Chapter 29

The recollection of about three days and nights succeeding this is very dim in my mind. I
can recall some sensations felt in that interval; but few thoughts framed, and no actions
performed. I knew I was in a small room and in a narrow bed. To that bed I seemed to
have grown; I lay on it motionless as a stone; and to have torn me from it would have
been almost to kill me. I took no note of the lapse of time—of the change from morning
to noon, from noon to evening. I observed when any one entered or left the apartment: I
could even tell who they were; I could understand what was said when the speaker
stood near to me; but I could not answer; to open my lips or move my limbs was equally
impossible. Hannah, the servant, was my most frequent visitor. Her coming disturbed
me. I had a feeling that she wished me away: that she did not understand me or my
circumstances; that she was prejudiced against me. Diana and Mary appeared in the
chamber once or twice a day. They would whisper sentences of this sort at my
bedside—
“It is very well we took her in.”
“Yes; she would certainly have been found dead at the door in the morning had she been
left out all night. I wonder what she has gone through?”
“Strange hardships, I imagine—poor, emaciated, pallid wanderer!”
“She is not an uneducated person, I should think, by her manner of speaking; her accent
was quite pure; and the clothes she took off, though splashed and wet, were little worn
and fine.”
“She has a peculiar face; fleshless and haggard as it is, I rather like it; and when in good
health and animated, I can fancy her physiognomy would be agreeable.”
Never once in their dialogues did I hear a syllable of regret at the hospitality they had
extended to me, or of suspicion of, or aversion to, myself. I was comforted.
Mr. St. John came but once: he looked at me, and said my state of lethargy was the result
of reaction from excessive and protracted fatigue. He pronounced it needless to send for
a doctor: nature, he was sure, would manage best, left to herself. He said every nerve
had been overstrained in some way, and the whole system must sleep torpid a while.
There was no disease. He imagined my recovery would be rapid enough when once
commenced. These opinions he delivered in a few words, in a quiet, low voice; and
added, after a pause, in the tone of a man little accustomed to expansive comment,
“Rather an unusual physiognomy; certainly, not indicative of vulgarity or degradation.”
“Far otherwise,” responded Diana. “To speak truth, St. John, my heart rather warms to
the poor little soul. I wish we may be able to benefit her permanently.”
“That is hardly likely,” was the reply. “You will find she is some young lady who has had
a misunderstanding with her friends, and has probably injudiciously left them. We may,
perhaps, succeed in restoring her to them, if she is not obstinate: but I trace lines of
force in her face which make me sceptical of her tractability.” He stood considering me
some minutes; then added, “She looks sensible, but not at all handsome.”

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“She is so ill, St. John.”
“Ill or well, she would always be plain. The grace and harmony of beauty are quite
wanting in those features.”
On the third day I was better; on the fourth, I could speak, move, rise in bed, and turn.
Hannah had brought me some gruel and dry toast, about, as I supposed, the dinner-
hour. I had eaten with relish: the food was good—void of the feverish flavour which had
hitherto poisoned what I had swallowed. When she left me, I felt comparatively strong
and revived: ere long satiety of repose and desire for action stirred me. I wished to rise;
but what could I put on? Only my damp and bemired apparel; in which I had slept on the
ground and fallen in the marsh. I felt ashamed to appear before my benefactors so clad. I
was spared the humiliation.
On a chair by the bedside were all my own things, clean and dry. My black silk frock
hung against the wall. The traces of the bog were removed from it; the creases left by
the wet smoothed out: it was quite decent. My very shoes and stockings were purified
and rendered presentable. There were the means of washing in the room, and a comb
and brush to smooth my hair. After a weary process, and resting every five minutes, I
succeeded in dressing myself. My clothes hung loose on me; for I was much wasted, but I
covered deficiencies with a shawl, and once more, clean and respectable looking—no
speck of the dirt, no trace of the disorder I so hated, and which seemed so to degrade
me, left—I crept down a stone staircase with the aid of the banisters, to a narrow low
passage, and found my way presently to the kitchen.
It was full of the fragrance of new bread and the warmth of a generous fire. Hannah was
baking. Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose
soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds
among stones. Hannah had been cold and stiff, indeed, at the first: latterly she had
begun to relent a little; and when she saw me come in tidy and well-dressed, she even
smiled.
“What, you have got up!” she said. “You are better, then. You may sit you down in my
chair on the hearthstone, if you will.”
She pointed to the rocking-chair: I took it. She bustled about, examining me every now
and then with the corner of her eye. Turning to me, as she took some loaves from the
oven, she asked bluntly—
“Did you ever go a-begging afore you came here?”
I was indignant for a moment; but remembering that anger was out of the question, and
that I had indeed appeared as a beggar to her, I answered quietly, but still not without a
certain marked firmness—
“You are mistaken in supposing me a beggar. I am no beggar; any more than yourself or
your young ladies.”
After a pause she said, “I dunnut understand that: you’ve like no house, nor no brass, I
guess?”
“The want of house or brass (by which I suppose you mean money) does not make a
beggar in your sense of the word.”
“Are you book-learned?” she inquired presently.
“Yes, very.”

