第307页
《简·爱(英文版)》章节:第307页,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
moss all the way.'
'Tell him I will go.'
'I'm sure, sir, you had better not. It's the worst road to travel
after dark that can be: there's no track at all over the bog. And then
it is such a bitter night- the keenest wind you ever felt. You had
better send word, sir, that you will be there in the morning.'
But he was already in the passage, putting on his cloak; and
without one objection, one murmur, he departed. It was then nine
o'clock: he did not return till midnight. Starved and tired enough
he was: but he looked happier than when he set out. He had performed
an act of duty; made an exertion; felt his own strength to do and
deny, and was on better terms with himself.
I am afraid the whole of the ensuing week tried his patience. It
was Christmas week: we took to no settled employment, but spent it
in a sort of merry domestic dissipation. The air of the moors, the
freedom of home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Diana and Mary's
spirits like some life-giving elixir: they were gay from morning
till noon, and from noon till night. They could always talk; and their
discourse, witty, pithy, original, had such charms for me, that I
preferred listening to, and sharing in it, to doing anything else. St.
John did not rebuke our vivacity; but he escaped from it: he was
seldom in the house; his parish was large, the population scattered,
and he found daily business in visiting the sick and poor in its
different districts.
One morning at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive for
some minutes, asked him, 'If his plans were yet unchanged.'
'Unchanged and unchangeable,' was the reply. And he proceeded to
inform us that his departure from England was now definitely fixed for
the ensuing year.
'And Rosamond Oliver?' suggested Mary, the words seeming to
escape her lips involuntarily: for no sooner had she uttered them,
than she made a gesture as if wishing to recall them. St. John had a
book in his hand- it was his unsocial custom to read at meals- he
closed it, and looked up.
'Rosamond Oliver,' said he, 'is about to be married to Mr.
Granby, one of the best connected and most estimable residents in
from her father yesterday.'
His sisters looked at each other and at me; we all three looked
at him: he was serene as glass.
'The match must have been got up hastily,' said Diana: 'they cannot
have known each other long.'
But where there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case,
where the connection is in every point desirable, delays are
Frederic gives up to them, can be refitted for their reception.'
The first time I found St. John alone after this communication, I
felt tempted to inquire if the event distressed him: but he seemed
so little to need sympathy, that, so far from venturing to offer him
more, I experienced some shame at the recollection of what I had
already hazarded. Besides, I was out of practice in talking to him: