Jane Eyre
by
Charlotte Bronte
Part 1 out of 11
This eBook was produced by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte
PREFACE
A preface to the first edition of "Jane Eyre" being unnecessary,
I gave none: this second edition demands a few words both of
acknowledgment and miscellaneous remark.
My thanks are due in three quarters.
To the Public, for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plain
tale with few pretensions.
To the Press, for the fair field its honest suffrage has opened to
an obscure aspirant.
To my Publishers, for the aid their tact, their energy, their
practical sense and frank liberality have afforded an unknown and
unrecommended Author.
The Press and the Public are but vague personifications for me, and
I must thank them in vague terms; but my Publishers are definite:
so are certain generous critics who have encouraged me as only
large-hearted and high-minded men know how to encourage a struggling
stranger; to them, i.e., to my Publishers and the select Reviewers,
I say cordially, Gentlemen, I thank you from my heart.
Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved
me, I turn to another class; a small one, so far as I know, but
not, therefore, to be overlooked. I mean the timorous or carping
few who doubt the tendency of such books as "Jane Eyre:" in whose
eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears detect in each protest
against bigotry -- that parent of crime -- an insult to piety, that
regent of God on earth. I would suggest to such doubters certain
obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain simple truths.
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion.
To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask
from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to
the Crown of Thorns.
These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are
as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them:
they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken
for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and
magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming
creed of Christ. There is -- I repeat it -- a difference; and it
is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the
line of separation between them.
The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been
accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external
show pass for sterling worth -- to let white-washed walls vouch for
clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose
-- to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it -- to penetrate
the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it
is indebted to him.
Ahab did not like Micaiah, because he never prophesied good concerning
him, but evil; probably he liked the sycophant son of Chenaannah
better; yet might Ahab have escaped a bloody death, had he but
stopped his ears to flattery, and opened them to faithful counsel.
There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle
delicate ears: who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones
of society, much as the son of Imlah came before the throned Kings
of Judah and Israel; and who speaks truth as deep, with a power
as prophet-like and as vital -- a mien as dauntless and as daring.
Is the satirist of "Vanity Fair" admired in high places? I cannot
tell; but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek
fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin-brand
of his denunciation, were to take his warnings in time -- they or
their seed might yet escape a fatal Rimoth-Gilead.
Why have I alluded to this man? I have alluded to him, Reader,
because I think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique
than his contemporaries have yet recognised; because I regard him
as the first social regenerator of the day -- as the very master
of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped
system of things; because I think no commentator on his writings
has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly
characterise his talent. They say he is like Fielding: they talk
of his wit, humour, comic powers. He resembles Fielding as an eagle
does a vulture: Fielding could stoop on carrion, but Thackeray
never does. His wit is bright, his humour attractive, but both
bear the same relation to his serious genius that the mere lambent
sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the summer-cloud does to
the electric death-spark hid in its womb. Finally, I have alluded
to Mr. Thackeray, because to him -- if he will accept the tribute
of a total stranger -- I have dedicated this second edition of
"JANE EYRE."
CURRER BELL.
December 21st, 1847.
NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION
I avail myself of the opportunity which a third edition of "Jane
Eyre" affords me, of again addressing a word to the Public, to
explain that my claim to the title of novelist rests on this one
work alone. If, therefore, the authorship of other works of fiction
has been attributed to me, an honour is awarded where it is not
merited; and consequently, denied where it is justly due.
This explanation will serve to rectify mistakes which may already
have been made, and to prevent future errors.
CURRER BELL.
April 13th, 1848.
CHAPTER I
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had
been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the
morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company,
dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so
sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise
was now out of the question.
I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly
afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight,
with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings
of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical
inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round
their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the
fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither
quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had
dispensed from joining the group; saying, "She regretted to be
under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until
she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation,
that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable
and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner
-- something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were -- she
really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented,
happy, little children."
"What does Bessie say I have done?" I asked.
"Jane, I don't like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is
something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that
manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly,
remain silent."
A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It
contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking
care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into
the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like
a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I
was shrined in double retirement.
Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the
left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating
me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over
the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon.
Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of
wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away
wildly before a long and lamentable blast.
I returned to my book -- Bewick's History of British Birds: the
letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and
yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I
could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of
the haunts of sea-fowl; of "the solitary rocks and promontories"
by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles
from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape -
"Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides."
Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of
Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland,
with "the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions
of dreary space, -- that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm
fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed
in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre
the multiplied rigours of extreme cold." Of these death-white realms
I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended
notions that float dim through children's brains, but strangely
impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected
themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance
to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the
broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly
moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking.
I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard,
with its inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low
horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent,
attesting the hour of eventide.
The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine
phantoms.
The fiend pinning down the thief's pack behind him, I passed over
quickly: it was an object of terror.
So was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a
distant crowd surrounding a gallows.
Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped
understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting:
as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter
evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having
brought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us
to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed's lace frills, and
crimped her nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages
of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads;
or (as at a later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela,
and Henry, Earl of Moreland.
With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my
way. I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon.
The breakfast-room door opened.
"Boh! Madam Mope!" cried the voice of John Reed; then he paused:
he found the room apparently empty.
"Where the dickens is she!" he continued. "Lizzy! Georgy!
(calling to his sisters) Joan is not here: tell mama she is run
out into the rain -- bad animal!"
"It is well I drew the curtain," thought I; and I wished fervently
he might not discover my hiding-place: nor would John Reed have
found it out himself; he was not quick either of vision or conception;
but Eliza just put her head in at the door, and said at once -
"She is in the window-seat, to be sure, Jack."
And I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being
dragged forth by the said Jack.
"What do you want?" I asked, with awkward diffidence.
"Say, 'What do you want, Master Reed?'" was the answer. "I want
you to come here;" and seating himself in an arm-chair, he intimated
by a gesture that I was to approach and stand before him.
John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older
than I, for I was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a
dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage,
heavy limbs and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually
at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared
eye and flabby cheeks. He ought now to have been at school; but
his mama had taken him home for a month or two, "on account of his
delicate health." Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed that he would
do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from
home; but the mother's heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and
inclined rather to the more refined idea that John's sallowness
was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining after home.
John had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and
an antipathy to me. He bullied and punished me; not two or three
times in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually:
every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones
shrank when he came near. There were moments when I was bewildered
by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against
either his menaces or his inflictions; the servants did not like to
offend their young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs.
Reed was blind and deaf on the subject: she never saw him strike
or heard him abuse me, though he did both now and then in her very
presence, more frequently, however, behind her back.
Habitually obedient to John, I came up to his chair: he spent
some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he
could without damaging the roots: I knew he would soon strike,
and while dreading the blow, I mused on the disgusting and ugly
appearance of him who would presently deal it. I wonder if he
read that notion in my face; for, all at once, without speaking,
he struck suddenly and strongly. I tottered, and on regaining my
equilibrium retired back a step or two from his chair.
"That is for your impudence in answering mama awhile since," said
he, "and for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains, and for
the look you had in your eyes two minutes since, you rat!"
Accustomed to John Reed's abuse, I never had an idea of replying
to it; my care was how to endure the blow which would certainly
follow the insult.
"What were you doing behind the curtain?" he asked.
"I was reading."
"Show the book."
I returned to the window and fetched it thence.
"You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama
says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to
beg, and not to live here with gentlemen's children like us, and
eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama's expense.
Now, I'll teach you to rummage my bookshelves: for they ARE mine;
all the house belongs to me, or will do in a few years. Go and
stand by the door, out of the way of the mirror and the windows."
I did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when
I saw him lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I
instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm: not soon enough,
however; the volume was flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my
head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was
sharp: my terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded.
"Wicked and cruel boy!" I said. "You are like a murderer -- you
are like a slave-driver -- you are like the Roman emperors!"
I had read Goldsmith's History of Rome, and had formed my opinion
of Nero, Caligula, &c. Also I had drawn parallels in silence,
which I never thought thus to have declared aloud.
"What! what!" he cried. "Did she say that to me? Did you hear
her, Eliza and Georgiana? Won't I tell mama? but first -- "
He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder:
he had closed with a desperate thing. I really saw in him a tyrant,
a murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle
down my neck, and was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering: these
sensations for the time predominated over fear, and I received him
in frantic sort. I don't very well know what I did with my hands,
but he called me "Rat! Rat!" and bellowed out aloud. Aid was
near him: Eliza and Georgiana had run for Mrs. Reed, who was gone
upstairs: she now came upon the scene, followed by Bessie
and her maid Abbot. We were parted: I heard the words -
"Dear! dear! What a fury to fly at Master John!"
"Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion!"
Then Mrs. Reed subjoined -
"Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there." Four hands
were immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.
