Part 1 - Jane Eyre Audiobook by Charlotte Bronte (Chs 01-06)

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 be
no difficulty about receiving her. Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Mr. Brocklehurst; remember me to Mrs. and Miss Brocklehurst, and to Augusta
and Theodore, and Master Broughton Brocklehurst."
"I will, madam.
Little girl, here is a book entitled the 'Child's Guide,' read it with prayer,
especially that part containing 'An account of the awfully sudden death of Martha G---,
a naughty child addicted to falsehood and deceit.'"
With these words Mr. Brocklehurst put into my hand a thin pamphlet sewn in a cover,
and having rung for his carriage, he departed.
Mrs. Reed and I were left alone: some minutes passed in silence; she was sewing,
I was watching her.
Mrs. Reed might be at that time some six or seven and thirty; she was a woman of robust
frame, square-shouldered and strong-limbed, not tall, and, though stout, not obese: she
had a somewhat large face, the under jaw
being much developed and very solid; her brow was low, her chin large and prominent,
mouth and nose sufficiently regular; under her light eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid
of ruth; her skin was dark and opaque, her
hair nearly flaxen; her constitution was sound as a bell--illness never came near
her; she was an exact, clever manager; her household and tenantry were thoroughly
under her control; her children only at
times defied her authority and laughed it to scorn; she dressed well, and had a
presence and port calculated to set off handsome attire.
Sitting on a low stool, a few yards from her arm-chair, I examined her figure; I
perused her features.
In my hand I held the tract containing the sudden death of the Liar, to which
narrative my attention had been pointed as to an appropriate warning.
What had just passed; what Mrs. Reed had said concerning me to Mr. Brocklehurst; the
whole tenor of their conversation, was recent, raw, and stinging in my mind; I had
felt every word as acutely as I had heard
it plainly, and a passion of resentment fomented now within me.
Mrs. Reed looked up from her work; her eye settled on mine, her fingers at the same
time suspended their nimble movements.
"Go out of the room; return to the nursery," was her mandate.
My look or something else must have struck her as offensive, for she spoke with
extreme though suppressed irritation.
I got up, I went to the door; I came back again; I walked to the window, across the
room, then close up to her. Speak I must: I had been trodden on
severely, and must turn: but how?
What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist?
I gathered my energies and launched them in this blunt sentence--
"I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not
love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed; and
this book about the liar, you may give to
your girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and not I."
Mrs. Reed's hands still lay on her work inactive: her eye of ice continued to dwell
freezingly on mine.
"What more have you to say?" she asked, rather in the tone in which a person might
address an opponent of adult age than such as is ordinarily used to a child.
That eye of hers, that voice stirred every antipathy I had.
Shaking from head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement, I continued--
"I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as long as I
live.
I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I
liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick,
and that you treated me with miserable cruelty."
"How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?" "How dare I, Mrs. Reed?
How dare I?
Because it is the truth. You think I have no feelings, and that I
can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity.
I shall remember how you thrust me back-- roughly and violently thrust me back--into
the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day; though I was in agony; though I
cried out, while suffocating with distress, 'Have mercy!
Have mercy, Aunt Reed!'
And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me--knocked
me down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions,
this exact tale.
People think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted.
You are deceitful!" {How dare I, Mrs. Ried?
How dare I?
Because it is the truth: p30.jpg} Ere I had finished this reply, my soul
began to expand, to exult, with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I
ever felt.
It seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into
unhoped- for liberty.
Not without cause was this sentiment: Mrs. Reed looked frightened; her work had
slipped from her knee; she was lifting up her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and
even twisting her face as if she would cry.
"Jane, you are under a mistake: what is the matter with you?
Why do you tremble so violently? Would you like to drink some water?"
"No, Mrs. Reed."
"Is there anything else you wish for, Jane? I assure you, I desire to be your friend."
"Not you.
You told Mr. Brocklehurst I had a bad character, a deceitful disposition; and
I'll let everybody at Lowood know what you are, and what you have done."
"Jane, you don't understand these things: children must be corrected for their
faults." "Deceit is not my fault!"
I cried out in a savage, high voice.
"But you are passionate, Jane, that you must allow: and now return to the nursery--
there's a dear--and lie down a little."
