Chapter: 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 dependants, 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 dependant'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.

 Jane's stay at Moor House is quite pleasant. Diana, Mary and she get along very well and have much in common. They loan her books, and she draws for them, and they converse much. Jane does not get along so well with Mr. St. John though, but she explains that he is not much at the house and that his disposition is not like the others'. A month passes since Jane's arrival, and soon the sisters are to return to their jobs as governesses. Jane asks St. John if he had found any work for her, and he says that he had. He tells her that he is opening a school for girls in Morton, and that if she were the mistress of it she would have a house and a housemaid and some money. He feels that it is beneath her station and she will not be very happy with it, but Jane accepts the position. That evening St. John brings home a letter that he had received. He says that their uncle John had died. They explain that they had never met him, but that he had come into a fortune that they thought they might have seen a part of as their uncle never married and had no children. His will however has left all his money to another who is no more closely related than they are. The next day Jane leaves for her house in Morton, and the day after Diana and Mary return to their jobs. Soon after St. John and Hannah close up the house and return to the parsonage

