No More Learning

As he was returning the box to his waistcoat pocket, a loud bell rang for
the servants' dinner; he knew what it was. "That's for you, nurse," said
he; "you can go down; I'll give Miss Jane a lecture till you come back. "

Bessie would rather have stayed, but she was obliged to go, because
punctuality at meals was rigidly enforced at Gateshead Hall.

"The fall did not make you ill; what did, then? " pursued Mr. Lloyd when
Bessie was gone.

"I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost till after dark. "

I saw Mr. Lloyd smile and frown at the same time.

"Ghost! What, you are a baby after all! You are afraid of ghosts? "

"Of Mr. Reed's ghost I am: he died in that room, and was laid out there.
Neither Bessie nor any one else will go into it at night, if they can
help it; and it was cruel to shut me up alone without a candle,--so cruel
that I think I shall never forget it. "

"Nonsense! And is it that makes you so miserable? Are you afraid now in
daylight? "

"No: but night will come again before long: and besides,--I am
unhappy,--very unhappy, for other things. "

"What other things? Can you tell me some of them? "

How much I wished to reply fully to this question! How difficult it was
to frame any answer! Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their
feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know
not how to express the result of the process in words. Fearful, however,
of losing this first and only opportunity of relieving my grief by
imparting it, I, after a disturbed pause, contrived to frame a meagre,
though, as far as it went, true response.

"For one thing, I have no father or mother, brothers or sisters. "

"You have a kind aunt and cousins. "

Again I paused; then bunglingly enounced--

"But John Reed knocked me down, and my aunt shut me up in the red-room. "

Mr. Lloyd a second time produced his snuff-box.

"Don't you think Gateshead Hall a very beautiful house? " asked he. "Are
you not very thankful to have such a fine place to live at? "

"It is not my house, sir; and Abbot says I have less right to be here
than a servant. "

"Pooh! you can't be silly enough to wish to leave such a splendid place? "

"If I had anywhere else to go, I should be glad to leave it; but I can
never get away from Gateshead till I am a woman. "

"Perhaps you may--who knows? Have you any relations besides Mrs. Reed? "

"I think not, sir. "

"None belonging to your father? "

"I don't know. I asked Aunt Reed once, and she said possibly I might
have some poor, low relations called Eyre, but she knew nothing about
them. "

"If you had such, would you like to go to them? "

I reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to
children: they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectable
poverty; they think of the word only as connected with ragged clothes,
scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and debasing vices: poverty
for me was synonymous with degradation.

"No; I should not like to belong to poor people," was my reply.

"Not even if they were kind to you? "

I shook my head: I could not see how poor people had the means of being
kind; and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their manners, to be
uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes nursing
their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of the
village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at
the price of caste.

"But are your relatives so very poor? Are they working people? "

"I cannot tell; Aunt Reed says if I have any, they must be a beggarly
set: I should not like to go a begging. "

"Would you like to go to school? "

Again I reflected: I scarcely knew what school was: Bessie sometimes
spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks, wore
backboards, and were expected to be exceedingly genteel and precise: John
Reed hated his school, and abused his master; but John Reed's tastes were
no rule for mine, and if Bessie's accounts of school-discipline (gathered
from the young ladies of a family where she had lived before coming to
Gateshead) were somewhat appalling, her details of certain
accomplishments attained by these same young ladies were, I thought,
equally attractive. She boasted of beautiful paintings of landscapes and
flowers by them executed; of songs they could sing and pieces they could
play, of purses they could net, of French books they could translate;
till my spirit was moved to emulation as I listened. Besides, school
would be a complete change: it implied a long journey, an entire
separation from Gateshead, an entrance into a new life.

"I should indeed like to go to school," was the audible conclusion of my
musings.

"Well, well! who knows what may happen? " said Mr. Lloyd, as he got up.
"The child ought to have change of air and scene," he added, speaking to
himself; "nerves not in a good state. "

Bessie now returned; at the same moment the carriage was heard rolling up
the gravel-walk.

