Jane Eyre: An Autobiography

JANE EYRE

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

by Charlotte Brontë

_ILLUSTRATED BY F. H. TOWNSEND_

London

SERVICE & PATON

5 HENRIETTA STREET

1897

_The Illustrations_

_in this Volume are the copyright of_

SERVICE & PATON, _London_

TO

W. M. THACKERAY, ESQ.,

This Work

IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED

BY

THE AUTHOR

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_ 21_st_, 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_ 13_th_, 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!”

How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth

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 manoeuvre: 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.”

CHAPTER X

Hitherto I have recorded in detail the events of my insignificant

existence: to the first ten years of my life I have given almost as

many chapters. But this is not to be a regular autobiography: I am only

bound to invoke Memory where I know her responses will possess some

degree of interest; therefore I now pass a space of eight years almost

in silence: a few lines only are necessary to keep up the links of

connection.

When the typhus fever had fulfilled its mission of devastation at

Lowood, it gradually disappeared from thence; but not till its

virulence and the number of its victims had drawn public attention on

the school. Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge, and by

degrees various facts came out which excited public indignation in a

high degree. The unhealthy nature of the site; the quantity and quality

of the children’s food; the brackish, fetid water used in its

preparation; the pupils’ wretched clothing and accommodations—all these

things were discovered, and the discovery produced a result mortifying

to Mr. Brocklehurst, but beneficial to the institution.

Several wealthy and benevolent individuals in the county subscribed

largely for the erection of a more convenient building in a better

situation; new regulations were made; improvements in diet and clothing

introduced; the funds of the school were intrusted to the management of

a committee. Mr. Brocklehurst, who, from his wealth and family

connections, could not be overlooked, still retained the post of

treasurer; but he was aided in the discharge of his duties by gentlemen

of rather more enlarged and sympathising minds: his office of

inspector, too, was shared by those who knew how to combine reason with

strictness, comfort with economy, compassion with uprightness. The

school, thus improved, became in time a truly useful and noble

institution. I remained an inmate of its walls, after its regeneration,

for eight years: six as pupil, and two as teacher; and in both

capacities I bear my testimony to its value and importance.

During these eight years my life was uniform: but not unhappy, because

it was not inactive. I had the means of an excellent education placed

within my reach; a fondness for some of my studies, and a desire to

excel in all, together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers,

especially such as I loved, urged me on: I availed myself fully of the

advantages offered me. In time I rose to be the first girl of the first

class; then I was invested with the office of teacher; which I

discharged with zeal for two years: but at the end of that time I

altered.

Miss Temple, through all changes, had thus far continued superintendent

of the seminary: to her instruction I owed the best part of my

acquirements; her friendship and society had been my continual solace;

she had stood me in the stead of mother, governess, and, latterly,

companion. At this period she married, removed with her husband (a

clergyman, an excellent man, almost worthy of such a wife) to a distant

county, and consequently was lost to me.

From the day she left I was no longer the same: with her was gone every

settled feeling, every association that had made Lowood in some degree

a home to me. I had imbibed from her something of her nature and much

of her habits: more harmonious thoughts: what seemed better regulated

feelings had become the inmates of my mind. I had given in allegiance

to duty and order; I was quiet; I believed I was content: to the eyes

of others, usually even to my own, I appeared a disciplined and subdued

character.

But destiny, in the shape of the Rev. Mr. Nasmyth, came between me and

Miss Temple: I saw her in her travelling dress step into a post-chaise,

shortly after the marriage ceremony; I watched the chaise mount the

hill and disappear beyond its brow; and then retired to my own room,

and there spent in solitude the greatest part of the half-holiday

granted in honour of the occasion.

I walked about the chamber most of the time. I imagined myself only to

be regretting my loss, and thinking how to repair it; but when my

reflections were concluded, and I looked up and found that the

afternoon was gone, and evening far advanced, another discovery dawned

on me, namely, that in the interval I had undergone a transforming

process; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple—or

rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been

breathing in her vicinity—and that now I was left in my natural

element, and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions. It did not

seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone:

it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason

for tranquillity was no more. My world had for some years been in

Lowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I

remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of

hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had

courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life

amidst its perils.

I went to my window, opened it, and looked out. There were the two

wings of the building; there was the garden; there were the skirts of

Lowood; there was the hilly horizon. My eye passed all other objects to

rest on those most remote, the blue peaks; it was those I longed to

surmount; all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed

prison-ground, exile limits. I traced the white road winding round the

base of one mountain, and vanishing in a gorge between two; how I

longed to follow it farther! I recalled the time when I had travelled

that very road in a coach; I remembered descending that hill at

twilight; an age seemed to have elapsed since the day which brought me

first to Lowood, and I had never quitted it since. My vacations had all

been spent at school: Mrs. Reed had never sent for me to Gateshead;

neither she nor any of her family had ever been to visit me. I had had

no communication by letter or message with the outer world:

school-rules, school-duties, school-habits and notions, and voices, and

faces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies—such

was what I knew of existence. And now I felt that it was not enough; I

tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired

liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it

seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and

framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition,

too, seemed swept off into vague space: “Then,” I cried, half

desperate, “grant me at least a new servitude!”

Here a bell, ringing the hour of supper, called me downstairs.

I was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections till

bedtime: even then a teacher who occupied the same room with me kept me

from the subject to which I longed to recur, by a prolonged effusion of

small talk. How I wished sleep would silence her. It seemed as if,

could I but go back to the idea which had last entered my mind as I

stood at the window, some inventive suggestion would rise for my

relief.

Miss Gryce snored at last; she was a heavy Welshwoman, and till now her

habitual nasal strains had never been regarded by me in any other light

than as a nuisance; to-night I hailed the first deep notes with

satisfaction; I was debarrassed of interruption; my half-effaced

thought instantly revived.

“A new servitude! There is something in that,” I soliloquised

(mentally, be it understood; I did not talk aloud). “I know there is,

because it does not sound too sweet; it is not like such words as

Liberty, Excitement, Enjoyment: delightful sounds truly; but no more

than sounds for me; and so hollow and fleeting that it is mere waste of

time to listen to them. But Servitude! That must be matter of fact. Any

one may serve: I have served here eight years; now all I want is to

serve elsewhere. Can I not get so much of my own will? Is not the thing

feasible? Yes—yes—the end is not so difficult; if I had only a brain

active enough to ferret out the means of attaining it.”

I sat up in bed by way of arousing this said brain: it was a chilly

night; I covered my shoulders with a shawl, and then I proceeded _to

think_ again with all my might.

“What do I want? A new place, in a new house, amongst new faces, under

new circumstances: I want this because it is of no use wanting anything

better. How do people do to get a new place? They apply to friends, I

suppose: I have no friends. There are many others who have no friends,

who must look about for themselves and be their own helpers; and what

is their resource?”

I could not tell: nothing answered me; I then ordered my brain to find

a response, and quickly. It worked and worked faster: I felt the pulses

throb in my head and temples; but for nearly an hour it worked in

chaos; and no result came of its efforts. Feverish with vain labour, I

got up and took a turn in the room; undrew the curtain, noted a star or

two, shivered with cold, and again crept to bed.

A kind fairy, in my absence, had surely dropped the required suggestion

on my pillow; for as I lay down, it came quietly and naturally to my

mind:—“Those who want situations advertise; you must advertise in the

_——shire Herald_.”

“How? I know nothing about advertising.”

Replies rose smooth and prompt now:—

“You must enclose the advertisement and the money to pay for it under a

cover directed to the editor of the _Herald_; you must put it, the

first opportunity you have, into the post at Lowton; answers must be

addressed to J.E., at the post-office there; you can go and inquire in

about a week after you send your letter, if any are come, and act

accordingly.”

This scheme I went over twice, thrice; it was then digested in my mind;

I had it in a clear practical form: I felt satisfied, and fell asleep.

With earliest day, I was up: I had my advertisement written, enclosed,

and directed before the bell rang to rouse the school; it ran thus:—

“A young lady accustomed to tuition” (had I not been a teacher two

years?) “is desirous of meeting with a situation in a private family

where the children are under fourteen” (I thought that as I was barely

eighteen, it would not do to undertake the guidance of pupils nearer my

own age). “She is qualified to teach the usual branches of a good

English education, together with French, Drawing, and Music” (in those

days, reader, this now narrow catalogue of accomplishments, would have

been held tolerably comprehensive). “Address, J.E., Post-office,

Lowton, ——shire.”

This document remained locked in my drawer all day: after tea, I asked

leave of the new superintendent to go to Lowton, in order to perform

some small commissions for myself and one or two of my fellow-teachers;

permission was readily granted; I went. It was a walk of two miles, and

the evening was wet, but the days were still long; I visited a shop or

two, slipped the letter into the post-office, and came back through

heavy rain, with streaming garments, but with a relieved heart.

The succeeding week seemed long: it came to an end at last, however,

like all sublunary things, and once more, towards the close of a

pleasant autumn day, I found myself afoot on the road to Lowton. A

picturesque track it was, by the way; lying along the side of the beck

and through the sweetest curves of the dale: but that day I thought

more of the letters, that might or might not be awaiting me at the

little burgh whither I was bound, than of the charms of lea and water.