CHAPTER II
I resisted all the way: a new thing for me, and a circumstance
which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot
were disposed to entertain of me. The fact is, I was a trifle
beside myself; or rather OUT of myself, as the French would say:
I was conscious that a moment's mutiny had already rendered me
liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I
felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths.
"Hold her arms, Miss Abbot: she's like a mad cat."
"For shame! for shame!" cried the lady's-maid. "What shocking
conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress's
son! Your young master."
"Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?"
"No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep.
There, sit down, and think over your wickedness."
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," &c. &c.
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.
I stepped across the rug; he placed me square and straight before
him. What a face he had, now that it was almost on a level
with mine! what a great nose! and what a mouth! and what large
prominent teeth!
"No sight so sad as that of a naughty child," he began, "especially a
naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?"
"They go to hell," was my ready and orthodox answer.
"And what is hell? Can you tell me that?"
"A pit full of fire."
"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there
for ever?"
"No, sir."
"What must you do to avoid it?"
I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable:
"I must keep in good health, and not die."
"How can you keep in good health? Children younger than you die
daily. I buried a little child of five years old only a day or
two since, -- a good little child, whose soul is now in heaven.
It is to be feared the same could not be said of you were you to
be called hence."
Not being in a condition to remove his doubt, I only cast my eyes
down on the two large feet planted on the rug, and sighed, wishing
myself far enough away.
"I hope that sigh is from the heart, and that you repent of ever
having been the occasion of discomfort to your excellent benefactress."
"Benefactress! benefactress!" said I inwardly: "they all call
Mrs. Reed my benefactress; if so, a benefactress is a disagreeable
thing."
"Do you say your prayers night and morning?" continued my
interrogator.
"Yes, sir."
"Do you read your Bible?"
"Sometimes."
"With pleasure? Are you fond of it?"
"I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel,
and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles,
and Job and Jonah."
"And the Psalms? I hope you like them?"
"No, sir."
"No? oh, shocking! I have a little boy, younger than you, who
knows six Psalms by heart: and when you ask him which he would
rather have, a gingerbread-nut to eat or a verse of a Psalm to
learn, he says: 'Oh! the verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalms;'
says he, 'I wish to be a little angel here below;' he then gets
two nuts in recompense for his infant piety."
"Psalms are not interesting," I remarked.
"That proves you have a wicked heart; and you must pray to God to
change it: to give you a new and clean one: to take away your
heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."
I was about to propound a question, touching the manner in which
that operation of changing my heart was to be performed, when Mrs.
Reed interposed, telling me to sit down; she then proceeded to
carry on the conversation herself.
"Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe I intimated in the letter which I
wrote to you three weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite
the character and disposition I could wish: should you admit her
into Lowood school, I should be glad if the superintendent and
teachers were requested to keep a strict eye on her, and, above
all, to guard against her worst fault, a tendency to deceit. I
mention this in your hearing, Jane, that you may not attempt to
impose on Mr. Brocklehurst."
Well might I dread, well might I dislike Mrs. Reed; for it was
her nature to wound me cruelly; never was I happy in her presence;
however carefully I obeyed, however strenuously I strove to please
her, my efforts were still repulsed and repaid by such sentences
as the above. Now, uttered before a stranger, the accusation cut
me to the heart; I dimly perceived that she was already obliterating
hope from the new phase of existence which she destined me to
enter; I felt, though I could not have expressed the feeling, that
she was sowing aversion and unkindness along my future path; I saw
myself transformed under Mr. Brocklehurst's eye into an artful,
noxious child, and what could I do to remedy the injury?
"Nothing, indeed," thought I, as I struggled to repress a sob, and
hastily wiped away some tears, the impotent evidences of my anguish.
"Deceit is, indeed, a sad fault in a child," said Mr. Brocklehurst;
"it is akin to falsehood, and all liars will have their portion in
the lake burning with fire and brimstone; she shall, however, be
watched, Mrs. Reed. I will speak to Miss Temple and the teachers."
"I should wish her to be brought up in a manner suiting her prospects,"
continued my benefactress; "to be made useful, to be kept humble:
as for the vacations, she will, with your permission, spend them
always at Lowood."
"Your decisions are perfectly judicious, madam," returned Mr.
Brocklehurst. "Humility is a Christian grace, and one peculiarly
appropriate to the pupils of Lowood; I, therefore, direct that
especial care shall be bestowed on its cultivation amongst them.
