"
Bessie answered that I was doing very well.
Bessie answered that I was doing very well.
Jane Eyre- An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë
"
They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Reed,
and had thrust me upon a stool: my impulse was to rise from it like a
spring; their two pair of hands arrested me instantly.
"If you don't sit still, you must be tied down," said Bessie. "Miss
Abbot, lend me your garters; she would break mine directly. "
Miss Abbot turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature. This
preparation for bonds, and the additional ignominy it inferred, took a
little of the excitement out of me.
"Don't take them off," I cried; "I will not stir. "
In guarantee whereof, I attached myself to my seat by my hands.
"Mind you don't," said Bessie; and when she had ascertained that I was
really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me; then she and Miss Abbot
stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as
incredulous of my sanity.
"She never did so before," at last said Bessie, turning to the Abigail.
"But it was always in her," was the reply. "I've told Missis often my
opinion about the child, and Missis agreed with me. She's an underhand
little thing: I never saw a girl of her age with so much cover. "
Bessie answered not; but ere long, addressing me, she said--"You ought to
be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. Reed: she keeps
you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poorhouse. "
I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very
first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This
reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very
painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. Miss Abbot joined in--
"And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed
and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up with
them. They will have a great deal of money, and you will have none: it
is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to
them. "
"What we tell you is for your good," added Bessie, in no harsh voice,
"you should try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, you would have
a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, Missis will send you
away, I am sure. "
"Besides," said Miss Abbot, "God will punish her: He might strike her
dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go? Come,
Bessie, we will leave her: I wouldn't have her heart for anything. Say
your prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself; for if you don't
repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and
fetch you away. "
They went, shutting the door, and locking it behind them.
The red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say
never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall
rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it
contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the
mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with
curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre;
the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half
shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red;
the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the
walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe,
the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out
of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-
up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles
counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair
near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and
looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.
This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because
remote from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was known to be
so seldom entered. The house-maid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe
from the mirrors and the furniture a week's quiet dust: and Mrs. Reed
herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain
secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments, her
jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last
words lies the secret of the red-room--the spell which kept it so lonely
in spite of its grandeur.
Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his
last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the
undertaker's men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had
guarded it from frequent intrusion.
My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted,
was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before me;
to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken
reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the muffled
windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty
of the bed and room. I was not quite sure whether they had locked the
door; and when I dared move, I got up and went to see. Alas! yes: no
jail was ever more secure. Returning, I had to cross before the looking-
glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed.
All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality:
and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and
arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all
else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it like one of
the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie's evening stories
represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing
before the eyes of belated travellers. I returned to my stool.
Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour for
complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave
was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a rapid rush
of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present.
All John Reed's violent tyrannies, all his sisters' proud indifference,
all his mother's aversion, all the servants' partiality, turned up in my
disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always
suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why
could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one's favour?
Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected. Georgiana, who had
a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage,
was universally indulged. Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls,
seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase
indemnity for every fault. John no one thwarted, much less punished;
though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks,
set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit,
and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory: he called
his mother "old girl," too; sometimes reviled her for her dark skin,
similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her wishes; not unfrequently tore
and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still "her own darling. " I dared
commit no fault: I strove to fulfil every duty; and I was termed naughty
and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to
night.
My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received: no
one had reproved John for wantonly striking me; and because I had turned
against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded with
general opprobrium.
"Unjust! --unjust! " said my reason, forced by the agonising stimulus into
precocious though transitory power: and Resolve, equally wrought up,
instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable
oppression--as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never
eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.
What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon! How all my
brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what
darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought! I could
not answer the ceaseless inward question--_why_ I thus suffered; now, at
the distance of--I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.
I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; I had nothing
in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen vassalage. If
they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them. They were not
bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathise with one
amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in
capacity, in propensities; a useless thing, incapable of serving their
interest, or adding to their pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the
germs of indignation at their treatment, of contempt of their judgment. I
know that had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome,
romping child--though equally dependent and friendless--Mrs. Reed would
have endured my presence more complacently; her children would have
entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants
would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.
