The Complete Works of Charlotte Brontë. Charlotte Bronte

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, СКАЧАТЬ