The recollection of about three days and nights succeeding this is
very dim in my mind. I can recall some sensations felt in that
interval; but few thoughts framed, and no actions performed. I knew
I was in a small room and in a narrow bed. To that bed I seemed
to have grown; I lay on it motionless as a stone; and to have torn
me from it would have been almost to kill me. I took no note of
the lapse of time of the change from morning to noon, from noon
to evening. I observed when any one entered or left the apartment:
I could even tell who they were; I could understand what was said
when the speaker stood near to me; but I could not answer; to
open my lips or move my limbs was equally impossible. Hannah, the
servant, was my most frequent visitor. Her coming disturbed me. I
had a feeling that she wished me away: that she did not understand
me or my circumstances; that she was prejudiced against me. Diana
and Mary appeared in the chamber once or twice a day. They
would whisper sentences of this sort at my bedside.

"It is very well we took her in." "Yes; she would certainly have
been found dead at the door in the morning had she been left out
all night. I wonder what she has gone through?" "Strange hardships,
I imagine poor, emaciated, pallid wanderer?" "She is not an uneducated
person, I should think, by her manner of speaking; her accent was quite
pure; and the clothes she took off, though splashed and wet, were little
worn and fine." "She has a peculiar face; fleshless and haggard as it is,
I rather like it; and when in good health and animated, I can fancy her
physiognomy would be agreeable." Never once in their dialogues did I
hear a syllable of regret at the hospitality they had extended to me, or
of suspicion of, or aversion to, myself. I was comforted.

Mr. St. John came but once: he looked at me, and said my state of
lethargy was the result of reaction from excessive and protracted
fatigue. He pronounced it needless to send for a doctor: nature,
he was sure, would manage best, left to herself. He said every nerve
had been overstrained in some way, and the whole system must sleep
torpid a while. There was no disease. He imagined my recovery would
be rapid enough when once commenced. These opinions he delivered
in a few words, in a quiet, low voice; and added, after a pause, in
the tone of a man little accustomed to expansive comment, "Rather
an unusual physiognomy; certainly, not indicative of vulgarity or
degradation."

"Far otherwise," responded Diana. "To speak truth, St. John, my
heart rather warms to the poor little soul. I wish we may be able
to benefit her permanently." "That is hardly likely," was the reply.
"You will find she is some young lady who has had a misunderstanding
with her friends, and has probably injudiciously left them. We may,
perhaps, succeed in restoring her to them, if she is not obstinate:
but I trace lines of force in her face which make me sceptical of her
tractability." He stood considering me some minutes; then added,
"She looks sensible, but not at all handsome." "She is so ill, St. John."
"Ill or well, she would always be plain. The grace and harmony of
beauty are quite wanting in those features."

On the third day I was better; on the fourth, I could speak, move,
rise in bed, and turn. Hannah had brought me some gruel and dry
toast, about, as I supposed, the dinner hour. I had eaten with
relish: the food was good void of the feverish flavour which
had hitherto poisoned what I had swallowed. When she left me, I
felt comparatively strong and revived: ere long satiety of repose
and desire for action stirred me. I wished to rise; but what could
I put on? Only my damp and bemired apparel; in which I had slept
on the ground and fallen in the marsh. I felt ashamed to appear
before my benefactors so clad. I was spared the humiliation.

On a chair by the bedside were all my own things, clean and dry.
My black silk frock hung against the wall. The traces of the bog
were removed from it; the creases left by the wet smoothed out: it
was quite decent. My very shoes and stockings were purified and
rendered presentable. There were the means of washing in the room,
and a comb and brush to smooth my hair. After a weary process,
and resting every five minutes, I succeeded in dressing myself.
My clothes hung loose on me; for I was much wasted, but I covered
deficiencies with a shawl, and once more, clean and respectable looking
no speck of the dirt, no trace of the disorder I so hated, and
which seemed so to degrade me, left I crept down a stone staircase
with the aid of the banisters, to a narrow low passage, and found
my way presently to the kitchen.

It was full of the fragrance of new bread and the warmth of a
generous fire. Hannah was baking. Prejudices, it is well known,
are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never
been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm
as weeds among stones. Hannah had been cold and stiff, indeed,
at the first: latterly she had begun to relent a little; and when
she saw me come in tidy and well dressed, she even smiled.
"What, you have got up!" she said. "You are better, then. You
may sit you down in my chair on the hearthstone, if you will."
She pointed to the rocking chair: I took it. She bustled about,
examining me every now and then with the corner of her eye. Turning
to me, as she took some loaves from the oven, she asked bluntly
"Did you ever go a begging afore you came here?"

