The
other drawings pleased her much, but she called that "an ugly man.
other drawings pleased her much, but she called that "an ugly man.
Jane Eyre- An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë
I'll pledge my word on it.
You go to-morrow,
then? "
"Yes, sir; early. "
"Shall you come down to the drawing-room after dinner? "
"No, sir, I must prepare for the journey. "
"Then you and I must bid good-bye for a little while? "
"I suppose so, sir. "
"And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me; I'm
not quite up to it. "
"They say, Farewell, or any other form they prefer. "
"Then say it. "
"Farewell, Mr. Rochester, for the present. "
"What must I say? "
"The same, if you like, sir. "
"Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present; is that all? "
"Yes? "
"It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly. I should like
something else: a little addition to the rite. If one shook hands, for
instance; but no--that would not content me either. So you'll do no more
than say Farewell, Jane? "
"It is enough, sir: as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word
as in many. "
"Very likely; but it is blank and cool--'Farewell. '"
"How long is he going to stand with his back against that door? " I asked
myself; "I want to commence my packing. " The dinner-bell rang, and
suddenly away he bolted, without another syllable: I saw him no more
during the day, and was off before he had risen in the morning.
I reached the lodge at Gateshead about five o'clock in the afternoon of
the first of May: I stepped in there before going up to the hall. It was
very clean and neat: the ornamental windows were hung with little white
curtains; the floor was spotless; the grate and fire-irons were burnished
bright, and the fire burnt clear. Bessie sat on the hearth, nursing her
last-born, and Robert and his sister played quietly in a corner.
"Bless you! --I knew you would come! " exclaimed Mrs. Leaven, as I entered.
"Yes, Bessie," said I, after I had kissed her; "and I trust I am not too
late. How is Mrs. Reed? --Alive still, I hope. "
"Yes, she is alive; and more sensible and collected than she was. The
doctor says she may linger a week or two yet; but he hardly thinks she
will finally recover. "
"Has she mentioned me lately? "
"She was talking of you only this morning, and wishing you would come,
but she is sleeping now, or was ten minutes ago, when I was up at the
house. She generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the afternoon, and
wakes up about six or seven. Will you rest yourself here an hour, Miss,
and then I will go up with you? "
Robert here entered, and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the cradle and
went to welcome him: afterwards she insisted on my taking off my bonnet
and having some tea; for she said I looked pale and tired. I was glad to
accept her hospitality; and I submitted to be relieved of my travelling
garb just as passively as I used to let her undress me when a child.
Old times crowded fast back on me as I watched her bustling about--setting
out the tea-tray with her best china, cutting bread and butter, toasting
a tea-cake, and, between whiles, giving little Robert or Jane an
occasional tap or push, just as she used to give me in former days.
Bessie had retained her quick temper as well as her light foot and good
looks.
Tea ready, I was going to approach the table; but she desired me to sit
still, quite in her old peremptory tones. I must be served at the
fireside, she said; and she placed before me a little round stand with my
cup and a plate of toast, absolutely as she used to accommodate me with
some privately purloined dainty on a nursery chair: and I smiled and
obeyed her as in bygone days.
She wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall, and what sort of a
person the mistress was; and when I told her there was only a master,
whether he was a nice gentleman, and if I liked him. I told her he was
rather an ugly man, but quite a gentleman; and that he treated me kindly,
and I was content. Then I went on to describe to her the gay company
that had lately been staying at the house; and to these details Bessie
listened with interest: they were precisely of the kind she relished.
In such conversation an hour was soon gone: Bessie restored to me my
bonnet, &c. , and, accompanied by her, I quitted the lodge for the hall.
It was also accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine years ago, walked
down the path I was now ascending. On a dark, misty, raw morning in
January, I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered
heart--a sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation--to seek the chilly
harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so far away and unexplored. The same
hostile roof now again rose before me: my prospects were doubtful yet;
and I had yet an aching heart. I still felt as a wanderer on the face of
the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers,
and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs,
too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished.
"You shall go into the breakfast-room first," said Bessie, as she
preceded me through the hall; "the young ladies will be there. "
In another moment I was within that apartment. There was every article
of furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was first introduced
to Mr. Brocklehurst: the very rug he had stood upon still covered the
hearth. Glancing at the bookcases, I thought I could distinguish the two
volumes of Bewick's British Birds occupying their old place on the third
shelf, and Gulliver's Travels and the Arabian Nights ranged just above.
The inanimate objects were not changed; but the living things had altered
past recognition.
Two young ladies appeared before me; one very tall, almost as tall as
Miss Ingram--very thin too, with a sallow face and severe mien. There
was something ascetic in her look, which was augmented by the extreme
plainness of a straight-skirted, black, stuff dress, a starched linen
collar, hair combed away from the temples, and the nun-like ornament of a
string of ebony beads and a crucifix. This I felt sure was Eliza, though
I could trace little resemblance to her former self in that elongated and
colourless visage.
The other was as certainly Georgiana: but not the Georgiana I
remembered--the slim and fairy-like girl of eleven. This was a
full-blown, very plump damsel, fair as waxwork, with handsome and regular
features, languishing blue eyes, and ringleted yellow hair. The hue of
her dress was black too; but its fashion was so different from her
sister's--so much more flowing and becoming--it looked as stylish as the
other's looked puritanical.
In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother--and only one;
the thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent's Cairngorm eye: the
blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and
chin--perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable
hardness to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous and buxom.
Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me, and both addressed me by
the name of "Miss Eyre. " Eliza's greeting was delivered in a short,
abrupt voice, without a smile; and then she sat down again, fixed her
eyes on the fire, and seemed to forget me. Georgiana added to her "How
d'ye do? " several commonplaces about my journey, the weather, and so on,
uttered in rather a drawling tone: and accompanied by sundry side-glances
that measured me from head to foot--now traversing the folds of my drab
merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain trimming of my cottage
bonnet. Young ladies have a remarkable way of letting you know that they
think you a "quiz" without actually saying the words. A certain
superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone,
express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing them by
any positive rudeness in word or deed.
A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power
over me it once possessed: as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised
to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi-
sarcastic attentions of the other--Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana
ruffle me. The fact was, I had other things to think about; within the
last few months feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than
any they could raise--pains and pleasures so much more acute and
exquisite had been excited than any it was in their power to inflict or
bestow--that their airs gave me no concern either for good or bad.
"How is Mrs. Reed? " I asked soon, looking calmly at Georgiana, who
thought fit to bridle at the direct address, as if it were an unexpected
liberty.
"Mrs. Reed? Ah! mama, you mean; she is extremely poorly: I doubt if you
can see her to-night. "
"If," said I, "you would just step upstairs and tell her I am come, I
should be much obliged to you. "
Georgiana almost started, and she opened her blue eyes wild and wide. "I
know she had a particular wish to see me," I added, "and I would not
defer attending to her desire longer than is absolutely necessary. "
"Mama dislikes being disturbed in an evening," remarked Eliza. I soon
rose, quietly took off my bonnet and gloves, uninvited, and said I would
just step out to Bessie--who was, I dared say, in the kitchen--and ask
her to ascertain whether Mrs. Reed was disposed to receive me or not to-
night. I went, and having found Bessie and despatched her on my errand,
I proceeded to take further measures. It had heretofore been my habit
always to shrink from arrogance: received as I had been to-day, I should,
a year ago, have resolved to quit Gateshead the very next morning; now,
it was disclosed to me all at once that that would be a foolish plan. I
had taken a journey of a hundred miles to see my aunt, and I must stay
with her till she was better--or dead: as to her daughters' pride or
folly, I must put it on one side, make myself independent of it. So I
addressed the housekeeper; asked her to show me a room, told her I should
probably be a visitor here for a week or two, had my trunk conveyed to my
chamber, and followed it thither myself: I met Bessie on the landing.
