Jane Slayre (46 page)

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else is as deeply impressed with her defects. They are such that she could sympathize in nothing I aspired to--cooperate in nothing I undertook. Rosamond a fighter, a slayer, a female apostle? Rosamond a missionary's wife? No!"

"But you need not be a missionary. You might relinquish that scheme. There are plenty of vampyres in England to pursue. Until we have eradicated them here, there is no need, perhaps, to seek them abroad. And as for preaching, you are an excellent clergyman. Morton embraces you. You need go no further."

"Relinquish! My vocation? My great work? My hopes of being numbered in the band who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their race--of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance--of substituting the hope of heaven for the fear of hell? It is what I have to look forward to, and to live for."

"And Miss Oliver? She has come to training. She has tried her best. Granted, she is no natural when it comes to fighting, and I can't imagine she will ever manage more than to defend herself, not to slay vampyres." I thought suddenly of her appalling lack of skills, though she did try. "Honestly, I doubt she could even manage to defend herself in any event. Still, she has made the effort. Why not let her decide what kind of life she would prefer to lead?"

"Miss Oliver enjoys balls and fetes and luxuries. She is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers. In less than a month, my image will be effaced from her heart. She will forget me and marry someone who will make her far happier than I should do."

"You speak coolly enough; but you suffer in the conflict. You are wasting away."

"No. If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, yet unsettled--my departure, continually procrastinated. Only this morning, I received intelligence that the successor, whose arrival I have been so long expecting, cannot be ready to replace me for three months to come yet. And perhaps the three months may extend to six."

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"You tremble and become flushed whenever Miss Oliver enters the schoolroom."

"You are original. And not timid. There is something brave in your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye. I almost dread to inform you that you partially misinterpret my emotions. Know me to be what I am--a cold, hard man."

I smiled incredulously. Having said this, he took his hat, which lay on the table beside my palette. Once more he looked at the portrait.

"She is lovely," he murmured.

"And may I not paint one like it for you?"

"Cui bono? No." he drew over the picture the sheet of thin paper on which I was accustomed to rest my hand in painting, to prevent the cardboard from being sullied. What he suddenly saw on this blank paper was impossible for me to tell. Something had caught his eye. He took it up with a snatch. He looked at the edge, then shot a glance at me that seemed to take and make note of every point in my shape, face, and dress. His lips parted, as if to speak, but he checked the coming sentence, whatever it was.

"What is the matter?" I asked.

"Nothing in the world." As he replaced the paper, I saw him dexterously tear a narrow slip from the margin. It disappeared in his glove. With one hasty nod and "Good afternoon," he vanished.

I, in my turn, scrutinised the paper, but saw nothing on it save a few dingy stains of paint where I had tried the tint in my brush. I pondered the mystery a minute or two, but dismissed and soon forgot it.

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CHAPTER 35

WHEN MR. ST. JOHN left, it was beginning to snow. The whirling storm continued all night. The next day a keen wind brought fresh and blinding falls. By twilight the valley was drifted up and almost impassable. I sat down at the fire with St. John's sketches and my research notes.

I heard a noise. The wind, I thought. No, it was St. John Rivers himself, who, lifting the latch, came in out of the frozen hurricane--the howling darkness--and stood before me. The cloak that covered his tall figure was all white as a glacier.

"Any ill news?" I demanded. "has anything happened? Are there vampyres about?"

"No. How very easily alarmed you are!" he removed his cloak and hung it against the door. He stamped the snow from his boots. "I shall sully the purity of your floor, but you must excuse me for once." he approached the fire to warm his hands. "I have had hard work to get here, I assure you. One drift took me up to the waist. Happily, the snow is quite soft yet."

"But why have you come?"

"Rather an inhospitable question to put to a visitor, but since you ask it, I answer simply, to have a little talk with you. I got tired of my tinkering. The model of your Rivers Gun is complete, by the way. I call it a Rivers Gun because stake-o-matic makes no sense when you will shoot silver bullets instead of stakes. I couldn't drag such a machine through the snow, but I did bring you my uncle's notes. Besides, since yesterday I have experienced the excitement of a person to whom a tale has been half-told, and who is impatient to hear the sequel."