"Is that your mistress, nurse? " asked Mr. Lloyd. "I should like to speak
to her before I go. "

Bessie invited him to walk into the breakfast-room, and led the way out.
In the interview which followed between him and Mrs. Reed, I presume,
from after-occurrences, that the apothecary ventured to recommend my
being sent to school; and the recommendation was no doubt readily enough
adopted; for as Abbot said, in discussing the subject with Bessie when
both sat sewing in the nursery one night, after I was in bed, and, as
they thought, asleep, "Missis was, she dared say, glad enough to get rid
of such a tiresome, ill-conditioned child, who always looked as if she
were watching everybody, and scheming plots underhand. " Abbot, I think,
gave me credit for being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes.

On that same occasion I learned, for the first time, from Miss Abbot's
communications to Bessie, that my father had been a poor clergyman; that
my mother had married him against the wishes of her friends, who
considered the match beneath her; that my grandfather Reed was so
irritated at her disobedience, he cut her off without a shilling; that
after my mother and father had been married a year, the latter caught the
typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing town
where his curacy was situated, and where that disease was then prevalent:
that my mother took the infection from him, and both died within a month
of each other.

Bessie, when she heard this narrative, sighed and said, "Poor Miss Jane
is to be pitied, too, Abbot. "

"Yes," responded Abbot; "if she were a nice, pretty child, one might
compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a
little toad as that. "

"Not a great deal, to be sure," agreed Bessie: "at any rate, a beauty
like Miss Georgiana would be more moving in the same condition. "

"Yes, I doat on Miss Georgiana! " cried the fervent Abbot. "Little
darling! --with her long curls and her blue eyes, and such a sweet colour
as she has; just as if she were painted! --Bessie, I could fancy a Welsh
rabbit for supper. "

"So could I--with a roast onion. Come, we'll go down. " They went.




CHAPTER IV


From my discourse with Mr. Lloyd, and from the above reported conference
between Bessie and Abbot, I gathered enough of hope to suffice as a
motive for wishing to get well: a change seemed near,--I desired and
waited it in silence. It tarried, however: days and weeks passed: I had
regained my normal state of health, but no new allusion was made to the
subject over which I brooded. Mrs. Reed surveyed me at times with a
severe eye, but seldom addressed me: since my illness, she had drawn a
more marked line of separation than ever between me and her own children;
appointing me a small closet to sleep in by myself, condemning me to take
my meals alone, and pass all my time in the nursery, while my cousins
were constantly in the drawing-room. Not a hint, however, did she drop
about sending me to school: still I felt an instinctive certainty that
she would not long endure me under the same roof with her; for her
glance, now more than ever, when turned on me, expressed an insuperable
and rooted aversion.

Eliza and Georgiana, evidently acting according to orders, spoke to me as
little as possible: John thrust his tongue in his cheek whenever he saw
me, and once attempted chastisement; but as I instantly turned against
him, roused by the same sentiment of deep ire and desperate revolt which
had stirred my corruption before, he thought it better to desist, and ran
from me tittering execrations, and vowing I had burst his nose. I had
indeed levelled at that prominent feature as hard a blow as my knuckles
could inflict; and when I saw that either that or my look daunted him, I
had the greatest inclination to follow up my advantage to purpose; but he
was already with his mama. I heard him in a blubbering tone commence the
tale of how "that nasty Jane Eyre" had flown at him like a mad cat: he
was stopped rather harshly--

"Don't talk to me about her, John: I told you not to go near her; she is
not worthy of notice; I do not choose that either you or your sisters
should associate with her. "

Here, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly, and without at all
deliberating on my words--

"They are not fit to associate with me. "

Mrs. Reed was rather a stout woman; but, on hearing this strange and
audacious declaration, she ran nimbly up the stair, swept me like a
whirlwind into the nursery, and crushing me down on the edge of my crib,
dared me in an emphatic voice to rise from that place, or utter one
syllable during the remainder of the day.