"Missis is awake," said she; "I have told her you are here: come and let
us see if she will know you. "
I did not need to be guided to the well-known room, to which I had so
often been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days. I
hastened before Bessie; I softly opened the door: a shaded light stood on
the table, for it was now getting dark. There was the great four-post
bed with amber hangings as of old; there the toilet-table, the armchair,
and the footstool, at which I had a hundred times been sentenced to
kneel, to ask pardon for offences by me uncommitted. I looked into a
certain corner near, half-expecting to see the slim outline of a once
dreaded switch which used to lurk there, waiting to leap out imp-like and
lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck. I approached the bed; I opened
the curtains and leant over the high-piled pillows.
Well did I remember Mrs. Reed's face, and I eagerly sought the familiar
image. It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance
and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in
bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion
than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong yearning to
forget and forgive all injuries--to be reconciled and clasp hands in
amity.
The well-known face was there: stern, relentless as ever--there was that
peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised,
imperious, despotic eyebrow. How often had it lowered on me menace and
hate! and how the recollection of childhood's terrors and sorrows revived
as I traced its harsh line now! And yet I stooped down and kissed her:
she looked at me.
"Is this Jane Eyre? " she said.
"Yes, Aunt Reed. How are you, dear aunt? "
I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again: I thought it no
sin to forget and break that vow now. My fingers had fastened on her
hand which lay outside the sheet: had she pressed mine kindly, I should
at that moment have experienced true pleasure. But unimpressionable
natures are not so soon softened, nor are natural antipathies so readily
eradicated. Mrs. Reed took her hand away, and, turning her face rather
from me, she remarked that the night was warm. Again she regarded me so
icily, I felt at once that her opinion of me--her feeling towards me--was
unchanged and unchangeable. I knew by her stony eye--opaque to
tenderness, indissoluble to tears--that she was resolved to consider me
bad to the last; because to believe me good would give her no generous
pleasure: only a sense of mortification.
I felt pain, and then I felt ire; and then I felt a determination to
subdue her--to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will.
My tears had risen, just as in childhood: I ordered them back to their
source. I brought a chair to the bed-head: I sat down and leaned over
the pillow.
"You sent for me," I said, "and I am here; and it is my intention to stay
till I see how you get on. "
"Oh, of course! You have seen my daughters? "
"Yes. "
"Well, you may tell them I wish you to stay till I can talk some things
over with you I have on my mind: to-night it is too late, and I have a
difficulty in recalling them. But there was something I wished to
say--let me see--"
The wandering look and changed utterance told what wreck had taken place
in her once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly, she drew the bedclothes
round her; my elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt, fixed it down: she
was at once irritated.
"Sit up! " said she; "don't annoy me with holding the clothes fast. Are
you Jane Eyre? "
"I am Jane Eyre. "
"I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe. Such
a burden to be left on my hands--and so much annoyance as she caused me,
daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden
starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural watchings of one's
movements! I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or like a
fiend--no child ever spoke or looked as she did; I was glad to get her
away from the house. What did they do with her at Lowood? The fever
broke out there, and many of the pupils died. She, however, did not die:
but I said she did--I wish she had died! "
"A strange wish, Mrs. Reed; why do you hate her so? "
"I had a dislike to her mother always; for she was my husband's only
sister, and a great favourite with him: he opposed the family's disowning
her when she made her low marriage; and when news came of her death, he
wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I entreated
him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its maintenance. I hated
it the first time I set my eyes on it--a sickly, whining, pining thing!
It would wail in its cradle all night long--not screaming heartily like
any other child, but whimpering and moaning. Reed pitied it; and he used
to nurse it and notice it as if it had been his own: more, indeed, than
he ever noticed his own at that age. He would try to make my children
friendly to the little beggar: the darlings could not bear it, and he was
angry with them when they showed their dislike. In his last illness, he
had it brought continually to his bedside; and but an hour before he
died, he bound me by vow to keep the creature. I would as soon have been
charged with a pauper brat out of a workhouse: but he was weak, naturally
weak. John does not at all resemble his father, and I am glad of it:
John is like me and like my brothers--he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish
he would cease tormenting me with letters for money? I have no more
money to give him: we are getting poor. I must send away half the
servants and shut up part of the house; or let it off. I can never
submit to do that--yet how are we to get on? Two-thirds of my income
goes in paying the interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully, and
always loses--poor boy! He is beset by sharpers: John is sunk and
degraded--his look is frightful--I feel ashamed for him when I see him. "
She was getting much excited. "I think I had better leave her now," said
I to Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed.
"Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often talks in this way towards night--in
the morning she is calmer. "
I rose. "Stop! " exclaimed Mrs. Reed, "there is another thing I wished to
say. He threatens me--he continually threatens me with his own death, or
mine: and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great wound in
his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face. I am come to a strange
pass: I have heavy troubles. What is to be done? How is the money to be
had? "
Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught: she
succeeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed, and
sank into a dozing state. I then left her.
More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with her.
She continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor forbade
everything which could painfully excite her. Meantime, I got on as well
as I could with Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold, indeed, at
first. Eliza would sit half the day sewing, reading, or writing, and
scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister. Georgiana would
chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour, and take no notice of
me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for occupation or
amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with me, and they served me
for both.
Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take
a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching
fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened momentarily to
shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse
of sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk;
a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad's head, crowned with lotus-
flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow's nest,
under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom.
One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was to be,
I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad
point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and
prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage: that contour
gave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with features.
Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that brow; then
followed, naturally, a well-defined nose, with a straight ridge and full
nostrils; then a flexible-looking mouth, by no means narrow; then a firm
chin, with a decided cleft down the middle of it: of course, some black
whiskers were wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and
waved above the forehead. Now for the eyes: I had left them to the last,
because they required the most careful working. I drew them large; I
shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and sombre; the irids
lustrous and large. "Good! but not quite the thing," I thought, as I
surveyed the effect: "they want more force and spirit;" and I wrought the
shades blacker, that the lights might flash more brilliantly--a happy
touch or two secured success. There, I had a friend's face under my
gaze; and what did it signify that those young ladies turned their backs
on me? I looked at it; I smiled at the speaking likeness: I was absorbed
and content.
"Is that a portrait of some one you know? " asked Eliza, who had
approached me unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy head,
and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Of course, I lied: it was, in
fact, a very faithful representation of Mr. Rochester. But what was that
to her, or to any one but myself? Georgiana also advanced to look.
The
other drawings pleased her much, but she called that "an ugly man. " They
both seemed surprised at my skill. I offered to sketch their portraits;
and each, in turn, sat for a pencil outline. Then Georgiana produced her
album. I promised to contribute a water-colour drawing: this put her at
once into good humour. She proposed a walk in the grounds. Before we
had been out two hours, we were deep in a confidential conversation: she
had favoured me with a description of the brilliant winter she had spent
in London two seasons ago--of the admiration she had there excited--the
attention she had received; and I even got hints of the titled conquest
she had made. In the course of the afternoon and evening these hints
were enlarged on: various soft conversations were reported, and
sentimental scenes represented; and, in short, a volume of a novel of
fashionable life was that day improvised by her for my benefit. The
communications were renewed from day to day: they always ran on the same
theme--herself, her loves, and woes. It was strange she never once
adverted either to her mother's illness, or her brother's death, or the
present gloomy state of the family prospects. Her mind seemed wholly
taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety, and aspirations after
dissipations to come. She passed about five minutes each day in her
mother's sick-room, and no more.
Eliza still spoke little: she had evidently no time to talk. I never saw
a busier person than she seemed to be; yet it was difficult to say what
she did: or rather, to discover any result of her diligence. She had an
alarm to call her up early. I know not how she occupied herself before
breakfast, but after that meal she divided her time into regular
portions, and each hour had its allotted task. Three times a day she
studied a little book, which I found, on inspection, was a Common Prayer
Book. I asked her once what was the great attraction of that volume, and
she said, "the Rubric. " Three hours she gave to stitching, with gold
thread, the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large enough for a
carpet. In answer to my inquiries after the use of this article, she
informed me it was a covering for the altar of a new church lately
erected near Gateshead. Two hours she devoted to her diary; two to
working by herself in the kitchen-garden; and one to the regulation of
her accounts. She seemed to want no company; no conversation. I believe
she was happy in her way: this routine sufficed for her; and nothing
annoyed her so much as the occurrence of any incident which forced her to
vary its clockwork regularity.