I was indignant for a moment; but remembering that anger was out
of the question, and that I had indeed appeared as a beggar to her,
I answered quietly, but still not without a certain marked firmness
"You are mistaken in supposing me a beggar. I am no beggar; any
more than yourself or your young ladies." After a pause she said, "I
dunnut understand that: you've like no house, nor no brass, I guess?"
"The want of house or brass (by which I suppose you mean money)
does not make a beggar in your sense of the word." "Are you book
learned?" she inquired presently. "Yes, very." "But you've never
been to a boarding school?" "I was at a boarding school eight years."
She opened her eyes wide. "Whatever cannot ye keep yourself for,
then?" "I have kept myself; and, I trust, shall keep myself again.
What are you going to do with these gooseberries?" I inquired,
as she brought out a basket of the fruit. "Mak' 'em into pies."
"Give them to me and I'll pick them." "Nay; I dunnut want ye
to do nought." "But I must do something. Let me have them."

She consented; and she even brought me a clean towel to spread
over my dress, "lest," as she said, "I should mucky it." "Ye've not
been used to sarvant's wark, I see by your hands," she remarked.
"Happen ye've been a dressmaker?" "No, you are wrong. And now,
never mind what I have been: don't trouble your head further
about me; but tell me the name of the house where we are."
"Some calls it Marsh End, and some calls it Moor House."
"And the gentleman who lives here is called Mr. St. John?"
"Nay; he doesn't live here: he is only staying a while. When he
is at home, he is in his own parish at Morton." "That village
a few miles off? "Aye." "And what is he?" "He is a parson."
I remembered the answer of the old housekeeper at the parsonage,
when I had asked to see the clergyman. "This, then, was his father's
residence?" "Aye; old Mr. Rivers lived here, and his father, and
grandfather, and gurt (great) grandfather afore him."
"The name, then, of that gentleman, is Mr. St. John Rivers?"
"Aye; St. John is like his kirstened name." "And his sisters
are called Diana and Mary Rivers?" "Yes." "Their father is dead?"

"Dead three weeks sin' of a stroke." "They have no mother?"
"The mistress has been dead this mony a year." "Have you lived
with the family long?" "I've lived here thirty year. I nursed
them all three." "That proves you must have been an honest
and faithful servant. I will say so much for you, though you
have had the incivility to call me a beggar." She again
regarded me with a surprised stare. "I believe," she said,
"I was quite mista'en in my thoughts of you: but there is
so mony cheats goes about, you mun forgie me."

"And though," I continued, rather severely, "you wished
to turn me from the door, on a night when you should
not have shut out a dog." "Well, it was hard: but what
can a body do? I thought more o' th' childer nor of mysel:
poor things! They've like nobody to tak' care on 'em but
me. I'm like to look sharpish." I maintained a grave silence
for some minutes. "You munnut think too hardly of me,"
she again remarked. "But I do think hardly of you," I said;
"and I'll tell you why not so much because you refused to
give me shelter, or regarded me as an impostor, as because
you just now made it a species of reproach that I had no
'brass' and no house. Some of the best people that ever
lived have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a
christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime."

"No more I ought," said she: "Mr. St. John tells me so too;
and I see I wor wrang but I've clear a different notion on
you now to what I had. You look a raight down dacent
little crater." "That will do I forgive you now. Shake
hands." She put her floury and horny hand into mine;
another and heartier smile illumined her rough face,
and from that moment we were friends. Hannah was
evidently fond of talking. While I picked the fruit, and
she made the paste for the pies, she proceeded to give
me sundry details about her deceased master and
mistress, and "the childer," as she called the young people.

Old Mr. Rivers, she said, was a plain man enough, but a
gentleman, and of as ancient a family as could be found.
Marsh End had belonged to the Rivers ever since it was a
house: and it was, she affirmed, "aboon two hundred year
old for all it looked but a small, humble place, naught to
compare wi' Mr. Oliver's grand hall down i' Morton Vale.
But she could remember Bill Oliver's father a journeyman
needlemaker; and th' Rivers wor gentry i' th' owd days
o' th' Henrys, as onybody might see by looking into th'
registers i' Morton church vestry." Still, she allowed, "the
owd maister was like other folk naught mich out o' t'
common way: stark mad o' shooting, and farming, and sich
like." The mistress was different. She was a great reader,
and studied a deal; and the "bairns" had taken after her.