"I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I
hate to live here."
"I will indeed send her to school soon," murmured Mrs. Reed sotto voce; and
gathering up her work, she abruptly quitted the apartment.
I was left there alone--winner of the field.
It was the hardest battle I had fought, and the first victory I had gained: I stood
awhile on the rug, where Mr. Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed my conqueror's
solitude.
First, I smiled to myself and felt elate; but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as
fast as did the accelerated throb of my pulses.
A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as I had done; cannot give its furious
feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the
pang of remorse and the chill of reaction.
A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of
my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed: the same ridge, black and blasted
after the flames are dead, would have
represented as meetly my subsequent condition, when half-an-hour's silence and
reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness of my hated and
hating position.
Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on
swallowing, warm and racy: its after- flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a
sensation as if I had been poisoned.
Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed's pardon; but I knew, partly from
experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her repulse me with
double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature.
I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking; fain find
nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than that of sombre indignation.
I took a book--some Arabian tales; I sat down and endeavoured to read.
I could make no sense of the subject; my own thoughts swam always between me and the
page I had usually found fascinating.
I opened the glass-door in the breakfast- room: the shrubbery was quite still: the
black frost reigned, unbroken by sun or breeze, through the grounds.
I covered my head and arms with the skirt of my frock, and went out to walk in a part
of the plantation which was quite sequestrated; but I found no pleasure in
the silent trees, the falling fir-cones,
the congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past winds in heaps, and
now stiffened together.
I leaned against a gate, and looked into an empty field where no sheep were feeding,
where the short grass was nipped and blanched.
It was a very grey day; a most opaque sky, "onding on snaw," canopied all; thence
flakes felt it intervals, which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea without
melting.
I stood, a wretched child enough, whispering to myself over and over again,
"What shall I do?--what shall I do?" All at once I heard a clear voice call,
"Miss Jane! where are you?
Come to lunch!" It was Bessie, I knew well enough; but I
did not stir; her light step came tripping down the path.
"You naughty little thing!" she said.
"Why don't you come when you are called?" Bessie's presence, compared with the
thoughts over which I had been brooding, seemed cheerful; even though, as usual, she
was somewhat cross.
The fact is, after my conflict with and victory over Mrs. Reed, I was not disposed
to care much for the nursemaid's transitory anger; and I was disposed to bask in her
youthful lightness of heart.
I just put my two arms round her and said, "Come, Bessie! don't scold."
The action was more frank and fearless than any I was habituated to indulge in: somehow
it pleased her.
"You are a strange child, Miss Jane," she said, as she looked down at me; "a little
roving, solitary thing: and you are going to school, I suppose?"
I nodded.
"And won't you be sorry to leave poor Bessie?"
"What does Bessie care for me? She is always scolding me."
"Because you're such a queer, frightened, shy little thing.
You should be bolder." "What! to get more knocks?"
"Nonsense!
But you are rather put upon, that's certain.
My mother said, when she came to see me last week, that she would not like a little
one of her own to be in your place.--Now, come in, and I've some good news for you."
"I don't think you have, Bessie."
"Child! what do you mean? What sorrowful eyes you fix on me!
Well, but Missis and the young ladies and Master John are going out to tea this
afternoon, and you shall have tea with me.
I'll ask cook to bake you a little cake, and then you shall help me to look over
your drawers; for I am soon to pack your trunk.
Missis intends you to leave Gateshead in a day or two, and you shall choose what toys
you like to take with you." "Bessie, you must promise not to scold me
any more till I go."
"Well, I will; but mind you are a very good girl, and don't be afraid of me.
Don't start when I chance to speak rather sharply; it's so provoking."
"I don't think I shall ever be afraid of you again, Bessie, because I have got used
to you, and I shall soon have another set of people to dread."
"If you dread them they'll dislike you."
"As you do, Bessie?" "I don't dislike you, Miss; I believe I am
fonder of you than of all the others." "You don't show it."
"You little sharp thing! you've got quite a new way of talking.
What makes you so venturesome and hardy?"
"Why, I shall soon be away from you, and besides"--I was going to say something
about what had passed between me and Mrs. Reed, but on second thoughts I considered
it better to remain silent on that head.
