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Wherever you listen to podcasts today, we'll be continuing Jane Air by Charlotte Brante Chapter 34 It was near Christmas by the time all was settled, the season of general holiday approached.

I now closed Morton's 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 abuse 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 60 girls file out before me and lock the door.

I stood with the key in my hand, exchanging a few words of special farewell with some halfdozen of my best scholars, as decent, respectable, modest, and wellinformed 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 painsains and Burnin, and the best of them seemed to me ignorant, poor, 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 forever.

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 Morehouse.

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 flying off on some excursion.

It is better.

So Hannah shall go with you.

Tell her to be ready by tomorrow, 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 lightheartedness, because I cannot tell what employment you proposed 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 Morehouse from Chamber to cellar?

My next to wrap it up with beeswax, oil and an indefinite number of cloths till it glitters again.

My third, to arrange every chair, table, bed, carpet with mathematical precision.

Afterwards, I shall go near to ruin you in Coles and Pete 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 solemnizing 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 bow 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 flesh of vivacity is over, you will look a little higher than domestic endearments and household joys.

The best things the world has, I interrupted.

No, Jane, no.

This world is not the scene of fruition.

Do not attempt to make it so, nor of rest.

Do not turn slothful.

I mean, on the contrary, to be busy.

Jane, I excuse you.

For the present two month 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 Morehouse and Morton and sisterly society in the selfish calm and sensual comfort of civilized affluence.

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

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 disappropriate fervor with which you throw yourself into commonplace home pleasures.

Don't cling so tenaciously to ties up the flesh.

Save your constancy and ardor for an adequate cause forbear to waste them on tright, 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.

Goodbye.

Happy.

At Moorehouse 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 chaos ourselves had made.

I had previously taken a journey to US to purchase some new furniture, my cousins having given me cart Blanche to affect what alterations I pleased, and some 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 pickancy 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 parlor 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 Morehouse 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 air.

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 labors.

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 affected 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 dampened 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 by?

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.

It's peaceful enjoyment, no charm, literally.

He lived only to aspire after what was good and great, certainly, but still he would never rest nor prove of others resting around 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 conducting permanently to his happiness or hers.

I saw he was of the material from which nature Hughes, 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, Cumbers column, gloomy and out of place.

This parlor is not his sphere, I reflected.

The Himalayan Ridge or Caffer Bush.

Even the plague cursed Guinea Coast swamp would suit him better.

Well, he may escew the calm of domestic life.

It is not his element.

They're 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 married 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're coming, cried Hannah, throwing open the parlor 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 wellknown 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 firelights.

While the driver and Hannah brought in the boxes, they demanded St.

John.

At this moment he advanced from the parlor.

They both threw their arms around his neck at once.

He gave each one a quiet kiss, said in a low tone a few words of welcome, stood a while to be talked to, and then, intimating that he was supposed they would soon rejoin him in the parlor, withdrew there as 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 tack eternity.

He was sincerely glad to see his sisters, but in their glow of fervor and flow of joy, he could not sympathize.

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 garlic glee of reception, irked him.

I saw he wished the calm 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, and that unlikely time to fetch Mr.

Rivers to see his mother, who was drawing away.

Where does she live, Hannah?

Clear up at Wittcross Brow, almost 4 miles off, and Moore and Moth all the way.

Tell him I will go.

I am 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 have ever felt.

You'd better send words there, 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 09:00.

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 heir of the Moors, the freedom of home, the dawn of prosperity acted on Diana and Mary's spirits like some lifegiving 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.

Then 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 esteemable residents in S, grandson and heir to Sir Frederick Granby.

I had the intelligence 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 two months.

They met in October at the county ball at S.

But where there are no obstacles to a Union, as in the present case, where the connection isn't every point desirable delays are unnecessary.

They will be married as soon as S place, which Sir Frederick 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 school mistress.

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 encyclopedic reading.

She had, to my awe and amazement, undertaken, and I sagged 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's School.

And still more, I was puzzled when, if the day was unfavorable, 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 everwatchful 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 Hindustani.

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 Hindustani was the language he was himself at present studying, that as he advanced he was asked 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 thought I could sit at a task the longest of the three.