Daylight began to forsake the red-room; it was past four o'clock, and the
beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. I heard the rain
still beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind howling
in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then
my courage sank. My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn
depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire. All said I was
wicked, and perhaps I might be so; what thought had I been but just
conceiving of starving myself to death? That certainly was a crime: and
was I fit to die? Or was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church
an inviting bourne? In such vault I had been told did Mr. Reed lie
buried; and led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with
gathering dread. I could not remember him; but I knew that he was my own
uncle--my mother's brother--that he had taken me when a parentless infant
to his house; and that in his last moments he had required a promise of
Mrs. Reed that she would rear and maintain me as one of her own children.
Mrs. Reed probably considered she had kept this promise; and so she had,
I dare say, as well as her nature would permit her; but how could she
really like an interloper not of her race, and unconnected with her,
after her husband's death, by any tie? It must have been most irksome to
find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of a
parent to a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial
alien permanently intruded on her own family group.
A singular notion dawned upon me. I doubted not--never doubted--that if
Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I
sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls--occasionally also
turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaning mirror--I began to
recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the
violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the
perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit,
harassed by the wrongs of his sister's child, might quit its
abode--whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the
departed--and rise before me in this chamber. I wiped my tears and
hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a
preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed
face, bending over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in
theory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I
endeavoured to stifle it--I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from
my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room;
at this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a
ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight
was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling
and quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this streak
of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by some
one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken
as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a
herald of some coming vision from another world. My heart beat thick, my
head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of
wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance
broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort.
Steps came running along the outer passage; the key turned, Bessie and
Abbot entered.
"Miss Eyre, are you ill? " said Bessie.
"What a dreadful noise! it went quite through me! " exclaimed Abbot.
"Take me out! Let me go into the nursery! " was my cry.
"What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something? " again demanded
Bessie.
"Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come. " I had now got
hold of Bessie's hand, and she did not snatch it from me.
"She has screamed out on purpose," declared Abbot, in some disgust. "And
what a scream! If she had been in great pain one would have excused it,
but she only wanted to bring us all here: I know her naughty tricks. "
"What is all this? " demanded another voice peremptorily; and Mrs. Reed
came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling stormily.
"Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre should be left
in the red-room till I came to her myself. "
"Miss Jane screamed so loud, ma'am," pleaded Bessie.
"Let her go," was the only answer. "Loose Bessie's hand, child: you
cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured. I abhor
artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that tricks
will not answer: you will now stay here an hour longer, and it is only on
condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you
then. "
"O aunt! have pity! Forgive me! I cannot endure it--let me be punished
some other way! I shall be killed if--"
"Silence! This violence is all most repulsive:" and so, no doubt, she
felt it. I was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked on
me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous
duplicity.
Bessie and Abbot having retreated, Mrs. Reed, impatient of my now frantic
anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked me in, without
farther parley. I heard her sweeping away; and soon after she was gone,
I suppose I had a species of fit: unconsciousness closed the scene.
CHAPTER III
The next thing I remember is, waking up with a feeling as if I had had a
frightful nightmare, and seeing before me a terrible red glare, crossed
with thick black bars. I heard voices, too, speaking with a hollow
sound, and as if muffled by a rush of wind or water: agitation,
uncertainty, and an all-predominating sense of terror confused my
faculties. Ere long, I became aware that some one was handling me;
lifting me up and supporting me in a sitting posture, and that more
tenderly than I had ever been raised or upheld before. I rested my head
against a pillow or an arm, and felt easy.
In five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved: I knew quite
well that I was in my own bed, and that the red glare was the nursery
fire. It was night: a candle burnt on the table; Bessie stood at the bed-
foot with a basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near my
pillow, leaning over me.
I felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection and
security, when I knew that there was a stranger in the room, an
individual not belonging to Gateshead, and not related to Mrs. Reed.
Turning from Bessie (though her presence was far less obnoxious to me
than that of Abbot, for instance, would have been), I scrutinised the
face of the gentleman: I knew him; it was Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary,
sometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when the servants were ailing: for
herself and the children she employed a physician.
"Well, who am I? " he asked.