There was nothing like them in these parts, nor ever had
been; they had liked learning, all three, almost from the
time they could speak; and they had always been "of a mak' of
their own." Mr. St. John, when he grew up, would go to college
and be a parson; and the girls, as soon as they left school, would
seek places as governesses: for they had told her their father had
some years ago lost a great deal of money by a man he had trusted
turning bankrupt; and as he was now not rich enough to give them
fortunes, they must provide for themselves. They had lived very
little at home for a long while, and were only come now to stay a
few weeks on account of their father's death; but they did so like
Marsh End and Morton, and all these moors and hills about. They
had been in London, and many other grand towns; but they always
said there was no place like home; and then they were so agreeable
with each other never fell out nor "threaped." She did not know
where there was such a family for being united.

Having finished my task of gooseberry picking, I asked where the
two ladies and their brother were now. "Gone over to Morton for a
walk; but they would be back in half an hour to tea." They returned
within the time Hannah had allotted them: they entered by the
kitchen door. Mr. St. John, when he saw me, merely bowed and
passed through; the two ladies stopped: Mary, in a few words,
kindly and calmly expressed the pleasure she felt in seeing me
well enough to be able to come down; Diana took my hand: she
shook her head at me. "You should have waited for my leave to
descend," she said. "You still look very pale and so thin! Poor
child! poor girl!" Diana had a voice toned, to my ear, like the
cooing of a dove. She possessed eyes whose gaze I delighted to
encounter. Her whole face seemed to me full of charm. Mary's
countenance was equally intelligent her features equally pretty;
but her expression was more reserved, and her manners, though
gentle, more distant. Diana looked and spoke with a certain
authority: she had a will, evidently. It was my nature to feel
pleasure in yielding to an authority supported like hers, and to
bend, where my conscience and self respect permitted, to an active
will. "And what business have you here?" she continued. "It is not
your place. Mary and I sit in the kitchen sometimes, because at home
we like to be free, even to license but you are a visitor, and must go
into the parlour." "I am very well here."

"Not at all, with Hannah bustling about and covering you with
flour." "Besides, the fire is too hot for you," interposed Mary.
"To be sure," added her sister. "Come, you must be obedient." And
still holding my hand she made me rise, and led me into the inner
room. "Sit there," she said, placing me on the sofa, "while we take
our things off and get the tea ready; it is another privilege we
exercise in our little moorland home to prepare our own meals
when we are so inclined, or when Hannah is baking, brewing,
washing, or ironing." She closed the door, leaving me solus with
Mr. St. John, who sat opposite, a book or newspaper in his hand.
I examined first, the parlour, and then its occupant.

The parlour was rather a small room, very plainly furnished, yet
comfortable, because clean and neat. The old fashioned chairs were
very bright, and the walnut wood table was like a looking glass. A
few strange, antique portraits of the men and women of other days
decorated the stained walls; a cupboard with glass doors contained
some books and an ancient set of china. There was no superfluous
ornament in the room not one modern piece of furniture, save a
brace of workboxes and a lady's desk in rosewood, which stood on
a side table: everything including the carpet and curtains
looked at once well worn and well saved.

Mr. St. John sitting as still as one of the dusty pictures on
the walls, keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his
lips mutely sealed was easy enough to examine. Had he been
a statue instead of a man, he could not have been easier. He was
young perhaps from twenty eight to thirty tall, slender;
his face riveted the eye; it was like a Greek face, very pure in
outline: quite a straight, classic nose; quite an Athenian mouth
and chin. It is seldom, indeed, an English face comes so near the
antique models as did his. He might well be a little shocked at
the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being so harmonious.
his eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his high forehead,
colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks
of fair hair.

This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader? Yet he whom
it describes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a
yielding, an impressible, or even of a placid nature. Quiescent
as he now sat, there was something about his nostril, his mouth,
his brow, which, to my perceptions, indicated elements within
either restless, or hard, or eager. He did not speak to me one
word, nor even direct to me one glance, till his sisters returned.
Diana, as she passed in and out, in the course of preparing tea,
brought me a little cake, baked on the top of the oven.
"Eat that now," she said: "you must be hungry. Hannah says you
have had nothing but some gruel since breakfast."

I did not refuse it, for my appetite was awakened and keen. Mr.
Rivers now closed his book, approached the table, and, as he took
a seat, fixed his blue pictorial looking eyes full on me. There
was an unceremonious directness, a searching, decided steadfastness
in his gaze now, which told that intention, and not diffidence,
had hitherto kept it averted from the stranger. "You are very hungry,"
he said. "I am, sir." It is my way it always was my way, by instinct
ever to meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness.

"It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for
the last three days: there would have been danger in yielding to
the cravings of your appetite at first. Now you may eat, though
still not immoderately." "I trust I shall not eat long at your
expense, sir," was my very clumsily contrived, unpolished answer.
"No," he said coolly: "when you have indicated to us the residence
of your friends, we can write to them, and you may be restored to
home." "That, I must plainly tell you, is out of my power to do;
being absolutely without home and friends."