"And so you're glad to leave me?" "Not at all, Bessie; indeed, just now I'm
rather sorry." "Just now! and rather!
How coolly my little lady says it!
I dare say now if I were to ask you for a kiss you wouldn't give it me: you'd say
you'd rather not." "I'll kiss you and welcome: bend your head
down."
Bessie stooped; we mutually embraced, and I followed her into the house quite
comforted.
That afternoon lapsed in peace and harmony; and in the evening Bessie told me some of
her most enchanting stories, and sang me some of her sweetest songs.
Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.
>
CHAPTER V
Five o'clock had hardly struck on the morning of the 19th of January, when Bessie
brought a candle into my closet and found me already up and nearly dressed.
I had risen half-an-hour before her entrance, and had washed my face, and put
on my clothes by the light of a half-moon just setting, whose rays streamed through
the narrow window near my crib.
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 shared 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!"
A quarter of an hour passed before lessons again began, during which the schoolroom
was in a glorious tumult; for that space of time it seemed to be permitted to talk loud
and more freely, and they used their privilege.
The whole conversation ran on the breakfast, which one and all abused
roundly.
Poor things! it was the sole consolation they had.
Miss Miller was now the only teacher in the room: a group of great girls standing about
her spoke with serious and sullen gestures.
I heard the name of Mr. Brocklehurst pronounced by some lips; at which Miss
Miller shook her head disapprovingly; but she made no great effort to check the
general wrath; doubtless she shared in it.
A clock in the schoolroom struck nine; Miss Miller left her circle, and standing in the
middle of the room, cried-- "Silence!
To your seats!"
Discipline prevailed: in five minutes the confused throng was resolved into order,
and comparative silence quelled the Babel clamour of tongues.
The upper teachers now punctually resumed their posts: but still, all seemed to wait.
Ranged on benches down the sides of the room, the eighty girls sat motionless and
erect; a quaint assemblage they appeared, all with plain locks combed from their
faces, not a curl visible; in brown
dresses, made high and surrounded by a narrow tucker about the throat, with little
pockets of holland (shaped something like a Highlander's purse) tied in front of their
frocks, and destined to serve the purpose
of a work-bag: all, too, wearing woollen stockings and country-made shoes, fastened
with brass buckles.
Above twenty of those clad in this costume were full-grown girls, or rather young
women; it suited them ill, and gave an air of oddity even to the prettiest.
I was still looking at them, and also at intervals examining the teachers--none of
whom precisely pleased me; for the stout one was a little coarse, the dark one not a
little fierce, the foreigner harsh and
grotesque, and Miss Miller, poor thing! looked purple, weather-beaten, and over-
worked--when, as my eye wandered from face to face, the whole school rose
simultaneously, as if moved by a common spring.
What was the matter? I had heard no order given: I was puzzled.
Ere I had gathered my wits, the classes were again seated: but as all eyes were now
turned to one point, mine followed the general direction, and encountered the
personage who had received me last night.
She stood at the bottom of the long room, on the hearth; for there was a fire at each
end; she surveyed the two rows of girls silently and gravely.
Miss Miller approaching, seemed to ask her a question, and having received her answer,
went back to her place, and said aloud-- "Monitor of the first class, fetch the
globes!"
While the direction was being executed, the lady consulted moved slowly up the room.
I suppose I have a considerable organ of veneration, for I retain yet the sense of
admiring awe with which my eyes traced her steps.
Seen now, in broad daylight, she looked tall, fair, and shapely; brown eyes with a
benignant light in their irids, and a fine pencilling of long lashes round, relieved
the whiteness of her large front; on each
of her temples her hair, of a very dark brown, was clustered in round curls,
according to the fashion of those times, when neither smooth bands nor long ringlets
were in vogue; her dress, also in the mode
of the day, was of purple cloth, relieved by a sort of Spanish trimming of black
velvet; a gold watch (watches were not so common then as now) shone at her girdle.
Let the reader add, to complete the picture, refined features; a complexion, if
pale, clear; and a stately air and carriage, and he will have, at least, as
clearly as words can give it, a correct
idea of the exterior of Miss Temple--Maria Temple, as I afterwards saw the name
written in a prayer-book intrusted to me to carry to church.
