general holiday approached. I now closed Morton school, taking care

that the parting should not be barren on my side. Good fortune opens

the hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when

we have largely received, is but to afford a vent to the unusual

ebullition of the sensations. I had long felt with pleasure that

many of my rustic scholars liked me, and when we parted, that

consciousness was confirmed: they manifested their affection plainly

and strongly. Deep was my gratification to find I had really a place

in their unsophisticated hearts: I promised them that never a week

should pass in future that I did not visit them, and give them an

hour's teaching in their school.

Mr. Rivers came up as, having seen the classes, now numbering sixty

girls, file out before me, and locked the door, I stood with the key

in my hand, exchanging a few words of special farewell with some

half-dozen of my best scholars: as decent, respectable, modest, and

well-informed young women as could be found in the ranks of the

British peasantry. And that is saying a great deal; for after all, the

British peasantry are the best taught, best mannered, most

self-respecting of any in Europe: since those days I have seen

paysannes and Bauerinnen; and the best of them seemed to me

ignorant, coarse, and besotted, compared with my Morton girls.

'Do you consider you have got your reward for a season of

exertion?' asked Mr. Rivers, when they were gone. 'Does not the

consciousness of having done some real good in your day and generation

give pleasure?'

'Doubtless.'

'And you have only toiled a few months! Would not a life devoted to

the task of regenerating your race be well spent?'

'Yes,' I said; 'but I could not go on for ever so: I want to

enjoy my own faculties as well as to cultivate those of other

people. I must enjoy them now; don't recall either my mind or body

to the school; I am out of it and disposed for full holiday.'

He looked grave. 'What now? What sudden eagerness is this you

evince? What are you going to do?'

'To be active: as active as I can. And first I must beg you to

set Hannah at liberty, and get somebody else to wait on you.'

'Do you want her?'

'Yes, to go with me to Moor House. Diana and Mary will be at home

in a week, and I want to have everything in order against their

arrival.'

'I understand. I thought you were for flying off on some excursion.

It is better so: Hannah shall go with you.'

'Tell her to be ready by to-morrow then; and here is the schoolroom

key: I will give you the key of my cottage in the morning.'

He took it. 'You give it up very gleefully,' said he; 'I don't

quite understand your light-heartedness, because I cannot tell what

employment you propose to yourself as a substitute for the one you are

relinquishing. What aim, what purpose, what ambition in life have

you now?'

'My first aim will be to clean down (do you comprehend the full

force of the expression?)- to clean down Moor House from chamber to

cellar; my next to rub it up with bees-wax, oil, and an indefinite

number of cloths, till it glitters again; my third, to arrange every

chair, table, bed, carpet, with mathematicalprecision; afterwards I

shall go near to ruin you in coals and peat to keep up good fires in

every room; and lastly, the two days preceding that on which your

sisters are expected will be devoted by Hannah and me to such a

beating of eggs, sorting of currants, grating of spices, compounding

of Christmas cakes, chopping up of materials for mince-pies, and

solemnising of other culinary rites, as words can convey but an

inadequate notion of to the uninitiated like you. My purpose, in

short, is to have all things in an absolutely perfect state of

readiness for Diana and Mary before next Thursday; and my ambition

is to give them a beau-ideal of a welcome when they come.'

St. John smiled slightly: still he was dissatisfied.

'It is all very well for the present,' said he; 'but seriously, I

trust that when the first flush of vivacity is over, you will look a

little higher than domestic endearments and household joys.'

'I mean, on the contrary, to be busy.'

'Jane, I excuse you for the present: two months' grace I allow

you for the full enjoyment of your new position, and for pleasing

yourself with this late-found charm of relationship; but then, I

hope you will begin to look beyond Moor House and Morton, and sisterly

society, and the selfish calm and sensual comfort of civilised

affluence. I hope your energies will then once more trouble you with

their strength.'

I looked at him with surprise. 'St. John,' I said, 'I think you are

almost wicked to talk so. I am disposed to be as content as a queen,

and you try to stir me up to restlessness! To what end?'

'To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has

committed to your keeping; and of which He will surely one day

demand a strict account. Jane, I shall watch you closely and

anxiously- I warn you of that. And try to restrain the

disproportionate fervour with which you throw yourself into

commonplace home pleasures. Don't cling so tenaciously to ties of

the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause;

forbear to waste them on trite transient objects. Do you hear, Jane?'

'Yes; just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have adequate

cause to be happy, and I will be happy. Good-bye!'

Happy at Moor House I was, and hard I worked; and so did Hannah:

she was charmed to see how jovial I could be amidst the bustle of a

house turned topsy-turvy- how I could brush, and dust, and clean,

and cook. And really, after a day or two of confusion worse

confounded, it was delightful by degrees to invoke order from the

to purchase some new furniture: my cousins having given me carte

blanche to effect what alterations I pleased, and a sum having been

set aside for that purpose. The ordinary sitting-room and bedrooms I

left much as they were: for I knew Diana and Mary would derive more

pleasure from seeing again the old homely tables, and chairs, and

beds, than from the spectacle of the smartest innovations. Still

some novelty was necessary, to give to their return the piquancy

with which I wished it to be invested. Dark handsome new carpets and

curtains, an arrangement of some carefully selected antique

ornaments in porcelain and bronze, new coverings, and mirrors, and

dressing-cases, for the toilet-tables, answered the end: they looked

fresh without being glaring. A spare parlour and bedroom I refurnished

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 steadfastbulwark 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

so fix them thoroughly in his mind; that his choice had hovered for

some time between me and his sisters; but that he had fixed on me

because he saw I could sit at a task the longest of the three. Would I

do him this favour? I should not, perhaps, have to make the

sacrifice long, as it wanted now barely three months to his departure.

St. John was not a man to be lightly refused: you felt that every