Jane Slayre (43 page)

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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."

"That, I must plainly tell you, is out of my power to do, being absolutely without home and friends."

The three looked at me more with curiosity than distrust. I sensed no suspicion in their glances.

"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."

"I believe you had a cousin?" he asked after a minute. "Perhaps more than one?"

"I have no more like her. She was the last of my relations. I am, as I have said, quite alone in the world."

"A most singular position at your age!"

Here I saw his glance directed to my hands, which were folded

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on the table before me. "You have never been married? You are a spinster?"

Diana laughed. "Why, she can't be above seventeen or eighteen years old, St. John."

"I am near nineteen, but I am not married. No."

I felt a burning glow mount to my face. They all saw the embarrassment and the emotion.

"Where did you last reside?" he now asked.

"The name of the place where, and of the person with whom I lived, is my secret," I replied concisely. I had no idea to what lengths Mr. Rochester might go to discover my whereabouts. The less they knew, the easier it was for me to remain concealed.

"Yet if I know nothing about you or your history, I cannot help you," he said. "And you need help, do you not?"

I had now swallowed my tea. Refreshed as I was, I had strength returned enough to tell the portion of my tale I wished to share.

"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. 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 am an orphan, the daughter of a clergyman. My parents died before I could know them. I was brought up a dependent in a rather unusual household and educated in a charitable institution. I passed six years as a pupil, and two as a teacher at Lowood orphan asylum. You will have heard of it, Mr. Rivers?"

"I have seen the school."

"I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess. I obtained a good situation. 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. No blame was attached to me."

St. John nodded, obviously satisfied so far and eager to hear more. "Go on."

"I observed but two points in planning my departure: speed, and

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secrecy. To secure these, I left everything behind me but a small parcel, which I forgot to take out of the coach that brought me to Whitcross. The ride took every shilling I owned. I arrived in your neighbourhood as a wanderer, quite destitute. I slept two nights in fields out of doors and lived on very little food, whatever I could find. I scoured the nearby forest looking for a place to die in peace when I was interrupted by a conversation between strangers plotting wicked deeds. I followed them at some length. I knew their sort, and not to get too close. They met their coconspirator in the farmhouse. I dared not go in. But I looked in to debate my next move, how I should go about warning the residents to safety, when a girl turned and I recognised her as my cousin."

"You had no idea she would be there?"

"I thought she was in London, and I believe you overheard some of our conversation to that effect."

"Before you staked her."

Diana and Mary gasped.

"Yes," I said quietly. The memory came rushing back, and with it the same surge of power I'd felt at the scene.

"I retrieved your stake. Fine work. How did you know?"

"How did I know what, sir?"

"That it takes a wooden stake to the heart to kill a vampyre?"

"I had a vision," I said quite simply. "I lived with a family of vampyres--the unusual household of my reference--when I was a child and I learned to protect myself."

"How was it they never consumed you?"

"The family had noble blood, and they believed that I did not. For some reason, my aunt was convinced that common blood would taint the family with illness."

He made a noise, but it was not quite a laugh. "Unusual indeed. Your cousin seemed to have changed her mind on that point."

"And her brother before her. They are both gone now. Perhaps they should have obeyed their mama."

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"And your aunt?"

"She died repentant, sir, as my uncle did years earlier. Both sought the mercy of death from slayers."

He narrowed his eyes. "Your name is Spencer, you say?"

"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. Once fully recovered, I am stronger than you imagine. I have a quick mind and capable physique. I understand you have a mission, Mr. St. John. I would like to train with you to help you in it. I would also like to work. I need to find a position. Please let me stay until I have found suitable employment."

"Indeed you shall stay here," said Diana, putting her hand on my head.

"You shall," repeated Mary.

"My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you," said Mr. St. John. "You're not strong enough to consider training, and at any rate you're a woman. As for employment, my sphere is narrow. I am but the incumbent of a poor country parish. My aid must be of the humblest sort."

"I will be a dressmaker. I will be a plain-work woman. I will be a servant, a nurse-girl, if I can be no better. I am not afraid of hard work or physical labour. And I wouldn't be the first woman to become a slayer. Women have done so before me. I know of at least one."

I thought of my mother, who had, I believed, reached out to me, as my uncle did before her, to guide me on my way.

"Right," said Mr. St. John quite coolly. "If such is your spirit, I promise to aid you, in my own time and way. In short, regain your strength and we will discuss it at a later time. No more on the subject for now."