The superintendent of Lowood (for such was this lady) having taken her seat before a
pair of globes placed on one of the tables, summoned the first class round her, and
commenced giving a lesson on geography; the
lower classes were called by the teachers: repetitions in history, grammar, &c., went
on for an hour; writing and arithmetic succeeded, and music lessons were given by
Miss Temple to some of the elder girls.
The duration of each lesson was measured by the clock, which at last struck twelve.
The superintendent rose-- "I have a word to address to the pupils,"
said she.
The tumult of cessation from lessons was already breaking forth, but it sank at her
voice. She went on--
"You had this morning a breakfast which you could not eat; you must be hungry:--I have
ordered that a lunch of bread and cheese shall be served to all."
The teachers looked at her with a sort of surprise.
"It is to be done on my responsibility," she added, in an explanatory tone to them,
and immediately afterwards left the room.
The bread and cheese was presently brought in and distributed, to the high delight and
refreshment of the whole school. The order was now given "To the garden!"
Each put on a coarse straw bonnet, with strings of coloured calico, and a cloak of
grey frieze.
I was similarly equipped, and, following the stream, I made my way into the open
air.
The garden was a wide inclosure, surrounded with walls so high as to exclude every
glimpse of prospect; a covered verandah ran down one side, and broad walks bordered a
middle space divided into scores of little
beds: these beds were assigned as gardens for the pupils to cultivate, and each bed
had an owner.
When full of flowers they would doubtless look pretty; but now, at the latter end of
January, all was wintry blight and brown decay.
I shuddered as I stood and looked round me: it was an inclement day for outdoor
exercise; not positively rainy, but darkened by a drizzling yellow fog; all
under foot was still soaking wet with the floods of yesterday.
The stronger among the girls ran about and engaged in active games, but sundry pale
and thin ones herded together for shelter and warmth in the verandah; and amongst
these, as the dense mist penetrated to
their shivering frames, I heard frequently the sound of a hollow cough.
As yet I had spoken to no one, nor did anybody seem to take notice of me; I stood
lonely enough: but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed; it did not
oppress me much.
I leant against a pillar of the verandah, drew my grey mantle close about me, and,
trying to forget the cold which nipped me without, and the unsatisfied hunger which
gnawed me within, delivered myself up to the employment of watching and thinking.
My reflections were too undefined and fragmentary to merit record: I hardly yet
knew where I was; Gateshead and my past life seemed floated away to an immeasurable
distance; the present was vague and
strange, and of the future I could form no conjecture.
I looked round the convent-like garden, and then up at the house--a large building,
half of which seemed grey and old, the other half quite new.
The new part, containing the schoolroom and dormitory, was lit by mullioned and
latticed windows, which gave it a church- like aspect; a stone tablet over the door
bore this inscription:--
"Lowood Institution.--This portion was rebuilt A.D.---, by Naomi Brocklehurst, of
Brocklehurst Hall, in this county."
"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify
your Father which is in heaven."--St. Matt. v. 16.
I read these words over and over again: I felt that an explanation belonged to them,
and was unable fully to penetrate their import.
I was still pondering the signification of "Institution," and endeavouring to make out
a connection between the first words and the verse of Scripture, when the sound of a
cough close behind me made me turn my head.
I saw a girl sitting on a stone bench near; she was bent over a book, on the perusal of
which she seemed intent: from where I stood I could see the title--it was "Rasselas;" a
name that struck me as strange, and consequently attractive.
In turning a leaf she happened to look up, and I said to her directly--
"Is your book interesting?"
I had already formed the intention of asking her to lend it to me some day.
"I like it," she answered, after a pause of a second or two, during which she examined
me.
"What is it about?" I continued.
I hardly know where I found the hardihood thus to open a conversation with a
stranger; the step was contrary to my nature and habits: but I think her
occupation touched a chord of sympathy
somewhere; for I too liked reading, though of a frivolous and childish kind; I could
not digest or comprehend the serious or substantial.
"You may look at it," replied the girl, offering me the book.