Would I do him this favor?

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 impression made on him, either for pain or pleasure, was deep, grave, and permanent.

I consented.

When Diana and Mary returned, the former found her scholar transferred from her to her brother.

She laughed, and both she and Mary agreed that St.

John should never have persuaded them to such a step.

He answered quietly, I know it.

I found him a very patient, very forbearing, and yet an exacting master.

He expected me to do a great deal, and when I fulfilled his expectations, he in his own way fully testified his approbation.

By degrees he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my Liberty of mind.

His praise and notice were more restraining than his indifference.

I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was by, because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that vivacity, at least in me, was distasteful to him.

I was so fully aware that only serious moods and occupations were acceptable, that in his presence every effort to sustain or follow any other became vain.

I fell under a freezing spell when he said, Go, I went, come, I came.

Do this.

I did it, but I did not love my servitude.

I wished many a time he had continued to neglect me.

One evening when at bedtime his sisters and I stood around him bidding him good night, he kissed each of them, as was his custom, and as was equally his custom, he gave me his hand.

Diana, who chanced to be in a frolicsome humor.

She was not painfully controlled by his will.

For hers in another way was as strong, exclaimed St.

John, you used to call Jane your third sister, but you don't treat her as such.

You should kiss her too.

She pushed me towards him.

I thought Diana very provoking and felt uncomfortably confused.

And while I was thus thinking and feeling St.

John bent his head, his Greek face was brought to a level with mine.

His eyes questioned, my eyes piercingly.

He kissed me.

There are no such things as marble kisses or ice kisses, or I should say my ecclesiastical cousin Salute belonged to one of these classes.

But there may be experiment kisses, and his was an experiment kiss.

When given he viewed me to learn the results.

It was not striking, I am sure.

I did not blush.

Perhaps I might have turned a little pale, for I felt as if this kiss were a seal affix to my fetters.

He never admitted the ceremony afterwards, and the gravity and quiescence with which I underwent it seemed to invest it for him with a certain charm.

As for me, I daily wished more to please him, but to do so I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, rest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation.

He wanted to train me to an elevation I could never reach.

It racked me hourly to aspire to the standard he uplifted.

The thing was as impossible as to mold my irregular features to his correct and classic pattern, to give to my changeable green eyes the sea blue tint and solemn lustre of his own.

Not his.

Ascendancy alone, however, held me enthralled at present.

Of late it had been easy enough for me to look sad.

A cankering evil sat at my heart and drained my happiness at its source.

The evil of suspense.

Perhaps you think I had forgotten Mr.

Rochester Reader amidst these changes of place and fortune.

Not for a moment.

His idea was still with me, because it was not a vapor Sunshine could disperse, nor a Sandraced effigy storms could wash away.

It was a name Graven on a tablet, faded to last as long as the marble had inscribed.

The craving to know what had become of him followed me everywhere.

When I was at Morton, I reentered my cottage every evening to think of that, and now at Morehouse, I fought my bedroom each night to brood over it.

In the course of my necessary correspondence with Mr.

Briggs about the will, I had inquired if he knew anything of Mr.

Rochester's present residence and state of health, but as St.

John conjectured, he was quite ignorant of all concerning him.

I then wrote to Mrs.

Fairfax, entreating information on the subject I had calculated with certainty on this step.

Answering my end, I felt sure it would elicit an early answer.

I was astonished when a fortnight passed without reply, but when two months wore away, and day after day the post arrived and brought nothing for me.

I felt prey to the keenest anxiety.

I wrote again.

There was a chance of my first letter having missed.

Renewed hope followed, renewed effort.

It's shown like the former for some weeks, then, like it faded, flickered.

Not a line, not a word reached me when half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died out, and then I felt dark indeed.

A fine spring shone around me, which I could not enjoy.

Summer approached.

Diana tried to cheer me.

She said I looked ill and wished to accompany me to the seaside.

This St.

John opposed.

He said I did not want dissipation.

I wanted employment.

My present life was too purposeless.

I required an aim, and I suppose by way of supplying deficiencies, he prolonged still further my lessons in Hindustani and grew more urgent in requiring their accomplishment.