I have studied how best to mortify in them the worldly sentiment
of pride; and, only the other day, I had a pleasing proof of my
success. My second daughter, Augusta, went with her mama to visit
the school, and on her return she exclaimed: 'Oh, dear papa,
how quiet and plain all the girls at Lowood look, with their hair
combed behind their ears, and their long pinafores, and those little
holland pockets outside their frocks -- they are almost like poor
people's children! and,' said she, 'they looked at my dress and
mama's, as if they had never seen a silk gown before.'"
"This is the state of things I quite approve," returned Mrs.
Reed; "had I sought all England over, I could scarcely have found
a system more exactly fitting a child like Jane Eyre. Consistency,
my dear Mr. Brocklehurst; I advocate consistency in all things."
"Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties; and it has
been observed in every arrangement connected with the establishment
of Lowood: plain fare, simple attire, unsophisticated accommodations,
hardy and active habits; such is the order of the day in the house
and its inhabitants."
"Quite right, sir. I may then depend upon this child being received
as a pupil at Lowood, and there being trained in conformity to her
position and prospects?"
"Madam, you may: she shall be placed in that nursery of chosen
plants, and I trust she will show herself grateful for the inestimable
privilege of her election."
"I will send her, then, as soon as possible, Mr. Brocklehurst; for,
I assure you, I feel anxious to be relieved of a responsibility
that was becoming too irksome."
"No doubt, no doubt, madam; and now I wish you good morning. I
shall return to Brocklehurst Hall in the course of a week or two:
my good friend, the Archdeacon, will not permit me to leave him
sooner. I shall send Miss Temple notice that she is to expect a
new girl, so that there will he no difficulty about receiving her.
Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Mr. Brocklehurst; remember me to Mrs. and Miss Brocklehurst,
and to Augusta and Theodore, and Master Broughton Brocklehurst."
"I will, madam. Little girl, here is a book entitled the 'Child's
Guide,' read it with prayer, especially that part containing 'An
account of the awfully sudden death of Martha G -, a naughty child
addicted to falsehood and deceit.'"
With these words Mr. Brocklehurst put into my hand a thin pamphlet
sewn in a cover, and having rung for his carriage, he departed.
Mrs. Reed and I were left alone: some minutes passed in silence;
she was sewing, I was watching her. Mrs. Reed might be at that
time some six or seven and thirty; she was a woman of robust frame,
square-shouldered and strong-limbed, not tall, and, though stout,
not obese: she had a somewhat large face, the under jaw being
much developed and very solid; her brow was low, her chin large and
prominent, mouth and nose sufficiently regular; under her light
eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth; her skin was dark and
opaque, her hair nearly flaxen; her constitution was sound as a bell
-- illness never came near her; she was an exact, clever manager;
her household and tenantry were thoroughly under her control;
her children only at times defied her authority and laughed it to
scorn; she dressed well, and had a presence and port calculated to
set off handsome attire.
Sitting on a low stool, a few yards from her arm-chair, I examined
her figure; I perused her features. In my hand I held the
tract containing the sudden death of the Liar, to which narrative
my attention had been pointed as to an appropriate warning. What
had just passed; what Mrs. Reed had said concerning me to Mr.
Brocklehurst; the whole tenor of their conversation, was recent,
raw, and stinging in my mind; I had felt every word as acutely as
I had heard it plainly, and a passion of resentment fomented now
within me.
Mrs. Reed looked up from her work; her eye settled on mine, her
fingers at the same time suspended their nimble movements.
"Go out of the room; return to the nursery," was her mandate. My
look or something else must have struck her as offensive, for she
spoke with extreme though suppressed irritation. I got up, I went
to the door; I came back again; I walked to the window, across the
room, then close up to her.
SPEAK I must: I had been trodden on severely, and MUST turn: but
how? What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist?
I gathered my energies and launched them in this blunt sentence -
"I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I
declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in
the world except John Reed; and this book about the liar, you may
give to your girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and
not I."
Mrs. Reed's hands still lay on her work inactive: her eye of ice
continued to dwell freezingly on mine.
"What more have you to say?" she asked, rather in the tone in
which a person might address an opponent of adult age than such as
is ordinarily used to a child.
That eye of hers, that voice stirred every antipathy I had.
Shaking from head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement,
I continued -
"I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you
aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when
I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you
treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and
that you treated me with miserable cruelty."
"How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?"