My ostensible errand on this occasion was to get measured for a pair of

shoes; so I discharged that business first, and when it was done, I

stepped across the clean and quiet little street from the shoemaker’s

to the post-office: it was kept by an old dame, who wore horn

spectacles on her nose, and black mittens on her hands.

“Are there any letters for J.E.?” I asked.

She peered at me over her spectacles, and then she opened a drawer and

fumbled among its contents for a long time, so long that my hopes began

to falter. At last, having held a document before her glasses for

nearly five minutes, she presented it across the counter, accompanying

the act by another inquisitive and mistrustful glance—it was for J.E.

“Is there only one?” I demanded.

“There are no more,” said she; and I put it in my pocket and turned my

face homeward: I could not open it then; rules obliged me to be back by

eight, and it was already half-past seven.

Various duties awaited me on my arrival: I had to sit with the girls

during their hour of study; then it was my turn to read prayers; to see

them to bed: afterwards I supped with the other teachers. Even when we

finally retired for the night, the inevitable Miss Gryce was still my

companion: we had only a short end of candle in our candlestick, and I

dreaded lest she should talk till it was all burnt out; fortunately,

however, the heavy supper she had eaten produced a soporific effect:

she was already snoring before I had finished undressing. There still

remained an inch of candle: I now took out my letter; the seal was an

initial F.; I broke it; the contents were brief.

“If J.E., who advertised in the _——shire Herald_ of last Thursday,

possesses the acquirements mentioned, and if she is in a position to

give satisfactory references as to character and competency, a

situation can be offered her where there is but one pupil, a little

girl, under ten years of age; and where the salary is thirty pounds per

annum. J.E. is requested to send references, name, address, and all

particulars to the direction:—

“Mrs. Fairfax, Thornfield, near Millcote, ——shire.”

I examined the document long: the writing was old-fashioned and rather

uncertain, like that of an elderly lady. This circumstance was

satisfactory: a private fear had haunted me, that in thus acting for

myself, and by my own guidance, I ran the risk of getting into some

scrape; and, above all things, I wished the result of my endeavours to

be respectable, proper, _en règle_. I now felt that an elderly lady was

no bad ingredient in the business I had on hand. Mrs. Fairfax! I saw

her in a black gown and widow’s cap; frigid, perhaps, but not uncivil:

a model of elderly English respectability. Thornfield! that, doubtless,

was the name of her house: a neat orderly spot, I was sure; though I

failed in my efforts to conceive a correct plan of the premises.

Millcote, ——shire; I brushed up my recollections of the map of England;

yes, I saw it; both the shire and the town. ——shire was seventy miles

nearer London than the remote county where I now resided: that was a

recommendation to me. I longed to go where there was life and movement:

Millcote was a large manufacturing town on the banks of the A——: a busy

place enough, doubtless: so much the better; it would be a complete

change at least. Not that my fancy was much captivated by the idea of

long chimneys and clouds of smoke—“but,” I argued, “Thornfield will,

probably, be a good way from the town.”

Here the socket of the candle dropped, and the wick went out.

Next day new steps were to be taken; my plans could no longer be

confined to my own breast; I must impart them in order to achieve their

success. Having sought and obtained an audience of the superintendent

during the noontide recreation, I told her I had a prospect of getting

a new situation where the salary would be double what I now received

(for at Lowood I only got £15 per annum); and requested she would break

the matter for me to Mr. Brocklehurst, or some of the committee, and

ascertain whether they would permit me to mention them as references.

She obligingly consented to act as mediatrix in the matter. The next

day she laid the affair before Mr. Brocklehurst, who said that Mrs.

Reed must be written to, as she was my natural guardian. A note was

accordingly addressed to that lady, who returned for answer, that “I

might do as I pleased: she had long relinquished all interference in my

affairs.” This note went the round of the committee, and at last, after

what appeared to me most tedious delay, formal leave was given me to

better my condition if I could; and an assurance added, that as I had

always conducted myself well, both as teacher and pupil, at Lowood, a

testimonial of character and capacity, signed by the inspectors of that

institution, should forthwith be furnished me.

This testimonial I accordingly received in about a month, forwarded a

copy of it to Mrs. Fairfax, and got that lady’s reply, stating that she

was satisfied, and fixing that day fortnight as the period for my

assuming the post of governess in her house.

I now busied myself in preparations: the fortnight passed rapidly. I

had not a very large wardrobe, though it was adequate to my wants; and

the last day sufficed to pack my trunk,—the same I had brought with me

eight years ago from Gateshead.

The box was corded, the card nailed on. In half-an-hour the carrier was

to call for it to take it to Lowton, whither I myself was to repair at

an early hour the next morning to meet the coach. I had brushed my

black stuff travelling-dress, prepared my bonnet, gloves, and muff;

sought in all my drawers to see that no article was left behind; and

now having nothing more to do, I sat down and tried to rest. I could

not; though I had been on foot all day, I could not now repose an

instant; I was too much excited. A phase of my life was closing

to-night, a new one opening to-morrow: impossible to slumber in the

interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being

accomplished.

“Miss,” said a servant who met me in the lobby, where I was wandering

like a troubled spirit, “a person below wishes to see you.”

“The carrier, no doubt,” I thought, and ran downstairs without inquiry.

I was passing the back-parlour or teachers’ sitting-room, the door of

which was half open, to go to the kitchen, when some one ran out—

“It’s her, I am sure!—I could have told her anywhere!” cried the

individual who stopped my progress and took my hand.

I looked: I saw a woman attired like a well-dressed servant, matronly,

yet still young; very good-looking, with black hair and eyes, and

lively complexion.

“Well, who is it?” she asked, in a voice and with a smile I half

recognised; “you’ve not quite forgotten me, I think, Miss Jane?”

In another second I was embracing and kissing her rapturously: “Bessie!

Bessie! Bessie!” that was all I said; whereat she half laughed, half

cried, and we both went into the parlour. By the fire stood a little

fellow of three years old, in plaid frock and trousers.

“That is my little boy,” said Bessie directly.

“Then you are married, Bessie?”

“Yes; nearly five years since to Robert Leaven, the coachman; and I’ve

a little girl besides Bobby there, that I’ve christened Jane.”

“And you don’t live at Gateshead?”

“I live at the lodge: the old porter has left.”

“Well, and how do they all get on? Tell me everything about them,

Bessie: but sit down first; and, Bobby, come and sit on my knee, will

you?” but Bobby preferred sidling over to his mother.

“You’re not grown so very tall, Miss Jane, nor so very stout,”

continued Mrs. Leaven. “I dare say they’ve not kept you too well at

school: Miss Reed is the head and shoulders taller than you are; and

Miss Georgiana would make two of you in breadth.”

“Georgiana is handsome, I suppose, Bessie?”

“Very. She went up to London last winter with her mama, and there

everybody admired her, and a young lord fell in love with her: but his

relations were against the match; and—what do you think?—he and Miss

Georgiana made it up to run away; but they were found out and stopped.

It was Miss Reed that found them out: I believe she was envious; and

now she and her sister lead a cat and dog life together; they are

always quarrelling—”

“Well, and what of John Reed?”

“Oh, he is not doing so well as his mama could wish. He went to

college, and he got—plucked, I think they call it: and then his uncles

wanted him to be a barrister, and study the law: but he is such a

dissipated young man, they will never make much of him, I think.”

“What does he look like?”

“He is very tall: some people call him a fine-looking young man; but he

has such thick lips.”

“And Mrs. Reed?”

“Missis looks stout and well enough in the face, but I think she’s not

quite easy in her mind: Mr. John’s conduct does not please her—he

spends a deal of money.”

“Did she send you here, Bessie?”

“No, indeed: but I have long wanted to see you, and when I heard that

there had been a letter from you, and that you were going to another

part of the country, I thought I’d just set off, and get a look at you

before you were quite out of my reach.”

“I am afraid you are disappointed in me, Bessie.” I said this laughing:

I perceived that Bessie’s glance, though it expressed regard, did in no

shape denote admiration.

“No, Miss Jane, not exactly: you are genteel enough; you look like a

lady, and it is as much as ever I expected of you: you were no beauty

as a child.”

I smiled at Bessie’s frank answer: I felt that it was correct, but I

confess I was not quite indifferent to its import: at eighteen most

people wish to please, and the conviction that they have not an

exterior likely to second that desire brings anything but

gratification.

“I dare say you are clever, though,” continued Bessie, by way of

solace. “What can you do? Can you play on the piano?”

“A little.”

There was one in the room; Bessie went and opened it, and then asked me

to sit down and give her a tune: I played a waltz or two, and she was

charmed.

“The Miss Reeds could not play as well!” said she exultingly. “I always

said you would surpass them in learning: and can you draw?”

“That is one of my paintings over the chimney-piece.” It was a

landscape in water colours, of which I had made a present to the

superintendent, in acknowledgment of her obliging mediation with the

committee on my behalf, and which she had framed and glazed.

“Well, that is beautiful, Miss Jane! It is as fine a picture as any

Miss Reed’s drawing-master could paint, let alone the young ladies

themselves, who could not come near it: and have you learnt French?”

“Yes, Bessie, I can both read it and speak it.”

“And you can work on muslin and canvas?”

“I can.”

“Oh, you are quite a lady, Miss Jane! I knew you would be: you will get

on whether your relations notice you or not. There was something I

wanted to ask you. Have you ever heard anything from your father’s

kinsfolk, the Eyres?”