And I, like a fool, never thought of resisting him.

I could not resist him.

One day I had come to my studies in lower spirits than usual.

The ebb was occasioned by a poignantly felt disappointment.

Hannah had told me in the morning there was a letter for me, and when I went down to take it, almost certain that the long looked for tidings were vouched saved me.

At last I found only an unimportant note for Mr.

Briggs on business.

The bitter check had rung from me some tears, and now, as I sat pouring over the crabbed characters and flourishing tropes of an Indian scribe, my eyes filled again.

St.

John called me to his side to read, and attempting to do this, my voice failed me.

Words were lost in sobs.

He and I were the only occupants of the parlor.

Diana was practicing her music in the drawing room.

Mary was gardening.

It was a very fine May day, clear, sunny, and breezy.

My companion expressed no surprise at this emotion, nor did he question me as to its cause.

He only said, we will wait a few minutes, Jane, so you are more composed.

And while I smothered the paroxysm with all haste, he sat calm and patient, leaning on his desk and looking like a physician, watching with the eye of science unexpected and fully understood crisis in a patient's malady, having stifled my sobs, wiped my eyes and muttered something about not being very well that morning I resumed my task and succeeded in completing it.

St.

John put away my books and his locked his desk and said, Now, Jane, you shall take a walk, and with me I will call Diana and Mary.

No, I want only one companion this morning, and that must be you.

Put on your things.

Go out by the kitchen door.

Take the road towards the head of Marsh Glenn.

I will join you in a moment.

I know no medium.

I never in my life have known any medium in my dealings with positive, hard characters antagonistic to my own, between absolute submission and determined revolt.

I have always faithfully observed the one up to the very moment of bursting, sometimes with volcanic venomous into the other, and as neither present circumstances warranted nor my present mood inclined me to mutiny.

I observed with careful obedience to St.

John's directions, and in ten minutes I was treading the wild track of the Glen side by side with him.

The breeze was from the west.

It came over the Hills, sweet with sense of Heath and rush.

The sky was of stainless blue.

The stream descending the ravine swelled with past.

Spring rains poured along plentiful and clear, catching golden gleams from the sun and Sapphire tints from the firmament.

As we advanced and left the track we trod a soft turf, mossy, fine and Emerald green, minutely enameled with a tiny white flower and Spangled with a star like yellow blossom.

The Hills, meantime, shut us quite in for the Glen towards its head wound to at their very core.

Let us rest here, said St.

John as we reached the first stragglers of a Battalion of rocks guarding a sort of pass, beyond which the Beck rushed down a waterfall, and where, still a little farther, the mountain shook off turf and flower had only Heath for Raymond and Crag for Gem, where it exaggerated the wild to the Savage and exchanged the fresh for the frowning, where it guarded the forlorn hope of solitude and a last refuge for silence.

I took a seat.

St.

John stood near me.

He looked up the path and down the hollow.

His glance wandered away with the stream and returned to traverse the unclouded heaven which colored it.

He removed his hat, let the breeze stir his hair, and kiss his brow.

He seemed in Communion with the genius of the haunt with his eye.

He bade farewell to something, and I shall see it again, he said aloud, in dreams when I sleep by the Ganges, and again in a more remote hour when another slumber overcomes me on the shore of a darker stream.

Strange words of a strange love, an austere Patriot's passion for his fatherland.

He sat down for half an hour we never spoke, neither he to me nor I to him.

That interval passed.

He recommenced.

Jane, I go.

In six weeks I have taken my birth in an East Indian man which sails on the 20 June.

God will protect you, for you have undertaken his work, I answered.

Yes, said he, there is my glory and joy.

I am the servant of an infallible master.

I am not going out under human guidance, subject to the defective laws and airing control of my feeble fellow worms, my King, my lawgiver, my captain, is the Allperfect.

It seems strange to me that all around me do not burn to enlist under the same banner to join in the same enterprise.

All have not your powers, and it would be folly for the feeble to wish to March with the strong.

I do not wish to speak to the feeble or think of them.

I address only such as are worthy of the work and competent to accomplish it.