"What would Uncle Reed say to you, if he were alive? " was my scarcely
voluntary demand. I say scarcely voluntary, for it seemed as if my
tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance:
something spoke out of me over which I had no control.

"What? " said Mrs. Reed under her breath: her usually cold composed grey
eye became troubled with a look like fear; she took her hand from my arm,
and gazed at me as if she really did not know whether I were child or
fiend. I was now in for it.

"My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and can see all you do and think; and so can
papa and mama: they know how you shut me up all day long, and how you
wish me dead. "

Mrs. Reed soon rallied her spirits: she shook me most soundly, she boxed
both my ears, and then left me without a word. Bessie supplied the
hiatus by a homily of an hour's length, in which she proved beyond a
doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a
roof. I half believed her; for I felt indeed only bad feelings surging
in my breast.

November, December, and half of January passed away. Christmas and the
New Year had been celebrated at Gateshead with the usual festive cheer;
presents had been interchanged, dinners and evening parties given. From
every enjoyment I was, of course, excluded: my share of the gaiety
consisted in witnessing the daily apparelling of Eliza and Georgiana, and
seeing them descend to the drawing-room, dressed out in thin muslin
frocks and scarlet sashes, with hair elaborately ringletted; and
afterwards, in listening to the sound of the piano or the harp played
below, to the passing to and fro of the butler and footman, to the
jingling of glass and china as refreshments were handed, to the broken
hum of conversation as the drawing-room door opened and closed. When
tired of this occupation, I would retire from the stairhead to the
solitary and silent nursery: there, though somewhat sad, I was not
miserable. To speak truth, I had not the least wish to go into company,
for in company I was very rarely noticed; and if Bessie had but been kind
and companionable, I should have deemed it a treat to spend the evenings
quietly with her, instead of passing them under the formidable eye of
Mrs. Reed, in a room full of ladies and gentlemen. But Bessie, as soon
as she had dressed her young ladies, used to take herself off to the
lively regions of the kitchen and housekeeper's room, generally bearing
the candle along with her. I then sat with my doll on my knee till the
fire got low, glancing round occasionally to make sure that nothing worse
than myself haunted the shadowy room; and when the embers sank to a dull
red, I undressed hastily, tugging at knots and strings as I best might,
and sought shelter from cold and darkness in my crib. To this crib I
always took my doll; human beings must love something, and, in the dearth
of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in
loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature
scarecrow. It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I
doated on this little toy, half fancying it alive and capable of
sensation. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown; and
when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it
to be happy likewise.

Long did the hours seem while I waited the departure of the company, and
listened for the sound of Bessie's step on the stairs: sometimes she
would come up in the interval to seek her thimble or her scissors, or
perhaps to bring me something by way of supper--a bun or a
cheese-cake--then she would sit on the bed while I ate it, and when I had
finished, she would tuck the clothes round me, and twice she kissed me,
and said, "Good night, Miss Jane. " When thus gentle, Bessie seemed to me
the best, prettiest, kindest being in the world; and I wished most
intensely that she would always be so pleasant and amiable, and never
push me about, or scold, or task me unreasonably, as she was too often
wont to do. Bessie Lee must, I think, have been a girl of good natural
capacity, for she was smart in all she did, and had a remarkable knack of
narrative; so, at least, I judge from the impression made on me by her
nursery tales. She was pretty too, if my recollections of her face and
person are correct. I remember her as a slim young woman, with black
hair, dark eyes, very nice features, and good, clear complexion; but she
had a capricious and hasty temper, and indifferent ideas of principle or
justice: still, such as she was, I preferred her to any one else at
Gateshead Hall.

