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And when I returned, sometimes a good deal tired, and not a
little weather-beaten, I never dared complain, because I saw that to
murmur would be to vex him: on all occasions fortitude pleased him;
the reverse was a special annoyance.
One afternoon, however, I got leave to stay at home, because I
really had a cold. His sisters were gone to Morton in my stead: I
sat reading Schiller; he, deciphering his crabbed Oriental scrolls. As
I exchanged a translation for an exercise, I happened to look his way:
there I found myself under the influence of the ever-watchful blue
eye. How long it had been searching me through and through, and over
and over, I cannot tell: so keen was it, and yet so cold, I felt for
the moment superstitious- as if I were sitting in the room with
something uncanny.
'Jane, what are you doing?'
'Learning German.'
'I want you to give up German and learn Hindostanee.'
'You are not in earnest?'
'In such earnest that I must have it so: and I will tell you why.'
He then went on to explain that Hindostanee was the language he was
himself at present studying; that, as he advanced, he was apt to
forget the commencement; that it would assist him greatly to have a
pupil with whom he might again and again go over the elements, and
so fix them thoroughly in his mind; that his choice had hovered for
some time between me and his sisters; but that he had fixed on me
because he saw I could sit at a task the longest of the three. Would I
do him this favour? I should not, perhaps, have to make the
sacrifice long, as it wanted now barely three months to his departure.
St. John was not a man to be lightly refused: you felt that every
impression made on him, either for pain or pleasure, was deep-graved
and permanent. I consented. When Diana and Mary returned, the former
found her scholar transferred from her to her brother: she laughed,
and both she and Mary agreed that St. John should never have persuaded
them to such a step. He answered quietly-
'I know it.'
I found him a very patient, very forbearing, and yet an exacting
master: he expected me to do a great deal; and when I fulfilled his
expectations, he, in his own way, fully testified his approbation.
By degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away
my liberty of mind: his praise and notice were more restraining than
his indifference. I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was
by, because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that
vivacity (at least in me) was distasteful to him. I was so fully aware
that only serious moods and occupations were acceptable, that in his
presence every effort to sustain or follow any other became vain: I
fell under a freezing spell. When he said 'go,' I went; 'come,' I
came; 'do this,' I did it. But I did not love my servitude: I
wished, many a time, he had continued to neglect me.
One evening when, at bedtime, his sisters and I stood round him,