“Never in my life.”

“Well, you know Missis always said they were poor and quite despicable:

and they may be poor; but I believe they are as much gentry as the

Reeds are; for one day, nearly seven years ago, a Mr. Eyre came to

Gateshead and wanted to see you; Missis said you were at school fifty

miles off; he seemed so much disappointed, for he could not stay: he

was going on a voyage to a foreign country, and the ship was to sail

from London in a day or two. He looked quite a gentleman, and I believe

he was your father’s brother.”

“What foreign country was he going to, Bessie?”

“An island thousands of miles off, where they make wine—the butler did

tell me—”

“Madeira?” I suggested.

“Yes, that is it—that is the very word.”

“So he went?”

“Yes; he did not stay many minutes in the house: Missis was very high

with him; she called him afterwards a ‘sneaking tradesman.’ My Robert

believes he was a wine-merchant.”

“Very likely,” I returned; “or perhaps clerk or agent to a

wine-merchant.”

Bessie and I conversed about old times an hour longer, and then she was

obliged to leave me: I saw her again for a few minutes the next morning

at Lowton, while I was waiting for the coach. We parted finally at the

door of the Brocklehurst Arms there: each went her separate way; she

set off for the brow of Lowood Fell to meet the conveyance which was to

take her back to Gateshead, I mounted the vehicle which was to bear me

to new duties and a new life in the unknown environs of Millcote.

CHAPTER XI

A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play; and

when I draw up the curtain this time, reader, you must fancy you see a

room in the George Inn at Millcote, with such large figured papering on

the walls as inn rooms have; such a carpet, such furniture, such

ornaments on the mantelpiece, such prints, including a portrait of

George the Third, and another of the Prince of Wales, and a

representation of the death of Wolfe. All this is visible to you by the

light of an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, and by that of an

excellent fire, near which I sit in my cloak and bonnet; my muff and

umbrella lie on the table, and I am warming away the numbness and chill

contracted by sixteen hours’ exposure to the rawness of an October day:

I left Lowton at four o’clock A.M., and the Millcote town clock is now

just striking eight.

Reader, though I look comfortably accommodated, I am not very tranquil

in my mind. I thought when the coach stopped here there would be some

one to meet me; I looked anxiously round as I descended the wooden

steps the “boots” placed for my convenience, expecting to hear my name

pronounced, and to see some description of carriage waiting to convey

me to Thornfield. Nothing of the sort was visible; and when I asked a

waiter if any one had been to inquire after a Miss Eyre, I was answered

in the negative: so I had no resource but to request to be shown into a

private room: and here I am waiting, while all sorts of doubts and

fears are troubling my thoughts.

It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself

quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain

whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by

many impediments from returning to that it has quitted. The charm of

adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then

the throb of fear disturbs it; and fear with me became predominant when

half-an-hour elapsed and still I was alone. I bethought myself to ring

the bell.

“Is there a place in this neighbourhood called Thornfield?” I asked of

the waiter who answered the summons.

“Thornfield? I don’t know, ma’am; I’ll inquire at the bar.” He

vanished, but reappeared instantly—

“Is your name Eyre, Miss?”

“Yes.”

“Person here waiting for you.”

I jumped up, took my muff and umbrella, and hastened into the

inn-passage: a man was standing by the open door, and in the lamp-lit

street I dimly saw a one-horse conveyance.

“This will be your luggage, I suppose?” said the man rather abruptly

when he saw me, pointing to my trunk in the passage.

“Yes.” He hoisted it on to the vehicle, which was a sort of car, and

then I got in; before he shut me up, I asked him how far it was to

Thornfield.

“A matter of six miles.”

“How long shall we be before we get there?”

“Happen an hour and a half.”

He fastened the car door, climbed to his own seat outside, and we set

off. Our progress was leisurely, and gave me ample time to reflect; I

was content to be at length so near the end of my journey; and as I

leaned back in the comfortable though not elegant conveyance, I

meditated much at my ease.

“I suppose,” thought I, “judging from the plainness of the servant and

carriage, Mrs. Fairfax is not a very dashing person: so much the

better; I never lived amongst fine people but once, and I was very

miserable with them. I wonder if she lives alone except this little

girl; if so, and if she is in any degree amiable, I shall surely be

able to get on with her; I will do my best; it is a pity that doing

one’s best does not always answer. At Lowood, indeed, I took that

resolution, kept it, and succeeded in pleasing; but with Mrs. Reed, I

remember my best was always spurned with scorn. I pray God Mrs. Fairfax

may not turn out a second Mrs. Reed; but if she does, I am not bound to

stay with her! let the worst come to the worst, I can advertise again.

How far are we on our road now, I wonder?”

I let down the window and looked out; Millcote was behind us; judging

by the number of its lights, it seemed a place of considerable

magnitude, much larger than Lowton. We were now, as far as I could see,

on a sort of common; but there were houses scattered all over the

district; I felt we were in a different region to Lowood, more

populous, less picturesque; more stirring, less romantic.

The roads were heavy, the night misty; my conductor let his horse walk

all the way, and the hour and a half extended, I verily believe, to two

hours; at last he turned in his seat and said—

“You’re noan so far fro’ Thornfield now.”

Again I looked out: we were passing a church; I saw its low broad tower

against the sky, and its bell was tolling a quarter; I saw a narrow

galaxy of lights too, on a hillside, marking a village or hamlet. About

ten minutes after, the driver got down and opened a pair of gates: we

passed through, and they clashed to behind us. We now slowly ascended a

drive, and came upon the long front of a house: candlelight gleamed

from one curtained bow-window; all the rest were dark. The car stopped

at the front door; it was opened by a maid-servant; I alighted and went

in.

“Will you walk this way, ma’am?” said the girl; and I followed her

across a square hall with high doors all round: she ushered me into a

room whose double illumination of fire and candle at first dazzled me,

contrasting as it did with the darkness to which my eyes had been for

two hours inured; when I could see, however, a cosy and agreeable

picture presented itself to my view.

A snug small room; a round table by a cheerful fire; an arm-chair

high-backed and old-fashioned, wherein sat the neatest imaginable

little elderly lady, in widow’s cap, black silk gown, and snowy muslin

apron; exactly like what I had fancied Mrs. Fairfax, only less stately

and milder looking. She was occupied in knitting; a large cat sat

demurely at her feet; nothing in short was wanting to complete the

beau-ideal of domestic comfort. A more reassuring introduction for a

new governess could scarcely be conceived; there was no grandeur to

overwhelm, no stateliness to embarrass; and then, as I entered, the old

lady got up and promptly and kindly came forward to meet me.

“How do you do, my dear? I am afraid you have had a tedious ride; John

drives so slowly; you must be cold, come to the fire.”

“Mrs. Fairfax, I suppose?” said I.

“Yes, you are right: do sit down.”

She conducted me to her own chair, and then began to remove my shawl

and untie my bonnet-strings; I begged she would not give herself so

much trouble.

“Oh, it is no trouble; I dare say your own hands are almost numbed with

cold. Leah, make a little hot negus and cut a sandwich or two: here are

the keys of the storeroom.”

And she produced from her pocket a most housewifely bunch of keys, and

delivered them to the servant.

“Now, then, draw nearer to the fire,” she continued. “You’ve brought

your luggage with you, haven’t you, my dear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ll see it carried into your room,” she said, and bustled out.

“She treats me like a visitor,” thought I. “I little expected such a

reception; I anticipated only coldness and stiffness: this is not like

what I have heard of the treatment of governesses; but I must not exult

too soon.”

She returned; with her own hands cleared her knitting apparatus and a

book or two from the table, to make room for the tray which Leah now

brought, and then herself handed me the refreshments. I felt rather

confused at being the object of more attention than I had ever before

received, and, that too, shown by my employer and superior; but as she

did not herself seem to consider she was doing anything out of her

place, I thought it better to take her civilities quietly.

“Shall I have the pleasure of seeing Miss Fairfax to-night?” I asked,

when I had partaken of what she offered me.

“What did you say, my dear? I am a little deaf,” returned the good

lady, approaching her ear to my mouth.

I repeated the question more distinctly.

“Miss Fairfax? Oh, you mean Miss Varens! Varens is the name of your

future pupil.”

“Indeed! Then she is not your daughter?”

“No,—I have no family.”

I should have followed up my first inquiry, by asking in what way Miss

Varens was connected with her; but I recollected it was not polite to

ask too many questions: besides, I was sure to hear in time.

“I am so glad,” she continued, as she sat down opposite to me, and took

the cat on her knee; “I am so glad you are come; it will be quite

pleasant living here now with a companion. To be sure it is pleasant at

any time; for Thornfield is a fine old hall, rather neglected of late

years perhaps, but still it is a respectable place; yet you know in

winter-time one feels dreary quite alone in the best quarters. I say

alone—Leah is a nice girl to be sure, and John and his wife are very

decent people; but then you see they are only servants, and one can’t

converse with them on terms of equality: one must keep them at due

distance, for fear of losing one’s authority. I’m sure last winter (it

was a very severe one, if you recollect, and when it did not snow, it

rained and blew), not a creature but the butcher and postman came to

the house, from November till February; and I really got quite

melancholy with sitting night after night alone; I had Leah in to read

to me sometimes; but I don’t think the poor girl liked the task much:

she felt it confining. In spring and summer one got on better: sunshine

and long days make such a difference; and then, just at the

commencement of this autumn, little Adela Varens came and her nurse: a

child makes a house alive all at once; and now you are here I shall be

quite gay.”