She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than
usual, that John's conduct, and the threatened ruin of the family, had
been a source of profound affliction to her: but she had now, she said,
settled her mind, and formed her resolution. Her own fortune she had
taken care to secure; and when her mother died--and it was wholly
improbable, she tranquilly remarked, that she should either recover or
linger long--she would execute a long-cherished project: seek a
retirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured from
disturbance, and place safe barriers between herself and a frivolous
world. I asked if Georgiana would accompany her.
"Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common: they never had
had. She would not be burdened with her society for any consideration.
Georgiana should take her own course; and she, Eliza, would take hers. "
Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her time
in lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the house, and
wishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an
invitation up to town. "It would be so much better," she said, "if she
could only get out of the way for a month or two, till all was over. " I
did not ask what she meant by "all being over," but I suppose she
referred to the expected decease of her mother and the gloomy sequel of
funeral rites. Eliza generally took no more notice of her sister's
indolence and complaints than if no such murmuring, lounging object had
been before her. One day, however, as she put away her account-book and
unfolded her embroidery, she suddenly took her up thus--
"Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never
allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make
no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a
reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some
other person's strength: if no one can be found willing to burden her or
himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you cry out that you
are ill-treated, neglected, miserable. Then, too, existence for you must
be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a
dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be
flattered--you must have music, dancing, and society--or you languish,
you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you
independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day;
share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no
stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes--include
all; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid
regularity. The day will close almost before you are aware it has begun;
and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant
moment: you have had to seek no one's company, conversation, sympathy,
forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an independent being ought to
do. Take this advice: the first and last I shall offer you; then you
will not want me or any one else, happen what may. Neglect it--go on as
heretofore, craving, whining, and idling--and suffer the results of your
idiocy, however bad and insuperable they may be. I tell you this
plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat what I am now
about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my mother's death, I
wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is carried to the vault in
Gateshead Church, you and I will be as separate as if we had never known
each other. You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the
same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest
claim: I can tell you this--if the whole human race, ourselves excepted,
were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you
in the old world, and betake myself to the new. "
She closed her lips.
"You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that tirade,"
answered Georgiana. "Everybody knows you are the most selfish, heartless
creature in existence: and _I_ know your spiteful hatred towards me: I
have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played me about Lord
Edwin Vere: you could not bear me to be raised above you, to have a
title, to be received into circles where you dare not show your face, and
so you acted the spy and informer, and ruined my prospects for ever. "
Georgiana took out her handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour
afterwards; Eliza sat cold, impassable, and assiduously industrious.
True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here were
two natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other despicably
savourless for the want of it. Feeling without judgment is a washy
draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and
husky a morsel for human deglutition.
It was a wet and windy afternoon: Georgiana had fallen asleep on the sofa
over the perusal of a novel; Eliza was gone to attend a saint's-day
service at the new church--for in matters of religion she was a rigid
formalist: no weather ever prevented the punctual discharge of what she
considered her devotional duties; fair or foul, she went to church thrice
every Sunday, and as often on week-days as there were prayers.
I bethought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped, who
lay there almost unheeded: the very servants paid her but a remittent
attention: the hired nurse, being little looked after, would slip out of
the room whenever she could. Bessie was faithful; but she had her own
family to mind, and could only come occasionally to the hall. I found
the sick-room unwatched, as I had expected: no nurse was there; the
patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic; her livid face sunk in the
pillows: the fire was dying in the grate. I renewed the fuel,
re-arranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile on her who could not now gaze on
me, and then I moved away to the window.
The rain beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously:
"One lies there," I thought, "who will soon be beyond the war of earthly
elements. Whither will that spirit--now struggling to quit its material
tenement--flit when at length released? "
In pondering the great mystery, I thought of Helen Burns, recalled her
dying words--her faith--her doctrine of the equality of disembodied
souls. I was still listening in thought to her well-remembered
tones--still picturing her pale and spiritual aspect, her wasted face and
sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid deathbed, and whispered her
longing to be restored to her divine Father's bosom--when a feeble voice
murmured from the couch behind: "Who is that? "
I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for days: was she reviving? I went up to
her.
"It is I, Aunt Reed. "
"Who--I? " was her answer. "Who are you? " looking at me with surprise and
a sort of alarm, but still not wildly. "You are quite a stranger to
me--where is Bessie? "
"She is at the lodge, aunt. "
"Aunt," she repeated. "Who calls me aunt? You are not one of the
Gibsons; and yet I know you--that face, and the eyes and forehead, are
quiet familiar to me: you are like--why, you are like Jane Eyre! "
I said nothing: I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring my
identity.
"Yet," said she, "I am afraid it is a mistake: my thoughts deceive me. I
wished to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none exists:
besides, in eight years she must be so changed. " I now gently assured
her that I was the person she supposed and desired me to be: and seeing
that I was understood, and that her senses were quite collected, I
explained how Bessie had sent her husband to fetch me from Thornfield.
"I am very ill, I know," she said ere long. "I was trying to turn myself
a few minutes since, and find I cannot move a limb. It is as well I
should ease my mind before I die: what we think little of in health,
burdens us at such an hour as the present is to me. Is the nurse here?
or is there no one in the room but you? "
I assured her we were alone.
"Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was in
breaking the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as my own
child; the other--" she stopped. "After all, it is of no great
importance, perhaps," she murmured to herself: "and then I may get
better; and to humble myself so to her is painful. "
She made an effort to alter her position, but failed: her face changed;
she seemed to experience some inward sensation--the precursor, perhaps,
of the last pang.
"Well, I must get it over. Eternity is before me: I had better tell
her. --Go to my dressing-case, open it, and take out a letter you will see
there. "
I obeyed her directions. "Read the letter," she said.
It was short, and thus conceived:--
"Madam,--Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my
niece, Jane Eyre, and to tell me how she is? It is my intention to
write shortly and desire her to come to me at Madeira. Providence has
blessed my endeavours to secure a competency; and as I am unmarried
and childless, I wish to adopt her during my life, and bequeath her at
my death whatever I may have to leave. --I am, Madam, &c. , &c. ,
"JOHN EYRE, Madeira. "
It was dated three years back.
"Why did I never hear of this? " I asked.
"Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand in
lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct to me,
Jane--the fury with which you once turned on me; the tone in which you
declared you abhorred me the worst of anybody in the world; the
unchildlike look and voice with which you affirmed that the very thought
of me made you sick, and asserted that I had treated you with miserable
cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when you thus started up
and poured out the venom of your mind: I felt fear as if an animal that I
had struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes and cursed me in
a man's voice. --Bring me some water! Oh, make haste! "
"Dear Mrs. Reed," said I, as I offered her the draught she required,
"think no more of all this, let it pass away from your mind. Forgive me
for my passionate language: I was a child then; eight, nine years have
passed since that day. "
She heeded nothing of what I said; but when she had tasted the water and
drawn breath, she went on thus--
"I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for you to be
adopted by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease and comfort, was
what I could not endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his
disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at
Lowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my assertion--expose
my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think, to be my
torment: my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed which, but
for you, I should never have been tempted to commit. "
"If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and to
regard me with kindness and forgiveness"
"You have a very bad disposition," said she, "and one to this day I feel
it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be patient and
quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and
violence, I can never comprehend. "
"My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but not
vindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to
love you if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be reconciled
to you now: kiss me, aunt. "
I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She said I
oppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded water. As I
laid her down--for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she
drank--I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine: the feeble
fingers shrank from my touch--the glazing eyes shunned my gaze.
"Love me, then, or hate me, as you will," I said at last, "you have my
full and free forgiveness: ask now for God's, and be at peace. "
Poor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the effort to
change her habitual frame of mind: living, she had ever hated me--dying,
she must hate me still.