It was the fifteenth of January, about nine o'clock in the morning:
Bessie was gone down to breakfast; my cousins had not yet been summoned
to their mama; Eliza was putting on her bonnet and warm garden-coat to go
and feed her poultry, an occupation of which she was fond: and not less
so of selling the eggs to the housekeeper and hoarding up the money she
thus obtained. She had a turn for traffic, and a marked propensity for
saving; shown not only in the vending of eggs and chickens, but also in
driving hard bargains with the gardener about flower-roots, seeds, and
slips of plants; that functionary having orders from Mrs. Reed to buy of
his young lady all the products of her parterre she wished to sell: and
Eliza would have sold the hair off her head if she could have made a
handsome profit thereby. As to her money, she first secreted it in odd
corners, wrapped in a rag or an old curl-paper; but some of these hoards
having been discovered by the housemaid, Eliza, fearful of one day losing
her valued treasure, consented to intrust it to her mother, at a usurious
rate of interest--fifty or sixty per cent. ; which interest she exacted
every quarter, keeping her accounts in a little book with anxious
accuracy.

Georgiana sat on a high stool, dressing her hair at the glass, and
interweaving her curls with artificial flowers and faded feathers, of
which she had found a store in a drawer in the attic. I was making my
bed, having received strict orders from Bessie to get it arranged before
she returned (for Bessie now frequently employed me as a sort of under-
nurserymaid, to tidy the room, dust the chairs, &c. ). Having spread the
quilt and folded my night-dress, I went to the window-seat to put in
order some picture-books and doll's house furniture scattered there; an
abrupt command from Georgiana to let her playthings alone (for the tiny
chairs and mirrors, the fairy plates and cups, were her property) stopped
my proceedings; and then, for lack of other occupation, I fell to
breathing on the frost-flowers with which the window was fretted, and
thus clearing a space in the glass through which I might look out on the
grounds, where all was still and petrified under the influence of a hard
frost.

From this window were visible the porter's lodge and the carriage-road,
and just as I had dissolved so much of the silver-white foliage veiling
the panes as left room to look out, I saw the gates thrown open and a
carriage roll through. I watched it ascending the drive with
indifference; carriages often came to Gateshead, but none ever brought
visitors in whom I was interested; it stopped in front of the house, the
door-bell rang loudly, the new-comer was admitted. All this being
nothing to me, my vacant attention soon found livelier attraction in the
spectacle of a little hungry robin, which came and chirruped on the twigs
of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the casement.
The remains of my breakfast of bread and milk stood on the table, and
having crumbled a morsel of roll, I was tugging at the sash to put out
the crumbs on the window-sill, when Bessie came running upstairs into the
nursery.

"Miss Jane, take off your pinafore; what are you doing there? Have you
washed your hands and face this morning? " I gave another tug before I
answered, for I wanted the bird to be secure of its bread: the sash
yielded; I scattered the crumbs, some on the stone sill, some on the
cherry-tree bough, then, closing the window, I replied--

"No, Bessie; I have only just finished dusting. "

"Troublesome, careless child! and what are you doing now? You look quite
red, as if you had been about some mischief: what were you opening the
window for? "

I was spared the trouble of answering, for Bessie seemed in too great a
hurry to listen to explanations; she hauled me to the washstand,
inflicted a merciless, but happily brief scrub on my face and hands with
soap, water, and a coarse towel; disciplined my head with a bristly
brush, denuded me of my pinafore, and then hurrying me to the top of the
stairs, bid me go down directly, as I was wanted in the breakfast-room.

I would have asked who wanted me: I would have demanded if Mrs. Reed was
there; but Bessie was already gone, and had closed the nursery-door upon
me. I slowly descended. For nearly three months, I had never been
called to Mrs. Reed's presence; restricted so long to the nursery, the
breakfast, dining, and drawing-rooms were become for me awful regions, on
which it dismayed me to intrude.

I now stood in the empty hall; before me was the breakfast-room door, and
I stopped, intimidated and trembling. What a miserable little poltroon
had fear, engendered of unjust punishment, made of me in those days! I
feared to return to the nursery, and feared to go forward to the parlour;
ten minutes I stood in agitated hesitation; the vehement ringing of the
breakfast-room bell decided me; I _must_ enter.

"Who could want me? " I asked inwardly, as with both hands I turned the
stiff door-handle, which, for a second or two, resisted my efforts. "What
should I see besides Aunt Reed in the apartment? --a man or a woman? " The
handle turned, the door unclosed, and passing through and curtseying low,
I looked up at--a black pillar! --such, at least, appeared to me, at first
sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug:
the grim face at the top was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft
by way of capital.