I did so; a brief examination convinced me that the contents were less taking than the
title: "Rasselas" looked dull to my trifling taste; I saw nothing about
fairies, nothing about genii; no bright
variety seemed spread over the closely- printed pages.
I returned it to her; she received it quietly, and without saying anything she
was about to relapse into her former studious mood: again I ventured to disturb
her--
"Can you tell me what the writing on that stone over the door means?
What is Lowood Institution?" "This house where you are come to live."
"And why do they call it Institution?
Is it in any way different from other schools?"
"It is partly a charity-school: you and I, and all the rest of us, are charity-
children.
I suppose you are an orphan: are not either your father or your mother dead?"
"Both died before I can remember."
"Well, all the girls here have lost either one or both parents, and this is called an
institution for educating orphans." "Do we pay no money?
Do they keep us for nothing?"
"We pay, or our friends pay, fifteen pounds a year for each."
"Then why do they call us charity- children?"
"Because fifteen pounds is not enough for board and teaching, and the deficiency is
supplied by subscription." "Who subscribes?"
"Different benevolent-minded ladies and gentlemen in this neighbourhood and in
London." "Who was Naomi Brocklehurst?"
"The lady who built the new part of this house as that tablet records, and whose son
overlooks and directs everything here." "Why?"
"Because he is treasurer and manager of the establishment."
"Then this house does not belong to that tall lady who wears a watch, and who said
we were to have some bread and cheese?"
"To Miss Temple? Oh, no!
I wish it did: she has to answer to Mr. Brocklehurst for all she does.
Mr. Brocklehurst buys all our food and all our clothes."
"Does he live here?" "No--two miles off, at a large hall."
"Is he a good man?"
"He is a clergyman, and is said to do a great deal of good."
"Did you say that tall lady was called Miss Temple?"
"Yes."
"And what are the other teachers called?"
"The one with red cheeks is called Miss Smith; she attends to the work, and cuts
out--for we make our own clothes, our frocks, and pelisses, and everything; the
little one with black hair is Miss
Scatcherd; she teaches history and grammar, and hears the second class repetitions; and
the one who wears a shawl, and has a pocket-handkerchief tied to her side with a
yellow ribband, is Madame Pierrot: she
comes from Lisle, in France, and teaches French."
"Do you like the teachers?" "Well enough."
"Do you like the little black one, and the Madame ---?--I cannot pronounce her name as
you do."
"Miss Scatcherd is hasty--you must take care not to offend her; Madame Pierrot is
not a bad sort of person." "But Miss Temple is the best--isn't she?"
"Miss Temple is very good and very clever; she is above the rest, because she knows
far more than they do." "Have you been long here?"
"Two years."
"Are you an orphan?" "My mother is dead."
"Are you happy here?" "You ask rather too many questions.
I have given you answers enough for the present: now I want to read."
But at that moment the summons sounded for dinner; all re-entered the house.
The odour which now filled the refectory was scarcely more appetising than that
which had regaled our nostrils at breakfast: the dinner was served in two
huge tin-plated vessels, whence rose a strong steam redolent of rancid fat.
I found the mess to consist of indifferent potatoes and strange shreds of rusty meat,
mixed and cooked together.
Of this preparation a tolerably abundant plateful was apportioned to each pupil.
I ate what I could, and wondered within myself whether every day's fare would be
like this.
After dinner, we immediately adjourned to the schoolroom: lessons recommenced, and
were continued till five o'clock.
The only marked event of the afternoon was, that I saw the girl with whom I had
conversed in the verandah dismissed in disgrace by Miss Scatcherd from a history
class, and sent to stand in the middle of the large schoolroom.
The punishment seemed to me in a high degree ignominious, especially for so great
a girl--she looked thirteen or upwards.
I expected she would show signs of great distress and shame; but to my surprise she
neither wept nor blushed: composed, though grave, she stood, the central mark of all
eyes.
"How can she bear it so quietly--so firmly?"
I asked of myself.
"Were I in her place, it seems to me I should wish the earth to open and swallow
me up.
She looks as if she were thinking of something beyond her punishment--beyond her
situation: of something not round her nor before her.
I have heard of day-dreams--is she in a day-dream now?
Her eyes are fixed on the floor, but I am sure they do not see it--her sight seems
turned in, gone down into her heart: she is looking at what she can remember, I
believe; not at what is really present.
