JANE EYRE

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

by Charlotte Brontë

VOLUME I - CHAPTER I TO X

ILLUSTRATED BY F. H. TOWNSEND

London

PREFACE

A preface to the first edition
of “Jane Eyre”
being unnecessary, I gave none:
this second edition
demands a few words
both of acknowledgment
and miscellaneous remark.

My thanks are due in three quarters.

To the Public,
for the indulgent ear
it has inclined to a plain tale
with few pretensions.

To the Press,
for the fair field
its honest suffrage
has opened to an obscure aspirant.

To my Publishers,
for the aid their tact,
their energy,
their practical sense
and frank liberality
have afforded an unknown
and unrecommended Author.

The Press and the Public
are but vague personifications for me,
and I must thank them in vague terms;
but my Publishers are definite:
so are certain generous critics
who have encouraged me
as only large-hearted
and high-minded men know
how to encourage a struggling stranger;
to them,
i.e.,
to my Publishers
and the select Reviewers,
I say cordially,
Gentlemen,
I thank you from my heart.

Having thus acknowledged
what I owe those
who have aided and approved me,
I turn to another class; a small one,
so far as I know, but not,
therefore,
to be overlooked.
I mean the timorous or carping few
who doubt the tendency of such books
as “Jane Eyre:”
in whose eyes
whatever is unusual is wrong;
whose ears detect
in each protest against bigotry
— that parent of crime
— an insult to piety,
that regent of God on earth.
I would suggest to such doubters
certain obvious distinctions;
I would remind them
of certain simple truths.

Conventionality is not morality.
Self-righteousness is not religion.
To attack the first
is not to assail the last.
To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee,
is not to
lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.

These things and deeds
are diametrically opposed:
they are as distinct
as is vice from virtue.
Men too often confound them:
they should not be confounded:
appearance
should not be mistaken for truth;
narrow human doctrines,
that only tend to elate
and magnify a few,

should not be substituted
for the world-redeeming creed of Christ.

There is
— I repeat it
— a difference; and it is a good,

and not a bad action
to mark broadly and clearly
the line of separation between them.

The world may not like
to see these ideas dissevered,
for it has been accustomed to blend them;
finding it convenient
to make external show pass
for sterling worth
— to let white-washed walls
vouch for clean shrines.
It may hate him
who dares to scrutinise and expose
— to rase the gilding,
and show base metal under it
— to penetrate the sepulchre,
and reveal charnel relics:
but hate as it will,
it is indebted to him.

Ahab did not like Micaiah,
because
he never prophesied good concerning him,
but evil;
probably he liked
the sycophant son of Chenaanah better;
yet might Ahab have escaped
a bloody death,
had he but stopped his ears to flattery,
and opened them to faithful counsel.

There is a man in our own days
whose words are not
framed to tickle delicate ears:
who,
to my thinking,
comes before the great ones of society,
much as the son of Imlah came before
the throned Kings of Judah and Israel;
and who speaks truth as deep,
with a power as prophet-like
and as vital
— a mien as dauntless and as daring.
Is the satirist of “Vanity Fair”
admired in high places?
I cannot tell;
but I think if some of those
amongst whom he hurls the Greek fire
of his sarcasm,
and over whom he flashes
the levin-brand of his denunciation,
were to take his warnings in time
— they or their seed
might yet escape a fatal Rimoth-Gilead.

Why have I alluded to this man?
I have alluded to him, Reader,
because I think I see in him
an intellect profounder and more unique
than his contemporaries
have yet recognised;
because I regard him
as the first social regenerator
of the day
— as the very master of that working corps
who would restore to rectitude
the warped system of things;
because I think no commentator
on his writings
has yet found the comparison
that suits him,
the terms
which rightly characterise his talent.
They say he is like Fielding:
they talk of his wit, humour,
comic powers.
He resembles Fielding
as an eagle does a vulture:
Fielding could stoop on carrion,
but Thackeray never does.
His wit is bright,
his humour attractive,
but both bear the same relation
to his serious genius that the mere
lambent sheet-lightning playing under
the edge of the summer-cloud does to the
electric death-spark hid in its womb.
Finally,
I have alluded to Mr. Thackeray,
because to him
— if he will accept
the tribute of a total stranger
— I have dedicated this second edition
of “JANE EYRE.”

CURRER BELL.

December 21st, 1847.

NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION

I avail myself of the opportunity
which a third edition of “Jane Eyre”
affords me,
of again addressing a word to the Public,
to explain
that my claim to the title of novelist
rests on this one work alone.
If,
therefore,
the authorship of other works of fiction
has been attributed to me,
an honour is awarded
where it is not merited;
and consequently,
denied where it is justly due.

This explanation will serve
to rectify mistakes
which may already have been made,
and to prevent future errors.

CURRER BELL.

April 13th, 1848.

CHAPTER I

There was no possibility
of taking a walk that day.
We had been wandering, indeed,
in the leafless shrubbery
an hour in the morning;
but since dinner
(Mrs. Reed, when there was no company,
dined early)
the cold winter wind
had brought with it clouds so sombre,
and a rain so penetrating,
that further outdoor 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 gleaming 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 intimated
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;
ear, eye, and mind
were alike 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 uttering 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!”

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 fell at 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.

CHAPTER VII

My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age;
and not the golden age either;
it comprised an irksome struggle
with difficulties in habituating myself
to new rules and unwonted tasks.
The fear of failure
in these points harassed me worse
than the physical hardships of my lot;
though these were no trifles.

During January, February,
and part of March,
the deep snows, and,
after their melting,
the almost impassable roads,
prevented our stirring
beyond the garden walls,
except to go to church;
but within these limits
we had to pass an hour every day
in the open air.
Our clothing was insufficient
to protect us
from the severe cold:
we had no boots,
the snow got into our shoes
and melted there:
our ungloved hands became numbed and
covered with chilblains,
as were our feet:
I remember well
the distracting irritation I endured
from this cause every evening,
when my feet inflamed;
and the torture of thrusting the swelled,
raw,
and stiff toes into my shoes
in the morning.
Then the scanty supply of food
was distressing:
with the keen appetites
of growing children,
we had scarcely sufficient
to keep alive a delicate invalid.
From this deficiency of nourishment
resulted an abuse,
which pressed hardly
on the younger pupils:
whenever the famished great girls
had an opportunity,
they would coax or menace
the little ones out of their portion.
Many a time I have shared
between two claimants
the precious morsel of brown bread
distributed at tea-time;
and after relinquishing to a third half
the contents of my mug of coffee,
I have swallowed the remainder
with an accompaniment of secret tears,
forced from me by the exigency of hunger.

Sundays were dreary days
in that wintry season.
We had to walk two miles
to Brocklebridge Church,
where our patron officiated.

We set out cold,
we arrived at church colder:
during the morning service
we became almost paralysed.
It was too far to return to dinner,
and an allowance of cold meat and bread,
in the same penurious proportion
observed in our ordinary meals,
was served round between the services.