Those are few in number and difficult to discover, you say truly.

But when found, it is right to stir them up, to urge and exhort them to the effort to show them what their gifts are and why they were given to speak heaven's message in their ear, to offer them direct from God, a place in the ranks of his chosen.

If they are really qualified for the task, will not their own hearts be the first to inform them of it?

I felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over me.

I trembled to hear some fatal words spoken which would at once declare and Rivet the spell.

And what does your heart say?

Demanded St.

John.

My heart is mute.

My heart is mute, I answered, struck and thrilled.

Then I must speak for it, continued the deep, relentless voice.

Jane, come with me to India.

Come as my help meet and fellow laborer.

The Glen and the sky spun round.

The Hills heaved.

It was as if I had heard a summons from heaven, as if a visionary messenger like him of Macedonia had announced, Come over and help us.

But I was no Apostle.

I could not behold the Herald.

I could not receive his call.

Oh, St.

John, I cried, have some mercy.

I appealed to one who, in the discharge of what he believed his duty, knew neither mercy nor remorse, he continued.

God and nature intended you for a missionary's life.

It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you.

You are formed for labor, not for love.

A missionary's life you must shall be, you shall be mine.

I claim you not for my pleasure, but for my sovereign service.

I am not fit for it.

I have no vocation, I said.

He had calculated on these first objections.

He was not irritated by them.

Indeed, as he leaned back against the Crag behind him, folded his arms on his chest, and fixed his countenance, I saw he was prepared for a long and trying opposition and had taken in stock of patience to last him to its close.

Resolved, however, that the close should be conquest for him.

Humility, Jane said, he is the groundwork of Christian virtues.

You say right that you are not fit for the work.

Who is fit for it, or who that ever was truly called, believed himself worthy of the summons.

I, for instance, and but dust and Ashes with St.

Paul.

I acknowledge myself the chiefest of sinners, but I do not suffer this sense of my personal vileness to Daunt me.

I know my leader that he is just as well as mighty.

And while he has chosen a feeble instrument to perform a great task, he will, from the boundless stores of his Providence, supply the inadequacy of his means to the end.

Think like me, Jane.

Trust like me.

It is the Rock of Ages I ask you to lean on.

Do not doubt, but it will bear the weight of your human weakness.

I do not understand a missionary life.

I have never studied missionary labors.

There.

I, humble as I am, can give you the aid you want.

I can set you your task from hour to hour.

Stand by you, always help you from moment to moment.

This I could do in the beginning, soon, for I know your powers.

You would be as strong and apt as myself and would not require my help.

But my powers?

Where are they for this undertaking?

I do not feel them.

Nothing speaks or stirs in me while you talk.

I am sensible of no light kindling, no life quickening, no voice counseling or cheering.

Oh, I wish I could make you see how much my mind is at this moment.

Like a Rayless dungeon with one shrieking fear fettered in its steps.

The fear of being persuaded by you to attempt what I cannot accomplish.

I have an answer for you.

Hear it.

I have watched you ever since we first met.

I have made you my study for ten months.

I have proved you in that time by sundry tests and what I have seen and elicited in the village school, I found you could perform well.

Punctually, uprightly labor, uncongenial to your habits and inclinations.

I saw you could perform it with capacity intact.

You could win while you controlled.

In the calm with which you learnt you had become suddenly rich.

I read a mind clear of the vice of Damas.

Lucre had no undue power over you in the resolute readiness with which you cut your wealth into four shares, keeping but one to yourself and relinquishing the three others to the claim of abstract justice.

I recognized a soul that reveled in the flame and excitement of sacrifice in the tractability with which, at my wish, you foresee a study in which you were interested and adopted another because it interested me in the untiring assiduity with which you have since persevered in it, in the unflagging energy and unshaken temper with which you have met its difficulties.

I acknowledge the compliment of the qualities I seek.

Jane, you are docile, diligent, disinterested, faithful, constant and courageous.

Very gentle and very heroic.

Cease to mistrust yourself.

I can trust you unreservedly as a conductor of Indian schools and a helper amongst Indian women.