Mrs. Reed occupied her usual seat by the fireside; she made a signal to
me to approach; I did so, and she introduced me to the stony stranger
with the words: "This is the little girl respecting whom I applied to
you. "

_He_, for it was a man, turned his head slowly towards where I stood, and
having examined me with the two inquisitive-looking grey eyes which
twinkled under a pair of bushy brows, said solemnly, and in a bass voice,
"Her size is small: what is her age? "

"Ten years. "

"So much? " was the doubtful answer; and he prolonged his scrutiny for
some minutes. Presently he addressed me--"Your name, little girl? "

"Jane Eyre, sir. "

In uttering these words I looked up: he seemed to me a tall gentleman;
but then I was very little; his features were large, and they and all the
lines of his frame were equally harsh and prim.

"Well, Jane Eyre, and are you a good child? "

Impossible to reply to this in the affirmative: my little world held a
contrary opinion: I was silent. Mrs. Reed answered for me by an
expressive shake of the head, adding soon, "Perhaps the less said on that
subject the better, Mr. Brocklehurst. "

"Sorry indeed to hear it! she and I must have some talk;" and bending
from the perpendicular, he installed his person in the arm-chair opposite
Mrs. Reed's. "Come here," he said.

I stepped across the rug; he placed me square and straight before him.
What a face he had, now that it was almost on a level with mine! what a
great nose! and what a mouth! and what large prominent teeth!

"No sight so sad as that of a naughty child," he began, "especially a
naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death? "

"They go to hell," was my ready and orthodox answer.

"And what is hell? Can you tell me that? "

"A pit full of fire. "

"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for
ever? "

"No, sir. "

"What must you do to avoid it? "

I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable:
"I must keep in good health, and not die. "

"How can you keep in good health? Children younger than you die daily. I
buried a little child of five years old only a day or two since,--a good
little child, whose soul is now in heaven. It is to be feared the same
could not be said of you were you to be called hence. "

Not being in a condition to remove his doubt, I only cast my eyes down on
the two large feet planted on the rug, and sighed, wishing myself far
enough away.

"I hope that sigh is from the heart, and that you repent of ever having
been the occasion of discomfort to your excellent benefactress. "

"Benefactress! benefactress! " said I inwardly: "they all call Mrs.
Reed
my benefactress; if so, a benefactress is a disagreeable thing. "

"Do you say your prayers night and morning? " continued my interrogator.

"Yes, sir. "

"Do you read your Bible? "

"Sometimes. "

"With pleasure? Are you fond of it? "

"I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel, and
a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job
and Jonah. "

"And the Psalms? I hope you like them? "

"No, sir. "

"No? oh, shocking! I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six
Psalms by heart: and when you ask him which he would rather have, a
gingerbread-nut to eat or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: 'Oh! the
verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalms;' says he, 'I wish to be a little
angel here below;' he then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant
piety. "

"Psalms are not interesting," I remarked.

"That proves you have a wicked heart; and you must pray to God to change
it: to give you a new and clean one: to take away your heart of stone and
give you a heart of flesh. "

I was about to propound a question, touching the manner in which that
operation of changing my heart was to be performed, when Mrs. Reed
interposed, telling me to sit down; she then proceeded to carry on the
conversation herself.

"Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe I intimated in the letter which I wrote to
you three weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite the character
and disposition I could wish: should you admit her into Lowood school, I
should be glad if the superintendent and teachers were requested to keep
a strict eye on her, and, above all, to guard against her worst fault, a
tendency to deceit. I mention this in your hearing, Jane, that you may
not attempt to impose on Mr. Brocklehurst. "

Well might I dread, well might I dislike Mrs. Reed; for it was her nature
to wound me cruelly; never was I happy in her presence; however carefully
I obeyed, however strenuously I strove to please her, my efforts were
still repulsed and repaid by such sentences as the above. Now, uttered
before a stranger, the accusation cut me to the heart; I dimly perceived
that she was already obliterating hope from the new phase of existence
which she destined me to enter; I felt, though I could not have expressed
the feeling, that she was sowing aversion and unkindness along my future
path; I saw myself transformed under Mr. Brocklehurst's eye into an
artful, noxious child, and what could I do to remedy the injury?