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He now resumed the book with which he had been occupied before tea. I soon withdrew, for I had talked as much as my strength would permit.

CHAPTER 33

THE MORE I KNEW of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them. In a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could sit up all day and walk out sometimes. I could join Diana and Mary in all their occupations, converse with them as much as they wished, and aid them when and where they would allow me.

They discovered I could draw. Their pencils and colour boxes were immediately at my service. My skill, greater in this one point than theirs, surprised and charmed them. Thus occupied, and mutually entertained, days passed like hours, and weeks like days. As to Mr. St. John, the intimacy that had so naturally and rapidly arisen between his sisters and me did not extend to him. One reason for this distance was that he was comparatively seldom at home. A large proportion of his time appeared devoted to visiting the sick and poor amongst the scattered population of his parish, and also I suspected to his training mission.

He would often return home with heightened colour and slicked with perspiration that could only have come from intense physical activity. Oftentimes, he slept later during the day and went out just as it was growing dark. I suspected he was hunting at night--vampyre hunting. With my strength returning, I was waiting to find a way to reintroduce the subject of his mission with him.

Meantime a month was gone. Diana and Mary were soon to leave Moor House and return to the far different life and scene

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that awaited them, as governesses in a large, fashionable south-of-England city, where each held a situation in families by whose wealthy and haughty members they were regarded only as humble dependents. Mr. St. John had said nothing to me yet about the employment he had promised to obtain for me, yet it became urgent that I should have a vocation of some kind. One morning, being left alone with him a few minutes in the parlour, I ventured to approach the desk consecrated as a kind of study. I was going to speak, but I first observed that he was sketching a sort of weapon, a type of crossbow.

"You would do better to make the bow more curved here." I pointed. "And raise this part here, and bring this nub back a bit, to increase the tension." I had no idea about weapons, but it seemed a natural argument based on artistic principles and natural law.

He looked up, his mouth twisting to a sneer. "I designed it. I believe I know what I am doing."

"Very well." I shrugged and continued looking. "It is brilliant, in concept. That roller there, on the bottom? I assume it allows for rapid fire of preloaded stakes?"

"Did you have a question to ask of me?" he said, continuing with his sketch and ignoring my comments. Not entirely ignoring, for I noticed he had made some adjustments in keeping with the very changes I'd pointed out.

"Yes. I wish to know whether you have heard of any service I can offer myself to undertake?"

"I devised something for you three weeks ago, but as you seemed both useful and happy here--as my sisters had evidently become attached to you, and your society gave them unusual pleasure--I deemed it inexpedient to break in on your mutual comfort until their approaching departure from Marsh End should render yours necessary."

"And you thought they would protest the idea of my being in danger? Or worse, you feared they might get a notion that they could be slayers, too?"

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He glared at me.

"They will go in three days now," I added.

"Yes, and when they go, I shall return to the parsonage at Morton. Hannah will accompany me, and this old house will be shut up."

"What is the employment you had in view, Mr. Rivers? I hope this delay will not have increased the difficulty of securing it."

"Oh, no, since it is an employment which depends only on me to give, and you to accept. Let me frankly tell you, I have nothing eligible or profitable to suggest. I am poor, for I find that, when I have paid my father's debts, all the patrimony remaining to me will be this crumbling grange, the row of scathed firs behind, and the patch of soil, with the yew trees and holly bushes in front. I am obscure. Rivers is an old name, but a good one. And since I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a service of poverty and obscurity."

"Well?" I said as he again paused. "Proceed."

"I believe you will accept the post I offer you. Despite the many dangers and arduous training, long hours, and very little recompense except for the satisfaction of creating a safer world. I shall not stay long at Morton now that my father is dead, and that I am my own master. I shall leave the place probably in the course of a twelvemonth for India."

"India?" I asked, surprised.

"The vampyre populations grow wild, unchecked. I plan to combine missionary work with slaying, to leave our world a better place. But while I do stay, I will exert myself to the utmost for its improvement. Morton used to be a thriving community, with two or three times the current population. But, about twenty years ago, vampyres ravaged the area, killing many and scaring away the others. My uncles, my mother's brothers, made it their mission to drive all the vampyres from the surroundings, as their fathers before them had done the same in other regions, as I will do in India. Recently, vampyres have begun to return to this region, drawn here perhaps for the immense woods that surround us and create shade, for their kind cannot tolerate direct sunlight."