Books: Jane Eyre

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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.