At the close of the afternoon service
we returned
by an exposed and hilly road,
where the bitter winter wind,
blowing over a range of snowy summits
to the north,
almost flayed the skin from our faces.

I can remember Miss Temple
walking lightly and rapidly
along our drooping line,
her plaid cloak,
which the frosty wind fluttered,
gathered close about her,
and encouraging us,
by precept and example,
to keep up our spirits,
and march forward, as she said,
“like stalwart soldiers.”
The other teachers, poor things,
were generally themselves
too much dejected
to attempt the task of cheering others.

How we longed
for the light and heat of a blazing fire
when we got back!
But,
to the little ones at least,
this was denied:
each hearth in the schoolroom
was immediately surrounded
by a double row of great girls,
and behind them
the younger children crouched in groups,
wrapping their starved arms
in their pinafores.

A little solace came at tea-time,
in the shape of a double ration of bread
— a whole, instead of a half, slice
— with the delicious addition
of a thin scrape of butter:
it was the hebdomadal treat
to which we all looked forward
from Sabbath to Sabbath.
I generally contrived
to reserve a moiety
of this bounteous repast for myself;
but the remainder
I was invariably obliged to part with.

The Sunday evening
was spent in repeating,
by heart,
the Church Catechism, and the fifth,
sixth, and seventh chapters
of St. Matthew;
and in listening to a long sermon,
read by Miss Miller,
whose irrepressible yawns
attested her weariness.
A frequent interlude
of these performances was the enactment
of the part of Eutychus
by some half-dozen of little girls,
who,
overpowered with sleep, would fall down,
if not out of the third loft,
yet off the fourth form,
and be taken up half dead.
The remedy was,
to thrust them forward
into the centre of the schoolroom,
and oblige them to stand there
till the sermon was finished.
Sometimes their feet failed them,
and they sank together in a heap;
they were then propped up
with the monitors’
high stools.

I have not yet alluded to
the visits of Mr. Brocklehurst;
and indeed that gentleman was from home
during the greater part
of the first month after my arrival;
perhaps prolonging his stay
with his friend the archdeacon:
his absence was a relief to me.
I need not say that I had my own reasons
for dreading his coming:
but come he did at last.

One afternoon
(I had then been three weeks at Lowood),
as I was sitting with a slate in my hand,
puzzling over a sum in long division,
my eyes,
raised in abstraction to the window,
caught sight of a figure just passing:
I recognised almost instinctively
that gaunt outline;
and when,
two minutes after,
all the school, teachers included,
rose en masse,
it was not necessary for me to look up
in order to ascertain whose entrance
they thus greeted.
A long stride measured the schoolroom,
and presently beside Miss Temple,
who herself had risen,
stood the same black column
which had frowned on me so ominously
from the hearthrug of Gateshead.
I now glanced sideways
at this piece of architecture.
Yes, I was right:
it was Mr. Brocklehurst,
buttoned up in a surtout,
and looking longer, narrower,
and more rigid than ever.

I had my own reasons for being dismayed
at this apparition;
too well I remembered
the perfidious hints given by Mrs. Reed
about my disposition, &c.;
the promise pledged by Mr. Brocklehurst
to apprise Miss Temple and the teachers
of my vicious nature.
All along I had been dreading
the fulfilment of this promise,
— I had been looking out daily
for the “Coming Man,”
whose information
respecting my past life and conversation
was to brand me as a bad child for ever:
now there he was.

He stood at Miss Temple’s side;
he was speaking low in her ear:
I did not doubt he was making
disclosures of my villainy;
and I watched her eye
with painful anxiety,
expecting every moment
to see its dark orb turn on me
a glance of repugnance and contempt.
I listened too;
and as I happened to be seated
quite at the top of the room,
I caught most of what he said:
its import relieved me
from immediate apprehension.

“I suppose, Miss Temple,
the thread I bought at Lowton will do;
it struck me
that it would be just of the quality
for the calico chemises,
and I sorted the needles to match.
You may tell Miss Smith
that I forgot to make
a memorandum of the darning needles,
but she shall have some papers
sent in next week;
and she is not, on any account,
to give out more than one at a time
to each pupil:
if they have more,
they are apt
to be careless and lose them.
And, O ma’am!
I wish the woollen stockings
were better looked to!
— when I was here last,
I went into the kitchen-garden
and examined the clothes drying
on the line;
there was a quantity of black hose
in a very bad state of repair:
from the size of the holes in them
I was sure they had not been well mended
from time to time.”

He paused.

“Your directions shall be
attended to, sir,” said Miss Temple.

“And,
ma’am,”
he continued,
“the laundress tells me
some of the girls
have two clean tuckers in the week:
it is too much;
the rules limit them to one.”

“I think I can explain that circumstance, sir.
Agnes and Catherine Johnstone
were invited to take tea
with some friends at Lowton
last Thursday,
and I gave them leave
to put on clean tuckers
for the occasion.”

Mr. Brocklehurst nodded.

“Well, for once it may pass;
but please not to let the circumstance
occur too often.
And there is another thing
which surprised me;
I find,
in settling accounts
with the housekeeper,
that a lunch,
consisting of bread and cheese,
has twice been served out to the girls
during the past fortnight.
How is this?
I looked over the regulations,
and I find no such meal
as lunch mentioned.
Who introduced this innovation?
and by what authority?”

“I must be responsible
for the circumstance,
sir,” replied Miss Temple:
“the breakfast was so ill prepared that
the pupils could not possibly eat it;
and I dared not allow
them to remain fasting
till dinner-time.”

“Madam, allow me an instant.
You are aware that my plan
in bringing up these girls is,
not to accustom them
to habits of luxury and indulgence,
but to render them hardy,
patient, self-denying.

Should any
little accidental disappointment
of the appetite occur,
such as the spoiling of a meal,
the under or the over dressing of a dish,
the incident ought not to be neutralised
by replacing with something
more delicate the comfort lost,
thus pampering the body
and obviating the aim
of this institution;
it ought to be improved
to the spiritual edification
of the pupils,
by encouraging them
to evince fortitude
under the temporary privation.
A brief address on those occasions
would not be mistimed,
wherein a judicious instructor
would take the opportunity
of referring to the sufferings
of the primitive Christians;
to the torments of martyrs;
to the exhortations
of our blessed Lord Himself,
calling upon His disciples
to take up their cross
and follow Him;
to His warnings
that man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God;
to His divine consolations,

‘If ye suffer hunger or thirst
for My sake,
happy are ye.’

Oh,
madam,
when you put bread and cheese,
instead of burnt porridge,
into these children’s mouths,
you may indeed feed their vile bodies,
but you little think
how you starve their immortal souls!”

Mr. Brocklehurst again paused
— perhaps overcome by his feelings.
Miss Temple had looked down
when he first began to speak to her;
but she now gazed straight before her,
and her face, naturally pale as marble,
appeared to be assuming also
the coldness and fixity
of that material;
especially her mouth,
closed as if it would have required
a sculptor’s chisel to open it,
and her brow settled gradually
into petrified severity.