Your assistance will be to me invaluable my iron shrewd contracted round me, persuasion advanced with slow, sure step.

Shut my eyes as I would.

These last words of his succeeded in making the way which had seemed blocked up comparatively clear.

My work, which had appeared so vague, so hopelessly diffuse, condensed itself as he proceeded and assumed a definite form under his shaping hand.

He waited for an answer.

I demanded a quarter of an hour to think before I again hazarded a reply.

Very willingly, he rejoined, and rising, he strode a little distance up the path, threw himself down on a swell of Heath, and there lay still.

I can do what he wants me to do.

I am forced to see and acknowledge that I meditated.

That is, if life be spared me.

But I feel mine is not the existence to be long protracted under an Indian Sun.

What then?

He does not care for that?

When my time came to die, he would resign me in all serenity and sanctity to the God who gave me.

The case is very plain before me.

In leaving England, I should leave a loved but empty land.

Mr.

Rochester is not there.

And if he were, what is f****** that ever be to me?

My business is to live without him now.

Nothing so absurd, so weak as to drag on from day to day as if I were waiting some impossible change in circumstances which might reunite me to him.

Of course, as St.

John once said, I must seek another interest in life to replace the one lost.

It's not the occupation he now offers me.

Truly, the most glorious man can adopt or God assign.

It is not by its Noble cares and sublime results the one best calculated to fill the void left by upturn affections and demolished hopes.

I believe I must say yes.

And yet I shudder.

Alas, if I join St.

John, I abandon half myself.

If I go to India, I go to premature death.

And how will the interval between leaving England for India and India for the grave be filled?

Oh, I know well, that, too is very clear to my vision.

By straining to satisfy St.

John till my sinew's ache, I shall satisfy him to the finest central point and furthest outward circle of his expectations.

If I do go with him, if I do make the sacrifice he urges, I will make it absolutely.

I will throw all on the altar, heart, vitals, the entire victim.

He will never love me, but he shall approve me.

I will show him energies he has not yet seen, resources he has never suspected.

Yes, I can work as hard as he can and with as little grudging consent, then to his demand as possible.

But for one item, one dreadful item.

It is that he asks me to be his wife and has no more of a husband's heart for me than that frowning giant of a rock down which the stream is foaming and Yonder Gorge.

He prizes me as a soldier with a good weapon, and that is all unmarried to him.

This would never grieve me.

But can I let him complete his calculations?

Coolly put into practice his plans go through the wedding ceremony.

Can I receive him the bridal ring, endure all the forms of love which I doubt not.

He would scrupulously, observe and know that the spirit was quite absent.

Can I bear the consciousness that every endearment he bestows is a sacrifice made on principle?

No.

Such a martyrdom would be monstrous.

I will never undergo it.

As his sister.

I might accompany him, not as his wife.

I will tell him so.

I looked towards the Knoll.

There he lay still as a prostrate column.

His face turned to me, his eye beaming, watchful and keen.

He started to his feet and approached me.

I am ready to go to India.

If I may go free.

Your answer requires a commentary, he said.

It is not clear.

You have hitherto been my adopted brother.

I your adopted sister.

Let us continue as such.

You and I had better not marry.

He shook his head.

Adopted fraternity will not do in this case.

If you were my real sister, it would be different.

I should take you and seek no wife.

But as it is, either our Union must be consecrated and sealed by marriage or it cannot exist.

Practical obstacles oppose themselves to any other plan.

Do you not see it?

Jane, consider a moment.

Your strong sense will guide you.

I did consider, and still my sense, such as it was, directed me only to the fact that we did not love each other as man and wife should, and therefore it inferred.

We ought not to marry.

I said so.

St.

John, I returned.

I regard you as a brother, you me as a sister.

So let us continue.

We cannot.

We cannot.

He answered with short, sharp determination.

It would not do.

You have said you will go with me to India.

Remember, you have said that conditionally well, to the main point.

The departure with me from England, the cooperation with me in my future labours.

You do not object.

You have already as good as put your hand to the plow.

You are too consistent to withdraw it.

You have but one end to keep in view how the work you have undertaken can be best done.