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"You confuse me," I said as he sat down. "I wish Diana or Mary would come and live with you. It is too bad that you should be quite alone. You are recklessly rash about your own health."

"Not at all. I care for myself when necessary. I am well now. What do you see amiss in me?"

I saw nothing amiss. In fact, he'd never looked so handsome, so chiseled. His face glowed in the fire and seemed to glow from the inside, too. He seemed careless, almost happy. It was a new side to St. John Rivers, one I never thought I would see. It must have been the snow. Perhaps he had experienced a bit of frostbite--to his brain.

"How long were you out in the snow?" I asked.

"Not long."

"Have you heard from Diana and Mary lately?" Perhaps communication with his sisters explained his mood.

"Not since the letter I showed you a week ago."

"There has been no change made about your own arrangements? Do you plan to leave England sooner than you expected?"

"I fear not, indeed. Such chance is too good to befall me."

"It's a shame we had to cancel training today. We may lose more days to snow if the weather keeps up. But, Christmas comes. Mr. Oliver means to give the whole school a treat at Christmas," I said, drawing the subject nearer to St. John's beloved in hope of drawing him out.

"I know. His daughter's suggestion, I think."

"It is like her. She is so good-natured."

"Yes."

Again came the blank of a pause. The clock struck eight strokes.

He uncrossed his legs, sat straight, and turned to me. "Leave your sketches a moment, and come a little nearer the fire."

Wondering, and of my wonder finding no end, I complied.

"I spoke of my impatience to hear the sequel of a tale," he said. "On reflection, I find the matter will be better managed by my assuming the narrator's part."

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"Very well," I agreed, anything so he would get to the point.

"Twenty years ago, a poor curate--never mind his name at this moment--fell in love with a rich man's daughter. She fell in love with him and married him, against the advice of all her friends, who consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before two years passed, the rash pair were both killed while trying to eradicate vampyres from the region and laid quietly side by side under one slab. I have seen their grave. It formed part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black, old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town not far from Morton. They left a daughter. Charity carried the friendless thing to her rich maternal relations. She was reared by an aunt-in-law, called--I come to names now--Mrs. Reed of Gateshead. You start--did you hear a noise?"

"Not at all. Go on." he'd left out the part about Mr. Reed being attacked on his way to bring the baby home and turning the whole family to vampyres, save for the orphan charge, but it was not common knowledge, and as I knew, at last, what St. John was finally getting at, I kept silent.

"Mrs. Reed kept the orphan ten years. Whether the girl was happy or not with her, I cannot say, never having been told. But at the end of that time she transferred her charge to a place you know--being no other than Lowood school. It seems her career there was very honourable. From a pupil, she became a teacher, like yourself. Really it strikes me there are parallel points in her history and yours. She left the school to be a governess. There, again, your fates were analogous. She undertook the education of the ward of a certain Mr. Rochester."

"Mr. Rivers!" I interrupted. The mere pronouncing of the name sent a wave of longing through me. Now he knew. Sweet torture!

"I can guess your feelings," he said. I doubted it. "But restrain them for a while. I have nearly finished. Of Mr. Rochester's character I know nothing, but the one fact that he professed to offer honourable marriage to this young girl, and that at the very altar she

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discovered he had a wife yet alive, though a lunatic. What his subsequent conduct and proposals were is a matter of pure conjecture. But when an event transpired which rendered inquiry after the governess necessary, it was discovered she was gone. No one could tell when, where, or how. She had left Thornfield Hall in the night. Every research after her course had been vain."

My breathing came shallow. A hollow, anxious feeling gripped me to the core.

"The country had been scoured far and wide," he went on. "No vestige of information could be gathered respecting her. That she should be found is become a matter of serious urgency. Advertisements have been put in all the papers. I myself have received a letter from one Mr. Briggs, a solicitor, communicating the details I have just imparted. Is it not an odd tale?"