I pronounced his name, offering him at the same time my hand: he took it,
smiling and saying, "We shall do very well by-and-by. " Then he laid me
down, and addressing Bessie, charged her to be very careful that I was
not disturbed during the night. Having given some further directions,
and intimates that he should call again the next day, he departed; to my
grief: I felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat in the chair near
my pillow; and as he closed the door after him, all the room darkened and
my heart again sank: inexpressible sadness weighed it down.
"Do you feel as if you should sleep, Miss? " asked Bessie, rather softly.
Scarcely dared I answer her; for I feared the next sentence might be
rough. "I will try. "
"Would you like to drink, or could you eat anything? "
"No, thank you, Bessie. "
"Then I think I shall go to bed, for it is past twelve o'clock; but you
may call me if you want anything in the night. "
Wonderful civility this! It emboldened me to ask a question.
"Bessie, what is the matter with me? Am I ill? "
"You fell sick, I suppose, in the red-room with crying; you'll be better
soon, no doubt. "
Bessie went into the housemaid's apartment, which was near. I heard her
say--
"Sarah, come and sleep with me in the nursery; I daren't for my life be
alone with that poor child to-night: she might die; it's such a strange
thing she should have that fit: I wonder if she saw anything. Missis was
rather too hard. "
Sarah came back with her; they both went to bed; they were whispering
together for half-an-hour before they fell asleep. I caught scraps of
their conversation, from which I was able only too distinctly to infer
the main subject discussed.
"Something passed her, all dressed in white, and vanished"--"A great
black dog behind him"--"Three loud raps on the chamber door"--"A light in
the churchyard just over his grave," etc. , etc.
At last both slept: the fire and the candle went out. For me, the
watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; strained by
dread: such dread as children only can feel.
No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-
room; it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the reverberation to
this day. Yes, Mrs. Reed, to you I owe some fearful pangs of mental
suffering, but I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did:
while rending my heart-strings, you thought you were only uprooting my
bad propensities.
Next day, by noon, I was up and dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl by
the nursery hearth. I felt physically weak and broken down: but my worse
ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which
kept drawing from me silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one salt drop
from my cheek than another followed. Yet, I thought, I ought to have
been happy, for none of the Reeds were there, they were all gone out in
the carriage with their mama. Abbot, too, was sewing in another room,
and Bessie, as she moved hither and thither, putting away toys and
arranging drawers, addressed to me every now and then a word of unwonted
kindness. This state of things should have been to me a paradise of
peace, accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless
fagging; but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such a state that no
calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably.
Bessie had been down into the kitchen, and she brought up with her a tart
on a certain brightly painted china plate, whose bird of paradise,
nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds, had been wont to stir in
me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration; and which plate I had often
petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand in order to examine it more
closely, but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a
privilege. This precious vessel was now placed on my knee, and I was
cordially invited to eat the circlet of delicate pastry upon it. Vain
favour! coming, like most other favours long deferred and often wished
for, too late! I could not eat the tart; and the plumage of the bird,
the tints of the flowers, seemed strangely faded: I put both plate and
tart away. Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word _book_ acted as
a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver's Travels from
the library. This book I had again and again perused with delight. I
considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of
interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves,
having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under
mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at
length made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of
England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker,
and the population more scant; whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in
my creed, solid parts of the earth's surface, I doubted not that I might
one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields,
houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds
of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs,
the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other. Yet, when
this cherished volume was now placed in my hand--when I turned over its
leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now,
never failed to find--all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt
goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most
desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. I closed the
book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table, beside the
untasted tart.
Bessie had now finished dusting and tidying the room, and having washed
her hands, she opened a certain little drawer, full of splendid shreds of
silk and satin, and began making a new bonnet for Georgiana's doll.
Meantime she sang: her song was--
"In the days when we went gipsying,
A long time ago. "
I had often heard the song before, and always with lively delight; for
Bessie had a sweet voice,--at least, I thought so. But now, though her
voice was still sweet, I found in its melody an indescribable sadness.
Sometimes, preoccupied with her work, she sang the refrain very low, very
lingeringly; "A long time ago" came out like the saddest cadence of a
funeral hymn. She passed into another ballad, this time a really doleful
one.
"My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary;
Long is the way, and the mountains are wild;
Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary
Over the path of the poor orphan child.