I wonder what sort of a girl she is-- whether good or naughty."
Soon after five p.m. we had another meal, consisting of a small mug of coffee, and
half-a-slice of brown bread.
I devoured my bread and drank my coffee with relish; but I should have been glad of
as much more--I was still hungry.
Half-an-hour's recreation succeeded, then study; then the glass of water and the
piece of oat-cake, prayers, and bed. Such was my first day at Lowood.
>
CHAPTER VI
The next day commenced as before, getting up and dressing by rushlight; but this
morning we were obliged to dispense with the ceremony of washing; the water in the
pitchers was frozen.
A change had taken place in the weather the preceding evening, and a keen north-east
wind, whistling through the crevices of our bedroom windows all night long, had made us
shiver in our beds, and turned the contents of the ewers to ice.
Before the long hour and a half of prayers and Bible-reading was over, I felt ready to
perish with cold.
Breakfast-time came at last, and this morning the porridge was not burnt; the
quality was eatable, the quantity small. How small my portion seemed!
I wished it had been doubled.
In the course of the day I was enrolled a member of the fourth class, and regular
tasks and occupations were assigned me: hitherto, I had only been a spectator of
the proceedings at Lowood; I was now to become an actor therein.
At first, being little accustomed to learn by heart, the lessons appeared to me both
long and difficult; the frequent change from task to task, too, bewildered me; and
I was glad when, about three o'clock in the
afternoon, Miss Smith put into my hands a border of muslin two yards long, together
with needle, thimble, &c., and sent me to sit in a quiet corner of the schoolroom,
with directions to hem the same.
At that hour most of the others were sewing likewise; but one class still stood round
Miss Scatcherd's chair reading, and as all was quiet, the subject of their lessons
could be heard, together with the manner in
which each girl acquitted herself, and the animadversions or commendations of Miss
Scatcherd on the performance.
It was English history: among the readers I observed my acquaintance of the verandah:
at the commencement of the lesson, her place had been at the top of the class, but
for some error of pronunciation, or some
inattention to stops, she was suddenly sent to the very bottom.
Even in that obscure position, Miss Scatcherd continued to make her an object
of constant notice: she was continually addressing to her such phrases as the
following:--
"Burns" (such it seems was her name: the girls here were all called by their
surnames, as boys are elsewhere), "Burns, you are standing on the side of your shoe;
turn your toes out immediately."
"Burns, you poke your chin most unpleasantly; draw it in."
"Burns, I insist on your holding your head up; I will not have you before me in that
attitude," &c.
&c. A chapter having been read through twice,
the books were closed and the girls examined.
The lesson had comprised part of the reign of Charles I., and there were sundry
questions about tonnage and poundage and ship- money, which most of them appeared
unable to answer; still, every little
difficulty was solved instantly when it reached Burns: her memory seemed to have
retained the substance of the whole lesson, and she was ready with answers on every
point.
I kept expecting that Miss Scatcherd would praise her attention; but, instead of that,
she suddenly cried out-- "You dirty, disagreeable girl! you have
never cleaned your nails this morning!"
Burns made no answer: I wondered at her silence.
"Why," thought I, "does she not explain that she could neither clean her nails nor
wash her face, as the water was frozen?"
My attention was now called off by Miss Smith desiring me to hold a skein of
thread: while she was winding it, she talked to me from time to time, asking
whether I had ever been at school before,
whether I could mark, stitch, knit, &c.; till she dismissed me, I could not pursue
my observations on Miss Scatcherd's movements.
When I returned to my seat, that lady was just delivering an order of which I did not
catch the import; but Burns immediately left the class, and going into the small
inner room where the books were kept,
returned in half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at one
end.
This ominous tool she presented to Miss Scatcherd with a respectful curtesy; then
she quietly, and without being told, unloosed her pinafore, and the teacher
instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs.
Not a tear rose to Burns' eye; and, while I paused from my sewing, because my fingers
quivered at this spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not a
feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression.
"Hardened girl!" exclaimed Miss Scatcherd; "nothing can correct you of your slatternly
habits: carry the rod away."