"Nothing, indeed," thought I, as I struggled to repress a sob, and
hastily wiped away some tears, the impotent evidences of my anguish.

"Deceit is, indeed, a sad fault in a child," said Mr. Brocklehurst; "it
is akin to falsehood, and all liars will have their portion in the lake
burning with fire and brimstone; she shall, however, be watched, Mrs.
Reed. I will speak to Miss Temple and the teachers. "

"I should wish her to be brought up in a manner suiting her prospects,"
continued my benefactress; "to be made useful, to be kept humble: as for
the vacations, she will, with your permission, spend them always at
Lowood. "

"Your decisions are perfectly judicious, madam," returned Mr.
Brocklehurst. "Humility is a Christian grace, and one peculiarly
appropriate to the pupils of Lowood; I, therefore, direct that especial
care shall be bestowed on its cultivation amongst them. I have studied
how best to mortify in them the worldly sentiment of pride; and, only the
other day, I had a pleasing proof of my success. My second daughter,
Augusta, went with her mama to visit the school, and on her return she
exclaimed: 'Oh, dear papa, how quiet and plain all the girls at Lowood
look, with their hair combed behind their ears, and their long pinafores,
and those little holland pockets outside their frocks--they are almost
like poor people's children! and,' said she, 'they looked at my dress and
mama's, as if they had never seen a silk gown before. '"

"This is the state of things I quite approve," returned Mrs. Reed; "had I
sought all England over, I could scarcely have found a system more
exactly fitting a child like Jane Eyre. Consistency, my dear Mr.
Brocklehurst; I advocate consistency in all things. "

"Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties; and it has been
observed in every arrangement connected with the establishment of Lowood:
plain fare, simple attire, unsophisticated accommodations, hardy and
active habits; such is the order of the day in the house and its
inhabitants. "

"Quite right, sir. I may then depend upon this child being received as a
pupil at Lowood, and there being trained in conformity to her position
and prospects? "

"Madam, you may: she shall be placed in that nursery of chosen plants,
and I trust she will show herself grateful for the inestimable privilege
of her election. "

"I will send her, then, as soon as possible, Mr. Brocklehurst; for, I
assure you, I feel anxious to be relieved of a responsibility that was
becoming too irksome. "

"No doubt, no doubt, madam; and now I wish you good morning. I shall
return to Brocklehurst Hall in the course of a week or two: my good
friend, the Archdeacon, will not permit me to leave him sooner. I shall
send Miss Temple notice that she is to expect a new girl, so that there
will be no difficulty about receiving her. Good-bye. "

"Good-bye, Mr. Brocklehurst; remember me to Mrs. and Miss Brocklehurst,
and to Augusta and Theodore, and Master Broughton Brocklehurst. "

"I will, madam. Little girl, here is a book entitled the 'Child's
Guide,' read it with prayer, especially that part containing 'An account
of the awfully sudden death of Martha G---, a naughty child addicted to
falsehood and deceit. '"

With these words Mr. Brocklehurst put into my hand a thin pamphlet sewn
in a cover, and having rung for his carriage, he departed.

Mrs. Reed and I were left alone: some minutes passed in silence; she was
sewing, I was watching her. Mrs. Reed might be at that time some six or
seven and thirty; she was a woman of robust frame, square-shouldered and
strong-limbed, not tall, and, though stout, not obese: she had a somewhat
large face, the under jaw being much developed and very solid; her brow
was low, her chin large and prominent, mouth and nose sufficiently
regular; under her light eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth; her
skin was dark and opaque, her hair nearly flaxen; her constitution was
sound as a bell--illness never came near her; she was an exact, clever
manager; her household and tenantry were thoroughly under her control;
her children only at times defied her authority and laughed it to scorn;
she dressed well, and had a presence and port calculated to set off
handsome attire.