Simplify your complicated interests, feelings, thoughts, wishes, aims merge all considerations in one purpose, that of fulfilling with effect with power the mission of your great master.

To do so, you must have a co adjuster, not a brother.

That is a loose tie, but a husband.

I, too, do not want a sister.

A sister might any day be taken from me.

I want a wife.

The soul help me.

I can influence efficiently in life and retain absolutely till death.

I shuddered as he spoke.

I felt his influence in my marrow, his hold on my limbs.

Seek one elsewhere than in me, St.

John, seek one fitted to you, one fitted to my purpose.

You mean fitted to my vocation again?

I tell you, it is not the insignificant private individual, the mere man with the man's selfish senses I wish to mate.

It is the missionary, and I will give the missionary my energies.

It is all he wants, but not myself.

That would be only adding to the husk and shell to the Colonel.

For them.

He has no use.

I retain them.

You cannot.

You ought not.

Do you think God will be satisfied with half an ablation?

Will he accept a mutilated sacrifice?

It is because of God I advocate.

It is under his standard.

I enlist you.

I cannot accept on his behalf a divided allegiance.

It must be entire.

Oh, I will give my heart to God, I said.

You do not want it.

I will not swear, reader, that there was not something of repressed sarcasm, both in the tone in which I uttered this sentence and in the feeling that accompanied it.

I had silently feared St.

John till now, because I had not understood him.

He had held me in awe, because he had held me in doubt.

How much of him was Saint, how much was mortal?

I could not hear to foretell.

But revelations were being made in this conference.

The analysis of his nature was proceeding before my eyes.

I saw his valuable.

I comprehended them.

I understood that sitting there where I did on the bank of Heath, and with that handsome form before me, I sat at the feet of a man, airing as I the veil fell from his hardness and despotism.

Having felt in him the presence of these qualities, I felt his imperfection and took courage.

I was with an equal one with whom I might argue, one whom, if I saw good, I might resist.

He was silent after I uttered the last sentence, and I presently risked an upward glance at his countenance, his eye bent on me, expressed at once stern surprise and keen inquiry.

Is she sarcastic and sarcastic?

To me?

It seemed to say, what does this signify?

Do not let us forget that this is a solemn matter, he said, ere long, one of which we may neither think nor talk lightly without sin, I trust, Jane, you are in earnest when you say you will serve your heart to God.

It is all I want.

Once rent your heart from man and fix it on your Maker.

The advancement of that Maker's spiritual Kingdom on Earth will be your chief delight.

And endeavor you will be ready to do at once.

Whatever furthers that end, you will see what impetus would be given to your efforts and mine by our physical and mental Union in marriage, the only Union that gives a character of permanent conformity to the destinies and designs of human beings, and passing over all minor capriceuses, all trivial difficulties and delicacies of feeling, all scruple about the degree, kind, strength, or tenderness of mere personal inclination.

You will hasten to enter into that Union at once.

Shall I?

I said briefly, and I looked at his features, beautiful in their harmony, but strangely formidable in their still severity, at his brow, commanding but not open at his eyes, bright and deep and searching, but never soft at his tall, imposing figure, and fancied myself an idea.

His wife?

Oh, it would never do.

As his curate, his Comrade, all would be right.

I would cross oceans with him in that capacity toil under Eastern Suns in Asian deserts, with him in that office, admire and emulate his courage and devotion and vigor, accommodate quietly to his masterhood smile undisturbed at his in eradicable ambition, discriminate the Christian from the man, profoundly esteem the one and freely forgive the other.

I should suffer often no doubt attached to him only in this capacity.

My body would be under rather astringent yoke, but my heart and mind would be free.

I should still have my unblided self to turn to my natural, UN, enslaved feelings with which to communicate.

In moments of loneliness there would be recesses in my mind which would be only mine, to which he never came, and sentiments growing there, fresh and sheltered, which his austerity could never blight, nor his measured warrior March trampled down.

But as his wife at his side, always and always restrained and always checked, forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low to compel it, to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital, this would be unendurable.

St.

John, I exclaimed when I had got so far in my meditation.

Well, he said icily, I repeat, I freely consent to go with you as your fellow missionary, but not as your wife.

