It had to be me.
The wood of the stake was smooth against my palm. I was a Slayre. It was in my blood.
I was a Slayre.
"Georgiana," I called her to attention as I stepped close enough to embrace her.
"Yes," she said, blinking her eyes in that familiar way of hers, the batting of the lashes that would win her mother over and convince Abbot to do anything she liked--not that it was a stretch with Abbot being a zombie under her mother's control.
"I always used to wonder how such a pretty little girl could be so hideous at the same time."
"What?" She blinked again, this time in shock. "Jane?"
"Hideous," I affirmed, shaking my head. "And I'm sorry, Georgy, but it's time--"
I raised the stake and drove it home, in one solid motion that broke the skin and, possibly, bone and pierced her heart. I was surprised I still had the strength. "It's time for you to go."
She blinked once, twice, then her eyelids shriveled, with the rest of her skin, and her eyes turned to dust, and she was no more. A pile of dust in an unflattering frock jumbled in a heap at my feet.
I felt a surge of elation, and then I was overwhelmed. I fell to my knees. I could not get back on my feet. I saw Hyacinth, Georgia-na's vampyre friend, the one from the woods, emerge from around the corner, dabbing at her lips as if she'd recently finished a five-course meal.
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"Georgy? Jack? Where did everyone go? I started without you. Just a quick bite, a taste. I couldn't resist, but there's plenty--"
Just as quickly, I saw a stake in her chest and watched her shrivel and fall, poof!
I looked back at the stranger. He removed his gauntlet, tucked it under his arm, approached, and extended his hand. "I told you to get to safety. You're obstinate."
"I just need to rest a moment. I've been wandering, sleeping out of doors, and I've had naught but a crust of bread and handful of berries to eat in three days. I suddenly feel on the verge of collapse."
"Can you hold on, just a moment? I need to check on Mr. Marshall inside, to make sure everyone is well."
I nodded. I could not move to go anywhere.
He came back within minutes. "Mr. Marshall is well. His brother just got a bite in the neck and passed out from fear, but he'll recover. It's a good thing his wife took the kids to visit her mother last week. Are you conscious?"
I muttered a yes. He offered me his hand. I took it and he pulled me to my feet, but I was yet unsteady. I fell into him. He supported me with one arm. "I can but die and I believe in God. Let me try to wait His will in silence."
"All men must die," he said, "but not all are condemned to meet a lingering and premature doom, such as yours would be if you perished here of want."
Upon hearing those words, I collapsed in the good stranger's arms.
When I opened my eyes, I was still in the support of strong arms, standing on a covered porch, at a door.
"Is it you, Mr. St. John?" a woman said. She looked to be an elder maidservant.
"Yes. Open quickly."
"Well, how wet and cold you must be, such a wild night as it is!
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Come in--your sisters are quite uneasy about you. What have you there?"
"A woman in need of assistance. She collapsed from want."
"Mr. St. John, there've been bad folk about i'the village of late. Is it safe to trust beggars and vagrants and the like?"
"Hush, hannah! I have a word to say to the woman. I think this is a peculiar case. I must at least examine into it." he set me on my feet. I wobbled, but managed to stay upright. "Young woman, try to pass before me into the house."
With difficulty, I obeyed him. Presently I stood within a clean, bright kitchen--on the hearth--trembling, sickening, conscious of my aspect in the last degree ghastly, wild, and weather-beaten. Two young ladies, Mr. St. John, and the old servant were all gazing at me.
"St. John, who is it?" I heard one ask.
"I found her on the road."
"She does look white," said hannah.
"As white as clay or death," another responded. "She will fall. Let her sit."
Indeed my head swam as it had not swum in years, not since my youth when I was bitten and beaten and dragged off to the red room dripping blood.
"Perhaps a little water would restore her. Hannah, fetch some. But she is worn to nothing. How very thin, and pale!"
"A mere specter!"
"Is she ill, or only famished?"
"Famished, I think. Hannah, is that milk? Give it me, and a piece of bread."
One of the women, the taller one with long curls, broke some bread, dipped it in milk, and put it to my lips. "Try to eat."