Sitting on a low stool, a few yards from her arm-chair, I examined her
figure; I perused her features. In my hand I held the tract containing
the sudden death of the Liar, to which narrative my attention had been
pointed as to an appropriate warning. What had just passed; what Mrs.
Reed had said concerning me to Mr. Brocklehurst; the whole tenor of their
conversation, was recent, raw, and stinging in my mind; I had felt every
word as acutely as I had heard it plainly, and a passion of resentment
fomented now within me.

Mrs. Reed looked up from her work; her eye settled on mine, her fingers
at the same time suspended their nimble movements.

"Go out of the room; return to the nursery," was her mandate. My look or
something else must have struck her as offensive, for she spoke with
extreme though suppressed irritation. I got up, I went to the door; I
came back again; I walked to the window, across the room, then close up
to her.

_Speak_ I must: I had been trodden on severely, and _must_ turn: but how?
What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist? I gathered my
energies and launched them in this blunt sentence--

"I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I
do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except
John Reed; and this book about the liar, you may give to your girl,
Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and not I. "

Mrs. Reed's hands still lay on her work inactive: her eye of ice
continued to dwell freezingly on mine.

"What more have you to say? " she asked, rather in the tone in which a
person might address an opponent of adult age than such as is ordinarily
used to a child.

That eye of hers, that voice stirred every antipathy I had. Shaking from
head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement, I continued--

"I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again
as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and
if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say
the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with
miserable cruelty. "

"How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre? "

"How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the _truth_. You
think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or
kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall remember
how you thrust me back--roughly and violently thrust me back--into the
red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day; though I was in agony;
though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, 'Have mercy! Have
mercy, Aunt Reed! ' And that punishment you made me suffer because your
wicked boy struck me--knocked me down for nothing. I will tell anybody
who asks me questions, this exact tale. People think you a good woman,
but you are bad, hard-hearted. _You_ are deceitful! "

{How dare I, Mrs. Ried? How dare I? Because it is the truth: p30. jpg}

Ere I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult, with
the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as if
an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-
for liberty. Not without cause was this sentiment: Mrs. Reed looked
frightened; her work had slipped from her knee; she was lifting up her
hands, rocking herself to and fro, and even twisting her face as if she
would cry.

"Jane, you are under a mistake: what is the matter with you? Why do you
tremble so violently? Would you like to drink some water? "

"No, Mrs. Reed. "

"Is there anything else you wish for, Jane? I assure you, I desire to be
your friend. "

"Not you. You told Mr. Brocklehurst I had a bad character, a deceitful
disposition; and I'll let everybody at Lowood know what you are, and what
you have done. "

"Jane, you don't understand these things: children must be corrected for
their faults. "

"Deceit is not my fault! " I cried out in a savage, high voice.

"But you are passionate, Jane, that you must allow: and now return to the
nursery--there's a dear--and lie down a little. "

"I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs.
Reed, for I hate to live here. "

"I will indeed send her to school soon," murmured Mrs. Reed _sotto voce_;
and gathering up her work, she abruptly quitted the apartment.

I was left there alone--winner of the field. It was the hardest battle I
had fought, and the first victory I had gained: I stood awhile on the
rug, where Mr. Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed my conqueror's
solitude. First, I smiled to myself and felt elate; but this fierce
pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the accelerated throb of my
pulses. A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as I had done; cannot
give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine, without
experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction. A
ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a
meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed: the same
ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have
represented as meetly my subsequent condition, when half-an-hour's
silence and reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the
dreariness of my hated and hating position.

Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine
it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and
corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned. Willingly
would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed's pardon; but I knew, partly
from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her
repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse
of my nature.