Meantime,
Mr. Brocklehurst,
standing on the hearth
with his hands behind his back,
majestically surveyed the whole school.
Suddenly his eye gave a blink,
as if it had met something
that either dazzled or shocked its pupil;
turning,
he said in more rapid accents
than he had hitherto used
— “Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what
— what is that girl with curled hair?
Red hair, ma’am, curled
— curled all over?”
And extending his cane
he pointed to the awful object,
his hand shaking as he did so.

“It is Julia Severn,”
replied Miss Temple, very quietly.

“Julia Severn, ma’am!
And why has she, or any other,
curled hair?
Why,
in defiance
of every precept and principle
of this house,
does she conform to the world so openly
— here in an evangelical,
charitable establishment
— as to wear her hair one mass of curls?”

“Julia’s hair curls naturally,”
returned Miss Temple,
still more quietly.

“Naturally!
Yes,
but we are not to conform to nature;
I wish these girls
to be the children of Grace:
and why that abundance?
I have again and again intimated
that I desire the hair
to be arranged closely,
modestly, plainly.
Miss Temple,
that girl’s hair
must be cut off entirely;
I will send a barber to-morrow:
and I see others
who have far too much of the excrescence
— that tall girl, tell her to turn round.
Tell all the first form to rise up and
direct their faces to the wall.”

Miss Temple passed her handkerchief
over her lips,
as if to smooth away
the involuntary smile that curled them;
she gave the order, however,
and when the first class could take in
what was required of them,
they obeyed.
Leaning a little back on my bench,
I could see the looks and grimaces
with which they commented
on this manœuvre:
it was a pity
Mr. Brocklehurst could not see them too;
he would perhaps have felt that,
whatever he might do
with the outside of the cup and platter,
the inside was further beyond
his interference than he imagined.

He scrutinised the reverse
of these living medals
some five minutes,
then pronounced sentence.
These words fell like the knell of doom
— “All those top-knots must be cut off.”

Miss Temple seemed to remonstrate.

“Madam,” he pursued,
“I have a Master to serve
whose kingdom is not of this world:
my mission is to mortify in these girls
the lusts of the flesh;
to teach them to clothe themselves
with shame-facedness and sobriety,
not with braided hair and costly apparel;
and each of the young persons before us
has a string of hair twisted in plaits
which vanity itself might have woven;
these, I repeat, must be cut off;
think of the time wasted, of —
”Mr. Brocklehurst was here interrupted:
three other visitors, ladies,
now entered the room.
They ought to have come a little sooner
to have heard his lecture on dress,
for they were splendidly attired
in velvet,
silk, and furs.
The two younger of the trio
(fine girls of sixteen and seventeen)
had grey beaver hats, then in fashion,
shaded with ostrich plumes,
and from under the brim
of this graceful head-dress
fell a profusion of light tresses,
elaborately curled;
the elder lady was enveloped
in a costly velvet shawl,
trimmed with ermine,
and she wore a false front
of French curls.

These ladies were deferentially received
by Miss Temple,
as Mrs. and the Misses Brocklehurst,
and conducted to seats of honour
at the top of the room.
It seems they had come in the carriage
with their reverend relative,
and had been conducting
a rummaging scrutiny
of the room upstairs,
while he transacted business
with the housekeeper,
questioned the laundress,
and lectured the superintendent.
They now proceeded
to address divers remarks and reproofs
to Miss Smith,
who was charged
with the care of the linen
and the inspection of the dormitories:
but I had no time to listen
to what they said;
other matters
called off and enchanted my attention.

Hitherto,
while gathering up the discourse
of Mr. Brocklehurst and Miss Temple,
I had not,
at the same time,
neglected precautions
to secure my personal safety;
which I thought would be effected,
if I could only elude observation.
To this end,
I had sat well back on the form,
and while seeming to be busy with my sum,
had held my slate in such a manner
as to conceal my face:
I might have escaped notice,
had not my treacherous slate
somehow happened to slip from my hand,
and falling with an obtrusive crash,
directly drawn every eye upon me;
I knew it was all over now, and,
as I stooped to pick up
the two fragments of slate,
I rallied my forces for the worst.
It came.

“A careless girl!”
said Mr. Brocklehurst,
and immediately after
— “It is the new pupil,
I perceive.”
And before I could draw breath,
“I must not forget
I have a word to say respecting her.”
Then aloud:
how loud it seemed to me!
“Let the child who broke her slate
come forward!”

Of my own accord
I could not have stirred;
I was paralysed:
but the two great girls
who sat on each side of me,
set me on my legs
and pushed me towards the dread judge,
and then Miss Temple gently assisted me
to his very feet,
and I caught her whispered counsel
— “Don’t be afraid, Jane,
I saw it was an accident;
you shall not be punished.”

The kind whisper went to my heart
like a dagger.

“Another minute,
and she will despise me
for a hypocrite,”
thought I;
and an impulse of fury against Reed,
Brocklehurst, and Co.
bounded in my pulses at the conviction.
I was no Helen Burns.

“Fetch that stool,”
said Mr. Brocklehurst,
pointing to a very high one
from which a monitor had just risen:
it was brought.

“Place the child upon it.”

And I was placed there,
by whom I don’t know:
I was in no condition
to note particulars;
I was only aware
that they had hoisted me
up to the height
of Mr. Brocklehurst’s nose,
that he was within a yard of me,
and that a spread of shot orange
and purple silk pelisses
and a cloud of silvery plumage
extended and waved below me.

Mr. Brocklehurst hemmed.

“Ladies,” said he,
turning to his family,
“Miss Temple, teachers, and children,
you all see this girl?”

Of course they did;
for I felt their eyes
directed like burning-glasses
against my scorched skin.

“You see she is yet young;
you observe she possesses
the ordinary form of childhood;
God has graciously given her the shape
that He has given to all of us;
no signal deformity
points her out as a marked character.
Who would think that the Evil One
had already found a servant and agent
in her?
Yet such, I grieve to say, is the case.”

A pause
— in which I began to steady
the palsy of my nerves,
and to feel that the Rubicon was passed;
and that the trial,
no longer to be shirked,
must be firmly sustained.

“My dear children,”
pursued the black marble clergyman,
with pathos,
“this is a sad, a melancholy occasion;
for it becomes my duty to warn you,
that this girl,
who might be one of God’s own lambs,
is a little castaway:
not a member of the true flock,
but evidently an interloper and an alien.

You must be on your guard against her;
you must shun her example;
if necessary, avoid her company,
exclude her from your sports,
and shut her out from your converse.
Teachers, you must watch her:
keep your eyes on her movements,
weigh well her words,
scrutinise her actions,
punish her body to save her soul:
if, indeed, such salvation be possible,
for
(my tongue falters while I tell it)
this girl, this child,
the native of a Christian land,
worse than many a little heathen
who says its prayers to Brahma
and kneels before Juggernaut
— this girl is
— a liar!”