The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed. I yet lingered half-an-hour
longer, hoping to see some sign of amity: but she gave none. She was
fast relapsing into stupor; nor did her mind again rally: at twelve
o'clock that night she died. I was not present to close her eyes, nor
were either of her daughters. They came to tell us the next morning that
all was over. She was by that time laid out. Eliza and I went to look
at her: Georgiana, who had burst out into loud weeping, said she dared
not go. There was stretched Sarah Reed's once robust and active frame,
rigid and still: her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid; her brow
and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul. A strange
and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with gloom and
pain: nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or hopeful, or
subduing did it inspire; only a grating anguish for _her_ woes--not _my_
loss--and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a
form.
Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence of some minutes she
observed--
"With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age: her life
was shortened by trouble. " And then a spasm constricted her mouth for an
instant: as it passed away she turned and left the room, and so did I.
Neither of us had dropt a tear.
CHAPTER XXII
Mr. Rochester had given me but one week's leave of absence: yet a month
elapsed before I quitted Gateshead. I wished to leave immediately after
the funeral, but Georgiana entreated me to stay till she could get off to
London, whither she was now at last invited by her uncle, Mr. Gibson, who
had come down to direct his sister's interment and settle the family
affairs. Georgiana said she dreaded being left alone with Eliza; from
her she got neither sympathy in her dejection, support in her fears, nor
aid in her preparations; so I bore with her feeble-minded wailings and
selfish lamentations as well as I could, and did my best in sewing for
her and packing her dresses. It is true, that while I worked, she would
idle; and I thought to myself, "If you and I were destined to live always
together, cousin, we would commence matters on a different footing. I
should not settle tamely down into being the forbearing party; I should
assign you your share of labour, and compel you to accomplish it, or else
it should be left undone: I should insist, also, on your keeping some of
those drawling, half-insincere complaints hushed in your own breast. It
is only because our connection happens to be very transitory, and comes
at a peculiarly mournful season, that I consent thus to render it so
patient and compliant on my part. "
At last I saw Georgiana off; but now it was Eliza's turn to request me to
stay another week. Her plans required all her time and attention, she
said; she was about to depart for some unknown bourne; and all day long
she stayed in her own room, her door bolted within, filling trunks,
emptying drawers, burning papers, and holding no communication with any
one. She wished me to look after the house, to see callers, and answer
notes of condolence.
One morning she told me I was at liberty. "And," she added, "I am
obliged to you for your valuable services and discreet conduct! There is
some difference between living with such an one as you and with
Georgiana: you perform your own part in life and burden no one.
To-morrow," she continued, "I set out for the Continent. I shall take up
my abode in a religious house near Lisle--a nunnery you would call it;
there I shall be quiet and unmolested. I shall devote myself for a time
to the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas, and to a careful study
of the workings of their system: if I find it to be, as I half suspect it
is, the one best calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently
and in order, I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and probably take the
veil. "
I neither expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to dissuade
her from it. "The vocation will fit you to a hair," I thought: "much
good may it do you! "
When we parted, she said: "Good-bye, cousin Jane Eyre; I wish you well:
you have some sense. "
I then returned: "You are not without sense, cousin Eliza; but what you
have, I suppose, in another year will be walled up alive in a French
convent. However, it is not my business, and so it suits you, I don't
much care. "
"You are in the right," said she; and with these words we each went our
separate way. As I shall not have occasion to refer either to her or her
sister again, I may as well mention here, that Georgiana made an
advantageous match with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion, and that Eliza
actually took the veil, and is at this day superior of the convent where
she passed the period of her novitiate, and which she endowed with her
fortune.
How people feel when they are returning home from an absence, long or
short, I did not know: I had never experienced the sensation. I had
known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after a long
walk, to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy; and later, what it was to
come back from church to Lowood, to long for a plenteous meal and a good
fire, and to be unable to get either. Neither of these returnings was
very pleasant or desirable: no magnet drew me to a given point,
increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came. The return
to Thornfield was yet to be tried.
My journey seemed tedious--very tedious: fifty miles one day, a night
spent at an inn; fifty miles the next day. During the first twelve hours
I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments; I saw her disfigured and
discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered voice. I mused on the
funeral day, the coffin, the hearse, the black train of tenants and
servants--few was the number of relatives--the gaping vault, the silent
church, the solemn service. Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana; I
beheld one the cynosure of a ball-room, the other the inmate of a convent
cell; and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities of person
and character. The evening arrival at the great town of--scattered these
thoughts; night gave them quite another turn: laid down on my traveller's
bed, I left reminiscence for anticipation.
I was going back to Thornfield: but how long was I to stay there? Not
long; of that I was sure. I had heard from Mrs. Fairfax in the interim
of my absence: the party at the hall was dispersed; Mr. Rochester had
left for London three weeks ago, but he was then expected to return in a
fortnight. Mrs. Fairfax surmised that he was gone to make arrangements
for his wedding, as he had talked of purchasing a new carriage: she said
the idea of his marrying Miss Ingram still seemed strange to her; but
from what everybody said, and from what she had herself seen, she could
no longer doubt that the event would shortly take place. "You would be
strangely incredulous if you did doubt it," was my mental comment. "I
don't doubt it. "
The question followed, "Where was I to go? " I dreamt of Miss Ingram all
the night: in a vivid morning dream I saw her closing the gates of
Thornfield against me and pointing me out another road; and Mr. Rochester
looked on with his arms folded--smiling sardonically, as it seemed, at
both her and me.
I had not notified to Mrs. Fairfax the exact day of my return; for I did
not wish either car or carriage to meet me at Millcote. I proposed to
walk the distance quietly by myself; and very quietly, after leaving my
box in the ostler's care, did I slip away from the George Inn, about six
o'clock of a June evening, and take the old road to Thornfield: a road
which lay chiefly through fields, and was now little frequented.
It was not a bright or splendid summer evening, though fair and soft: the
haymakers were at work all along the road; and the sky, though far from
cloudless, was such as promised well for the future: its blue--where blue
was visible--was mild and settled, and its cloud strata high and thin.
The west, too, was warm: no watery gleam chilled it--it seemed as if
there was a fire lit, an altar burning behind its screen of marbled
vapour, and out of apertures shone a golden redness.
I felt glad as the road shortened before me: so glad that I stopped once
to ask myself what that joy meant: and to remind reason that it was not
to my home I was going, or to a permanent resting-place, or to a place
where fond friends looked out for me and waited my arrival. "Mrs.
Fairfax will smile you a calm welcome, to be sure," said I; "and little
Adele will clap her hands and jump to see you: but you know very well you
are thinking of another than they, and that he is not thinking of you. "
But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience? These
affirmed that it was pleasure enough to have the privilege of again
looking on Mr. Rochester, whether he looked on me or not; and they
added--"Hasten! hasten! be with him while you may: but a few more days or
weeks, at most, and you are parted from him for ever! " And then I
strangled a new-born agony--a deformed thing which I could not persuade
myself to own and rear--and ran on.
They are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows: or rather, the labourers
are just quitting their work, and returning home with their rakes on
their shoulders, now, at the hour I arrive. I have but a field or two to
traverse, and then I shall cross the road and reach the gates. How full
the hedges are of roses!
then? "
"Yes, sir; early. "
"Shall you come down to the drawing-room after dinner? "
"No, sir, I must prepare for the journey. "
"Then you and I must bid good-bye for a little while? "
"I suppose so, sir. "
"And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane? Teach me; I'm
not quite up to it. "
"They say, Farewell, or any other form they prefer. "
"Then say it. "
"Farewell, Mr. Rochester, for the present. "
"What must I say? "
"The same, if you like, sir. "
"Farewell, Miss Eyre, for the present; is that all? "
"Yes? "
"It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly. I should like
something else: a little addition to the rite. If one shook hands, for
instance; but no--that would not content me either. So you'll do no more
than say Farewell, Jane? "
"It is enough, sir: as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word
as in many. "
"Very likely; but it is blank and cool--'Farewell. '"
"How long is he going to stand with his back against that door? " I asked
myself; "I want to commence my packing. " The dinner-bell rang, and
suddenly away he bolted, without another syllable: I saw him no more
during the day, and was off before he had risen in the morning.
