"Where does she live, Hannah?"
"Clear up at Whitcross Brow, almost four miles off, and moor and
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 definitively 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 S-,
grandson and heir to Sir Frederic Granby: I had the intelligence
from her father yesterday."
His sisters looked at each other and at me; we all three looked at
him: he was serene as glass.