Now came a pause of ten minutes,
during which I,
by this time
in perfect possession of my wits,
observed all the female Brocklehursts
produce their pocket-handkerchiefs
and apply them to their optics,
while the elderly lady
swayed herself to and fro,
and the two younger ones whispered,
“How shocking!”

Mr. Brocklehurst resumed.

“This I learned from her benefactress;
from the pious and charitable lady
who adopted her
in her orphan state,
reared her as her own daughter,
and whose kindness,
whose generosity
the unhappy girl repaid
by an ingratitude so bad,
so dreadful,
that at last her excellent patroness
was obliged to separate her
from her own young ones,
fearful lest her vicious example
should contaminate their purity:
she has sent her here to be healed,
even as the Jews of old
sent their diseased
to the troubled pool of Bethesda;
and, teachers, superintendent,
I beg of you not to allow the waters
to stagnate round her.”

With this sublime conclusion,
Mr. Brocklehurst adjusted the top button
of his surtout,
muttered something to his family,
who rose, bowed to Miss Temple,
and then all the great people
sailed in state from the room.
Turning at the door, my judge said
— “Let her stand half-an-hour longer
on that stool,
and let no one speak to her
during the remainder of the day.”

There was I, then, mounted aloft;
I,
who had said I could not bear the shame
of standing on my natural feet
in the middle of the room,
was now exposed to general view
on a pedestal of infamy.
What my sensations were,
no language can describe;
but just as they all rose,
stifling my breath
and constricting my throat,
a girl came up and passed me:
in passing, she lifted her eyes.

What a strange light inspired them!
What an extraordinary sensation
that ray sent through me!
How the new feeling bore me up!
It was as if a martyr, a hero,
had passed a slave or victim,
and imparted strength in the transit.
I mastered the rising hysteria,
lifted up my head,
and took a firm stand on the stool.
Helen Burns asked some slight question
about her work of Miss Smith,
was chidden
for the triviality of the inquiry,
returned to her place,
and smiled at me as she again went by.
What a smile!
I remember it now,
and I know that it was the effluence
of fine intellect,
of true courage;
it lit up her marked lineaments,
her thin face,
her sunken grey eye,
like a reflection
from the aspect of an angel.
Yet at that moment
Helen Burns wore on her arm
“the untidy badge;”
scarcely an hour ago I had heard
her condemned by Miss Scatcherd
to a dinner of bread and water
on the morrow
because she had blotted an exercise
in copying it out.
Such is the imperfect nature of man!
such spots are there on the disc
of the clearest planet;
and eyes like Miss Scatcherd’s
can only see those minute defects,
and are blind
to the full brightness of the orb.

CHAPTER VIII

Ere the half-hour ended,
five o’clock struck;
school was dismissed,
and all were gone
into the refectory to tea.
I now ventured to descend:
it was deep dusk;
I retired into a corner
and sat down on the floor.
The spell by which I had been
so far supported began to dissolve;
reaction took place, and soon,
so overwhelming was the grief
that seized me,
I sank prostrate
with my face to the ground.
Now I wept:
Helen Burns was not here;
nothing sustained me;
left to myself I abandoned myself,
and my tears watered the boards.
I had meant to be so good,
and to do so much at Lowood:
to make so many friends,
to earn respect and win affection.
Already I had made visible progress:
that very morning
I had reached the head of my class;
Miss Miller had praised me warmly;
Miss Temple had smiled approbation;
she had promised to teach me drawing,
and to let me learn French,
if I continued
to make similar improvement
two months longer:
and then I was well received
by my fellow-pupils;
treated as an equal
by those of my own age,
and not molested by any;
now,
here I lay again crushed and trodden on;
and could I ever rise more?

“Never,” I thought;
and ardently I wished to die.
While sobbing out this wish
in broken accents,
some one approached:
I started up
— again Helen Burns was near me;
the fading fires
just showed her coming up the long,
vacant room;
she brought my coffee and bread.

“Come, eat something,” she said;
but I put both away from me,
feeling as if a drop or a crumb
would have choked me
in my present condition.
Helen regarded me,
probably with surprise:
I could not now abate my agitation,
though I tried hard;
I continued to weep aloud.
She sat down on the ground near me,
embraced her knees with her arms,
and rested her head upon them;
in that attitude
she remained silent as an Indian.
I was the first who spoke
— “Helen,
why do you stay with a girl
whom everybody believes to be a liar?”

“Everybody, Jane?
Why,
there are only eighty people
who have heard you called so,
and the world
contains hundreds of millions.”

“But what have I to do with millions?
The eighty I know despise me.”

“Jane, you are mistaken:
probably not one in the school
either despises or dislikes you:
many, I am sure, pity you much.”

“How can they pity me
after what Mr. Brocklehurst has said?”

“Mr. Brocklehurst is not a god:
nor is he even a great and admired man:
he is little liked here;
he never took steps
to make himself liked.
Had he treated you
as an especial favourite,
you would have found enemies,
declared or covert,
all around you;
as it is,
the greater number
would offer you sympathy if they dared.
Teachers and pupils
may look coldly on you
for a day or two,
but friendly feelings
are concealed in their hearts;
and if you persevere in doing well,
these feelings will ere long appear
so much the more evidently
for their temporary suppression.
Besides, Jane”
— she paused.

“Well, Helen?”
said I, putting my hand into hers:
she chafed my fingers gently
to warm them,
and went on
— “If all the world hated you,
and believed you wicked,
while your own conscience approved you,
and absolved you from guilt,
you would not be without friends.”

“No;
I know I should think well of myself;
but that is not enough:
if others don’t love me
I would rather die than live
— I cannot bear to be solitary and hated,
Helen.
Look here;
to gain some real affection from you,
or Miss Temple,
or any other whom I truly love,
I would willingly submit
to have the bone of my arm broken,
or to let a bull toss me,
or to stand behind a kicking horse,
and let it dash its hoof at my chest —”
“Hush, Jane!
you think too much
of the love of human beings;
you are too impulsive, too vehement;
the sovereign hand
that created your frame,
and put life into it,
has provided you with other resources
than your feeble self,
or than creatures feeble as you.

Besides this earth,
and besides the race of men,
there is an invisible world and
a kingdom of spirits:
that world is round us,
for it is everywhere;
and those spirits watch us,
for they are commissioned to guard us;
and if we were dying in pain and shame,
if scorn smote us on all sides,
and hatred crushed us,
angels see our tortures,
recognise our innocence
(if innocent we be:
as I know you are of this charge
which Mr. Brocklehurst
has weakly and pompously repeated
at second-hand from Mrs. Reed;
for I read a sincere nature
in your ardent eyes
and on your clear front),
and God waits
only the separation of spirit from flesh
to crown us with a full reward.
Why, then,
should we ever sink
overwhelmed with distress,
when life is so soon over,
and death is so certain
an entrance to happiness
— to glory?”

