisters looked at each other and at me; we all three looked
at him: he was serene as glass.
'The match must have been got up hastily,' said Diana: 'they cannot
have known each other long.'
But where there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case,
where the connection is in every point desirable, delays are
Frederic gives up to them, can be refitted for their reception.'
The first time I found St. John alone after this communication, I
felt tempted to inquire if the event distressed him: but he seemed
so little to need sympathy, that, so far from venturing to offer him
more, I experienced some shame at the recollection of what I had
already hazarded. Besides, I was out of practice in talking to him:
his reserve was again frozen over, and my frankness was congealed
beneath it. He had not kept his promise of treating me like his
sisters; he continually made little, chilling differences between
us, which did not at all tend to the development of cordiality: in
short, now that I was acknowledged his kinswoman, and lived under
the same roof with him, I felt the distance between us to be far
greater than when he had known me only as the village
schoolmistress. When I remembered how far I had once been admitted
to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his present frigidity.
Such being the case, I felt not a little surprised when he raised
his head suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping, and said-
'You see, Jane, the battle is fought and the victory won.'
Startled at being thus addressed, I did not immediately reply:
after a moment's hesitation I answered-
'But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors
whose triumphs have cost them too dear? Would not such another ruin
you?'
'I think not; and if I were, it does not much signify; I shall
never be called upon to contend for such another. The event of the
conflict is decisive: my way is now clear; I thank God for it!' So
saying, he returned to his papers and his silence.
As our mutual happiness (i.e., Diana's, Mary's, and mine) settled
into a quieter character, and we resumed our usual habits and
regular studies, St. John stayed more at home: he sat with us in the
same room, sometimes for hours together. While Mary drew, Diana
pursued a course of encyclopaedic reading she had (to my awe and
amazement) undertaken, and I fagged away at German, he pondered a
mystic lore of his own: that of some Eastern tongue, the acquisition
of which he thought necessary to his plans.
Thus engaged, he appeared, sitting in his own recess, quiet and
absorbed enough; but that blue eye of his had a habit of leaving the
outlandish-looking grammar, and wandering over, and sometimes fixing
upon us, his fellow-students, with a curious intensity of observation:
if caught, it would be instantly withdrawn; yet ever and anon, it
returned searchingly to our table. I wondered what it meant: I
wondered, too, at the punctual satisfaction he never failed to exhibit
on an occasion that seemed to me of small moment, namely, my weekly
visit to Morton school; and still more was I puzzled when, if the
day was unfavourable, if there was snow, or rain, or high wind, and
his sisters urged me not to go, he would invariably make light of
their solicitude, and encourage me to accomplish the task without
regard to the elements.
'Jane is not such a weakling as you would make her,' he would
say: 'she can bear a mountain blast, or a shower, or a few flakes of
snow, as well as any of us. Her constitution is both sound and
elastic;- better calculated to endure variations of climate than
many more robust.'
And when I returned, sometimes a good deal tired, and not a
little weather-beaten, I never dared complain, because I saw that to
murmur would be to vex him: on all occasions fortitude pleased him;
the reverse was a special annoyance.
One afternoon, however, I got leave to stay at home, because I
really had a cold. His sisters were gone to Morton in my stead: I
sat reading Schiller; he, deciphering his crabbed Oriental scrolls. As
I exchanged a translation for an exercise, I happened to look his way:
there I found myself under the influence of the ever-watchful blue
eye. How long it had been searching me through and through, and over
and over, I cannot tell: so keen was it, and yet so cold, I felt for
the moment superstitious- as if I were sitting in the room with
something uncanny.
'Jane, what are you doing?'
'Learning German.'
'I want you to give up German and learn Hindostanee.'
'You are not in earnest?'
'In such earnest that I must have it so: and I will tell you why.'
He then went on to explain that Hindostanee was the language he was
himself at present studying; that, as he advanced, he was apt to
forget the commencement; that it would assist him greatly to have a
pupil with whom he might again and again go over the elements, and