"How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the TRUTH. You
think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love
or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall
remember how you thrust me back -- roughly and violently thrust
me back -- into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying
day; though I was in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating
with distress, 'Have mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed!' And that
punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me
-- knocked me down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me
questions, this exact tale. People think you a good woman, but
you are bad, hard- hearted. YOU are deceitful!"
Ere I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult,
with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It
seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled
out into unhoped-for liberty. Not without cause was this sentiment:
Mrs. Reed looked frightened; her work had slipped from her knee;
she was lifting up her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and even
twisting her face as if she would cry.
"Jane, you are under a mistake: what is the matter with you? Why
do you tremble so violently? Would you like to drink some water?"
"No, Mrs. Reed."
"Is there anything else you wish for, Jane? I assure you, I desire
to be your friend."
"Not you. You told Mr. Brocklehurst I had a bad character, a
deceitful disposition; and I'll let everybody at Lowood know what
you are, and what you have done."
"Jane, you don't understand these things: children must be corrected
for their faults."
"Deceit is not my fault!" I cried out in a savage, high voice.
"But you are passionate, Jane, that you must allow: and now return
to the nursery -- there's a dear -- and lie down a little."
"I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon,
Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here."
"I will indeed send her to school soon," murmured Mrs. Reed sotto
voce; and gathering up her work, she abruptly quitted the apartment.
I was left there alone -- winner of the field. It was the hardest
battle I had fought, and the first victory I had gained: I stood
awhile on the rug, where Mr. Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed
my conqueror's solitude. First, I smiled to myself and felt
elate; but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the
accelerated throb of my pulses. A child cannot quarrel with its
elders, as I had done; cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled
play, as I had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the pang
of remorse and the chill of reaction. A ridge of lighted heath,
alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my
mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed: the same ridge, black
and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as
meetly my subsequent condition, when half-an-hour's silence and
reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness
of my hated and hating position.
Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic
wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour,
metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.
Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed's pardon; but
I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was
the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting
every turbulent impulse of my nature.
I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce
speaking; fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than
that of sombre indignation. I took a book -- some Arabian tales;
I sat down and endeavoured to read. I could make no sense of
the subject; my own thoughts swam always between me and the page
I had usually found fascinating. I opened the glass-door in the
breakfast-room: the shrubbery was quite still: the black frost
reigned, unbroken by sun or breeze, through the grounds. I covered
my head and arms with the skirt of my frock, and went out to walk
in a part of the plantation which was quite sequestrated; but I
found no pleasure in the silent trees, the falling fir-cones, the
congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past winds in
heaps, and now stiffened together. I leaned against a gate, and
looked into an empty field where no sheep were feeding, where the
short grass was nipped and blanched. It was a very grey day; a
most opaque sky, "onding on snaw," canopied all; thence flakes felt
it intervals, which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea
without melting. I stood, a wretched child enough, whispering to
myself over and over again, "What shall I do? -- what shall I do?"
All at once I heard a clear voice call, "Miss Jane! where are you?
Come to lunch!"
It was Bessie, I knew well enough; but I did not stir; her light
step came tripping down the path.
"You naughty little thing!" she said. "Why don't you come when
you are called?"
Bessie's presence, compared with the thoughts over which I had been
brooding, seemed cheerful; even though, as usual, she was somewhat
cross. The fact is, after my conflict with and victory over Mrs.
Reed, I was not disposed to care much for the nursemaid's transitory
anger; and I WAS disposed to bask in her youthful lightness of
heart. I just put my two arms round her and said, "Come, Bessie!
don't scold."
The action was more frank and fearless than any I was habituated
to indulge in: somehow it pleased her.
"You are a strange child, Miss Jane," she said, as she looked down
at me; "a little roving, solitary thing: and you are going to
school, I suppose?"
I nodded.
"And won't you be sorry to leave poor Bessie?"
"What does Bessie care for me? She is always scolding me."
"Because you're such a queer, frightened, shy little thing. You
should be bolder."
"What! to get more knocks?"
"Nonsense! But you are rather put upon, that's certain. My mother
said, when she came to see me last week, that she would not like
a little one of her own to be in your place. -- Now, come in, and
I've some good news for you."
"I don't think you have, Bessie."
"Child! what do you mean? What sorrowful eyes you fix on me!
Well, but Missis and the young ladies and Master John are going
out to tea this afternoon, and you shall have tea with me. I'll
ask cook to bake you a little cake, and then you shall help me to
look over your drawers; for I am soon to pack your trunk. Missis
intends you to leave Gateshead in a day or two, and you shall choose
what toys you like to take with you."