I reached the lodge at Gateshead about five o'clock in the afternoon of
the first of May: I stepped in there before going up to the hall. It was
very clean and neat: the ornamental windows were hung with little white
curtains; the floor was spotless; the grate and fire-irons were burnished
bright, and the fire burnt clear. Bessie sat on the hearth, nursing her
last-born, and Robert and his sister played quietly in a corner.
"Bless you! --I knew you would come! " exclaimed Mrs. Leaven, as I entered.
"Yes, Bessie," said I, after I had kissed her; "and I trust I am not too
late. How is Mrs. Reed? --Alive still, I hope. "
"Yes, she is alive; and more sensible and collected than she was. The
doctor says she may linger a week or two yet; but he hardly thinks she
will finally recover. "
"Has she mentioned me lately? "
"She was talking of you only this morning, and wishing you would come,
but she is sleeping now, or was ten minutes ago, when I was up at the
house. She generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the afternoon, and
wakes up about six or seven. Will you rest yourself here an hour, Miss,
and then I will go up with you? "
Robert here entered, and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the cradle and
went to welcome him: afterwards she insisted on my taking off my bonnet
and having some tea; for she said I looked pale and tired. I was glad to
accept her hospitality; and I submitted to be relieved of my travelling
garb just as passively as I used to let her undress me when a child.
Old times crowded fast back on me as I watched her bustling about--setting
out the tea-tray with her best china, cutting bread and butter, toasting
a tea-cake, and, between whiles, giving little Robert or Jane an
occasional tap or push, just as she used to give me in former days.
Bessie had retained her quick temper as well as her light foot and good
looks.
Tea ready, I was going to approach the table; but she desired me to sit
still, quite in her old peremptory tones. I must be served at the
fireside, she said; and she placed before me a little round stand with my
cup and a plate of toast, absolutely as she used to accommodate me with
some privately purloined dainty on a nursery chair: and I smiled and
obeyed her as in bygone days.
She wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall, and what sort of a
person the mistress was; and when I told her there was only a master,
whether he was a nice gentleman, and if I liked him. I told her he was
rather an ugly man, but quite a gentleman; and that he treated me kindly,
and I was content. Then I went on to describe to her the gay company
that had lately been staying at the house; and to these details Bessie
listened with interest: they were precisely of the kind she relished.
In such conversation an hour was soon gone: Bessie restored to me my
bonnet, &c. , and, accompanied by her, I quitted the lodge for the hall.
It was also accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine years ago, walked
down the path I was now ascending. On a dark, misty, raw morning in
January, I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered
heart--a sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation--to seek the chilly
harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so far away and unexplored. The same
hostile roof now again rose before me: my prospects were doubtful yet;
and I had yet an aching heart. I still felt as a wanderer on the face of
the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers,
and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs,
too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished.
"You shall go into the breakfast-room first," said Bessie, as she
preceded me through the hall; "the young ladies will be there. "
In another moment I was within that apartment. There was every article
of furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was first introduced
to Mr. Brocklehurst: the very rug he had stood upon still covered the
hearth. Glancing at the bookcases, I thought I could distinguish the two
volumes of Bewick's British Birds occupying their old place on the third
shelf, and Gulliver's Travels and the Arabian Nights ranged just above.
The inanimate objects were not changed; but the living things had altered
past recognition.
Two young ladies appeared before me; one very tall, almost as tall as
Miss Ingram--very thin too, with a sallow face and severe mien. There
was something ascetic in her look, which was augmented by the extreme
plainness of a straight-skirted, black, stuff dress, a starched linen
collar, hair combed away from the temples, and the nun-like ornament of a
string of ebony beads and a crucifix. This I felt sure was Eliza, though
I could trace little resemblance to her former self in that elongated and
colourless visage.
The other was as certainly Georgiana: but not the Georgiana I
remembered--the slim and fairy-like girl of eleven. This was a
full-blown, very plump damsel, fair as waxwork, with handsome and regular
features, languishing blue eyes, and ringleted yellow hair. The hue of
her dress was black too; but its fashion was so different from her
sister's--so much more flowing and becoming--it looked as stylish as the
other's looked puritanical.
In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother--and only one;
the thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent's Cairngorm eye: the
blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and
chin--perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable
hardness to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous and buxom.
Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me, and both addressed me by
the name of "Miss Eyre. " Eliza's greeting was delivered in a short,
abrupt voice, without a smile; and then she sat down again, fixed her
eyes on the fire, and seemed to forget me. Georgiana added to her "How
d'ye do? " several commonplaces about my journey, the weather, and so on,
uttered in rather a drawling tone: and accompanied by sundry side-glances
that measured me from head to foot--now traversing the folds of my drab
merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain trimming of my cottage
bonnet. Young ladies have a remarkable way of letting you know that they
think you a "quiz" without actually saying the words. A certain
superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone,
express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing them by
any positive rudeness in word or deed.
A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power
over me it once possessed: as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised
to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi-
sarcastic attentions of the other--Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana
ruffle me. The fact was, I had other things to think about; within the
last few months feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than
any they could raise--pains and pleasures so much more acute and
exquisite had been excited than any it was in their power to inflict or
bestow--that their airs gave me no concern either for good or bad.
"How is Mrs. Reed? " I asked soon, looking calmly at Georgiana, who
thought fit to bridle at the direct address, as if it were an unexpected
liberty.
"Mrs. Reed? Ah! mama, you mean; she is extremely poorly: I doubt if you
can see her to-night. "
"If," said I, "you would just step upstairs and tell her I am come, I
should be much obliged to you. "
Georgiana almost started, and she opened her blue eyes wild and wide. "I
know she had a particular wish to see me," I added, "and I would not
defer attending to her desire longer than is absolutely necessary. "
"Mama dislikes being disturbed in an evening," remarked Eliza. I soon
rose, quietly took off my bonnet and gloves, uninvited, and said I would
just step out to Bessie--who was, I dared say, in the kitchen--and ask
her to ascertain whether Mrs. Reed was disposed to receive me or not to-
night. I went, and having found Bessie and despatched her on my errand,
I proceeded to take further measures. It had heretofore been my habit
always to shrink from arrogance: received as I had been to-day, I should,
a year ago, have resolved to quit Gateshead the very next morning; now,
it was disclosed to me all at once that that would be a foolish plan. I
had taken a journey of a hundred miles to see my aunt, and I must stay
with her till she was better--or dead: as to her daughters' pride or
folly, I must put it on one side, make myself independent of it. So I
addressed the housekeeper; asked her to show me a room, told her I should
probably be a visitor here for a week or two, had my trunk conveyed to my
chamber, and followed it thither myself: I met Bessie on the landing.
"Missis is awake," said she; "I have told her you are here: come and let
us see if she will know you. "
I did not need to be guided to the well-known room, to which I had so
often been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days. I
hastened before Bessie; I softly opened the door: a shaded light stood on
the table, for it was now getting dark. There was the great four-post
bed with amber hangings as of old; there the toilet-table, the armchair,
and the footstool, at which I had a hundred times been sentenced to
kneel, to ask pardon for offences by me uncommitted. I looked into a
certain corner near, half-expecting to see the slim outline of a once
dreaded switch which used to lurk there, waiting to leap out imp-like and
lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck. I approached the bed; I opened
the curtains and leant over the high-piled pillows.
Well did I remember Mrs. Reed's face, and I eagerly sought the familiar
image. It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance
and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in
bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion
than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong yearning to
forget and forgive all injuries--to be reconciled and clasp hands in
amity.
The well-known face was there: stern, relentless as ever--there was that
peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised,
imperious, despotic eyebrow. How often had it lowered on me menace and
hate! and how the recollection of childhood's terrors and sorrows revived
as I traced its harsh line now! And yet I stooped down and kissed her:
she looked at me.
"Is this Jane Eyre? " she said.