The three looked at me, but not distrustfully; I felt there was no
suspicion in their glances: there was more of curiosity. I speak
particularly of the young ladies. St. John's eyes, though clear
enough in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult
to fathom. He seemed to use them rather as instruments to search
other people's thoughts, than as agents to reveal his own: the
which combination of keenness and reserve was considerably more
calculated to embarrass than to encourage. "Do you mean to say,"
he asked, "that you are completely isolated from every connection?"
"I do. Not a tie links me to any living thing: not a claim do I possess
to admittance under any roof in England." "A most singular position
at your age!" Here I saw his glance directed to my hands, which were
folded on the table before me. I wondered what he sought there: his
words soon explained the quest.

"You have never been married? You are a spinster?" Diana laughed.
"Why, she can't he 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 dependant; educated in a charitable
institution. I will even tell you the name of the establishment,
where I passed six years as a pupil, and two as a teacher Lowood
Orphan Asylum, shire: you will have heard of it, Mr. Rivers? the
Rev. Robert Brocklehurst is the treasurer."

"I have heard of Mr. Brocklehurst, and I have seen the school."
"I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess.
I obtained a good situation, and was happy. This place I was
obliged to leave four days before I came here. The reason of my
departure I cannot and ought not to explain: it would be useless,
dangerous, and would sound incredible. No blame attached to me:
I am as free from culpability as any one of you three. Miserable
I am, and must be for a time; for the catastrophe which drove me
from a house I had found a paradise was of a strange and direful
nature. I observed but two points in planning my departure speed,
secrecy: to secure these, I had to leave behind me everything I
possessed except a small parcel; which, in my hurry and trouble of
mind, I forgot to take out of the coach that brought me to Whitcross.
To this neighbourhood, then, I came, quite destitute. I slept two
nights in the open air, and wandered about two days without crossing
a threshold: but twice in that space of time did I taste food;
and it was when brought by hunger, exhaustion, and despair almost
to the last gasp, that you, Mr. Rivers, forbade me to perish of
want at your door, and took me under the shelter of your roof. I
know all your sisters have done for me since for I have not
been insensible during my seeming torpor and I owe to their
spontaneous, genuine, genial compassion as large a debt as to your
evangelical charity."

"Don't make her talk any more now, St. John," said Diana, as I
paused; "she is evidently not yet fit for excitement. Come to the
sofa and sit down now, Miss Elliott." I gave an involuntary half
start at hearing the alias: I had forgotten my new name. Mr. Rivers,
whom nothing seemed to escape, noticed it at once. "You said your
name was Jane Elliott?" he observed. "I did say so; and it is the name
by which I think it expedient to be called at present, but it is not
my real name, and when I hear it, it sounds strange to me."
"Your real name you will not give?" "No: I fear discovery above
all things; and whatever disclosure would lead to it, I avoid."
"You are quite right, I am sure," said Diana. "Now do, brother,
let her be at peace a while." But when St. John had mused a few
moments he recommenced as imperturbably and with as much
acumen as ever.

"You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality you
would wish, I see, to dispense as soon as may be with my sisters'
compassion, and, above all, with my CHARITY (I am quite sensible
of the distinction drawn, nor do I resent it it is just): you desire
to be independent of us?" "I do: I have already said so. Show me
how to work, or how to seek work: that is all I now ask; then let
me go, if it be but to the meanest cottage; but till then, allow me
to stay here: I dread another essay of the horrors of homeless
destitution." "Indeed you SHALL stay here," said Diana, putting
her white hand on my head. "You SHALL," repeated Mary, in the
tone of undemonstrative sincerity which seemed natural to her.

"My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you," said Mr.
St. John, "as they would have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing
a half frozen bird, some wintry wind might have driven through
their casement. I feel more inclination to put you in the way of
keeping yourself, and shall endeavour to do so; but observe, my
sphere is narrow. I am but the incumbent of a poor country parish:
my aid must be of the humblest sort. And if you are inclined to
despise the day of small things, seek some more efficient succour
than such as I can offer." "She has already said that she is willing
to do anything honest she can do," answered Diana for me; "and
you know, St. John, she has no choice of helpers: she is forced to
put up with such crusty people as you." "I will be a dressmaker;
I will be a plain workwoman; I will be a servant, a nurse girl,
if I can be no better," I answered. "Right," said Mr. St. John, quite
coolly. "If such is your spirit, I promise to aid you, in my own time
and way." He now resumed the book with which he had been
occupied before tea. I soon withdrew, for I had talked as much,
and sat up as long, as my present strength would permit.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Deluxe Edition Chapter 30.>