Burns obeyed: I looked at her narrowly as she emerged from the book-closet; she was
just putting back her handkerchief into her pocket, and the trace of a tear glistened
on her thin cheek.
The play-hour in the evening I thought the pleasantest fraction of the day at Lowood:
the bit of bread, the draught of coffee swallowed at five o'clock had revived
vitality, if it had not satisfied hunger:
the long restraint of the day was slackened; the schoolroom felt warmer than
in the morning--its fires being allowed to burn a little more brightly, to supply, in
some measure, the place of candles, not yet
introduced: the ruddy gloaming, the licensed uproar, the confusion of many
voices gave one a welcome sense of liberty.
On the evening of the day on which I had seen Miss Scatcherd flog her pupil, Burns,
I wandered as usual among the forms and tables and laughing groups without a
companion, yet not feeling lonely: when I
passed the windows, I now and then lifted a blind, and looked out; it snowed fast, a
drift was already forming against the lower panes; putting my ear close to the window,
I could distinguish from the gleeful tumult
within, the disconsolate moan of the wind outside.
Probably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this would have been the
hour when I should most keenly have regretted the separation; that wind would
then have saddened my heart; this obscure
chaos would have disturbed my peace! as it was, I derived from both a strange
excitement, and reckless and feverish, I wished the wind to howl more wildly, the
gloom to deepen to darkness, and the confusion to rise to clamour.
Jumping over forms, and creeping under tables, I made my way to one of the fire-
places; there, kneeling by the high wire fender, I found Burns, absorbed, silent,
abstracted from all round her by the
companionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of the embers.
"Is it still 'Rasselas'?" I asked, coming behind her.
"Yes," she said, "and I have just finished it."
And in five minutes more she shut it up. I was glad of this.
"Now," thought I, "I can perhaps get her to talk."
I sat down by her on the floor. "What is your name besides Burns?"
"Helen."
"Do you come a long way from here?" "I come from a place farther north, quite
on the borders of Scotland." "Will you ever go back?"
"I hope so; but nobody can be sure of the future."
"You must wish to leave Lowood?" "No! why should I?
I was sent to Lowood to get an education; and it would be of no use going away until
I have attained that object." "But that teacher, Miss Scatcherd, is so
cruel to you?"
"Cruel? Not at all!
She is severe: she dislikes my faults." "And if I were in your place I should
dislike her; I should resist her.
If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should break it
under her nose."
"Probably you would do nothing of the sort: but if you did, Mr. Brocklehurst would
expel you from the school; that would be a great grief to your relations.
It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than
to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected
with you; and besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil."
"But then it seems disgraceful to be flogged, and to be sent to stand in the
middle of a room full of people; and you are such a great girl: I am far younger
than you, and I could not bear it."
"Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and
silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear."
I heard her with wonder: I could not comprehend this doctrine of endurance; and
still less could I understand or sympathise with the forbearance she expressed for her
chastiser.
Still I felt that Helen Burns considered things by a light invisible to my eyes.
I suspected she might be right and I wrong; but I would not ponder the matter deeply;
like Felix, I put it off to a more convenient season.
"You say you have faults, Helen: what are they?
To me you seem very good."
"Then learn from me, not to judge by appearances: I am, as Miss Scatcherd said,
slatternly; I seldom put, and never keep, things, in order; I am careless; I forget
rules; I read when I should learn my
lessons; I have no method; and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot bear to be
subjected to systematic arrangements.
This is all very provoking to Miss Scatcherd, who is naturally neat, punctual,
and particular."
"And cross and cruel," I added; but Helen Burns would not admit my addition: she kept
silence. "Is Miss Temple as severe to you as Miss
Scatcherd?"
At the utterance of Miss Temple's name, a soft smile flitted over her grave face.
"Miss Temple is full of goodness; it pains her to be severe to any one, even the worst
in the school: she sees my errors, and tells me of them gently; and, if I do
anything worthy of praise, she gives me my meed liberally.
One strong proof of my wretchedly defective nature is, that even her expostulations, so
mild, so rational, have not influence to cure me of my faults; and even her praise,
though I value it most highly, cannot
stimulate me to continued care and foresight."
"That is curious," said I, "it is so easy to be careful."
"For you I have no doubt it is.