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“But you’ve never been to a boarding-school?”
“I was at a boarding-school eight years.”
She opened her eyes wide. “Whatever cannot ye keep yourself for, then?”
“I have kept myself; and, I trust, shall keep myself again. What are you going to do with
these gooseberries?” I inquired, as she brought out a basket of the fruit.
“Mak’ ’em into pies.”
“Give them to me and I’ll pick them.”
“Nay; I dunnut want ye to do nought.”
“But I must do something. Let me have them.”
She consented; and she even brought me a clean towel to spread over my dress, “lest,”
as she said, “I should mucky it.”
“Ye’ve not been used to sarvant’s wark, I see by your hands,” she remarked. “Happen
ye’ve been a dressmaker?”
“No, you are wrong. And now, never mind what I have been: don’t trouble your head
further about me; but tell me the name of the house where we are.”
“Some calls it Marsh End, and some calls it Moor House.”
“And the gentleman who lives here is called Mr. St. John?”
“Nay; he doesn’t live here: he is only staying a while. When he is at home, he is in his
own parish at Morton.”
“That village a few miles off?
“Aye.”
“And what is he?”
“He is a parson.”
I remembered the answer of the old housekeeper at the parsonage, when I had asked to
see the clergyman. “This, then, was his father’s residence?”
“Aye; old Mr. Rivers lived here, and his father, and grandfather, and gurt (great)
grandfather afore him.”
“The name, then, of that gentleman, is Mr. St. John Rivers?”
“Aye; St. John is like his kirstened name.”
“And his sisters are called Diana and Mary Rivers?”
“Yes.”
“Their father is dead?”
“Dead three weeks sin’ of a stroke.”
“They have no mother?”
“The mistress has been dead this mony a year.”
“Have you lived with the family long?”
“I’ve lived here thirty year. I nursed them all three.”