My heart really warmed to the worthy lady as I heard her talk; and I

drew my chair a little nearer to her, and expressed my sincere wish

that she might find my company as agreeable as she anticipated.

“But I’ll not keep you sitting up late to-night,” said she; “it is on

the stroke of twelve now, and you have been travelling all day: you

must feel tired. If you have got your feet well warmed, I’ll show you

your bedroom. I’ve had the room next to mine prepared for you; it is

only a small apartment, but I thought you would like it better than one

of the large front chambers: to be sure they have finer furniture, but

they are so dreary and solitary, I never sleep in them myself.”

I thanked her for her considerate choice, and as I really felt fatigued

with my long journey, expressed my readiness to retire. She took her

candle, and I followed her from the room. First she went to see if the

hall-door was fastened; having taken the key from the lock, she led the

way upstairs. The steps and banisters were of oak; the staircase window

was high and latticed; both it and the long gallery into which the

bedroom doors opened looked as if they belonged to a church rather than

a house. A very chill and vault-like air pervaded the stairs and

gallery, suggesting cheerless ideas of space and solitude; and I was

glad, when finally ushered into my chamber, to find it of small

dimensions, and furnished in ordinary, modern style.

When Mrs. Fairfax had bidden me a kind good-night, and I had fastened

my door, gazed leisurely round, and in some measure effaced the eerie

impression made by that wide hall, that dark and spacious staircase,

and that long, cold gallery, by the livelier aspect of my little room,

I remembered that, after a day of bodily fatigue and mental anxiety, I

was now at last in safe haven. The impulse of gratitude swelled my

heart, and I knelt down at the bedside, and offered up thanks where

thanks were due; not forgetting, ere I rose, to implore aid on my

further path, and the power of meriting the kindness which seemed so

frankly offered me before it was earned. My couch had no thorns in it

that night; my solitary room no fears. At once weary and content, I

slept soon and soundly: when I awoke it was broad day.

The chamber looked such a bright little place to me as the sun shone in

between the gay blue chintz window curtains, showing papered walls and

a carpeted floor, so unlike the bare planks and stained plaster of

Lowood, that my spirits rose at the view. Externals have a great effect

on the young: I thought that a fairer era of life was beginning for me,

one that was to have its flowers and pleasures, as well as its thorns

and toils. My faculties, roused by the change of scene, the new field

offered to hope, seemed all astir. I cannot precisely define what they

expected, but it was something pleasant: not perhaps that day or that

month, but at an indefinite future period.

I rose; I dressed myself with care: obliged to be plain—for I had no

article of attire that was not made with extreme simplicity—I was still

by nature solicitous to be neat. It was not my habit to be disregardful

of appearance or careless of the impression I made: on the contrary, I

ever wished to look as well as I could, and to please as much as my

want of beauty would permit. I sometimes regretted that I was not

handsomer; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and

small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed

in figure; I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and

had features so irregular and so marked. And why had I these

aspirations and these regrets? It would be difficult to say: I could

not then distinctly say it to myself; yet I had a reason, and a

logical, natural reason too. However, when I had brushed my hair very

smooth, and put on my black frock—which, Quakerlike as it was, at least

had the merit of fitting to a nicety—and adjusted my clean white

tucker, I thought I should do respectably enough to appear before Mrs.

Fairfax, and that my new pupil would not at least recoil from me with

antipathy. Having opened my chamber window, and seen that I left all

things straight and neat on the toilet table, I ventured forth.

Traversing the long and matted gallery, I descended the slippery steps

of oak; then I gained the hall: I halted there a minute; I looked at

some pictures on the walls (one, I remember, represented a grim man in

a cuirass, and one a lady with powdered hair and a pearl necklace), at

a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock whose case was

of oak curiously carved, and ebon black with time and rubbing.

Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me; but then I was so

little accustomed to grandeur. The hall-door, which was half of glass,

stood open; I stepped over the threshold. It was a fine autumn morning;

the early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green

fields; advancing on to the lawn, I looked up and surveyed the front of

the mansion. It was three storeys high, of proportions not vast, though

considerable: a gentleman’s manor-house, not a nobleman’s seat:

battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look. Its grey front

stood out well from the background of a rookery, whose cawing tenants

were now on the wing: they flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in

a great meadow, from which these were separated by a sunk fence, and

where an array of mighty old thorn trees, strong, knotty, and broad as

oaks, at once explained the etymology of the mansion’s designation.

Farther off were hills: not so lofty as those round Lowood, nor so

craggy, nor so like barriers of separation from the living world; but

yet quiet and lonely hills enough, and seeming to embrace Thornfield

with a seclusion I had not expected to find existent so near the

stirring locality of Millcote. A little hamlet, whose roofs were blent

with trees, straggled up the side of one of these hills; the church of

the district stood nearer Thornfield: its old tower-top looked over a

knoll between the house and gates.

I was yet enjoying the calm prospect and pleasant fresh air, yet

listening with delight to the cawing of the rooks, yet surveying the

wide, hoary front of the hall, and thinking what a great place it was

for one lonely little dame like Mrs. Fairfax to inhabit, when that lady

appeared at the door.

“What! out already?” said she. “I see you are an early riser.” I went

up to her, and was received with an affable kiss and shake of the hand.

“How do you like Thornfield?” she asked. I told her I liked it very

much.

“Yes,” she said, “it is a pretty place; but I fear it will be getting

out of order, unless Mr. Rochester should take it into his head to come

and reside here permanently; or, at least, visit it rather oftener:

great houses and fine grounds require the presence of the proprietor.”

“Mr. Rochester!” I exclaimed. “Who is he?”

“The owner of Thornfield,” she responded quietly. “Did you not know he

was called Rochester?”

Of course I did not—I had never heard of him before; but the old lady

seemed to regard his existence as a universally understood fact, with

which everybody must be acquainted by instinct.

“I thought,” I continued, “Thornfield belonged to you.”

“To me? Bless you, child; what an idea! To me! I am only the

housekeeper—the manager. To be sure I am distantly related to the

Rochesters by the mother’s side, or at least my husband was; he was a

clergyman, incumbent of Hay—that little village yonder on the hill—and

that church near the gates was his. The present Mr. Rochester’s mother

was a Fairfax, and second cousin to my husband: but I never presume on

the connection—in fact, it is nothing to me; I consider myself quite in

the light of an ordinary housekeeper: my employer is always civil, and

I expect nothing more.”

“And the little girl—my pupil!”

“She is Mr. Rochester’s ward; he commissioned me to find a governess

for her. He intended to have her brought up in ——shire, I believe. Here

she comes, with her ‘bonne,’ as she calls her nurse.” The enigma then

was explained: this affable and kind little widow was no great dame;

but a dependent like myself. I did not like her the worse for that; on

the contrary, I felt better pleased than ever. The equality between her

and me was real; not the mere result of condescension on her part: so

much the better—my position was all the freer.

As I was meditating on this discovery, a little girl, followed by her

attendant, came running up the lawn. I looked at my pupil, who did not

at first appear to notice me: she was quite a child, perhaps seven or

eight years old, slightly built, with a pale, small-featured face, and

a redundancy of hair falling in curls to her waist.

“Good morning, Miss Adela,” said Mrs. Fairfax. “Come and speak to the

lady who is to teach you, and to make you a clever woman some day.” She

approached.

“C’est là ma gouvernante!” said she, pointing to me, and addressing her

nurse; who answered—

“Mais oui, certainement.”

“Are they foreigners?” I inquired, amazed at hearing the French

language.

“The nurse is a foreigner, and Adela was born on the Continent; and, I

believe, never left it till within six months ago. When she first came

here she could speak no English; now she can make shift to talk it a

little: I don’t understand her, she mixes it so with French; but you

will make out her meaning very well, I dare say.”

Fortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a French

lady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with Madame

Pierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last seven

years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily—applying myself to

take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as possible the

pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain degree of

readiness and correctness in the language, and was not likely to be

much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela. She came and shook hands with

me when she heard that I was her governess; and as I led her in to

breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue: she

replied briefly at first, but after we were seated at the table, and

she had examined me some ten minutes with her large hazel eyes, she

suddenly commenced chattering fluently.

“Ah!” cried she, in French, “you speak my language as well as Mr.

Rochester does: I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can Sophie.

She will be glad: nobody here understands her: Madame Fairfax is all

English. Sophie is my nurse; she came with me over the sea in a great

ship with a chimney that smoked—how it did smoke!—and I was sick, and

so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester lay down on a

sofa in a pretty room called the salon, and Sophie and I had little

beds in another place. I nearly fell out of mine; it was like a shelf.

And Mademoiselle—what is your name?”

“Eyre—Jane Eyre.”

“Aire? Bah! I cannot say it. Well, our ship stopped in the morning,

before it was quite daylight, at a great city—a huge city, with very

dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty clean town I came

from; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the

land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach, which took us

to a beautiful large house, larger than this and finer, called an

hotel. We stayed there nearly a week: I and Sophie used to walk every

day in a great green place full of trees, called the Park; and there

were many children there besides me, and a pond with beautiful birds in

it, that I fed with crumbs.”

“Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?” asked Mrs. Fairfax.

I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent

tongue of Madame Pierrot.

“I wish,” continued the good lady, “you would ask her a question or two

about her parents: I wonder if she remembers them?”

“Adèle,” I inquired, “with whom did you live when you were in that

pretty clean town you spoke of?”

“I lived long ago with mama; but she is gone to the Holy Virgin. Mama

used to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses. A great many

gentlemen and ladies came to see mama, and I used to dance before them,

or to sit on their knees and sing to them: I liked it. Shall I let you

hear me sing now?”

She had finished her breakfast, so I permitted her to give a specimen

of her accomplishments. Descending from her chair, she came and placed

herself on my knee; then, folding her little hands demurely before her,

shaking back her curls and lifting her eyes to the ceiling, she

commenced singing a song from some opera. It was the strain of a

forsaken lady, who, after bewailing the perfidy of her lover, calls

pride to her aid; desires her attendant to deck her in her brightest

jewels and richest robes, and resolves to meet the false one that night

at a ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety of her demeanour, how little

his desertion has affected her.

The subject seemed strangely chosen for an infant singer; but I suppose

the point of the exhibition lay in hearing the notes of love and

jealousy warbled with the lisp of childhood; and in very bad taste that

point was: at least I thought so.

Adèle sang the canzonette tunefully enough, and with the _naïveté_ of

her age. This achieved, she jumped from my knee and said, “Now,

Mademoiselle, I will repeat you some poetry.”

Assuming an attitude, she began, “La Ligue des Rats: fable de La

Fontaine.” She then declaimed the little piece with an attention to

punctuation and emphasis, a flexibility of voice and an appropriateness

of gesture, very unusual indeed at her age, and which proved she had

been carefully trained.

“Was it your mama who taught you that piece?” I asked.

“Yes, and she just used to say it in this way: ‘Qu’avez vous donc? lui

dit un de ces rats; parlez!’ She made me lift my hand—so—to remind me

to raise my voice at the question. Now shall I dance for you?”

“No, that will do: but after your mama went to the Holy Virgin, as you

say, with whom did you live then?”

“With Madame Frédéric and her husband: she took care of me, but she is

nothing related to me. I think she is poor, for she had not so fine a

house as mama. I was not long there. Mr. Rochester asked me if I would

like to go and live with him in England, and I said yes; for I knew Mr.

Rochester before I knew Madame Frédéric, and he was always kind to me

and gave me pretty dresses and toys: but you see he has not kept his

word, for he has brought me to England, and now he is gone back again

himself, and I never see him.”

After breakfast, Adèle and I withdrew to the library, which room, it

appears, Mr. Rochester had directed should be used as the schoolroom.

Most of the books were locked up behind glass doors; but there was one

bookcase left open containing everything that could be needed in the

way of elementary works, and several volumes of light literature,

poetry, biography, travels, a few romances, &c. I suppose he had

considered that these were all the governess would require for her

private perusal; and, indeed, they contented me amply for the present;

compared with the scanty pickings I had now and then been able to glean

at Lowood, they seemed to offer an abundant harvest of entertainment

and information. In this room, too, there was a cabinet piano, quite

new and of superior tone; also an easel for painting and a pair of

globes.

I found my pupil sufficiently docile, though disinclined to apply: she

had not been used to regular occupation of any kind. I felt it would be

injudicious to confine her too much at first; so, when I had talked to

her a great deal, and got her to learn a little, and when the morning

had advanced to noon, I allowed her to return to her nurse. I then

proposed to occupy myself till dinner-time in drawing some little

sketches for her use.

As I was going upstairs to fetch my portfolio and pencils, Mrs. Fairfax

called to me: “Your morning school-hours are over now, I suppose,” said

she. She was in a room the folding-doors of which stood open: I went in

when she addressed me. It was a large, stately apartment, with purple

chairs and curtains, a Turkey carpet, walnut-panelled walls, one vast

window rich in stained glass, and a lofty ceiling, nobly moulded. Mrs.

Fairfax was dusting some vases of fine purple spar, which stood on a

sideboard.

“What a beautiful room!” I exclaimed, as I looked round; for I had

never before seen any half so imposing.

“Yes; this is the dining-room. I have just opened the window, to let in

a little air and sunshine; for everything gets so damp in apartments

that are seldom inhabited; the drawing-room yonder feels like a vault.”

She pointed to a wide arch corresponding to the window, and hung like

it with a Tyrian-dyed curtain, now looped up. Mounting to it by two

broad steps, and looking through, I thought I caught a glimpse of a

fairy place, so bright to my novice-eyes appeared the view beyond. Yet

it was merely a very pretty drawing-room, and within it a boudoir, both

spread with white carpets, on which seemed laid brilliant garlands of

flowers; both ceiled with snowy mouldings of white grapes and

vine-leaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast crimson couches and

ottomans; while the ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of

sparkling Bohemian glass, ruby red; and between the windows large

mirrors repeated the general blending of snow and fire.

“In what order you keep these rooms, Mrs. Fairfax!” said I. “No dust,

no canvas coverings: except that the air feels chilly, one would think

they were inhabited daily.”

“Why, Miss Eyre, though Mr. Rochester’s visits here are rare, they are

always sudden and unexpected; and as I observed that it put him out to

find everything swathed up, and to have a bustle of arrangement on his

arrival, I thought it best to keep the rooms in readiness.”

“Is Mr. Rochester an exacting, fastidious sort of man?”

“Not particularly so; but he has a gentleman’s tastes and habits, and

he expects to have things managed in conformity to them.”

“Do you like him? Is he generally liked?”

“Oh, yes; the family have always been respected here. Almost all the

land in this neighbourhood, as far as you can see, has belonged to the

Rochesters time out of mind.”

“Well, but, leaving his land out of the question, do you like him? Is

he liked for himself?”

“_I_ have no cause to do otherwise than like him; and I believe he is

considered a just and liberal landlord by his tenants: but he has never

lived much amongst them.”

“But has he no peculiarities? What, in short, is his character?”

“Oh! his character is unimpeachable, I suppose. He is rather peculiar,

perhaps: he has travelled a great deal, and seen a great deal of the

world, I should think. I dare say he is clever, but I never had much

conversation with him.”

“In what way is he peculiar?”

“I don’t know—it is not easy to describe—nothing striking, but you feel

it when he speaks to you; you cannot be always sure whether he is in

jest or earnest, whether he is pleased or the contrary; you don’t

thoroughly understand him, in short—at least, I don’t: but it is of no

consequence, he is a very good master.”

This was all the account I got from Mrs. Fairfax of her employer and

mine. There are people who seem to have no notion of sketching a

character, or observing and describing salient points, either in

persons or things: the good lady evidently belonged to this class; my

queries puzzled, but did not draw her out. Mr. Rochester was Mr.

Rochester in her eyes; a gentleman, a landed proprietor—nothing more:

she inquired and searched no further, and evidently wondered at my wish

to gain a more definite notion of his identity.

When we left the dining-room, she proposed to show me over the rest of

the house; and I followed her upstairs and downstairs, admiring as I

went; for all was well arranged and handsome. The large front chambers

I thought especially grand: and some of the third-storey rooms, though

dark and low, were interesting from their air of antiquity. The

furniture once appropriated to the lower apartments had from time to

time been removed here, as fashions changed: and the imperfect light

entering by their narrow casement showed bedsteads of a hundred years

old; chests in oak or walnut, looking, with their strange carvings of

palm branches and cherubs’ heads, like types of the Hebrew ark; rows of

venerable chairs, high-backed and narrow; stools still more antiquated,

on whose cushioned tops were yet apparent traces of half-effaced

embroideries, wrought by fingers that for two generations had been

coffin-dust. All these relics gave to the third storey of Thornfield

Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine of memory. I liked the

hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats in the day; but I by

no means coveted a night’s repose on one of those wide and heavy beds:

shut in, some of them, with doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought

old English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of

strange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings,—all

which would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of

moonlight.

“Do the servants sleep in these rooms?” I asked.

“No; they occupy a range of smaller apartments to the back; no one ever

sleeps here: one would almost say that, if there were a ghost at

Thornfield Hall, this would be its haunt.”

“So I think: you have no ghost, then?”

“None that I ever heard of,” returned Mrs. Fairfax, smiling.

“Nor any traditions of one? no legends or ghost stories?”

“I believe not. And yet it is said the Rochesters have been rather a

violent than a quiet race in their time: perhaps, though, that is the

reason they rest tranquilly in their graves now.”

“Yes—‘after life’s fitful fever they sleep well,’” I muttered. “Where

are you going now, Mrs. Fairfax?” for she was moving away.

“On to the leads; will you come and see the view from thence?” I

followed still, up a very narrow staircase to the attics, and thence by

a ladder and through a trap-door to the roof of the hall. I was now on

a level with the crow colony, and could see into their nests. Leaning

over the battlements and looking far down, I surveyed the grounds laid

out like a map: the bright and velvet lawn closely girdling the grey

base of the mansion; the field, wide as a park, dotted with its ancient

timber; the wood, dun and sere, divided by a path visibly overgrown,

greener with moss than the trees were with foliage; the church at the

gates, the road, the tranquil hills, all reposing in the autumn day’s

sun; the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with

pearly white. No feature in the scene was extraordinary, but all was

pleasing. When I turned from it and repassed the trap-door, I could

scarcely see my way down the ladder; the attic seemed black as a vault

compared with that arch of blue air to which I had been looking up, and

to that sunlit scene of grove, pasture, and green hill, of which the

hall was the centre, and over which I had been gazing with delight.