"Yes, Aunt Reed. How are you, dear aunt? "
I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again: I thought it no
sin to forget and break that vow now. My fingers had fastened on her
hand which lay outside the sheet: had she pressed mine kindly, I should
at that moment have experienced true pleasure. But unimpressionable
natures are not so soon softened, nor are natural antipathies so readily
eradicated. Mrs. Reed took her hand away, and, turning her face rather
from me, she remarked that the night was warm. Again she regarded me so
icily, I felt at once that her opinion of me--her feeling towards me--was
unchanged and unchangeable. I knew by her stony eye--opaque to
tenderness, indissoluble to tears--that she was resolved to consider me
bad to the last; because to believe me good would give her no generous
pleasure: only a sense of mortification.
I felt pain, and then I felt ire; and then I felt a determination to
subdue her--to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will.
My tears had risen, just as in childhood: I ordered them back to their
source. I brought a chair to the bed-head: I sat down and leaned over
the pillow.
"You sent for me," I said, "and I am here; and it is my intention to stay
till I see how you get on. "
"Oh, of course! You have seen my daughters? "
"Yes. "
"Well, you may tell them I wish you to stay till I can talk some things
over with you I have on my mind: to-night it is too late, and I have a
difficulty in recalling them. But there was something I wished to
say--let me see--"
The wandering look and changed utterance told what wreck had taken place
in her once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly, she drew the bedclothes
round her; my elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt, fixed it down: she
was at once irritated.
"Sit up! " said she; "don't annoy me with holding the clothes fast. Are
you Jane Eyre? "
"I am Jane Eyre. "
"I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe. Such
a burden to be left on my hands--and so much annoyance as she caused me,
daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden
starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural watchings of one's
movements! I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or like a
fiend--no child ever spoke or looked as she did; I was glad to get her
away from the house. What did they do with her at Lowood? The fever
broke out there, and many of the pupils died. She, however, did not die:
but I said she did--I wish she had died! "
"A strange wish, Mrs. Reed; why do you hate her so? "
"I had a dislike to her mother always; for she was my husband's only
sister, and a great favourite with him: he opposed the family's disowning
her when she made her low marriage; and when news came of her death, he
wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I entreated
him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its maintenance. I hated
it the first time I set my eyes on it--a sickly, whining, pining thing!
It would wail in its cradle all night long--not screaming heartily like
any other child, but whimpering and moaning. Reed pitied it; and he used
to nurse it and notice it as if it had been his own: more, indeed, than
he ever noticed his own at that age. He would try to make my children
friendly to the little beggar: the darlings could not bear it, and he was
angry with them when they showed their dislike. In his last illness, he
had it brought continually to his bedside; and but an hour before he
died, he bound me by vow to keep the creature. I would as soon have been
charged with a pauper brat out of a workhouse: but he was weak, naturally
weak. John does not at all resemble his father, and I am glad of it:
John is like me and like my brothers--he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish
he would cease tormenting me with letters for money? I have no more
money to give him: we are getting poor. I must send away half the
servants and shut up part of the house; or let it off. I can never
submit to do that--yet how are we to get on? Two-thirds of my income
goes in paying the interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully, and
always loses--poor boy! He is beset by sharpers: John is sunk and
degraded--his look is frightful--I feel ashamed for him when I see him. "
She was getting much excited. "I think I had better leave her now," said
I to Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed.
"Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often talks in this way towards night--in
the morning she is calmer. "
I rose. "Stop! " exclaimed Mrs. Reed, "there is another thing I wished to
say. He threatens me--he continually threatens me with his own death, or
mine: and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great wound in
his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face. I am come to a strange
pass: I have heavy troubles. What is to be done? How is the money to be
had? "
Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught: she
succeeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed, and
sank into a dozing state. I then left her.
More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with her.
She continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor forbade
everything which could painfully excite her. Meantime, I got on as well
as I could with Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold, indeed, at
first. Eliza would sit half the day sewing, reading, or writing, and
scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister. Georgiana would
chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour, and take no notice of
me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for occupation or
amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with me, and they served me
for both.
Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take
a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching
fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened momentarily to
shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse
of sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk;
a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad's head, crowned with lotus-
flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow's nest,
under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom.
One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was to be,
I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad
point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and
prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage: that contour
gave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with features.
Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that brow; then
followed, naturally, a well-defined nose, with a straight ridge and full
nostrils; then a flexible-looking mouth, by no means narrow; then a firm
chin, with a decided cleft down the middle of it: of course, some black
whiskers were wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and
waved above the forehead. Now for the eyes: I had left them to the last,
because they required the most careful working. I drew them large; I
shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and sombre; the irids
lustrous and large. "Good! but not quite the thing," I thought, as I
surveyed the effect: "they want more force and spirit;" and I wrought the
shades blacker, that the lights might flash more brilliantly--a happy
touch or two secured success. There, I had a friend's face under my
gaze; and what did it signify that those young ladies turned their backs
on me? I looked at it; I smiled at the speaking likeness: I was absorbed
and content.
"Is that a portrait of some one you know? " asked Eliza, who had
approached me unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy head,
and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Of course, I lied: it was, in
fact, a very faithful representation of Mr. Rochester. But what was that
to her, or to any one but myself? Georgiana also advanced to look.
The
other drawings pleased her much, but she called that "an ugly man. " They
both seemed surprised at my skill. I offered to sketch their portraits;
and each, in turn, sat for a pencil outline. Then Georgiana produced her
album. I promised to contribute a water-colour drawing: this put her at
once into good humour. She proposed a walk in the grounds. Before we
had been out two hours, we were deep in a confidential conversation: she
had favoured me with a description of the brilliant winter she had spent
in London two seasons ago--of the admiration she had there excited--the
attention she had received; and I even got hints of the titled conquest
she had made. In the course of the afternoon and evening these hints
were enlarged on: various soft conversations were reported, and
sentimental scenes represented; and, in short, a volume of a novel of
fashionable life was that day improvised by her for my benefit. The
communications were renewed from day to day: they always ran on the same
theme--herself, her loves, and woes. It was strange she never once
adverted either to her mother's illness, or her brother's death, or the
present gloomy state of the family prospects. Her mind seemed wholly
taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety, and aspirations after
dissipations to come. She passed about five minutes each day in her
mother's sick-room, and no more.
Eliza still spoke little: she had evidently no time to talk. I never saw
a busier person than she seemed to be; yet it was difficult to say what
she did: or rather, to discover any result of her diligence. She had an
alarm to call her up early. I know not how she occupied herself before
breakfast, but after that meal she divided her time into regular
portions, and each hour had its allotted task. Three times a day she
studied a little book, which I found, on inspection, was a Common Prayer
Book. I asked her once what was the great attraction of that volume, and
she said, "the Rubric. " Three hours she gave to stitching, with gold
thread, the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large enough for a
carpet. In answer to my inquiries after the use of this article, she
informed me it was a covering for the altar of a new church lately
erected near Gateshead. Two hours she devoted to her diary; two to
working by herself in the kitchen-garden; and one to the regulation of
her accounts. She seemed to want no company; no conversation. I believe
she was happy in her way: this routine sufficed for her; and nothing
annoyed her so much as the occurrence of any incident which forced her to
vary its clockwork regularity.
She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than
usual, that John's conduct, and the threatened ruin of the family, had
been a source of profound affliction to her: but she had now, she said,
settled her mind, and formed her resolution. Her own fortune she had
taken care to secure; and when her mother died--and it was wholly
improbable, she tranquilly remarked, that she should either recover or
linger long--she would execute a long-cherished project: seek a
retirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured from
disturbance, and place safe barriers between herself and a frivolous
world. I asked if Georgiana would accompany her.
"Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common: they never had
had. She would not be burdened with her society for any consideration.