"Yes--try," repeated the other gently. Her hand removed my sodden bonnet and lifted my head. I tasted what they offered me, feebly at first, eagerly soon.
"Not too much at first--restrain her, Diana," Mr. St. John said.
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"She has had enough." he withdrew the cup of milk and the plate of bread.
I felt I could speak. "My name is Jane Spencer." Anxious as ever to avoid discovery, I had before resolved to assume an alias.
"And where do you live? Where are your friends?"
"I have no home or friends."
"Can we send for anyone you know?"
I shook my head.
"What account can you give of yourself?"
Somehow, now that I had once crossed the threshold of this house and was brought face-to-face with its owners, I felt no longer outcast by the wide world. I began once more to know myself, but I wasn't sure how much to offer. "Sir, I can give you no details tonight."
"But what, then," said he, "do you expect me to do for you?"
"I will trust you. If I were a dog, I know that you would not turn me from your hearth tonight. As it is, I really have no fear. Do with me and for me as you like, but excuse me from much discourse. My breath is short--I feel a spasm when I speak."
A pleasant stupor was stealing over me as I sat by the genial fire. One of the young ladies was giving directions to hannah. Ere long, with the servant's aid, I contrived to mount a staircase. My dripping clothes were removed. Soon a warm, dry bed received me. I thanked God, experienced amidst unutterable exhaustion a glow of grateful joy, and slept.
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CHAPTER 32
THE NEXT THREE DAYS and nights were not clear in my mind. I slept. When I wasn't sleeping, it was if I lived a waking dream, still half-asleep but yet somewhat aware. I knew I was in a small room and in a narrow bed. I knew the difference between night and day, as always since my childhood with night having played so key a role in my youth, but I was not aware of the time. I observed when anyone entered or left the apartment. I could tell who they were and understand what was said when the speaker stood near to me. But, I could not answer. To open my lips or move my limbs seemed equally impossible.
Hannah, the servant, was my most frequent visitor. Diana and Mary, as I learned their names from their conversations, appeared in the chamber once or twice a day. They would whisper at my bedside.
"It is very well we took her in."
"Yes. She would certainly have died there in the road had St. John not found her and brought her to us. I wonder what she has gone through."
"Strange hardships, I imagine, poor, 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, like a pixie's. I rather like it."
Never once in their dialogues did they reveal any hint of dissatisfaction for taking me in, which comforted me.
Mr. St. John came but once. He looked at me and said my lethargy was a reaction to excessive and protracted fatigue. He pronounced
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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 whol
e system must sleep torpid awhile, and then, he imagined, my recovery would be rapid enough. 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 face."
"Oh, yes," responded Diana (I thought it must be Diana). "To speak truth, St. John, my heart rather warms to the poor little soul."
"She has come from somewhere, from family, from home. We may, perhaps, succeed in restoring her to them, if she is not obstinate." he stood considering me some minutes, then added, "She looks sensible."
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. When she left me, I felt comparatively strong and revived. I wished to rise, but what could I put on?
The answer waited on a chair by the bedside: my own things, clean and dry. My black silk frock hung against the wall, in fine shape. My shoes and stockings were purified and rendered presentable. The means of washing were in the room, and a comb and brush to smooth my hair. After a weary process, resting every five minutes, I succeeded in dressing myself. My clothes hung loose on me, for I was much wasted. I covered deficiencies with a shawl, and once more clean and respectable, I crept down a stone staircase with the aid of the banister, to a narrow, low passage and found my way to the kitchen.
It was full of the fragrance of new bread and the warmth of a generous fire. Hannah was baking.
When she saw me come in tidy and well dressed, she even smiled. "What, you have got up! You are better, then. You may sit down in my chair on the hearthstone, if you will."
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She pointed to the rocking chair. I took it. She bustled about, examining me every now and then from the corner of her eye.
"Did you ever go a-begging afore you came here?" she asked bluntly, turning to me as she took some loaves from the oven.
"You are mistaken in supposing me a beggar. I am no beggar any more than you 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?"