I was silent; Helen had calmed me;
but in the tranquillity she imparted
there was an alloy
of inexpressible sadness.
I felt the impression of woe
as she spoke,
but I could not tell whence it came;
and when,
having done speaking,
she breathed a little fast
and coughed a short cough,
I momentarily forgot my own sorrows
to yield to a vague concern for her.

Resting my head on Helen’s shoulder,
I put my arms round her waist;
she drew me to her,
and we reposed in silence.
We had not sat long thus,
when another person came in.
Some heavy clouds,
swept from the sky by a rising wind,
had left the moon bare; and her light,
streaming in through a window near,
shone full both on us and on
the approaching figure,
which we at once
recognised as Miss Temple.

“I came on purpose to find you,
Jane Eyre,” said she;
“I want you in my room;
and as Helen Burns is with you,
she may come too.”

We went;
following the superintendent’s guidance,
we had to thread some intricate passages,
and mount a staircase
before we reached her apartment;
it contained a good fire,
and looked cheerful.
Miss Temple told Helen Burns
to be seated in a low arm-chair
on one side of the hearth,
and herself taking another,
she called me to her side.

“Is it all over?”
she asked, looking down at my face.
“Have you cried your grief away?”

“I am afraid I never shall do that.”

“Why?”

“Because I have been wrongly accused;
and you, ma’am, and everybody else,
will now think me wicked.”

“We shall think you
what you prove yourself to be,
my child.
Continue to act as a good girl,
and you will satisfy us.”

“Shall I, Miss Temple?”

“You will,” said she,
passing her arm round me.
“And now tell me who is the lady
whom Mr. Brocklehurst
called your benefactress?”

“Mrs. Reed, my uncle’s wife.
My uncle is dead,
and he left me to her care.”

“Did she not,
then, adopt you of her own accord?”

“No, ma’am;
she was sorry to have to do it:
but my uncle,
as I have often heard the servants say,
got her to promise before he died
that she would always keep me.”

“Well now, Jane, you know,
or at least I will tell you,
that when a criminal is accused,
he is always allowed to speak
in his own defence.
You have been charged with falsehood;
defend yourself to me as well as you can.
Say whatever your memory suggests
is true;
but add nothing and exaggerate nothing.”

I resolved, in the depth of my heart,
that I would be most moderate
— most correct;
and, having reflected a few minutes
in order to arrange coherently
what I had to say,
I told her all the story
of my sad childhood.
Exhausted by emotion,
my language was more subdued
than it generally was
when it developed that sad theme;
and mindful of Helen’s warnings
against the indulgence of resentment,
I infused into the narrative far less
of gall and wormwood than ordinary.
Thus restrained and simplified,
it sounded more credible:
I felt as I went on
that Miss Temple fully believed me.

In the course of the tale
I had mentioned Mr. Lloyd
as having come to see me after the fit:
for I never forgot the,
to me,
frightful episode of the red-room:
in detailing which,
my excitement was sure, in some degree,
to break bounds;
for nothing could soften
in my recollection the spasm of agony
which clutched my heart
when Mrs. Reed spurned
my wild supplication for pardon,
and locked me a second time
in the dark and haunted chamber.

I had finished:
Miss Temple regarded me
a few minutes in silence;
she then said
— “I know something of Mr. Lloyd;
I shall write to him;
if his reply agrees with your statement,
you shall be publicly cleared
from every imputation;
to me, Jane, you are clear now.”

She kissed me,
and still keeping me at her side
(where I was well contented to stand,
for I derived a child’s pleasure
from the contemplation of her face,
her dress, her one or two ornaments,
her white forehead,
her clustered and shining curls,
and beaming dark eyes),
she proceeded to address Helen Burns.

“How are you to-night, Helen?
Have you coughed much to-day?”

“Not quite so much, I think, ma’am.”

“And the pain in your chest?”

“It is a little better.”

Miss Temple got up,
took her hand and examined her pulse;
then she returned to her own seat:
as she resumed it, I heard her sigh low.
She was pensive a few minutes,
then rousing herself,
she said cheerfully
— “But you two are my visitors to-night;
I must treat you as such.”
She rang her bell.

“Barbara,”
she said to the servant who answered it,
“I have not yet had tea;
bring the tray and place cups
for these two young ladies.”

And a tray was soon brought.
How pretty,
to my eyes,
did the china cups and bright teapot
look,
placed on the little round table
near the fire!
How fragrant
was the steam of the beverage,
and the scent of the toast!
of which, however, I, to my dismay
(for I was beginning to be hungry)
discerned only a very small portion:
Miss Temple discerned it too.

“Barbara,” said she,
“can you not bring
a little more bread and butter?
There is not enough for three.”

Barbara went out:
she returned soon
— “Madam,
Mrs. Harden says
she has sent up the usual quantity.”

Mrs. Harden,
be it observed, was the housekeeper:
a woman
after Mr. Brocklehurst’s own heart,
made up of equal parts
of whalebone and iron.

“Oh, very well!”
returned Miss Temple;
“we must make it do, Barbara,
I suppose.”
And as the girl withdrew she added,
smiling,
“Fortunately,
I have it in my power
to supply deficiencies for this once.”

Having invited Helen and me
to approach the table,
and placed before each of us
a cup of tea with one delicious but thin
morsel of toast,
she got up, unlocked a drawer,
and taking from it
a parcel wrapped in paper,
disclosed presently to our eyes
a good-sized seed-cake.

“I meant to give each of you
some of this to take with you,”
said she,
“but as there is so little toast,
you must have it now,”
and she proceeded to cut slices
with a generous hand.

We feasted that evening
as on nectar and ambrosia;
and not the least delight
of the entertainment
was the smile of gratification
with which our hostess regarded us,
as we satisfied our famished appetites
on the delicate fare
she liberally supplied.

Tea over and the tray removed,
she again summoned us to the fire;
we sat one on each side of her,
and now a conversation followed
between her and Helen,
which it was indeed a privilege
to be admitted to hear.

Miss Temple had always
something of serenity in her air,
of state in her mien,
of refined propriety in her language,
which precluded deviation into
the ardent,
the excited,
the eager:
something which chastened the pleasure
of those who looked on her
and listened to her,
by a controlling sense of awe;
and such was my feeling now:
but as to Helen Burns,
I was struck with wonder.

The refreshing meal, the brilliant fire,
the presence and kindness
of her beloved instructress,
or,
perhaps,
more than all these,
something in her own unique mind,
had roused her powers within her.
They woke, they kindled:
first,
they glowed
in the bright tint of her cheek,
which till this hour
I had never seen but pale and bloodless;
then they shone
in the liquid lustre of her eyes,
which had suddenly acquired a beauty
more singular than that of Miss Temple’s
— a beauty
neither of fine colour nor long eyelash,
nor pencilled brow,
but of meaning, of movement,
of radiance.
Then her soul sat on her lips,
and language flowed,
from what source I cannot tell.