Georgiana should take her own course; and she, Eliza, would take hers. "
Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her time
in lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the house, and
wishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an
invitation up to town. "It would be so much better," she said, "if she
could only get out of the way for a month or two, till all was over. " I
did not ask what she meant by "all being over," but I suppose she
referred to the expected decease of her mother and the gloomy sequel of
funeral rites. Eliza generally took no more notice of her sister's
indolence and complaints than if no such murmuring, lounging object had
been before her. One day, however, as she put away her account-book and
unfolded her embroidery, she suddenly took her up thus--
"Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never
allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make
no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a
reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some
other person's strength: if no one can be found willing to burden her or
himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you cry out that you
are ill-treated, neglected, miserable. Then, too, existence for you must
be a scene of continual change and excitement, or else the world is a
dungeon: you must be admired, you must be courted, you must be
flattered--you must have music, dancing, and society--or you languish,
you die away. Have you no sense to devise a system which will make you
independent of all efforts, and all wills, but your own? Take one day;
share it into sections; to each section apportion its task: leave no
stray unemployed quarters of an hour, ten minutes, five minutes--include
all; do each piece of business in its turn with method, with rigid
regularity. The day will close almost before you are aware it has begun;
and you are indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant
moment: you have had to seek no one's company, conversation, sympathy,
forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an independent being ought to
do. Take this advice: the first and last I shall offer you; then you
will not want me or any one else, happen what may. Neglect it--go on as
heretofore, craving, whining, and idling--and suffer the results of your
idiocy, however bad and insuperable they may be. I tell you this
plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat what I am now
about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my mother's death, I
wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is carried to the vault in
Gateshead Church, you and I will be as separate as if we had never known
each other. You need not think that because we chanced to be born of the
same parents, I shall suffer you to fasten me down by even the feeblest
claim: I can tell you this--if the whole human race, ourselves excepted,
were swept away, and we two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you
in the old world, and betake myself to the new. "
She closed her lips.
"You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that tirade,"
answered Georgiana. "Everybody knows you are the most selfish, heartless
creature in existence: and _I_ know your spiteful hatred towards me: I
have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played me about Lord
Edwin Vere: you could not bear me to be raised above you, to have a
title, to be received into circles where you dare not show your face, and
so you acted the spy and informer, and ruined my prospects for ever. "
Georgiana took out her handkerchief and blew her nose for an hour
afterwards; Eliza sat cold, impassable, and assiduously industrious.
True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here were
two natures rendered, the one intolerably acrid, the other despicably
savourless for the want of it. Feeling without judgment is a washy
draught indeed; but judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and
husky a morsel for human deglutition.
It was a wet and windy afternoon: Georgiana had fallen asleep on the sofa
over the perusal of a novel; Eliza was gone to attend a saint's-day
service at the new church--for in matters of religion she was a rigid
formalist: no weather ever prevented the punctual discharge of what she
considered her devotional duties; fair or foul, she went to church thrice
every Sunday, and as often on week-days as there were prayers.
I bethought myself to go upstairs and see how the dying woman sped, who
lay there almost unheeded: the very servants paid her but a remittent
attention: the hired nurse, being little looked after, would slip out of
the room whenever she could. Bessie was faithful; but she had her own
family to mind, and could only come occasionally to the hall. I found
the sick-room unwatched, as I had expected: no nurse was there; the
patient lay still, and seemingly lethargic; her livid face sunk in the
pillows: the fire was dying in the grate. I renewed the fuel,
re-arranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile on her who could not now gaze on
me, and then I moved away to the window.
The rain beat strongly against the panes, the wind blew tempestuously:
"One lies there," I thought, "who will soon be beyond the war of earthly
elements. Whither will that spirit--now struggling to quit its material
tenement--flit when at length released? "
In pondering the great mystery, I thought of Helen Burns, recalled her
dying words--her faith--her doctrine of the equality of disembodied
souls. I was still listening in thought to her well-remembered
tones--still picturing her pale and spiritual aspect, her wasted face and
sublime gaze, as she lay on her placid deathbed, and whispered her
longing to be restored to her divine Father's bosom--when a feeble voice
murmured from the couch behind: "Who is that? "
I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for days: was she reviving? I went up to
her.
"It is I, Aunt Reed. "
"Who--I? " was her answer. "Who are you? " looking at me with surprise and
a sort of alarm, but still not wildly. "You are quite a stranger to
me--where is Bessie? "
"She is at the lodge, aunt. "
"Aunt," she repeated. "Who calls me aunt? You are not one of the
Gibsons; and yet I know you--that face, and the eyes and forehead, are
quiet familiar to me: you are like--why, you are like Jane Eyre! "
I said nothing: I was afraid of occasioning some shock by declaring my
identity.
"Yet," said she, "I am afraid it is a mistake: my thoughts deceive me. I
wished to see Jane Eyre, and I fancy a likeness where none exists:
besides, in eight years she must be so changed. " I now gently assured
her that I was the person she supposed and desired me to be: and seeing
that I was understood, and that her senses were quite collected, I
explained how Bessie had sent her husband to fetch me from Thornfield.
"I am very ill, I know," she said ere long. "I was trying to turn myself
a few minutes since, and find I cannot move a limb. It is as well I
should ease my mind before I die: what we think little of in health,
burdens us at such an hour as the present is to me. Is the nurse here?
or is there no one in the room but you? "
I assured her we were alone.
"Well, I have twice done you a wrong which I regret now. One was in
breaking the promise which I gave my husband to bring you up as my own
child; the other--" she stopped. "After all, it is of no great
importance, perhaps," she murmured to herself: "and then I may get
better; and to humble myself so to her is painful. "
She made an effort to alter her position, but failed: her face changed;
she seemed to experience some inward sensation--the precursor, perhaps,
of the last pang.
"Well, I must get it over. Eternity is before me: I had better tell
her. --Go to my dressing-case, open it, and take out a letter you will see
there. "
I obeyed her directions. "Read the letter," she said.
It was short, and thus conceived:--
"Madam,--Will you have the goodness to send me the address of my
niece, Jane Eyre, and to tell me how she is? It is my intention to
write shortly and desire her to come to me at Madeira. Providence has
blessed my endeavours to secure a competency; and as I am unmarried
and childless, I wish to adopt her during my life, and bequeath her at
my death whatever I may have to leave. --I am, Madam, &c. , &c. ,
"JOHN EYRE, Madeira. "
It was dated three years back.
"Why did I never hear of this? " I asked.
"Because I disliked you too fixedly and thoroughly ever to lend a hand in
lifting you to prosperity. I could not forget your conduct to me,
Jane--the fury with which you once turned on me; the tone in which you
declared you abhorred me the worst of anybody in the world; the
unchildlike look and voice with which you affirmed that the very thought
of me made you sick, and asserted that I had treated you with miserable
cruelty. I could not forget my own sensations when you thus started up
and poured out the venom of your mind: I felt fear as if an animal that I
had struck or pushed had looked up at me with human eyes and cursed me in
a man's voice. --Bring me some water! Oh, make haste! "
"Dear Mrs. Reed," said I, as I offered her the draught she required,
"think no more of all this, let it pass away from your mind. Forgive me
for my passionate language: I was a child then; eight, nine years have
passed since that day. "
She heeded nothing of what I said; but when she had tasted the water and
drawn breath, she went on thus--
"I tell you I could not forget it; and I took my revenge: for you to be
adopted by your uncle, and placed in a state of ease and comfort, was
what I could not endure. I wrote to him; I said I was sorry for his
disappointment, but Jane Eyre was dead: she had died of typhus fever at
Lowood. Now act as you please: write and contradict my assertion--expose
my falsehood as soon as you like. You were born, I think, to be my
torment: my last hour is racked by the recollection of a deed which, but
for you, I should never have been tempted to commit. "
"If you could but be persuaded to think no more of it, aunt, and to
regard me with kindness and forgiveness"
"You have a very bad disposition," said she, "and one to this day I feel
it impossible to understand: how for nine years you could be patient and
quiescent under any treatment, and in the tenth break out all fire and
violence, I can never comprehend. "
"My disposition is not so bad as you think: I am passionate, but not
vindictive. Many a time, as a little child, I should have been glad to
love you if you would have let me; and I long earnestly to be reconciled
to you now: kiss me, aunt. "
I approached my cheek to her lips: she would not touch it. She said I
oppressed her by leaning over the bed, and again demanded water. As I
laid her down--for I raised her and supported her on my arm while she
drank--I covered her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine: the feeble
fingers shrank from my touch--the glazing eyes shunned my gaze.