Why did they send me so far and so lonely,
Up where the moors spread and grey rocks are piled?
Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only
Watch o'er the steps of a poor orphan child.
Yet distant and soft the night breeze is blowing,
Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild,
God, in His mercy, protection is showing,
Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child.
Ev'n should I fall o'er the broken bridge passing,
Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled,
Still will my Father, with promise and blessing,
Take to His bosom the poor orphan child.
There is a thought that for strength should avail me,
Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled;
Heaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me;
God is a friend to the poor orphan child. "
"Come, Miss Jane, don't cry," said Bessie as she finished. She might as
well have said to the fire, "don't burn! " but how could she divine the
morbid suffering to which I was a prey? In the course of the morning Mr.
Lloyd came again.
"What, already up! " said he, as he entered the nursery. "Well, nurse,
how is she?
"
Bessie answered that I was doing very well.
"Then she ought to look more cheerful. Come here, Miss Jane: your name
is Jane, is it not? "
"Yes, sir, Jane Eyre. "
"Well, you have been crying, Miss Jane Eyre; can you tell me what about?
Have you any pain? "
"No, sir. "
"Oh! I daresay she is crying because she could not go out with Missis in
the carriage," interposed Bessie.
"Surely not! why, she is too old for such pettishness. "
I thought so too; and my self-esteem being wounded by the false charge, I
answered promptly, "I never cried for such a thing in my life: I hate
going out in the carriage. I cry because I am miserable. "
"Oh fie, Miss! " said Bessie.
The good apothecary appeared a little puzzled. I was standing before
him; he fixed his eyes on me very steadily: his eyes were small and grey;
not very bright, but I dare say I should think them shrewd now: he had a
hard-featured yet good-natured looking face. Having considered me at
leisure, he said--
"What made you ill yesterday? "
"She had a fall," said Bessie, again putting in her word.
"Fall! why, that is like a baby again! Can't she manage to walk at her
age? She must be eight or nine years old. "
"I was knocked down," was the blunt explanation, jerked out of me by
another pang of mortified pride; "but that did not make me ill," I added;
while Mr. Lloyd helped himself to a pinch of snuff.
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.
They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Reed,
and had thrust me upon a stool: my impulse was to rise from it like a
spring; their two pair of hands arrested me instantly.
"If you don't sit still, you must be tied down," said Bessie. "Miss
Abbot, lend me your garters; she would break mine directly. "
Miss Abbot turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature. This
preparation for bonds, and the additional ignominy it inferred, took a
little of the excitement out of me.
"Don't take them off," I cried; "I will not stir. "
In guarantee whereof, I attached myself to my seat by my hands.
"Mind you don't," said Bessie; and when she had ascertained that I was
really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me; then she and Miss Abbot
stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as
incredulous of my sanity.
"She never did so before," at last said Bessie, turning to the Abigail.
"But it was always in her," was the reply. "I've told Missis often my
opinion about the child, and Missis agreed with me. She's an underhand
little thing: I never saw a girl of her age with so much cover. "
Bessie answered not; but ere long, addressing me, she said--"You ought to
be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. Reed: she keeps
you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poorhouse. "
I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very
first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This
reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very
painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. Miss Abbot joined in--
"And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed
and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up with
them. They will have a great deal of money, and you will have none: it
is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to
them. "
"What we tell you is for your good," added Bessie, in no harsh voice,
"you should try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, you would have
a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, Missis will send you
away, I am sure. "
"Besides," said Miss Abbot, "God will punish her: He might strike her
dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go? Come,
Bessie, we will leave her: I wouldn't have her heart for anything. Say
your prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself; for if you don't
repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and
fetch you away. "
They went, shutting the door, and locking it behind them.
The red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say
never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall
rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it
contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the
mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with
curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre;
the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half
shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red;
the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the
walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe,
the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out
of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-
up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles
counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair
near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and
looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.
This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because
remote from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was known to be
so seldom entered. The house-maid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe
from the mirrors and the furniture a week's quiet dust: and Mrs. Reed
herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain
secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments, her
jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last
words lies the secret of the red-room--the spell which kept it so lonely
in spite of its grandeur.
Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his
last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the
undertaker's men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had
guarded it from frequent intrusion.
My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted,
was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before me;
to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken
reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the muffled
windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty
of the bed and room. I was not quite sure whether they had locked the
door; and when I dared move, I got up and went to see. Alas! yes: no
jail was ever more secure. Returning, I had to cross before the looking-
glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed.
All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality:
and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and
arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all
else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it like one of
the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie's evening stories
represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing
before the eyes of belated travellers. I returned to my stool.
Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour for
complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave
was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a rapid rush
of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present.
All John Reed's violent tyrannies, all his sisters' proud indifference,
all his mother's aversion, all the servants' partiality, turned up in my
disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always
suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned? Why
could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one's favour?
Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected. Georgiana, who had
a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage,
was universally indulged. Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls,
seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase
indemnity for every fault. John no one thwarted, much less punished;
though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks,
set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit,
and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory: he called
his mother "old girl," too; sometimes reviled her for her dark skin,
similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her wishes; not unfrequently tore
and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still "her own darling. " I dared
commit no fault: I strove to fulfil every duty; and I was termed naughty
and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to
night.
My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received: no
one had reproved John for wantonly striking me; and because I had turned
against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded with
general opprobrium.
"Unjust! --unjust! " said my reason, forced by the agonising stimulus into
precocious though transitory power: and Resolve, equally wrought up,
instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable
oppression--as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never
eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.
What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon! How all my
brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what
darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought! I could
not answer the ceaseless inward question--_why_ I thus suffered; now, at
the distance of--I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.
I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; I had nothing
in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen vassalage. If
they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them. They were not
bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathise with one
amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in
capacity, in propensities; a useless thing, incapable of serving their
interest, or adding to their pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the
germs of indignation at their treatment, of contempt of their judgment. I
know that had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome,
romping child--though equally dependent and friendless--Mrs. Reed would
have endured my presence more complacently; her children would have
entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants
would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.
Daylight began to forsake the red-room; it was past four o'clock, and the
beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. I heard the rain
still beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind howling
in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then
my courage sank. My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn
depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire. All said I was
wicked, and perhaps I might be so; what thought had I been but just
conceiving of starving myself to death? That certainly was a crime: and
was I fit to die? Or was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church
an inviting bourne? In such vault I had been told did Mr. Reed lie
buried; and led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with
gathering dread. I could not remember him; but I knew that he was my own
uncle--my mother's brother--that he had taken me when a parentless infant
to his house; and that in his last moments he had required a promise of
Mrs. Reed that she would rear and maintain me as one of her own children.
Mrs. Reed probably considered she had kept this promise; and so she had,
I dare say, as well as her nature would permit her; but how could she
really like an interloper not of her race, and unconnected with her,
after her husband's death, by any tie? It must have been most irksome to
find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of a
parent to a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial
alien permanently intruded on her own family group.
A singular notion dawned upon me. I doubted not--never doubted--that if
Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I
sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls--occasionally also
turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaning mirror--I began to
recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the
violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the
perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit,
harassed by the wrongs of his sister's child, might quit its
abode--whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the
departed--and rise before me in this chamber. I wiped my tears and
hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a
preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed
face, bending over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in
theory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I
endeavoured to stifle it--I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from
my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room;
at this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a
ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight
was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling
and quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this streak
of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by some
one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken
as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a
herald of some coming vision from another world. My heart beat thick, my
head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of
wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance
broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort.
Steps came running along the outer passage; the key turned, Bessie and
Abbot entered.
"Miss Eyre, are you ill? " said Bessie.
"What a dreadful noise! it went quite through me! " exclaimed Abbot.
"Take me out! Let me go into the nursery! " was my cry.
"What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something? " again demanded
Bessie.
"Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come. " I had now got
hold of Bessie's hand, and she did not snatch it from me.
"She has screamed out on purpose," declared Abbot, in some disgust. "And
what a scream! If she had been in great pain one would have excused it,
but she only wanted to bring us all here: I know her naughty tricks. "
"What is all this? " demanded another voice peremptorily; and Mrs. Reed
came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling stormily.
"Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre should be left
in the red-room till I came to her myself. "
"Miss Jane screamed so loud, ma'am," pleaded Bessie.
"Let her go," was the only answer. "Loose Bessie's hand, child: you
cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured. I abhor
artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that tricks
will not answer: you will now stay here an hour longer, and it is only on
condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you
then. "
"O aunt! have pity! Forgive me! I cannot endure it--let me be punished
some other way! I shall be killed if--"
"Silence! This violence is all most repulsive:" and so, no doubt, she
felt it. I was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked on
me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous
duplicity.
Bessie and Abbot having retreated, Mrs. Reed, impatient of my now frantic
anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked me in, without
farther parley. I heard her sweeping away; and soon after she was gone,
I suppose I had a species of fit: unconsciousness closed the scene.
CHAPTER III
The next thing I remember is, waking up with a feeling as if I had had a
frightful nightmare, and seeing before me a terrible red glare, crossed
with thick black bars. I heard voices, too, speaking with a hollow
sound, and as if muffled by a rush of wind or water: agitation,
uncertainty, and an all-predominating sense of terror confused my
faculties. Ere long, I became aware that some one was handling me;
lifting me up and supporting me in a sitting posture, and that more
tenderly than I had ever been raised or upheld before. I rested my head
against a pillow or an arm, and felt easy.
In five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved: I knew quite
well that I was in my own bed, and that the red glare was the nursery
fire. It was night: a candle burnt on the table; Bessie stood at the bed-
foot with a basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near my
pillow, leaning over me.
I felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection and
security, when I knew that there was a stranger in the room, an
individual not belonging to Gateshead, and not related to Mrs. Reed.
Turning from Bessie (though her presence was far less obnoxious to me
than that of Abbot, for instance, would have been), I scrutinised the
face of the gentleman: I knew him; it was Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary,
sometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when the servants were ailing: for
herself and the children she employed a physician.
"Well, who am I? " he asked.
I pronounced his name, offering him at the same time my hand: he took it,
smiling and saying, "We shall do very well by-and-by. " Then he laid me
down, and addressing Bessie, charged her to be very careful that I was
not disturbed during the night. Having given some further directions,
and intimates that he should call again the next day, he departed; to my
grief: I felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat in the chair near
my pillow; and as he closed the door after him, all the room darkened and
my heart again sank: inexpressible sadness weighed it down.
"Do you feel as if you should sleep, Miss? " asked Bessie, rather softly.
Scarcely dared I answer her; for I feared the next sentence might be
rough. "I will try. "
"Would you like to drink, or could you eat anything? "
"No, thank you, Bessie. "
"Then I think I shall go to bed, for it is past twelve o'clock; but you
may call me if you want anything in the night. "
Wonderful civility this! It emboldened me to ask a question.
"Bessie, what is the matter with me? Am I ill? "
"You fell sick, I suppose, in the red-room with crying; you'll be better
soon, no doubt. "
Bessie went into the housemaid's apartment, which was near. I heard her
say--
"Sarah, come and sleep with me in the nursery; I daren't for my life be
alone with that poor child to-night: she might die; it's such a strange
thing she should have that fit: I wonder if she saw anything. Missis was
rather too hard. "
Sarah came back with her; they both went to bed; they were whispering
together for half-an-hour before they fell asleep. I caught scraps of
their conversation, from which I was able only too distinctly to infer
the main subject discussed.
"Something passed her, all dressed in white, and vanished"--"A great
black dog behind him"--"Three loud raps on the chamber door"--"A light in
the churchyard just over his grave," etc. , etc.
At last both slept: the fire and the candle went out. For me, the
watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; strained by
dread: such dread as children only can feel.
No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-
room; it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the reverberation to
this day. Yes, Mrs. Reed, to you I owe some fearful pangs of mental
suffering, but I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did:
while rending my heart-strings, you thought you were only uprooting my
bad propensities.
Next day, by noon, I was up and dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl by
the nursery hearth. I felt physically weak and broken down: but my worse
ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which
kept drawing from me silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one salt drop
from my cheek than another followed. Yet, I thought, I ought to have
been happy, for none of the Reeds were there, they were all gone out in
the carriage with their mama. Abbot, too, was sewing in another room,
and Bessie, as she moved hither and thither, putting away toys and
arranging drawers, addressed to me every now and then a word of unwonted
kindness. This state of things should have been to me a paradise of
peace, accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless
fagging; but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such a state that no
calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably.