"Bessie, you must promise not to scold me any more till I go."
"Well, I will; but mind you are a very good girl, and don't be
afraid of me. Don't start when I chance to speak rather sharply;
it's so provoking."
"I don't think I shall ever be afraid of you again, Bessie, because
I have got used to you, and I shall soon have another set of people
to dread."
"If you dread them they'll dislike you."
"As you do, Bessie?"
"I don't dislike you, Miss; I believe I am fonder of you than of
all the others."
"You don't show it."
"You little sharp thing! you've got quite a new way of talking.
What makes you so venturesome and hardy?"
"Why, I shall soon be away from you, and besides" -- I was going
to say something about what had passed between me and Mrs. Reed,
but on second thoughts I considered it better to remain silent on
that head.
"And so you're glad to leave me?"
"Not at all, Bessie; indeed, just now I'm rather sorry."
"Just now! and rather! How coolly my little lady says it! I
dare say now if I were to ask you for a kiss you wouldn't give it
me: you'd say you'd RATHER not."
"I'll kiss you and welcome: bend your head down." Bessie stooped;
we mutually embraced, and I followed her into the house quite
comforted. That afternoon lapsed in peace and harmony; and in the
evening Bessie told me some of her most enchanting stories, and sang
me some of her sweetest songs. Even for me life had its gleams of
sunshine.
CHAPTER V
Five o'clock had hardly struck on the morning of the 19th of
January, when Bessie brought a candle into my closet and found me
already up and nearly dressed. I had risen half-an-hour before
her entrance, and had washed my face, and put on my clothes by the
light of a half-moon just setting, whose rays streamed through the
narrow window near my crib. I was to leave Gateshead that day by
a coach which passed the lodge gates at six a.m. Bessie was the
only person yet risen; she had lit a fire in the nursery, where
she now proceeded to make my breakfast. Few children can eat when
excited with the thoughts of a journey; nor could I. Bessie, having
pressed me in vain to take a few spoonfuls of the boiled milk and
bread she had prepared for me, wrapped up some biscuits in a paper
and put them into my bag; then she helped me on with my pelisse
and bonnet, and wrapping herself in a shawl, she and I left the
nursery. As we passed Mrs. Reed's bedroom, she said, "Will you go
in and bid Missis good-bye?"
"No, Bessie: she came to my crib last night when you were gone
down to supper, and said I need not disturb her in the morning, or
my cousins either; and she told me to remember that she had always
been my best friend, and to speak of her and be grateful to her
accordingly."
"What did you say, Miss?"
"Nothing: I covered my face with the bedclothes, and turned from
her to the wall."
"That was wrong, Miss Jane."
"It was quite right, Bessie. Your Missis has not been my friend:
she has been my foe."
"O Miss Jane! don't say so!"
"Good-bye to Gateshead!" cried I, as we passed through the hall
and went out at the front door.
The moon was set, and it was very dark; Bessie carried a lantern,
whose light glanced on wet steps and gravel road sodden by a recent
thaw. Raw and chill was the winter morning: my teeth chattered
as I hastened down the drive. There was a light in the porter's
lodge: when we reached it, we found the porter's wife just kindling
her fire: my trunk, which had been carried down the evening
before, stood corded at the door. It wanted but a few minutes of
six, and shortly after that hour had struck, the distant roll of
wheels announced the coming coach; I went to the door and watched
its lamps approach rapidly through the gloom.
"Is she going by herself?" asked the porter's wife.
"Yes."
"And how far is it?"
"Fifty miles."
"What a long way! I wonder Mrs. Reed is not afraid to trust her
so far alone."
The coach drew up; there it was at the gates with its four horses
and its top laden with passengers: the guard and coachman loudly
urged haste; my trunk was hoisted up; I was taken from Bessie's
neck, to which I clung with kisses.
"Be sure and take good care of her," cried she to the guard, as he
lifted me into the inside.
"Ay, ay!" was the answer: the door was slapped to, a voice exclaimed
"All right," and on we drove. Thus was I severed from Bessie and
Gateshead; thus whirled away to unknown, and, as I then deemed,
remote and mysterious regions.
I remember but little of the journey; I only know that the day
seemed to me of a preternatural length, and that we appeared to
travel over hundreds of miles of road. We passed through several
towns, and in one, a very large one, the coach stopped; the horses
were taken out, and the passengers alighted to dine. I was carried
into an inn, where the guard wanted me to have some dinner; but, as
I had no appetite, he left me in an immense room with a fireplace
at each end, a chandelier pendent from the ceiling, and a little red
gallery high up against the wall filled with musical instruments.