Has a girl of fourteen
a heart large enough,
vigorous enough,
to hold the swelling spring of pure,
full, fervid eloquence?
Such was the characteristic
of Helen’s discourse on that,
to me, memorable evening;
her spirit seemed hastening to live
within a very brief span
as much as many live
during a protracted existence.

They conversed of things
I had never heard of;
of nations and times past;
of countries far away;
of secrets of nature
discovered or guessed at:
they spoke of books:
how many they had read!
What stores of knowledge they possessed!
Then they seemed so familiar
with French names and French authors:
but my amazement reached its climax
when Miss Temple asked Helen
if she sometimes snatched a moment
to recall the Latin
her father had taught her,
and taking a book from a shelf,
bade her read and construe
a page of Virgil;
and Helen obeyed,
my organ of veneration expanding
at every sounding line.
She had scarcely finished
ere the bell announced bedtime!
no delay could be admitted;
Miss Temple embraced us both, saying,
as she drew us to her heart
— “God bless you, my children!”

Helen she held a little longer than me:
she let her go more reluctantly;
it was Helen
her eye followed to the door;
it was for her she a second time
breathed a sad sigh;
for her she wiped a tear from her cheek.

On reaching the bedroom,
we heard the voice of Miss Scatcherd:
she was examining drawers;
she had just pulled out Helen Burns’s,
and when we entered
Helen was greeted
with a sharp reprimand,
and told that to-morrow
she should have half-a-dozen
of untidily folded articles
pinned to her shoulder.

“My things were indeed
in shameful disorder,”
murmured Helen to me, in a low voice:
“I intended to have arranged them,
but I forgot.”

Next morning,
Miss Scatcherd
wrote in conspicuous characters
on a piece of pasteboard
the word “Slattern,”
and bound it
like a phylactery
round Helen’s large,
mild, intelligent,
and benign-looking forehead.
She wore it till evening,
patient, unresentful,
regarding it as a deserved punishment.

The moment Miss Scatcherd withdrew
after afternoon school,
I ran to Helen, tore it off,
and thrust it into the fire:
the fury of which she was incapable
had been burning in my soul all day,
and tears, hot and large,
had continually been scalding my cheek;
for the spectacle of her sad resignation
gave me an intolerable pain
at the heart.

About a week subsequently to
the incidents above narrated,
Miss Temple,
who had written to Mr. Lloyd,
received his answer:
it appeared that what he said
went to corroborate my account.
Miss Temple,
having assembled the whole school,
announced that inquiry
had been made into the charges
alleged against Jane Eyre,
and that she was most happy to be able
to pronounce her completely cleared
from every imputation.
The teachers then shook hands with me
and kissed me,
and a murmur of pleasure
ran through the ranks of my companions.

Thus relieved of a grievous load,
I from that hour set to work afresh,
resolved to pioneer my way
through every difficulty:
I toiled hard,
and my success
was proportionate to my efforts;
my memory, not naturally tenacious,
improved with practice;
exercise sharpened my wits;
in a few weeks
I was promoted to a higher class;
in less than two months I was allowed
to commence French and drawing.
I learned the first two tenses
of the verb Etre,
and sketched my first cottage
(whose walls,
by-the-bye,
outrivalled in slope
those of the leaning tower of Pisa),
on the same day.
That night,
on going to bed,
I forgot to prepare in imagination
the Barmecide supper
of hot roast potatoes,
or white bread and new milk,
with which
I was wont to amuse my inward cravings:
I feasted instead
on the spectacle of ideal drawings,
which I saw in the dark;
all the work of my own hands:
freely pencilled houses and trees,
picturesque rocks and ruins,
Cuyp-like groups of cattle,
sweet paintings of butterflies
hovering over unblown roses,
of birds picking at ripe cherries,
of wren’s nests
enclosing pearl-like eggs,
wreathed about with young ivy sprays.
I examined, too, in thought,
the possibility of my ever being able
to translate currently
a certain little French story
which Madame Pierrot
had that day shown me;
nor was that problem
solved to my satisfaction
ere I fell sweetly asleep.

Well has Solomon said
— “Better is a dinner of herbs
where love is,
than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.”

I would not now have exchanged Lowood
with all its privations
for Gateshead and its daily luxuries.

CHAPTER IX

But the privations,
or rather the hardships,
of Lowood lessened.
Spring drew on:
she was indeed already come;
the frosts of winter had ceased;
its snows were melted,
its cutting winds ameliorated.
My wretched feet,
flayed and swollen to lameness
by the sharp air of January,
began to heal and subside
under the gentler breathings of April;
the nights and mornings
no longer by their Canadian temperature
froze the very blood in our veins;
we could now endure
the play-hour passed in the garden:
sometimes on a sunny day
it began even to be pleasant and genial,
and a greenness grew
over those brown beds,
which,
freshening daily,
suggested the thought
that Hope traversed them
at night,
and left each morning
brighter traces of her steps.
Flowers peeped out amongst the leaves;
snow-drops, crocuses, purple auriculas,
and golden-eyed pansies.
On Thursday afternoons
(half-holidays)
we now took walks,
and found still sweeter flowers
opening by the wayside,
under the hedges.

I discovered, too,
that a great pleasure,
an enjoyment which the horizon
only bounded,
lay all outside the high and
spike-guarded walls of our garden:
this pleasure
consisted in prospect of noble summits
girdling a great hill-hollow,
rich in verdure and shadow;
in a bright beck,
full of dark stones and sparkling eddies.
How different had this scene looked
when I viewed it laid out
beneath the iron sky of winter,
stiffened in frost,
shrouded with snow!
— when mists
as chill as death
wandered to the impulse of east winds
along those purple peaks,
and rolled down “ing”
and holm till they blended
with the frozen fog of the beck!
That beck itself was then a torrent,
turbid and curbless:
it tore asunder the wood,
and sent a raving sound through the air,
often thickened
with wild rain or whirling sleet;
and for the forest on its banks,
that showed only ranks of skeletons.

April advanced to May:
a bright serene May it was;
days of blue sky, placid sunshine,
and soft western or southern gales
filled up its duration.
And now vegetation matured with vigour;
Lowood shook loose its tresses;
it became all green, all flowery;
its great elm, ash,
and oak skeletons
were restored to majestic life;
woodland plants sprang up profusely
in its recesses;
unnumbered varieties of moss
filled its hollows,
and it made a strange ground-sunshine
out of the wealth
of its wild primrose plants:
I have seen their pale gold gleam
in overshadowed spots
like scatterings of the sweetest lustre.
All this I enjoyed often and fully,
free, unwatched, and almost alone:
for this unwonted liberty and pleasure
there was a cause,
to which it now becomes my task
to advert.