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“That proves you must have been an honest and faithful servant. I will say so much for
you, though you have had the incivility to call me a beggar.”
She again regarded me with a surprised stare. “I believe,” she said, “I was quite mista’en
in my thoughts of you: but there is so mony cheats goes about, you mun forgie me.”
“And though,” I continued, rather severely, “you wished to turn me from the door, on a
night when you should not have shut out a dog.”
“Well, it was hard: but what can a body do? I thought more o’ th’ childer nor of mysel:
poor things! They’ve like nobody to tak’ care on ’em but me. I’m like to look sharpish.”
I maintained a grave silence for some minutes.
“You munnut think too hardly of me,” she again remarked.
“But I do think hardly of you,” I said; “and I’ll tell you why—not so much because you
refused to give me shelter, or regarded me as an impostor, as because you just now
made it a species of reproach that I had no ‘brass’ and no house. Some of the best people
that ever lived have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not
to consider poverty a crime.”
“No more I ought,” said she: “Mr. St. John tells me so too; and I see I wor wrang—but I’ve
clear a different notion on you now to what I had. You look a raight down dacent little
crater.”
“That will do—I forgive you now. Shake hands.”
She put her floury and horny hand into mine; another and heartier smile illumined her
rough face, and from that moment we were friends.
Hannah was evidently fond of talking. While I picked the fruit, and she made the paste
for the pies, she proceeded to give me sundry details about her deceased master and
mistress, and “the childer,” as she called the young people.
Old Mr. Rivers, she said, was a plain man enough, but a gentleman, and of as ancient a
family as could be found. Marsh End had belonged to the Rivers ever since it was a
house: and it was, she affirmed, “aboon two hundred year old—for all it looked but a
small, humble place, naught to compare wi’ Mr. Oliver’s grand hall down i’ Morton Vale.
But she could remember Bill Oliver’s father a journeyman needlemaker; and th’ Rivers
wor gentry i’ th’ owd days o’ th’ Henrys, as onybody might see by looking into th’
registers i’ Morton Church vestry.” Still, she allowed, “the owd maister was like other
folk—naught mich out o’ t’ common way: stark mad o’ shooting, and farming, and sich
like.” The mistress was different. She was a great reader, and studied a deal; and the
“bairns” had taken after her. There was nothing like them in these parts, nor ever had
been; they had liked learning, all three, almost from the time they could speak; and they
had always been “of a mak’ of their own.” Mr. St. John, when he grew up, would go to
college and be a parson; and the girls, as soon as they left school, would seek places as
governesses: for they had told her their father had some years ago lost a great deal of
money by a man he had trusted turning bankrupt; and as he was now not rich enough to
give them fortunes, they must provide for themselves. They had lived very little at home
for a long while, and were only come now to stay a few weeks on account of their
father’s death; but they did so like Marsh End and Morton, and all these moors and hills
about. They had been in London, and many other grand towns; but they always said
there was no place like home; and then they were so agreeable with each other—never

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fell out nor “threaped.” She did not know where there was such a family for being
united.
Having finished my task of gooseberry picking, I asked where the two ladies and their
brother were now.
“Gone over to Morton for a walk; but they would be back in half-an-hour to tea.”
They returned within the time Hannah had allotted them: they entered by the kitchen
door. Mr. St. John, when he saw me, merely bowed and passed through; the two ladies
stopped: Mary, in a few words, kindly and calmly expressed the pleasure she felt in
seeing me well enough to be able to come down; Diana took my hand: she shook her
head at me.
“You should have waited for my leave to descend,” she said. “You still look very pale—
and so thin! Poor child!—poor girl!”
Diana had a voice toned, to my ear, like the cooing of a dove. She possessed eyes whose
gaze I delighted to encounter. Her whole face seemed to me full of charm. Mary’s
countenance was equally intelligent—her features equally pretty; but her expression
was more reserved, and her manners, though gentle, more distant. Diana looked and
spoke with a certain authority: she had a will, evidently. It was my nature to feel
pleasure in yielding to an authority supported like hers, and to bend, where my
conscience and self-respect permitted, to an active will.
“And what business have you here?” she continued. “It is not your place. Mary and I sit
in the kitchen sometimes, because at home we like to be free, even to license—but you
are a visitor, and must go into the parlour.”
“I am very well here.”
“Not at all, with Hannah bustling about and covering you with flour.”
“Besides, the fire is too hot for you,” interposed Mary.
“To be sure,” added her sister. “Come, you must be obedient.” And still holding my hand
she made me rise, and led me into the inner room.
“Sit there,” she said, placing me on the sofa, “while we take our things off and get the tea
ready; it is another privilege we exercise in our little moorland home—to prepare our
own meals when we are so inclined, or when Hannah is baking, brewing, washing, or
ironing.”
She closed the door, leaving me solus with Mr. St. John, who sat opposite, a book or
newspaper in his hand. I examined first, the parlour, and then its occupant.
The parlour was rather a small room, very plainly furnished, yet comfortable, because
clean and neat. The old-fashioned chairs were very bright, and the walnut-wood table
was like a looking-glass. A few strange, antique portraits of the men and women of other
days decorated the stained walls; a cupboard with glass doors contained some books
and an ancient set of china. There was no superfluous ornament in the room—not one
modern piece of furniture, save a brace of workboxes and a lady’s desk in rosewood,
which stood on a side-table: everything—including the carpet and curtains—looked at
once well worn and well saved.
Mr. St. John—sitting as still as one of the dusty pictures on the walls, keeping his eyes
fixed on the page he perused, and his lips mutely sealed—was easy enough to examine.