I observed you in your class this morning, and saw you were closely attentive: your
thoughts never seemed to wander while Miss Miller explained the lesson and questioned
you.
Now, mine continually rove away; when I should be listening to Miss Scatcherd, and
collecting all she says with assiduity, often I lose the very sound of her voice; I
fall into a sort of dream.
Sometimes I think I am in Northumberland, and that the noises I hear round me are the
bubbling of a little brook which runs through Deepden, near our house;--then,
when it comes to my turn to reply, I have
to be awakened; and having heard nothing of what was read for listening to the
visionary brook, I have no answer ready." "Yet how well you replied this afternoon."
"It was mere chance; the subject on which we had been reading had interested me.
This afternoon, instead of dreaming of Deepden, I was wondering how a man who
wished to do right could act so unjustly and unwisely as Charles the First sometimes
did; and I thought what a pity it was that,
with his integrity and conscientiousness, he could see no farther than the
prerogatives of the crown.
If he had but been able to look to a distance, and see how what they call the
spirit of the age was tending! Still, I like Charles--I respect him--I
pity him, poor murdered king!
Yes, his enemies were the worst: they shed blood they had no right to shed.
How dared they kill him!"
Helen was talking to herself now: she had forgotten I could not very well understand
her--that I was ignorant, or nearly so, of the subject she discussed.
I recalled her to my level.
"And when Miss Temple teaches you, do your thoughts wander then?"
"No, certainly, not often; because Miss Temple has generally something to say which
is newer than my own reflections; her language is singularly agreeable to me, and
the information she communicates is often just what I wished to gain."
"Well, then, with Miss Temple you are good?"
"Yes, in a passive way: I make no effort; I follow as inclination guides me.
There is no merit in such goodness." "A great deal: you are good to those who
are good to you.
It is all I ever desire to be.
If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked
people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they
would never alter, but would grow worse and worse.
When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am
sure we should--so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again."
"You will change your mind, I hope, when you grow older: as yet you are but a little
untaught girl."
"But I feel this, Helen; I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them,
persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly.
It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to
punishment when I feel it is deserved."
"Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine, but Christians and civilised
nations disown it." "How? I don't understand."
"It is not violence that best overcomes hate--nor vengeance that most certainly
heals injury." "What then?"
"Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how He acts; make His word
your rule, and His conduct your example." "What does He say?"
"Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and
despitefully use you."
"Then I should love Mrs. Reed, which I cannot do; I should bless her son John,
which is impossible."
In her turn, Helen Burns asked me to explain, and I proceeded forthwith to pour
out, in my own way, the tale of my sufferings and resentments.
Bitter and truculent when excited, I spoke as I felt, without reserve or softening.
Helen heard me patiently to the end: I expected she would then make a remark, but
she said nothing.
"Well," I asked impatiently, "is not Mrs. Reed a hard-hearted, bad woman?"
"She has been unkind to you, no doubt; because you see, she dislikes your cast of
character, as Miss Scatcherd does mine; but how minutely you remember all she has done
and said to you!
What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart!
No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings.
Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the
passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be spent in
nursing animosity or registering wrongs.
We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time
will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible
bodies; when debasement and sin will fall
from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will
remain,--the impalpable principle of light and thought, pure as when it left the
Creator to inspire the creature: whence it
came it will return; perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man-
-perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten
to the seraph!
Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend?
No; I cannot believe that: I hold another creed: which no one ever taught me, and
which I seldom mention; but in which I delight, and to which I cling: for it
extends hope to all: it makes Eternity a
rest--a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss.
Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his
crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last: with this creed
revenge never worries my heart, degradation
never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low: I live in calm,
looking to the end." Helen's head, always drooping, sank a
little lower as she finished this sentence.
I saw by her look she wished no longer to talk to me, but rather to converse with her
own thoughts.
She was not allowed much time for meditation: a monitor, a great rough girl,
presently came up, exclaiming in a strong Cumberland accent--
"Helen Burns, if you don't go and put your drawer in order, and fold up your work this
minute, I'll tell Miss Scatcherd to come and look at it!"
Helen sighed as her reverie fled, and getting up, obeyed the monitor without
reply as without delay.
>