I cannot marry you and become part of you.

A part of me you must become, he answered steadily, otherwise the whole bargain is void.

How can I, a man not yet 30, take out with me to India a girl of 19, unless she be married to me.

How can we be forever together, sometimes in solitudes, sometimes amid Savage tribes and unwed?

Very well, I said shortly.

Under the circumstances quite as well as if I were either your real sister or a man and a clergyman like yourself, it is known that you are not my sister.

I cannot introduce you as such.

To attempt it would be to fasten injurious suspicions on us both, and for the rest, though you have a man's vigorous brain.

You have a woman's heart, and it would not do.

It would do, I affirmed with some disdain.

Perfectly well.

I have a woman's heart, but not where you are concerned.

For you I have only a comrades constancy, a fellow soldiers, frankness, Fidelity, fraternity, if you like.

A Neil fights respect and submission to his hiriphant, nothing more.

Don't fear.

It is what I want, he said, speaking to himself.

It is just what I want, and there are obstacles in the way they must be.

Hewn down, Jane.

You would not repent marrying me.

Be certain of that.

We must be married.

I repeat it.

There is no other way, and undoubtedly enough of love would follow upon marriage to render the Union right.

Even in your eyes.

I scorn your idea of love, I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock, I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer.

Yes, St.

John, and I scorn you when you offer it.

He looked at me fixedly, compressing his well cut lips while he did so.

Whether he was incensed or surprised or what, it was not easy to tell he could command his countenance thoroughly.

I scarcely expected to hear that expression from you, he said.

I think I have done and uttered nothing to deserve scorn.

I was touched by his gentle tone and overawed by his high calm mean.

Forgive me the word, St.

John, but it is your own fault that I have been roused to speak so unguardedly.

You have introduced a topic on which our natures are at variance, a topic we should never discuss.

The very name of love is an Apple of discord between us.

If the reality were required, what should we do?

How should we feel, my dear cousin, abandon your scheme of marriage?

Forget it.

No, said he.

It is a long cherished scheme, and the only one which can secure my great end.

But I shall urge you no further at present.

Tomorrow I leave home for Cambridge.

I have many friends there to whom I should wish to say farewell.

I shall be absent a fortnight.

Take that space of time to consider my offer.

And do not forget that if you reject it, it is not me you deny but God.

Through my means he opens to you a Noble career as my wife.

Only you can enter upon it.

Refuse to be my wife, and you limit yourself forever to attract of selfish ease and barren obscurity.

Tremble, lest in that case you should be numbered with those who have denied the faith and are worse than infidels he had done.

Turning from me, he wants more looked to river, looked to Hill.

But this time his feelings were all pent in his heart.

I was not worthy to hear them uttered.

As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in his iron silence, all he felt towards me, the disappointment of an austere and despotic nature which has met resistance where it expected submission, the disapprobation of a cool inflexible judgment which has detected in another feelings and views in which it has no power to sympathize.

In short, as a man, he would have wished to coerce me into obedience.

It was only as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with my perversity, and allowed so long a space for reflection and repentance.

That night, after he had kissed his sisters, he thought proper to forget, even to shake hands with me, but left the room in silence.

I, who, though I had no love, had much friendship for him, was hurt by the market omission.

So much hurt that tears started to my eyes.

I see you and Saint John have been quarreling, Jane, said Diana, during your walk on the Moor.

But go after him.

He is now lingering in the passage, expecting you.

He will make it up.

I have not much pride under such circumstances.

I would always rather be happy than dignified.

And I ran after him.

He stood at the foot of the stairs.

Goodnight, Saint John, said I.

Goodnight, Jane, he replied calmly.

Then shake hands, I added, what a cold, loose touch he impressed on my fingers.

He was deeply displeased by what had occurred that day.

Cordiality would not warm nor tears move him.

No happy reconciliation was to be had with him, no cheering smile or generous word.

But still the Christian was patient and placid.

And when I asked him if he forgave me, he answered that he was not in the habit of cherishing the remembrance of vexation, that he had nothing to forgive.

Not having been offended.

And with that answer, he left me.

I would much rather he had knocked me down.

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