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Had he been a statue instead of a man, he could not have been easier. He was young—
perhaps from twenty-eight to thirty—tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was like a
Greek face, very pure in outline: quite a straight, classic nose; quite an Athenian mouth
and chin. It is seldom, indeed, an English face comes so near the antique models as did
his. He might well be a little shocked at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being
so harmonious. His eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his high forehead,
colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of fair hair.
This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader? Yet he whom it describes scarcely
impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a yielding, an impressible, or even of a placid
nature. Quiescent as he now sat, there was something about his nostril, his mouth, his
brow, which, to my perceptions, indicated elements within either restless, or hard, or
eager. He did not speak to me one word, nor even direct to me one glance, till his sisters
returned. Diana, as she passed in and out, in the course of preparing tea, brought me a
little cake, baked on the top of the oven.
“Eat that now,” she said: “you must be hungry. Hannah says you have had nothing but
some gruel since breakfast.”
I did not refuse it, for my appetite was awakened and keen. Mr. Rivers now closed his
book, approached the table, and, as he took a seat, fixed his blue pictorial-looking eyes
full on me. There was an unceremonious directness, a searching, decided steadfastness
in his gaze now, which told that intention, and not diffidence, had hitherto kept it
averted from the stranger.
“You are very hungry,” he said.
“I am, sir.” It is my way—it always was my way, by instinct—ever to meet the brief with
brevity, the direct with plainness.
“It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for the last three days: there
would have been danger in yielding to the cravings of your appetite at first. Now you
may eat, though still not immoderately.”
“I trust I shall not eat long at your expense, sir,” was my very clumsily-contrived,
unpolished answer.
“No,” he said coolly: “when you have indicated to us the residence of your friends, we
can write to them, and you may be restored to home.”
“That, I must plainly tell you, is out of my power to do; being absolutely without home
and friends.”
The three looked at me, but not distrustfully; I felt there was no suspicion in their
glances: there was more of curiosity. I speak particularly of the young ladies. St. John’s
eyes, though clear enough in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult to fathom.
He seemed to use them rather as instruments to search other people’s thoughts, than as
agents to reveal his own: the which combination of keenness and reserve was
considerably more calculated to embarrass than to encourage.
“Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that you are completely isolated from every
connection?”
“I do. Not a tie links me to any living thing: not a claim do I possess to admittance under
any roof in England.”
“A most singular position at your age!”

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Here I saw his glance directed to my hands, which were folded on the table before me. I
wondered what he sought there: his words soon explained the quest.
“You have never been married? You are a spinster?”
Diana laughed. “Why, she can’t be above seventeen or eighteen years old, St. John,” said
she.
“I am near nineteen: but I am not married. No.”
I felt a burning glow mount to my face; for bitter and agitating recollections were
awakened by the allusion to marriage. They all saw the embarrassment and the
emotion. Diana and Mary relieved me by turning their eyes elsewhere than to my
crimsoned visage; but the colder and sterner brother continued to gaze, till the trouble
he had excited forced out tears as well as colour.
“Where did you last reside?” he now asked.
“You are too inquisitive, St. John,” murmured Mary in a low voice; but he leaned over the
table and required an answer by a second firm and piercing look.
“The name of the place where, and of the person with whom I lived, is my secret,” I
replied concisely.
“Which, if you like, you have, in my opinion, a right to keep, both from St. John and every
other questioner,” remarked Diana.
“Yet if I know nothing about you or your history, I cannot help you,” he said. “And you
need help, do you not?”
“I need it, and I seek it so far, sir, that some true philanthropist will put me in the way of
getting work which I can do, and the remuneration for which will keep me, if but in the
barest necessaries of life.”
“I know not whether I am a true philanthropist; yet I am willing to aid you to the utmost
of my power in a purpose so honest. First, then, tell me what you have been accustomed
to do, and what you can do.”
I had now swallowed my tea. I was mightily refreshed by the beverage; as much so as a
giant with wine: it gave new tone to my unstrung nerves, and enabled me to address
this penetrating young judge steadily.
“Mr. Rivers,” I said, turning to him, and looking at him, as he looked at me, openly and
without diffidence, “you and your sisters have done me a great service—the greatest
man can do his fellow-being; you have rescued me, by your noble hospitality, from
death. This benefit conferred gives you an unlimited claim on my gratitude, and a claim,
to a certain extent, on my confidence. I will tell you as much of the history of the
wanderer you have harboured, as I can tell without compromising my own peace of
mind—my own security, moral and physical, and that of others.
“I am an orphan, the daughter of a clergyman. My parents died before I could know
them. I was brought up a dependent; educated in a charitable institution. I will even tell
you the name of the establishment, where I passed six years as a pupil, and two as a
teacher—Lowood Orphan Asylum, ——shire: you will have heard of it, Mr. Rivers?—the
Rev. Robert Brocklehurst is the treasurer.”
“I have heard of Mr. Brocklehurst, and I have seen the school.”