Have I not described a pleasant site
for a dwelling,
when I speak of it
as bosomed in hill and wood,
and rising from the verge of a stream?
Assuredly, pleasant enough:
but whether healthy or not
is another question.

That forest-dell, where Lowood lay,
was the cradle
of fog and fog-bred pestilence;
which,
quickening with the quickening spring,
crept into the Orphan Asylum,
breathed typhus through
its crowded schoolroom and dormitory,
and,
ere May arrived,
transformed the seminary
into an hospital.

Semi-starvation and neglected colds
had predisposed most of the pupils
to receive infection:
forty-five out of the eighty girls
lay ill at one time.
Classes were broken up, rules relaxed.
The few who continued well
were allowed almost unlimited license;
because the medical attendant insisted
on the necessity of frequent exercise
to keep them in health:
and had it been otherwise,
no one had leisure
to watch or restrain them.
Miss Temple’s whole attention
was absorbed by the patients:
she lived in the sick-room,
never quitting it
except to snatch a few hours’
rest at night.
The teachers were fully occupied
with packing up and making
other necessary preparations
for the departure of those girls
who were fortunate enough to have
friends and relations able and willing
to remove them from the seat of contagion.
Many, already smitten,
went home only to die:
some died at the school,
and were buried quietly and quickly,
the nature of the malady
forbidding delay.

While disease had thus become
an inhabitant of Lowood,
and death its frequent visitor;
while there was gloom and fear
within its walls;
while its rooms and passages
steamed with hospital smells,
the drug and the pastille
striving vainly to overcome
the effluvia of mortality,
that bright May shone unclouded over
the bold hills and beautiful woodland
out of doors.
Its garden, too, glowed with flowers:
hollyhocks had sprung up tall as trees,
lilies had opened,
tulips and roses were in bloom;
the borders of the little beds
were gay with pink thrift and crimson
double daisies;
the sweetbriars gave out,
morning and evening,
their scent of spice and apples;
and these fragrant treasures
were all useless
for most of the inmates of Lowood,
except to furnish now and then
a handful of herbs and blossoms
to put in a coffin.

But I, and the rest who continued well,
enjoyed fully
the beauties of the scene and season;
they let us ramble in the wood,
like gipsies,
from morning till night;
we did what we liked,
went where we liked:
we lived better too.
Mr. Brocklehurst and his family
never came near Lowood now:
household matters
were not scrutinised into;
the cross housekeeper was gone,
driven away by the fear of infection;
her successor,
who had been matron
at the Lowton Dispensary,
unused to the ways of her new abode,
provided with comparative liberality.
Besides, there were fewer to feed;
the sick could eat little;
our breakfast-basins were better filled;
when there was no time
to prepare a regular dinner,
which often happened,
she would give us
a large piece of cold pie,
or a thick slice of bread and cheese,
and this we carried away with us
to the wood,
where we each chose the spot
we liked best,
and dined sumptuously.

My favourite seat
was a smooth and broad stone,
rising white and dry
from the very middle of the beck,
and only to be got at
by wading through the water;
a feat I accomplished barefoot.
The stone was just broad enough
to accommodate,
comfortably,
another girl and me,
at that time my chosen comrade
— one Mary Ann Wilson;
a shrewd, observant personage,
whose society I took pleasure in,
partly
because she was witty and original,
and partly because she had a manner
which set me at my ease.
Some years older than I,
she knew more of the world,
and could tell me many things
I liked to hear:
with her my curiosity
found gratification:
to my faults
also she gave ample indulgence,
never imposing curb or rein on
anything I said.

She had a turn for narrative,
I for analysis;
she liked to inform, I to question;
so we got on swimmingly together,
deriving much entertainment,
if not much improvement,
from our mutual intercourse.

And where, meantime, was Helen Burns?
Why did I not spend
these sweet days of liberty with her?
Had I forgotten her?
or was I so worthless
as to have grown tired
of her pure society?
Surely the Mary Ann Wilson
I have mentioned
was inferior to my first acquaintance:
she could only tell me amusing stories,
and reciprocate any racy and pungent
gossip I chose to indulge in;
while,
if I have spoken truth of Helen,
she was qualified
to give those who enjoyed
the privilege of her converse
a taste of far higher things.

True, reader; and I knew and felt this:
and though I am a defective being,
with many faults and few
redeeming points,
yet I never tired of Helen Burns;
nor ever ceased to
cherish for her a sentiment of attachment,
as strong, tender,
and respectful
as any that ever animated my heart.
How could it be otherwise,
when Helen,
at all times and under all circumstances,
evinced for me
a quiet and faithful friendship,
which ill-humour never soured,
nor irritation never troubled?
But Helen was ill at present:
for some weeks
she had been removed from my sight
to I knew not what room upstairs.
She was not, I was told,
in the hospital portion of the house
with the fever patients;
for her complaint was consumption,
not typhus:
and by consumption I,
in my ignorance,
understood something mild,
which time and care
would be sure to alleviate.

I was confirmed in this idea
by the fact of her
once or twice coming downstairs
on very warm sunny afternoons,
and being taken by Miss Temple
into the garden;
but, on these occasions,
I was not allowed to go and speak to her;
I only saw her
from the schoolroom window,
and then not distinctly;
for she was much wrapped up,
and sat at a distance under the verandah.

One evening,
in the beginning of June,
I had stayed out very late
with Mary Ann in the wood;
we had,
as usual,
separated ourselves from the others,
and had wandered far;
so far that we lost our way,
and had to ask it at a lonely cottage,
where a man and woman lived,
who looked after
a herd of half-wild swine
that fed on the mast in the wood.

When we got back, it was after moonrise:
a pony,
which we knew to be the surgeon’s,
was standing at the garden door.
Mary Ann remarked
that she supposed some one
must be very ill,
as Mr. Bates had been sent for
at that time of the evening.
She went into the house;
I stayed behind a few minutes
to plant in my garden a handful of roots
I had dug up in the forest,
and which I feared would wither
if I left them till the morning.
This done,
I lingered yet a little longer:
the flowers smelt so sweet
as the dew fell;
it was such a pleasant evening,
so serene, so warm;
the still glowing west
promised so fairly another fine day
on the morrow;
the moon rose with such majesty
in the grave east.
I was noting these things
and enjoying them as a child might,
when it entered my mind
as it had never done before:
— “How sad to be lying now on a sick bed,
and to be in danger of dying!
This world is pleasant
— it would be dreary to be called from it,
and to have to go who knows where?”

And then my mind
made its first earnest effort
to comprehend what had been infused
into it concerning heaven and hell;
and for the first time it recoiled,
baffled;
and for the first time glancing behind,
on each side, and before it,
it saw all round an unfathomed gulf:
it felt the one point where it stood
— the present;
all the rest was formless cloud
and vacant depth;
and it shuddered
at the thought of tottering,
and plunging amid that chaos.
While pondering this new idea,
I heard the front door open;
Mr. Bates came out,
and with him was a nurse.
After she had seen him mount his horse
and depart,
she was about to close the door,
but I ran up to her.