Mrs. Fairfax stayed behind a moment to fasten the trap-door; I, by dint

of groping, found the outlet from the attic, and proceeded to descend

the narrow garret staircase. I lingered in the long passage to which

this led, separating the front and back rooms of the third storey:

narrow, low, and dim, with only one little window at the far end, and

looking, with its two rows of small black doors all shut, like a

corridor in some Bluebeard’s castle.

While I paced softly on, the last sound I expected to hear in so still

a region, a laugh, struck my ear. It was a curious laugh; distinct,

formal, mirthless. I stopped: the sound ceased, only for an instant; it

began again, louder: for at first, though distinct, it was very low. It

passed off in a clamorous peal that seemed to wake an echo in every

lonely chamber; though it originated but in one, and I could have

pointed out the door whence the accents issued.

“Mrs. Fairfax!” I called out: for I now heard her descending the great

stairs. “Did you hear that loud laugh? Who is it?”

“Some of the servants, very likely,” she answered: “perhaps Grace

Poole.”

“Did you hear it?” I again inquired.

“Yes, plainly: I often hear her: she sews in one of these rooms.

Sometimes Leah is with her; they are frequently noisy together.”

The laugh was repeated in its low, syllabic tone, and terminated in an

odd murmur.

“Grace!” exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax.

I really did not expect any Grace to answer; for the laugh was as

tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard; and, but that it

was high noon, and that no circumstance of ghostliness accompanied the

curious cachinnation; but that neither scene nor season favoured fear,

I should have been superstitiously afraid. However, the event showed me

I was a fool for entertaining a sense even of surprise.

The door nearest me opened, and a servant came out,—a woman of between

thirty and forty; a set, square-made figure, red-haired, and with a

hard, plain face: any apparition less romantic or less ghostly could

scarcely be conceived.

“Too much noise, Grace,” said Mrs. Fairfax. “Remember directions!”

Grace curtseyed silently and went in.

“She is a person we have to sew and assist Leah in her housemaid’s

work,” continued the widow; “not altogether unobjectionable in some

points, but she does well enough. By-the-bye, how have you got on with

your new pupil this morning?”

The conversation, thus turned on Adèle, continued till we reached the

light and cheerful region below. Adèle came running to meet us in the

hall, exclaiming—

“Mesdames, vous êtes servies!” adding, “J’ai bien faim, moi!”

We found dinner ready, and waiting for us in Mrs. Fairfax’s room.

CHAPTER XII

The promise of a smooth career, which my first calm introduction to

Thornfield Hall seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer

acquaintance with the place and its inmates. Mrs. Fairfax turned out to

be what she appeared, a placid-tempered, kind-natured woman, of

competent education and average intelligence. My pupil was a lively

child, who had been spoilt and indulged, and therefore was sometimes

wayward; but as she was committed entirely to my care, and no

injudicious interference from any quarter ever thwarted my plans for

her improvement, she soon forgot her little freaks, and became obedient

and teachable. She had no great talents, no marked traits of character,

no peculiar development of feeling or taste which raised her one inch

above the ordinary level of childhood; but neither had she any

deficiency or vice which sunk her below it. She made reasonable

progress, entertained for me a vivacious, though perhaps not very

profound, affection; and by her simplicity, gay prattle, and efforts to

please, inspired me, in return, with a degree of attachment sufficient

to make us both content in each other’s society.

This, _par parenthèse_, will be thought cool language by persons who

entertain solemn doctrines about the angelic nature of children, and

the duty of those charged with their education to conceive for them an

idolatrous devotion: but I am not writing to flatter parental egotism,

to echo cant, or prop up humbug; I am merely telling the truth. I felt

a conscientious solicitude for Adèle’s welfare and progress, and a

quiet liking for her little self: just as I cherished towards Mrs.

Fairfax a thankfulness for her kindness, and a pleasure in her society

proportionate to the tranquil regard she had for me, and the moderation

of her mind and character.

Anybody may blame me who likes, when I add further, that, now and then,

when I took a walk by myself in the grounds; when I went down to the

gates and looked through them along the road; or when, while Adèle

played with her nurse, and Mrs. Fairfax made jellies in the storeroom,

I climbed the three staircases, raised the trap-door of the attic, and

having reached the leads, looked out afar over sequestered field and

hill, and along dim sky-line—that then I longed for a power of vision

which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world,

towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen—that then I

desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of

intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character,

than was here within my reach. I valued what was good in Mrs. Fairfax,

and what was good in Adèle; but I believed in the existence of other

and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to

behold.

Who blames me? Many, no doubt; and I shall be called discontented. I

could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to

pain sometimes. Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of

the third storey, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and

solitude of the spot, and allow my mind’s eye to dwell on whatever

bright visions rose before it—and, certainly, they were many and

glowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement, which,

while it swelled it in trouble, expanded it with life; and, best of

all, to open my inward ear to a tale that was never ended—a tale my

imagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of

incident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual

existence.

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with

tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they

cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and

millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many

rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life

which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but

women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties,

and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they

suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely

as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged

fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making

puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and

embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them,

if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced

necessary for their sex.

When thus alone, I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole’s laugh: the same

peal, the same low, slow ha! ha! which, when first heard, had thrilled

me: I heard, too, her eccentric murmurs; stranger than her laugh. There

were days when she was quite silent; but there were others when I could

not account for the sounds she made. Sometimes I saw her: she would

come out of her room with a basin, or a plate, or a tray in her hand,

go down to the kitchen and shortly return, generally (oh, romantic

reader, forgive me for telling the plain truth!) bearing a pot of

porter. Her appearance always acted as a damper to the curiosity raised

by her oral oddities: hard-featured and staid, she had no point to

which interest could attach. I made some attempts to draw her into

conversation, but she seemed a person of few words: a monosyllabic

reply usually cut short every effort of that sort.

The other members of the household, viz., John and his wife, Leah the

housemaid, and Sophie the French nurse, were decent people; but in no

respect remarkable; with Sophie I used to talk French, and sometimes I

asked her questions about her native country; but she was not of a

descriptive or narrative turn, and generally gave such vapid and

confused answers as were calculated rather to check than encourage

inquiry.

October, November, December passed away. One afternoon in January, Mrs.

Fairfax had begged a holiday for Adèle, because she had a cold; and, as

Adèle seconded the request with an ardour that reminded me how precious

occasional holidays had been to me in my own childhood, I accorded it,

deeming that I did well in showing pliability on the point. It was a

fine, calm day, though very cold; I was tired of sitting still in the

library through a whole long morning: Mrs. Fairfax had just written a

letter which was waiting to be posted, so I put on my bonnet and cloak

and volunteered to carry it to Hay; the distance, two miles, would be a

pleasant winter afternoon walk. Having seen Adèle comfortably seated in

her little chair by Mrs. Fairfax’s parlour fireside, and given her her

best wax doll (which I usually kept enveloped in silver paper in a

drawer) to play with, and a story-book for change of amusement; and

having replied to her “Revenez bientôt, ma bonne amie, ma chère Mdlle.

Jeannette,” with a kiss, I set out.

The ground was hard, the air was still, my road was lonely; I walked

fast till I got warm, and then I walked slowly to enjoy and analyse the

species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and situation. It was

three o’clock; the church bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the

charm of the hour lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding

and pale-beaming sun. I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for

wild roses in summer, for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now

possessing a few coral treasures in hips and haws, but whose best

winter delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose. If a

breath of air stirred, it made no sound here; for there was not a

holly, not an evergreen to rustle, and the stripped hawthorn and hazel

bushes were as still as the white, worn stones which causewayed the

middle of the path. Far and wide, on each side, there were only fields,

where no cattle now browsed; and the little brown birds, which stirred

occasionally in the hedge, looked like single russet leaves that had

forgotten to drop.

This lane inclined up-hill all the way to Hay; having reached the

middle, I sat down on a stile which led thence into a field. Gathering

my mantle about me, and sheltering my hands in my muff, I did not feel

the cold, though it froze keenly; as was attested by a sheet of ice

covering the causeway, where a little brooklet, now congealed, had

overflowed after a rapid thaw some days since. From my seat I could

look down on Thornfield: the grey and battlemented hall was the

principal object in the vale below me; its woods and dark rookery rose

against the west. I lingered till the sun went down amongst the trees,

and sank crimson and clear behind them. I then turned eastward.

On the hill-top above me sat the rising moon; pale yet as a cloud, but

brightening momentarily, she looked over Hay, which, half lost in

trees, sent up a blue smoke from its few chimneys: it was yet a mile

distant, but in the absolute hush I could hear plainly its thin murmurs

of life. My ear, too, felt the flow of currents; in what dales and

depths I could not tell: but there were many hills beyond Hay, and

doubtless many becks threading their passes. That evening calm betrayed

alike the tinkle of the nearest streams, the sough of the most remote.