I snapped like a whip. What could I do? "Dear God, St. John, what has happened? What of Mr. Rochester? Is he well? Has something happened to him? How and where is he?"

St. John merely shrugged. "I am ignorant of all concerning Mr. Rochester. The letter never mentions him but to narrate the fraudulent and illegal attempt I have adverted to. You should rather ask the name of the governess, the nature of the event which requires her appearance."

"Did no one go to Thornfield Hall, then? Did no one see Mr. Rochester?" I felt somewhat relieved. I had so feared that he was building up to dreadful news of Mr. Rochester.

"I suppose not."

"But they wrote to him?"

"Of course."

"And what did he say? Who has his letters?"

"Mr. Briggs intimates that the answer to his application was not from Mr. Rochester, but from a lady. It is signed 'Alice Fairfax.' "

I felt cold and dismayed. My worry remained. What had my departure done to him? He had, in all probability, left England and

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rushed in reckless desperation to some former haunt on the Continent. Oh, my poor master--once almost my husband--whom I had often called "my dear Edward"!

"He must have been a bad man," observed Mr. Rivers.

"You don't know him--don't pronounce an opinion upon him," I said with warmth.

"Very well," St. John answered quietly. "And I have my tale to finish. Since you won't ask the governess's name, I must tell it of my own accord. Stay! I have it here--it is always more satisfactory to see important points written down, fairly committed to black and white."

He displayed the corner he had ripped off my work before leaving me the other day. Aha, it had my signature. I had forgotten to write Jane Spencer, and I left him the clue he needed to solve his mystery. Jane Slayre.

"Briggs wrote to me of a Jane Slayre," he said. "The advertisements demanded a Jane Slayre. I knew a Jane Spencer. I confess I had my suspicions, but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once resolved into certainty. You own the name and renounce the alias?"

"Yes, but where is Mr. Briggs? He perhaps knows more of Mr. Rochester than you do."

"Briggs is in London. I should doubt his knowing anything at all about Mr. Rochester. This has nothing to do with Rochester. It is not Mr. Rochester who seeks you, Jane Slayre. At least, not in that concerns me. You forget essential points in pursuing trifles. You do not inquire why Mr. Briggs sought after you--what
he
wanted with you."

"Well, what did he want?"

"Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Slayre of Madeira, is dead. That he has left you all his property, and that you are now rich--merely that, nothing more."

"I--rich?"

"Yes, you, rich. Quite an heiress."

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Silence succeeded.

"You must prove your identity of course," resumed St. John presently. "A step which will offer no difficulties. You can then enter on immediate possession. Your fortune is vested in the English funds. Briggs has the will and the necessary documents."

It is a fine thing, reader, to be lifted in a moment from indigence to wealth--a very fine thing, but not a matter one can comprehend, or consequently enjoy, all at once.

Besides, the words
legacy
and
bequest
go side by side with the words
death
and
funeral.
I had heard that my uncle was dead. Ever since being made aware of his existence, I had cherished the hope of one day seeing him. Now, I never should.

"You unbend your forehead at last," said St. John. "I thought Medusa had looked at you and you were turning into stone. Perhaps now you will ask how much you're worth."

"How much?"

"Oh, a trifle! Nothing of course to speak of--twenty thousand pounds, I think they say--but what is that?"

"Twenty thousand pounds?"

Here was a new stunner. I had been calculating on four or five thousand. This news actually took my breath for a moment. Mr. St. John, whom I had never heard laugh before, laughed now.

"Well," said he, "if you had committed a murder, and I had told you your crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast."

"It is a large sum. Don't you think there is a mistake?"

"No mistake at all."

I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions for a hundred. Mr. Rivers rose now and put on his cloak.

"If it were not such a very wild night, I would send Hannah down to keep you company. But Hannah, poor woman, she could not make it in this weather. I must leave you to your thoughts. Good night."