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 dependent; educated in a charitable

institution. I will even tell you the name of the establishment, where

I passed six years as a pupil, and two as a teacher—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.