I crossed my arms over my chest. "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." She brought out a basket of fruit. "What are you going to do with these gooseberries?"
"Mak' 'em into pies."
"Give them to me and I'll pick them."
"Nay."
"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, "you should mucky it."
She remarked, "Ye've not been used to sarvant's wark, I see by your hands. Happen ye've been a dressmaker?"
"Never mind what I have been. Where am I now? This house has a name?"
"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 awhile. When he is at home, he is in his own parish at Morton."
"That village a few miles off?"
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"Aye."
"And what is he?"
"Never mind what he is," Hannah said, flashing a saucy smile.
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 great-grandfather afore him."
"The name, then, of that gentleman is Mr. St. John Rivers?"
"Aye. St. John is like his christened 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 for years."
"Have you lived with the family long?"
"I've lived here thirty years. 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 I was quite mista'en in my thoughts of you, but there is so many cheats goes about, you must forgive me."
"That will do--I forgive you now. Shake hands."
She put her floury and horny hand into mine and smiled. Hannah was evidently fond of talking. While I picked the fruit, and she made the paste for the pies, she gave 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 Riverses ever since it was a house and was, she affirmed, "aboon two hundred year old--for all it looked but a small,
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humble place, naught to compare wi' Mr. Oliver's grand hall down i' Morton Vale."
The Riverses were gentry in the old days, she informed me. The old master preferred to get on as common folk, with interests in farming and shooting. The mistress was a great reader; Hannah supposed the "bairns," as she called them, had taken after their mother. Nothing like them was in these parts, nor had ever been. They had liked learning, all three, almost from the time they could speak. Mr. St. John, when he grew up, would go to college and be a parson. The girls, as soon as they left school, would seek places as governesses. Their father lost a great deal of the family money to a trusted friend who turned out to be no friend at all, and so they all had to provide for themselves and work hard to make enough money to provide for St. John's experiments and his mission.
"His mission? And experiments?" Here I stopped Hannah's rambling narrative to ask some questions.
"Oh, aye. Mr. St. John has always been fond o'fiddling with old junk to mak' 'em into new things. His 'speriments offtimes just make more junk t' fill the shed, but some of 'em done work for the mission. It's a school he runs, training the childer to grow up and fight the vampyres like his uncle taught him when he was a lad."
"His uncle? His uncle was a slayer?"
She slanted her eyes and looked at me as if I'd struck a nerve, then told me if I wanted to know more about it, I would have to ask Mr. St. John directly. 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 twenty minutes. They entered by the kitchen door. Mr. St. John, when he saw me, merely bowed and passed. The two ladies stopped.
"You should have waited for my leave to descend," Diana said. "You still look very pale--and so thin! Poor girl!"
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Diana's whole face seemed to me full of charm. Mary's countenance was equally intelligent, her features equally pretty. Her expression was more reserved, and her manners, though gentle, more distant than her sister's. Diana looked and spoke with authority.
"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."
Still holding my hand, Diana 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 exercis
e in our little moorland home--to prepare our own meals when we are so inclined, or when Hannah is baking, brewing, washing, or ironing."
Diana closed the door, leaving me alone with Mr. St. John, who sat opposite, a book in his hand. I examined first the parlour, then its occupant.
The parlour was rather a small room, plainly furnished, yet comfortable. The old-fashioned chairs were bright, and the walnut table was like a looking glass. A few strange, antique portraits of the men and women of other days decorated the walls. A cupboard with glass doors contained some books and an ancient set of china. No superfluous ornament was in the room--not one modern piece of furniture, save a brace of workboxes that stood on a side table and a lady's desk in rosewood. 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, was easy enough to examine. Earlier, I made note of his physique and his classic, handsome features. In the better light of day, I
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could see that 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, or even a placid nature. He did not speak to me one word, nor even direct to me one glance, until his sisters returned.
Diana, as she passed in and out preparing tea, brought me a little cake. "Eat that now. 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. "You are very hungry."
"I am, sir."
"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. When you have indicated to us the residence of your friends, we can write to them, and you may be restored to home."
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