“How is Helen Burns?”

“Very poorly,” was the answer.

“Is it her Mr. Bates has been to see?”

“Yes.”

“And what does he say about her?”

“He says she’ll not be here long.”

This phrase,
uttered in my hearing yesterday,
would have only conveyed the notion
that she was about
to be removed to Northumberland,
to her own home.

I should not have suspected
that it meant she was dying;
but I knew instantly now!
It opened clear on my comprehension
that Helen Burns was numbering
her last days in this world,
and that she was going to be taken
to the region of spirits,
if such region there were.
I experienced a shock of horror,
then a strong thrill of grief,
then a desire
— a necessity to see her;
and I asked in what room she lay.

“She is in Miss Temple’s room,”
said the nurse.

“May I go up and speak to her?”

“Oh no, child!
It is not likely;
and now it is time for you to come in;
you’ll catch the fever
if you stop out
when the dew is falling.”

The nurse closed the front door;
I went in by the side entrance
which led to the schoolroom:
I was just in time; it was nine o’clock,
and Miss Miller was calling the pupils
to go to bed.

It might be two hours later,
probably near eleven,
when I
— not having been able to fall asleep,
and deeming,
from the perfect silence
of the dormitory,
that my companions
were all wrapt in profound repose
— rose softly,
put on my frock over my night-dress,
and, without shoes,
crept from the apartment,
and set off
in quest of Miss Temple’s room.
It was quite at the other end
of the house;
but I knew my way;
and the light
of the unclouded summer moon,
entering here and there
at passage windows,
enabled me to find it without difficulty.
An odour of camphor and burnt vinegar
warned me
when I came near the fever room:
and I passed its door quickly,
fearful lest the nurse
who sat up all night
should hear me.
I dreaded being discovered and sent back;
for I must see Helen,
— I must embrace her
before she died,
— I must give her one last kiss,
exchange with her one last word.

Having descended a staircase,
traversed a portion of the house below,
and succeeded in opening and shutting,
without noise,
two doors,
I reached another flight of steps;
these I mounted,
and then just opposite to me
was Miss Temple’s room.
A light shone through the keyhole
and from under the door;
a profound stillness
pervaded the vicinity.
Coming near,
I found the door slightly ajar;
probably to admit some fresh air
into the close abode of sickness.
Indisposed to hesitate,
and full of impatient impulses
— soul and senses
quivering with keen throes
— I put it back and looked in.
My eye sought Helen,
and feared to find death.

Close by Miss Temple’s bed,
and half covered with its white curtains,
there stood a little crib.
I saw the outline of a form
under the clothes,
but the face was hid by the hangings:
the nurse I had spoken to in the garden
sat in an easy-chair asleep;
an unsnuffed candle
burnt dimly on the table.
Miss Temple was not to be seen:
I knew afterwards
that she had been called
to a delirious patient in the fever-room.
I advanced;
then paused by the crib side:
my hand was on the curtain,
but I preferred speaking
before I withdrew it.
I still recoiled
at the dread of seeing a corpse.

“Helen!”
I whispered softly,
“are you awake?”

She stirred herself,
put back the curtain,
and I saw her face, pale, wasted,
but quite composed:
she looked so little changed
that my fear was instantly dissipated.

“Can it be you, Jane?”
she asked, in her own gentle voice.

“Oh!”
I thought,
“she is not going to die;
they are mistaken:
she could not speak and look so calmly
if she were.”

I got on to her crib and kissed her:
her forehead was cold,
and her cheek both cold and thin,
and so were her hand and wrist;
but she smiled as of old.

“Why are you come here, Jane?
It is past eleven o’clock:
I heard it strike some minutes since.”

“I came to see you, Helen:
I heard you were very ill,
and I could not sleep
till I had spoken to you.”

“You came to bid me good-bye, then:
you are just in time probably.”

“Are you going somewhere, Helen?
Are you going home?”

“Yes; to my long home
— my last home.”

“No, no, Helen!”
I stopped, distressed.
While I tried to devour my tears,
a fit of coughing seized Helen;
it did not, however, wake the nurse;
when it was over,
she lay some minutes exhausted;
then she whispered
— “Jane, your little feet are bare;
lie down and cover yourself
with my quilt.”

I did so:
she put her arm over me,
and I nestled close to her.
After a long silence, she resumed,
still whispering
— “I am very happy, Jane;
and when you hear that I am dead,
you must be sure and not grieve:
there is nothing to grieve about.
We all must die one day,
and the illness
which is removing me
is not painful;
it is gentle and gradual:
my mind is at rest.
I leave no one to regret me much:
I have only a father;
and he is lately married,
and will not miss me.
By dying young,
I shall escape great sufferings.
I had not qualities or talents
to make my way very well in the world:
I should have been continually
at fault.”

“But where are you going to, Helen?
Can you see?
Do you know?”

“I believe; I have faith:
I am going to God.”

“Where is God?
What is God?”

“My Maker and yours,
who will never destroy what He created.
I rely implicitly on His power,
and confide wholly in His goodness:
I count the hours
till that eventful one arrives
which shall restore me to Him,
reveal Him to me.”

“You are sure, then, Helen,
that there is such a place as heaven,
and that our souls can get to it
when we die?”

“I am sure there is a future state;
I believe God is good;
I can resign my immortal part to Him
without any misgiving.
God is my father; God is my friend:
I love Him; I believe He loves me.”

“And shall I see you again, Helen,
when I die?”

“You will come
to the same region of happiness:
be received by the same mighty,
universal Parent,
no doubt, dear Jane.”

Again I questioned,
but this time only in thought.
“Where is that region?
Does it exist?”
And I clasped my arms closer round Helen;
she seemed dearer to me than ever;
I felt as if I could not let her go;
I lay with my face hidden on her neck.
Presently she said, in the sweetest tone
— “How comfortable I am!
That last fit of coughing
has tired me a little;
I feel as if I could sleep:
but don’t leave me, Jane;
I like to have you near me.”

“I’ll stay with you, dear Helen:
no one shall take me away.”

“Are you warm, darling?”

“Yes.”

“Good-night, Jane.”

“Good-night, Helen.”

She kissed me, and I her,
and we both soon slumbered.

When I awoke it was day:
an unusual movement roused me;
I looked up;
I was in somebody’s arms;
the nurse held me;
she was carrying me through the passage
back to the dormitory.
I was not reprimanded for leaving my bed;
people had something else to think about;
no explanation was afforded then
to my many questions;
but a day or two afterwards
I learned that Miss Temple,
on returning to her own room at dawn,
had found me laid in the little crib;
my face against Helen Burns’s shoulder,
my arms round her neck.
I was asleep, and Helen was
— dead.

Her grave is in Brocklebridge churchyard:
for fifteen years after her death
it was only covered by a grassy mound;
but now a grey marble tablet
marks the spot,
inscribed with her name,

and the word “Resurgam.”