"Love me, then, or hate me, as you will," I said at last, "you have my
full and free forgiveness: ask now for God's, and be at peace. "
Poor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to make now the effort to
change her habitual frame of mind: living, she had ever hated me--dying,
she must hate me still.
The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed. I yet lingered half-an-hour
longer, hoping to see some sign of amity: but she gave none. She was
fast relapsing into stupor; nor did her mind again rally: at twelve
o'clock that night she died. I was not present to close her eyes, nor
were either of her daughters. They came to tell us the next morning that
all was over. She was by that time laid out. Eliza and I went to look
at her: Georgiana, who had burst out into loud weeping, said she dared
not go. There was stretched Sarah Reed's once robust and active frame,
rigid and still: her eye of flint was covered with its cold lid; her brow
and strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable soul. A strange
and solemn object was that corpse to me. I gazed on it with gloom and
pain: nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or hopeful, or
subduing did it inspire; only a grating anguish for _her_ woes--not _my_
loss--and a sombre tearless dismay at the fearfulness of death in such a
form.
Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence of some minutes she
observed--
"With her constitution she should have lived to a good old age: her life
was shortened by trouble. " And then a spasm constricted her mouth for an
instant: as it passed away she turned and left the room, and so did I.
Neither of us had dropt a tear.
CHAPTER XXII
Mr. Rochester had given me but one week's leave of absence: yet a month
elapsed before I quitted Gateshead. I wished to leave immediately after
the funeral, but Georgiana entreated me to stay till she could get off to
London, whither she was now at last invited by her uncle, Mr. Gibson, who
had come down to direct his sister's interment and settle the family
affairs. Georgiana said she dreaded being left alone with Eliza; from
her she got neither sympathy in her dejection, support in her fears, nor
aid in her preparations; so I bore with her feeble-minded wailings and
selfish lamentations as well as I could, and did my best in sewing for
her and packing her dresses. It is true, that while I worked, she would
idle; and I thought to myself, "If you and I were destined to live always
together, cousin, we would commence matters on a different footing. I
should not settle tamely down into being the forbearing party; I should
assign you your share of labour, and compel you to accomplish it, or else
it should be left undone: I should insist, also, on your keeping some of
those drawling, half-insincere complaints hushed in your own breast. It
is only because our connection happens to be very transitory, and comes
at a peculiarly mournful season, that I consent thus to render it so
patient and compliant on my part. "
At last I saw Georgiana off; but now it was Eliza's turn to request me to
stay another week. Her plans required all her time and attention, she
said; she was about to depart for some unknown bourne; and all day long
she stayed in her own room, her door bolted within, filling trunks,
emptying drawers, burning papers, and holding no communication with any
one. She wished me to look after the house, to see callers, and answer
notes of condolence.
One morning she told me I was at liberty. "And," she added, "I am
obliged to you for your valuable services and discreet conduct! There is
some difference between living with such an one as you and with
Georgiana: you perform your own part in life and burden no one.
To-morrow," she continued, "I set out for the Continent. I shall take up
my abode in a religious house near Lisle--a nunnery you would call it;
there I shall be quiet and unmolested. I shall devote myself for a time
to the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas, and to a careful study
of the workings of their system: if I find it to be, as I half suspect it
is, the one best calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently
and in order, I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and probably take the
veil. "
I neither expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to dissuade
her from it. "The vocation will fit you to a hair," I thought: "much
good may it do you! "
When we parted, she said: "Good-bye, cousin Jane Eyre; I wish you well:
you have some sense. "
I then returned: "You are not without sense, cousin Eliza; but what you
have, I suppose, in another year will be walled up alive in a French
convent. However, it is not my business, and so it suits you, I don't
much care. "
"You are in the right," said she; and with these words we each went our
separate way. As I shall not have occasion to refer either to her or her
sister again, I may as well mention here, that Georgiana made an
advantageous match with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion, and that Eliza
actually took the veil, and is at this day superior of the convent where
she passed the period of her novitiate, and which she endowed with her
fortune.
How people feel when they are returning home from an absence, long or
short, I did not know: I had never experienced the sensation. I had
known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after a long
walk, to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy; and later, what it was to
come back from church to Lowood, to long for a plenteous meal and a good
fire, and to be unable to get either. Neither of these returnings was
very pleasant or desirable: no magnet drew me to a given point,
increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came. The return
to Thornfield was yet to be tried.
My journey seemed tedious--very tedious: fifty miles one day, a night
spent at an inn; fifty miles the next day. During the first twelve hours
I thought of Mrs. Reed in her last moments; I saw her disfigured and
discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered voice. I mused on the
funeral day, the coffin, the hearse, the black train of tenants and
servants--few was the number of relatives--the gaping vault, the silent
church, the solemn service. Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana; I
beheld one the cynosure of a ball-room, the other the inmate of a convent
cell; and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities of person
and character. The evening arrival at the great town of--scattered these
thoughts; night gave them quite another turn: laid down on my traveller's
bed, I left reminiscence for anticipation.
I was going back to Thornfield: but how long was I to stay there? Not
long; of that I was sure. I had heard from Mrs. Fairfax in the interim
of my absence: the party at the hall was dispersed; Mr. Rochester had
left for London three weeks ago, but he was then expected to return in a
fortnight. Mrs. Fairfax surmised that he was gone to make arrangements
for his wedding, as he had talked of purchasing a new carriage: she said
the idea of his marrying Miss Ingram still seemed strange to her; but
from what everybody said, and from what she had herself seen, she could
no longer doubt that the event would shortly take place. "You would be
strangely incredulous if you did doubt it," was my mental comment. "I
don't doubt it. "
The question followed, "Where was I to go? " I dreamt of Miss Ingram all
the night: in a vivid morning dream I saw her closing the gates of
Thornfield against me and pointing me out another road; and Mr. Rochester
looked on with his arms folded--smiling sardonically, as it seemed, at
both her and me.
I had not notified to Mrs. Fairfax the exact day of my return; for I did
not wish either car or carriage to meet me at Millcote. I proposed to
walk the distance quietly by myself; and very quietly, after leaving my
box in the ostler's care, did I slip away from the George Inn, about six
o'clock of a June evening, and take the old road to Thornfield: a road
which lay chiefly through fields, and was now little frequented.
It was not a bright or splendid summer evening, though fair and soft: the
haymakers were at work all along the road; and the sky, though far from
cloudless, was such as promised well for the future: its blue--where blue
was visible--was mild and settled, and its cloud strata high and thin.
The west, too, was warm: no watery gleam chilled it--it seemed as if
there was a fire lit, an altar burning behind its screen of marbled
vapour, and out of apertures shone a golden redness.
I felt glad as the road shortened before me: so glad that I stopped once
to ask myself what that joy meant: and to remind reason that it was not
to my home I was going, or to a permanent resting-place, or to a place
where fond friends looked out for me and waited my arrival. "Mrs.
Fairfax will smile you a calm welcome, to be sure," said I; "and little
Adele will clap her hands and jump to see you: but you know very well you
are thinking of another than they, and that he is not thinking of you. "
But what is so headstrong as youth? What so blind as inexperience? These
affirmed that it was pleasure enough to have the privilege of again
looking on Mr. Rochester, whether he looked on me or not; and they
added--"Hasten! hasten! be with him while you may: but a few more days or
weeks, at most, and you are parted from him for ever! " And then I
strangled a new-born agony--a deformed thing which I could not persuade
myself to own and rear--and ran on.
They are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows: or rather, the labourers
are just quitting their work, and returning home with their rakes on
their shoulders, now, at the hour I arrive. I have but a field or two to
traverse, and then I shall cross the road and reach the gates. How full
the hedges are of roses!