A rude noise broke on these fine ripplings and whisperings, at once so

far away and so clear: a positive tramp, tramp, a metallic clatter,

which effaced the soft wave-wanderings; as, in a picture, the solid

mass of a crag, or the rough boles of a great oak, drawn in dark and

strong on the foreground, efface the aërial distance of azure hill,

sunny horizon, and blended clouds where tint melts into tint.

The din was on the causeway: a horse was coming; the windings of the

lane yet hid it, but it approached. I was just leaving the stile; yet,

as the path was narrow, I sat still to let it go by. In those days I

was young, and all sorts of fancies bright and dark tenanted my mind:

the memories of nursery stories were there amongst other rubbish; and

when they recurred, maturing youth added to them a vigour and vividness

beyond what childhood could give. As this horse approached, and as I

watched for it to appear through the dusk, I remembered certain of

Bessie’s tales, wherein figured a North-of-England spirit called a

“Gytrash,” which, in the form of horse, mule, or large dog, haunted

solitary ways, and sometimes came upon belated travellers, as this

horse was now coming upon me.

It was very near, but not yet in sight; when, in addition to the tramp,

tramp, I heard a rush under the hedge, and close down by the hazel

stems glided a great dog, whose black and white colour made him a

distinct object against the trees. It was exactly one form of Bessie’s

Gytrash—a lion-like creature with long hair and a huge head: it passed

me, however, quietly enough; not staying to look up, with strange

pretercanine eyes, in my face, as I half expected it would. The horse

followed,—a tall steed, and on its back a rider. The man, the human

being, broke the spell at once. Nothing ever rode the Gytrash: it was

always alone; and goblins, to my notions, though they might tenant the

dumb carcasses of beasts, could scarce covet shelter in the commonplace

human form. No Gytrash was this,—only a traveller taking the short cut

to Millcote. He passed, and I went on; a few steps, and I turned: a

sliding sound and an exclamation of “What the deuce is to do now?” and

a clattering tumble, arrested my attention. Man and horse were down;

they had slipped on the sheet of ice which glazed the causeway. The dog

came bounding back, and seeing his master in a predicament, and hearing

the horse groan, barked till the evening hills echoed the sound, which

was deep in proportion to his magnitude. He snuffed round the prostrate

group, and then he ran up to me; it was all he could do,—there was no

other help at hand to summon. I obeyed him, and walked down to the

traveller, by this time struggling himself free of his steed. His

efforts were so vigorous, I thought he could not be much hurt; but I

asked him the question—

“Are you injured, sir?”

I think he was swearing, but am not certain; however, he was

pronouncing some formula which prevented him from replying to me

directly.

“Can I do anything?” I asked again.

“You must just stand on one side,” he answered as he rose, first to his

knees, and then to his feet. I did; whereupon began a heaving,

stamping, clattering process, accompanied by a barking and baying which

removed me effectually some yards’ distance; but I would not be driven

quite away till I saw the event. This was finally fortunate; the horse

was re-established, and the dog was silenced with a “Down, Pilot!” The

traveller now, stooping, felt his foot and leg, as if trying whether

they were sound; apparently something ailed them, for he halted to the

stile whence I had just risen, and sat down.

I was in the mood for being useful, or at least officious, I think, for

I now drew near him again.

“If you are hurt, and want help, sir, I can fetch some one either from

Thornfield Hall or from Hay.”

“Thank you: I shall do: I have no broken bones,—only a sprain;” and

again he stood up and tried his foot, but the result extorted an

involuntary “Ugh!”

Something of daylight still lingered, and the moon was waxing bright: I

could see him plainly. His figure was enveloped in a riding cloak, fur

collared and steel clasped; its details were not apparent, but I traced

the general points of middle height and considerable breadth of chest.

He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes and

gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now; he was past

youth, but had not reached middle-age; perhaps he might be thirty-five.

I felt no fear of him, and but little shyness. Had he been a handsome,

heroic-looking young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus

questioning him against his will, and offering my services unasked. I

had hardly ever seen a handsome youth; never in my life spoken to one.

I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance,

gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in

masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither

had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have

shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is

bright but antipathetic.

If even this stranger had smiled and been good-humoured to me when I

addressed him; if he had put off my offer of assistance gaily and with

thanks, I should have gone on my way and not felt any vocation to renew

inquiries: but the frown, the roughness of the traveller, set me at my

ease: I retained my station when he waved to me to go, and announced—

“I cannot think of leaving you, sir, at so late an hour, in this

solitary lane, till I see you are fit to mount your horse.”

He looked at me when I said this; he had hardly turned his eyes in my

direction before.

“I should think you ought to be at home yourself,” said he, “if you

have a home in this neighbourhood: where do you come from?”

“From just below; and I am not at all afraid of being out late when it

is moonlight: I will run over to Hay for you with pleasure, if you wish

it: indeed, I am going there to post a letter.”

“You live just below—do you mean at that house with the battlements?”

pointing to Thornfield Hall, on which the moon cast a hoary gleam,

bringing it out distinct and pale from the woods that, by contrast with

the western sky, now seemed one mass of shadow.

“Yes, sir.”

“Whose house is it?”

“Mr. Rochester’s.”

“Do you know Mr. Rochester?”

“No, I have never seen him.”

“He is not resident, then?”

“No.”

“Can you tell me where he is?”

“I cannot.”

“You are not a servant at the hall, of course. You are—” He stopped,

ran his eye over my dress, which, as usual, was quite simple: a black

merino cloak, a black beaver bonnet; neither of them half fine enough

for a lady’s-maid. He seemed puzzled to decide what I was; I helped

him.

“I am the governess.”

“Ah, the governess!” he repeated; “deuce take me, if I had not

forgotten! The governess!” and again my raiment underwent scrutiny. In

two minutes he rose from the stile: his face expressed pain when he

tried to move.

“I cannot commission you to fetch help,” he said; “but you may help me

a little yourself, if you will be so kind.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have not an umbrella that I can use as a stick?”

“No.”

“Try to get hold of my horse’s bridle and lead him to me: you are not

afraid?”

I should have been afraid to touch a horse when alone, but when told to

do it, I was disposed to obey. I put down my muff on the stile, and

went up to the tall steed; I endeavoured to catch the bridle, but it

was a spirited thing, and would not let me come near its head; I made

effort on effort, though in vain: meantime, I was mortally afraid of

its trampling fore-feet. The traveller waited and watched for some

time, and at last he laughed.

I was mortally afraid of its trampling forefeet

“I see,” he said, “the mountain will never be brought to Mahomet, so

all you can do is to aid Mahomet to go to the mountain; I must beg of

you to come here.”

I came. “Excuse me,” he continued: “necessity compels me to make you

useful.” He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, and leaning on me with

some stress, limped to his horse. Having once caught the bridle, he

mastered it directly and sprang to his saddle; grimacing grimly as he

made the effort, for it wrenched his sprain.

“Now,” said he, releasing his under lip from a hard bite, “just hand me

my whip; it lies there under the hedge.”

I sought it and found it.

“Thank you; now make haste with the letter to Hay, and return as fast

as you can.”

A touch of a spurred heel made his horse first start and rear, and then

bound away; the dog rushed in his traces; all three vanished,

“Like heath that, in the wilderness,

The wild wind whirls away.”

I took up my muff and walked on. The incident had occurred and was gone

for me: it _was_ an incident of no moment, no romance, no interest in a

sense; yet it marked with change one single hour of a monotonous life.

My help had been needed and claimed; I had given it: I was pleased to

have done something; trivial, transitory though the deed was, it was

yet an active thing, and I was weary of an existence all passive. The

new face, too, was like a new picture introduced to the gallery of

memory; and it was dissimilar to all the others hanging there: firstly,

because it was masculine; and, secondly, because it was dark, strong,

and stern. I had it still before me when I entered Hay, and slipped the

letter into the post-office; I saw it as I walked fast down-hill all

the way home. When I came to the stile, I stopped a minute, looked

round and listened, with an idea that a horse’s hoofs might ring on the

causeway again, and that a rider in a cloak, and a Gytrash-like

Newfoundland dog, might be again apparent: I saw only the hedge and a

pollard willow before me, rising up still and straight to meet the

moonbeams; I heard only the faintest waft of wind roaming fitful among

the trees round Thornfield, a mile distant; and when I glanced down in

the direction of the murmur, my eye, traversing the hall-front, caught

a light kindling in a window: it reminded me that I was late, and I

hurried on.

I did not like re-entering Thornfield. To pass its threshold was to

return to stagnation; to cross the silent hall, to ascend the darksome

staircase, to seek my own lonely little room, and then to meet tranquil

Mrs. Fairfax, and spend the long winter evening with her, and her only,

was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk,—to slip

again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too

still existence; of an existence whose very privileges of security and

ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating. What good it would have

done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain

struggling life, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience

to long for the calm amidst which I now repined! Yes, just as much good

as it would do a man tired of sitting still in a “too easy chair” to

take a long walk: and just as natural was the wish to stir, under my

circumstances, as it would be under his.

I lingered at the gates; I lingered on the lawn; I paced backwards and

forwards on the pavement; the shutters of the glass door were closed; I

could not see into the interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed

drawn from the gloomy house—from the grey hollow filled with rayless

cells, as it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me,—a blue sea

absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march;

her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which

she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith,

midnight dark in its fathomless depth and measureless distance; and for

those trembling stars that followed her course; they made my heart

tremble, my veins glow when I viewed them. Little things recall us to

earth; the clock struck in the hall; that sufficed; I turned from moon

and stars, opened a side-door, and went in.

