Hello.
Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph,
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Come with me as we immerse ourselves in a romantic journey to a time long since forgotten.
But before we begin,
Let's take a moment to focus on where we are now.
Take a deep breath in through your nose and let it out with a long sigh.
That's it.
Now close your eyes and feel yourself sink deeper into the support beneath you.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.
Happy listening.
This is SD Hudson Magic.
Jane Eyre Chapter 30 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 with Diana and Mary in all their occupations,
Converse with them as much as they wish,
And aid them when necessary.
There was a reviving pleasure in this intercourse of a kind now tasted by me for the first time.
The pleasure arising from perfect congeniality of tastes,
Sentiments,
And principles.
I liked to read what they liked to read.
What they enjoyed delighted me.
What they approved,
I reverenced.
They loved their sequestered home,
I too in the grey,
Small,
Antique structure,
With its low roof,
Its lattice casements,
Its mouldering walls,
Its avenue-of-age furs,
All grown aslant under the stress of mountain winds.
Its garden,
Dark with yew and holly,
And where no flowers but of the hardiest species would bloom,
Found a charm,
Both potent and permanent.
They clung to the purple moors behind and around their dwelling,
To the hollow vale into which the pebbly bridle-path leading from their gates descended,
And which wound between fern-banks first,
And then amongst a few of the wildest little pasture-fields that ever bordered a wilderness of heath,
Or gave sustenance to a flock of grey moorland sheep with their little mossy-faced lambs.
They clung to this scene,
I say,
With a perfect enthusiasm of attachment.
I could comprehend the feeling,
And share both its strength and truth.
I saw the fascination of the locality,
I felt the consecration of its loneliness.
My eye feasted on the outline of swell and sweep,
On the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell,
By moss,
Of heath bell,
By flower-sprinkled turf,
By brilliant bracken and mellow granite crag.
These details were just to me what they were to them,
So many pure and sweet sources of pleasure.
Indoors we agreed equally well.
They were both more accomplished and better read than I was,
But with eagerness I followed in the path of knowledge they had trodden before me.
I devoured the books they lent me,
Then it was full satisfaction to discuss with them in the evening what I had perused during the day.
Thought fitted thought,
Opinion met opinion,
We concided in short,
Perfectly.
If in our trio there was a superior and a leader,
It was Diana.
Physically she far excelled me,
She was handsome,
She was vigorous.
In her animal spirits there was an affluence of life and certainly a flow,
Such as excited my wonder,
While it baffled my comprehension.
I could talk a while,
When the evening commenced,
But the first gush of vivacity and fluency gone,
I was fain to sit on a stool at Diana's feet,
To rest my head on her knee and listen alternately to her and Mary,
While they sounded thoroughly the topic on which I had but touched.
Diana offered to teach me German,
I liked to learn of her,
I saw the part of instructress pleased and suited her,
That of scholar pleased and suited me no less.
Our natures dovetailed,
Mutual affection of the strongest kind was the result.
They both 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.
Mary would sit and watch me by the hour together,
Then she would take lessons,
And a docile,
Intelligent,
Assiduous pupil she made.
Thus occupied and mutually entertained,
Days passed like hours and weeks like days.
As to Mr.
St.
John,
The intimacy which had arisen so naturally and rapidly between me and his sisters,
Did not extend to him.
One reason of the distance yet observed between us was,
That he was comparatively seldom at home.
A large proportion of his time appeared devoted to visiting the sick and poor,
Among the scattered population of his parish.
No weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral exertions,
Rain or fair,
He would,
When his hours of morning study were over,
Take his hat,
And,
Followed by his father's old pointer carload,
Go out on his mission of love or duty.
I scarcely know in which light he regarded it.
Sometimes,
When the day was very favourable,
His sisters would expostulate.
He would then say,
With a peculiar smile,
More solemn than cheerful,
And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from these easy tasks,
What preparation would such sloth be for the future I propose to myself?
Diana and Mary's general answer to this question was a sigh,
And some minutes of apparently mournful meditation.
But besides his frequent absences,
There was another barrier to friendship.
He seemed of a reserved,
An abstracted,
And a brooding nature.
Zealous in his ministerial labours,
Blameless in his life and habits,
He yet,
In the absence of his sisters,
He yet did not appear to enjoy that mental serenity,
That inward content which should be the reward of every sincere Christian and practical philanthropist.
Often of an evening,
When he sat at the window,
His desk papers before him,
He would cease reading or writing,
Rest his chin on his hand,
And deliver himself up to I know not what cause of thought,
But that it was perturbed and exciting,
Might be seen in the frequent flash and changeful dilation of his eye.
I think,
Moreover,
That nature was not to him that treasury of delight,
It was to his sisters.
He expressed once,
And but once in my hearing,
A strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills,
And an inborn affection for the dark roof,
And the walls he called his home,
But there was more of a gloom than pleasure in the tone.
And never did he seem to roam the moors for the sake of their soothing silence.
Incommunicative as he was,
Some time elapsed before I had an opportunity of gauging his mind.
I first got an idea of its calibre when I learned him preach in his own church at Morton.
I wish I could describe that sermon,
But it is past my power.
I cannot even render faithfully the effect it produced on me.
It began calm,
And indeed as far as delivery and pitch of voice went,
It was calm to the end.
An earnestly felt,
Yet strictly restrained zeal breathed soon in the distant accents,
And prompted the nervous language.
This grew to force,
Compressed,
Condensed,
Controlled.
The heart was thrilled,
The mind astonished by the power of the preacher.
Neither were softened.
Throughout,
There was a strange bitterness,
An absence of consolatory gentleness,
Stern allusions to Calvinistic doctrines.
Election,
Predestination,
Reprobation were frequent,
And each reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom.
When he had done,
Instead of feeling better,
Calmer,
More enlightened by his discourse,
I experienced an inexpressible sadness,
For it seemed to me that the eloquence to which I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of disappointment,
Where moved troubling impulses of insatiate yearnings,
And disquieting aspirations.
I was sure,
Since John Rivers,
Pure-lived,
Conscientious,
Zealous as he was,
Had not yet found that peace of God which passeth all understanding.
He had no more found it,
I thought,
Than had I,
With my concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol.
Regrets to which I have latterly avoided,
But which possessed me and tyrannised me ruthlessly.