Bessie had been down into the kitchen, and she brought up with her a tart
on a certain brightly painted china plate, whose bird of paradise,
nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds, had been wont to stir in
me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration; and which plate I had often
petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand in order to examine it more
closely, but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a
privilege. This precious vessel was now placed on my knee, and I was
cordially invited to eat the circlet of delicate pastry upon it. Vain
favour! coming, like most other favours long deferred and often wished
for, too late! I could not eat the tart; and the plumage of the bird,
the tints of the flowers, seemed strangely faded: I put both plate and
tart away. Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word _book_ acted as
a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver's Travels from
the library. This book I had again and again perused with delight. I
considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of
interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves,
having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under
mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at
length made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of
England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker,
and the population more scant; whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in
my creed, solid parts of the earth's surface, I doubted not that I might
one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields,
houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds
of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs,
the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other. Yet, when
this cherished volume was now placed in my hand--when I turned over its
leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now,
never failed to find--all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt
goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most
desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. I closed the
book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table, beside the
untasted tart.
Bessie had now finished dusting and tidying the room, and having washed
her hands, she opened a certain little drawer, full of splendid shreds of
silk and satin, and began making a new bonnet for Georgiana's doll.
Meantime she sang: her song was--
"In the days when we went gipsying,
A long time ago. "
I had often heard the song before, and always with lively delight; for
Bessie had a sweet voice,--at least, I thought so. But now, though her
voice was still sweet, I found in its melody an indescribable sadness.
Sometimes, preoccupied with her work, she sang the refrain very low, very
lingeringly; "A long time ago" came out like the saddest cadence of a
funeral hymn. She passed into another ballad, this time a really doleful
one.
"My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary;
Long is the way, and the mountains are wild;
Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary
Over the path of the poor orphan child.
Why did they send me so far and so lonely,
Up where the moors spread and grey rocks are piled?
Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only
Watch o'er the steps of a poor orphan child.
Yet distant and soft the night breeze is blowing,
Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild,
God, in His mercy, protection is showing,
Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child.
Ev'n should I fall o'er the broken bridge passing,
Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled,
Still will my Father, with promise and blessing,
Take to His bosom the poor orphan child.
There is a thought that for strength should avail me,
Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled;
Heaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me;
God is a friend to the poor orphan child. "
"Come, Miss Jane, don't cry," said Bessie as she finished. She might as
well have said to the fire, "don't burn! " but how could she divine the
morbid suffering to which I was a prey? In the course of the morning Mr.
Lloyd came again.
"What, already up! " said he, as he entered the nursery. "Well, nurse,
how is she?
"
Bessie answered that I was doing very well.
"Then she ought to look more cheerful. Come here, Miss Jane: your name
is Jane, is it not? "
"Yes, sir, Jane Eyre. "
"Well, you have been crying, Miss Jane Eyre; can you tell me what about?
Have you any pain? "
"No, sir. "
"Oh! I daresay she is crying because she could not go out with Missis in
the carriage," interposed Bessie.
"Surely not! why, she is too old for such pettishness. "
I thought so too; and my self-esteem being wounded by the false charge, I
answered promptly, "I never cried for such a thing in my life: I hate
going out in the carriage. I cry because I am miserable. "
"Oh fie, Miss! " said Bessie.
The good apothecary appeared a little puzzled. I was standing before
him; he fixed his eyes on me very steadily: his eyes were small and grey;
not very bright, but I dare say I should think them shrewd now: he had a
hard-featured yet good-natured looking face. Having considered me at
leisure, he said--
"What made you ill yesterday? "
"She had a fall," said Bessie, again putting in her word.
"Fall! why, that is like a baby again! Can't she manage to walk at her
age? She must be eight or nine years old. "
"I was knocked down," was the blunt explanation, jerked out of me by
another pang of mortified pride; "but that did not make me ill," I added;
while Mr. Lloyd helped himself to a pinch of snuff.
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.