Here I walked about for a long time, feeling very strange, and
mortally apprehensive of some one coming in and kidnapping me; for
I believed in kidnappers, their exploits having frequently figured
in Bessie's fireside chronicles. At last the guard returned; once
more I was stowed away in the coach, my protector mounted his own
seat, sounded his hollow horn, and away we rattled over the "stony
street" of L-.
The afternoon came on wet and somewhat misty: as it waned into
dusk, I began to feel that we were getting very far indeed from
Gateshead: we ceased to pass through towns; the country changed;
great grey hills heaved up round the horizon: as twilight deepened,
we descended a valley, dark with wood, and long after night had
overclouded the prospect, I heard a wild wind rushing amongst trees.
Lulled by the sound, I at last dropped asleep; I had not long slumbered
when the sudden cessation of motion awoke me; the coach-door was
open, and a person like a servant was standing at it: I saw her
face and dress by the light of the lamps.
"Is there a little girl called Jane Eyre here?" she asked. I
answered "Yes," and was then lifted out; my trunk was handed down,
and the coach instantly drove away.
I was stiff with long sitting, and bewildered with the noise and
motion of the coach: Gathering my faculties, I looked about me.
Rain, wind, and darkness filled the air; nevertheless, I dimly
discerned a wall before me and a door open in it; through this door
I passed with my new guide: she shut and locked it behind her.
There was now visible a house or houses -- for the building spread
far -- with many windows, and lights burning in some; we went up
a broad pebbly path, splashing wet, and were admitted at a door;
then the servant led me through a passage into a room with a fire,
where she left me alone.
I stood and warmed my numbed fingers over the blaze, then I looked
round; there was no candle, but the uncertain light from the hearth
showed, by intervals, papered walls, carpet, curtains, shining
mahogany furniture: it was a parlour, not so spacious or splendid
as the drawing-room at Gateshead, but comfortable enough. I was
puzzling to make out the subject of a picture on the wall, when the
door opened, and an individual carrying a light entered; another
followed close behind.
The first was a tall lady with dark hair, dark eyes, and a pale
and large forehead; her figure was partly enveloped in a shawl,
her countenance was grave, her bearing erect.
"The child is very young to be sent alone," said she, putting
her candle down on the table. She considered me attentively
for a minute or two, then further added -
"She had better be put to bed soon; she looks tired: are you
tired?" she asked, placing her hand on my shoulder.
"A little, ma'am."
"And hungry too, no doubt: let her have some supper before she
goes to bed, Miss Miller. Is this the first time you have left
your parents to come to school, my little girl?"
I explained to her that I had no parents. She inquired how long
they had been dead: then how old I was, what was my name, whether
I could read, write, and sew a little: then she touched my cheek
gently with her forefinger, and saying, "She hoped I should be a
good child," dismissed me along with Miss Miller.
The lady I had left might be about twenty-nine; the one who went
with me appeared some years younger: the first impressed me by
her voice, look, and air. Miss Miller was more ordinary; ruddy in
complexion, though of a careworn countenance; hurried in gait and
action, like one who had always a multiplicity of tasks on hand:
she looked, indeed, what I afterwards found she really was, an
under-teacher. Led by her, I passed from compartment to compartment,
from passage to passage, of a large and irregular building; till,
emerging from the total and somewhat dreary silence pervading that
portion of the house we had traversed, we came upon the hum of many
voices, and presently entered a wide, long room, with great deal
tables, two at each end, on each of which burnt a pair of candles,
and seated all round on benches, a congregation of girls of every
age, from nine or ten to twenty. Seen by the dim light of the
dips, their number to me appeared countless, though not in reality
exceeding eighty; they were uniformly dressed in brown stuff frocks
of quaint fashion, and long holland pinafores. It was the hour of
study; they were engaged in conning over their to- morrow's task,
and the hum I had heard was the combined result of their whispered
repetitions.
Miss Miller signed to me to sit on a bench near the door,
then walking up to the top of the long room she cried out -
"Monitors, collect the lesson-books and put them away! Four tall
girls arose from different tables, and going round, gathered the
books and removed them. Miss Miller again gave the word of command -
"Monitors, fetch the supper-trays!"