I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking;
fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than that of sombre
indignation. I took a book--some Arabian tales; I sat down and
endeavoured to read. I could make no sense of the subject; my own
thoughts swam always between me and the page I had usually found
fascinating. I opened the glass-door in the breakfast-room: the
shrubbery was quite still: the black frost reigned, unbroken by sun or
breeze, through the grounds. I covered my head and arms with the skirt
of my frock, and went out to walk in a part of the plantation which was
quite sequestrated; but I found no pleasure in the silent trees, the
falling fir-cones, the congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept
by past winds in heaps, and now stiffened together. I leaned against a
gate, and looked into an empty field where no sheep were feeding, where
the short grass was nipped and blanched. It was a very grey day; a most
opaque sky, "onding on snaw," canopied all; thence flakes felt it
intervals, which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea without
melting. I stood, a wretched child enough, whispering to myself over and
over again, "What shall I do? --what shall I do? "

All at once I heard a clear voice call, "Miss Jane! where are you? Come
to lunch! "

It was Bessie, I knew well enough; but I did not stir; her light step
came tripping down the path.

"You naughty little thing! " she said. "Why don't you come when you are
called? "

Bessie's presence, compared with the thoughts over which I had been
brooding, seemed cheerful; even though, as usual, she was somewhat cross.
The fact is, after my conflict with and victory over Mrs. Reed, I was not
disposed to care much for the nursemaid's transitory anger; and I _was_
disposed to bask in her youthful lightness of heart. I just put my two
arms round her and said, "Come, Bessie! don't scold. "

The action was more frank and fearless than any I was habituated to
indulge in: somehow it pleased her.

"You are a strange child, Miss Jane," she said, as she looked down at me;
"a little roving, solitary thing: and you are going to school, I
suppose? "

I nodded.

"And won't you be sorry to leave poor Bessie? "

"What does Bessie care for me? She is always scolding me. "

"Because you're such a queer, frightened, shy little thing. You should
be bolder. "

"What! to get more knocks? "

"Nonsense! But you are rather put upon, that's certain. My mother said,
when she came to see me last week, that she would not like a little one
of her own to be in your place. --Now, come in, and I've some good news
for you. "

"I don't think you have, Bessie. "

"Child! what do you mean? What sorrowful eyes you fix on me! Well, but
Missis and the young ladies and Master John are going out to tea this
afternoon, and you shall have tea with me. I'll ask cook to bake you a
little cake, and then you shall help me to look over your drawers; for I
am soon to pack your trunk. Missis intends you to leave Gateshead in a
day or two, and you shall choose what toys you like to take with you. "

"Bessie, you must promise not to scold me any more till I go. "

"Well, I will; but mind you are a very good girl, and don't be afraid of
me. Don't start when I chance to speak rather sharply; it's so
provoking. "

"I don't think I shall ever be afraid of you again, Bessie, because I
have got used to you, and I shall soon have another set of people to
dread. "

"If you dread them they'll dislike you. "

"As you do, Bessie? "

"I don't dislike you, Miss; I believe I am fonder of you than of all the
others. "

"You don't show it. "

"You little sharp thing! you've got quite a new way of talking. What
makes you so venturesome and hardy? "

"Why, I shall soon be away from you, and besides"--I was going to say
something about what had passed between me and Mrs. Reed, but on second
thoughts I considered it better to remain silent on that head.

"And so you're glad to leave me? "

"Not at all, Bessie; indeed, just now I'm rather sorry. "

"Just now! and rather! How coolly my little lady says it! I dare say
now if I were to ask you for a kiss you wouldn't give it me: you'd say
you'd _rather_ not. "

"I'll kiss you and welcome: bend your head down. " Bessie stooped; we
mutually embraced, and I followed her into the house quite comforted.
That afternoon lapsed in peace and harmony; and in the evening Bessie
told me some of her most enchanting stories, and sang me some of her
sweetest songs. Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.




CHAPTER V


Five o'clock had hardly struck on the morning of the 19th of January,
when Bessie brought a candle into my closet and found me already up and
nearly dressed. I had risen half-an-hour before her entrance, and had
washed my face, and put on my clothes by the light of a half-moon just
setting, whose rays streamed through the narrow window near my crib.