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“I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess. I obtained a good
situation, and was happy. This place I was obliged to leave four days before I came here.
The reason of my departure I cannot and ought not to explain: it would be useless,
dangerous, and would sound incredible. No blame attached to me: I am as free from
culpability as any one of you three. Miserable I am, and must be for a time; for the
catastrophe which drove me from a house I had found a paradise was of a strange and
direful nature. I observed but two points in planning my departure—speed, secrecy: to
secure these, I had to leave behind me everything I possessed except a small parcel;
which, in my hurry and trouble of mind, I forgot to take out of the coach that brought me
to Whitcross. To this neighbourhood, then, I came, quite destitute. I slept two nights in
the open air, and wandered about two days without crossing a threshold: but twice in
that space of time did I taste food; and it was when brought by hunger, exhaustion, and
despair almost to the last gasp, that you, Mr. Rivers, forbade me to perish of want at
your door, and took me under the shelter of your roof. I know all your sisters have done
for me since—for I have not been insensible during my seeming torpor—and I owe to
their spontaneous, genuine, genial compassion as large a debt as to your evangelical
charity.”
“Don’t make her talk any more now, St. John,” said Diana, as I paused; “she is evidently
not yet fit for excitement. Come to the sofa and sit down now, Miss Elliott.”
I gave an involuntary half start at hearing the alias: I had forgotten my new name. Mr.
Rivers, whom nothing seemed to escape, noticed it at once.
“You said your name was Jane Elliott?” he observed.
“I did say so; and it is the name by which I think it expedient to be called at present, but
it is not my real name, and when I hear it, it sounds strange to me.”
“Your real name you will not give?”
“No: I fear discovery above all things; and whatever disclosure would lead to it, I avoid.”
“You are quite right, I am sure,” said Diana. “Now do, brother, let her be at peace a
while.”
But when St. John had mused a few moments he recommenced as imperturbably and
with as much acumen as ever.
“You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality—you would wish, I see, to
dispense as soon as may be with my sisters’ compassion, and, above all, with
my charity (I am quite sensible of the distinction drawn, nor do I resent it—it is just):
you desire to be independent of us?”
“I do: I have already said so. Show me how to work, or how to seek work: that is all I
now ask; then let me go, if it be but to the meanest cottage; but till then, allow me to stay
here: I dread another essay of the horrors of homeless destitution.”
“Indeed you shall stay here,” said Diana, putting her white hand on my head. “You shall,”
repeated Mary, in the tone of undemonstrative sincerity which seemed natural to her.
“My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you,” said Mr. St. John, “as they would
have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing a half-frozen bird, some wintry wind might
have driven through their casement. I feel more inclination to put you in the way of
keeping yourself, and shall endeavour to do so; but observe, my sphere is narrow. I am
but the incumbent of a poor country parish: my aid must be of the humblest sort. And if

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you are inclined to despise the day of small things, seek some more efficient succour
than such as I can offer.”
“She has already said that she is willing to do anything honest she can do,” answered
Diana for me; “and you know, St. John, she has no choice of helpers: she is forced to put
up with such crusty people as you.”
“I will be a dressmaker; I will be a plain-workwoman; I will be a servant, a nurse-girl, if I
can be no better,” I answered.
“Right,” said Mr. St. John, quite coolly. “If such is your spirit, I promise to aid you, in my
own time and way.”
He now resumed the book with which he had been occupied before tea. I soon
withdrew, for I had talked as much, and sat up as long, as my present strength would
permit.