The tall girls went out and returned presently, each bearing a tray,
with portions of something, I knew not what, arranged thereon, and
a pitcher of water and mug in the middle of each tray. The portions
were handed round; those who liked took a draught of the water,
the mug being common to all. When it came to my turn, I drank, for
I was thirsty, but did not touch the food, excitement and fatigue
rendering me incapable of eating: I now saw, however, that it was
a thin oaten cake shaved into fragments.
The meal over, prayers were read by Miss Miller, and the classes
filed off, two and two, upstairs. Overpowered by this time with
weariness, I scarcely noticed what sort of a place the bedroom was,
except that, like the schoolroom, I saw it was very long. To-night
I was to be Miss Miller's bed-fellow; she helped me to undress:
when laid down I glanced at the long rows of beds, each of which
was quickly filled with two occupants; in ten minutes the single
light was extinguished, and amidst silence and complete darkness
I fell asleep.
The night passed rapidly. I was too tired even to dream; I only
once awoke to hear the wind rave in furious gusts, and the rain
fall in torrents, and to be sensible that Miss Miller had taken
her place by my side. When I again unclosed my eyes, a loud bell
was ringing; the girls were up and dressing; day had not yet begun
to dawn, and a rushlight or two burned in the room. I too rose
reluctantly; it was bitter cold, and I dressed as well as I could
for shivering, and washed when there was a basin at liberty, which
did not occur soon, as there was but one basin to six girls, on
the stands down the middle of the room. Again the bell rang: all
formed in file, two and two, and in that order descended the stairs
and entered the cold and dimly lit schoolroom: here prayers
were read by Miss Miller; afterwards she called out -
"Form classes!"
A great tumult succeeded for some minutes, during which Miss Miller
repeatedly exclaimed, "Silence!" and "Order!" When it subsided,
I saw them all drawn up in four semicircles, before four chairs,
placed at the four tables; all held books in their hands, and a great
book, like a Bible, lay on each table, before the vacant seat. A
pause of some seconds succeeded, filled up by the low, vague hum
of numbers; Miss Miller walked from class to class, hushing this
indefinite sound.
A distant bell tinkled: immediately three ladies entered the room,
each walked to a table and took her seat. Miss Miller assumed the
fourth vacant chair, which was that nearest the door, and around
which the smallest of the children were assembled: to this inferior
class I was called, and placed at the bottom of it.
Business now began, the day's Collect was repeated, then certain
texts of Scripture were said, and to these succeeded a protracted
reading of chapters in the Bible, which lasted an hour. By
the time that exercise was terminated, day had fully dawned. The
indefatigable bell now sounded for the fourth time: the classes
were marshalled and marched into another room to breakfast: how
glad I was to behold a prospect of getting something to eat! I
was now nearly sick from inanition, having taken so little the day
before.
The refectory was a great, low-ceiled, gloomy room; on two long tables
smoked basins of something hot, which, however, to my dismay, sent
forth an odour far from inviting. I saw a universal manifestation
of discontent when the fumes of the repast met the nostrils
of those destined to swallow it; from the van of the procession,
the tall girls of the first class, rose the whispered words -
"Disgusting! The porridge is burnt again!"
"Silence!" ejaculated a voice; not that of Miss Miller, but one of
the upper teachers, a little and dark personage, smartly dressed,
but of somewhat morose aspect, who installed herself at the top
of one table, while a more buxom lady presided at the other. I
looked in vain for her I had first seen the night before; she was
not visible: Miss Miller occupied the foot of the table where I sat,
and a strange, foreign-looking, elderly lady, the French teacher,
as I afterwards found, took the corresponding seat at the other
board. A long grace was said and a hymn sung; then a servant
brought in some tea for the teachers, and the meal began.
Ravenous, and now very faint, I devoured a spoonful or two of my
portion without thinking of its taste; but the first edge of hunger
blunted, I perceived I had got in hand a nauseous mess; burnt
porridge is almost as bad as rotten potatoes; famine itself soon
sickens over it. The spoons were moved slowly: I saw each girl
taste her food and try to swallow it; but in most cases the effort
was soon relinquished. Breakfast was over, and none had breakfasted.
Thanks being returned for what we had not got, and a second hymn
chanted, the refectory was evacuated for the schoolroom. I was one
of the last to go out, and in passing the tables, I saw one teacher
take a basin of the porridge and taste it; she looked at the others;
all their countenances expressed displeasure, and one of
them, the stout one, whispered -
"Abominable stuff! How shameful!"
Back to Full Books
|