The hall was not dark, nor yet was it lit, only by the high-hung bronze

lamp; a warm glow suffused both it and the lower steps of the oak

staircase. This ruddy shine issued from the great dining-room, whose

two-leaved door stood open, and showed a genial fire in the grate,

glancing on marble hearth and brass fire-irons, and revealing purple

draperies and polished furniture, in the most pleasant radiance. It

revealed, too, a group near the mantelpiece: I had scarcely caught it,

and scarcely become aware of a cheerful mingling of voices, amongst

which I seemed to distinguish the tones of Adèle, when the door closed.

I hastened to Mrs. Fairfax’s room; there was a fire there too, but no

candle, and no Mrs. Fairfax. Instead, all alone, sitting upright on the

rug, and gazing with gravity at the blaze, I beheld a great black and

white long-haired dog, just like the Gytrash of the lane. It was so

like it that I went forward and said—“Pilot,” and the thing got up and

came to me and snuffed me. I caressed him, and he wagged his great

tail; but he looked an eerie creature to be alone with, and I could not

tell whence he had come. I rang the bell, for I wanted a candle; and I

wanted, too, to get an account of this visitant. Leah entered.

“What dog is this?”

“He came with master.”

“With whom?”

“With master—Mr. Rochester—he is just arrived.”

“Indeed! and is Mrs. Fairfax with him?”

“Yes, and Miss Adèle; they are in the dining-room, and John is gone for

a surgeon; for master has had an accident; his horse fell and his ankle

is sprained.”

“Did the horse fall in Hay Lane?”

“Yes, coming down-hill; it slipped on some ice.”

“Ah! Bring me a candle will you Leah?”

Leah brought it; she entered, followed by Mrs. Fairfax, who repeated

the news; adding that Mr. Carter the surgeon was come, and was now with

Mr. Rochester: then she hurried out to give orders about tea, and I

went upstairs to take off my things.

CHAPTER XIII

Mr. Rochester, it seems, by the surgeon’s orders, went to bed early

that night; nor did he rise soon next morning. When he did come down,

it was to attend to business: his agent and some of his tenants were

arrived, and waiting to speak with him.

Adèle and I had now to vacate the library: it would be in daily

requisition as a reception-room for callers. A fire was lit in an

apartment upstairs, and there I carried our books, and arranged it for

the future schoolroom. I discerned in the course of the morning that

Thornfield Hall was a changed place: no longer silent as a church, it

echoed every hour or two to a knock at the door, or a clang of the

bell; steps, too, often traversed the hall, and new voices spoke in

different keys below; a rill from the outer world was flowing through

it; it had a master: for my part, I liked it better.

Adèle was not easy to teach that day; she could not apply: she kept

running to the door and looking over the banisters to see if she could

get a glimpse of Mr. Rochester; then she coined pretexts to go

downstairs, in order, as I shrewdly suspected, to visit the library,

where I knew she was not wanted; then, when I got a little angry, and

made her sit still, she continued to talk incessantly of her “ami,

Monsieur Edouard Fairfax _de_ Rochester,” as she dubbed him (I had not

before heard his prenomens), and to conjecture what presents he had

brought her: for it appears he had intimated the night before, that

when his luggage came from Millcote, there would be found amongst it a

little box in whose contents she had an interest.

“Et cela doit signifier,” said she, “qu’il y aura là dedans un cadeau

pour moi, et peut-être pour vous aussi, mademoiselle. Monsieur a parlé

de vous: il m’a demandé le nom de ma gouvernante, et si elle n’était

pas une petite personne, assez mince et un peu pâle. J’ai dit qu’oui:

car c’est vrai, n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle?”

I and my pupil dined as usual in Mrs. Fairfax’s parlour; the afternoon

was wild and snowy, and we passed it in the schoolroom. At dark I

allowed Adèle to put away books and work, and to run downstairs; for,

from the comparative silence below, and from the cessation of appeals

to the door-bell, I conjectured that Mr. Rochester was now at liberty.

Left alone, I walked to the window; but nothing was to be seen thence:

twilight and snowflakes together thickened the air, and hid the very

shrubs on the lawn. I let down the curtain and went back to the

fireside.

In the clear embers I was tracing a view, not unlike a picture I

remembered to have seen of the castle of Heidelberg, on the Rhine, when

Mrs. Fairfax came in, breaking up by her entrance the fiery mosaic I

had been piercing together, and scattering too some heavy unwelcome

thoughts that were beginning to throng on my solitude.

“Mr. Rochester would be glad if you and your pupil would take tea with

him in the drawing-room this evening,” said she: “he has been so much

engaged all day that he could not ask to see you before.”

“When is his tea-time?” I inquired.

“Oh, at six o’clock: he keeps early hours in the country. You had

better change your frock now; I will go with you and fasten it. Here is

a candle.”

“Is it necessary to change my frock?”

“Yes, you had better: I always dress for the evening when Mr. Rochester

is here.”

This additional ceremony seemed somewhat stately; however, I repaired

to my room, and, with Mrs. Fairfax’s aid, replaced my black stuff dress

by one of black silk; the best and the only additional one I had,

except one of light grey, which, in my Lowood notions of the toilette,

I thought too fine to be worn, except on first-rate occasions.

“You want a brooch,” said Mrs. Fairfax. I had a single little pearl

ornament which Miss Temple gave me as a parting keepsake: I put it on,

and then we went downstairs. Unused as I was to strangers, it was

rather a trial to appear thus formally summoned in Mr. Rochester’s

presence. I let Mrs. Fairfax precede me into the dining-room, and kept

in her shade as we crossed that apartment; and, passing the arch, whose

curtain was now dropped, entered the elegant recess beyond.

Two wax candles stood lighted on the table, and two on the mantelpiece;

basking in the light and heat of a superb fire, lay Pilot—Adèle knelt

near him. Half reclined on a couch appeared Mr. Rochester, his foot

supported by the cushion; he was looking at Adèle and the dog: the fire

shone full on his face. I knew my traveller with his broad and jetty

eyebrows; his square forehead, made squarer by the horizontal sweep of

his black hair. I recognised his decisive nose, more remarkable for

character than beauty; his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler;

his grim mouth, chin, and jaw—yes, all three were very grim, and no

mistake. His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonised in

squareness with his physiognomy: I suppose it was a good figure in the

athletic sense of the term—broad chested and thin flanked, though

neither tall nor graceful.

Mr. Rochester must have been aware of the entrance of Mrs. Fairfax and

myself; but it appeared he was not in the mood to notice us, for he

never lifted his head as we approached.

“Here is Miss Eyre, sir,” said Mrs. Fairfax, in her quiet way. He

bowed, still not taking his eyes from the group of the dog and child.

“Let Miss Eyre be seated,” said he: and there was something in the

forced stiff bow, in the impatient yet formal tone, which seemed

further to express, “What the deuce is it to me whether Miss Eyre be

there or not? At this moment I am not disposed to accost her.”

I sat down quite disembarrassed. A reception of finished politeness

would probably have confused me: I could not have returned or repaid it

by answering grace and elegance on my part; but harsh caprice laid me

under no obligation; on the contrary, a decent quiescence, under the

freak of manner, gave me the advantage. Besides, the eccentricity of

the proceeding was piquant: I felt interested to see how he would go

on.

He went on as a statue would, that is, he neither spoke nor moved. Mrs.

Fairfax seemed to think it necessary that some one should be amiable,

and she began to talk. Kindly, as usual—and, as usual, rather trite—she

condoled with him on the pressure of business he had had all day; on

the annoyance it must have been to him with that painful sprain: then

she commended his patience and perseverance in going through with it.

“Madam, I should like some tea,” was the sole rejoinder she got. She

hastened to ring the bell; and when the tray came, she proceeded to

arrange the cups, spoons, &c., with assiduous celerity. I and Adèle

went to the table; but the master did not leave his couch.

“Will you hand Mr. Rochester’s cup?” said Mrs. Fairfax to me; “Adèle

might perhaps spill it.”

I did as requested. As he took the cup from my hand, Adèle, thinking

the moment propitious for making a request in my favour, cried out—

“N’est-ce pas, monsieur, qu’il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Eyre

dans votre petit coffre?”

“Who talks of cadeaux?” said he gruffly. “Did you expect a present,

Miss Eyre? Are you fond of presents?” and he searched my face with eyes

that I saw were dark, irate, and piercing.

“I hardly know, sir; I have little experience of them: they are

generally thought pleasant things.”

“Generally thought? But what do _you_ think?”

“I should be obliged to take time, sir, before I could give you an

answer worthy of your acceptance: a present has many faces to it, has

it not? and one should consider all, before pronouncing an opinion as

to its nature.”

“Miss Eyre, you are not so unsophisticated as Adèle: she demands a

‘cadeau,’ clamorously, the moment she sees me: you beat about the

bush.”

“Because I have less confidence in my deserts than Adèle has: she can

prefer the claim of old acquaintance, and the right too of custom; for

she says you have always been in the habit of giving her playthings;

but if I had to make out a case I should be puzzled, since I am a

stranger, and have done nothing to entitle me to an acknowledgment.”

“Oh, don’t fall back on over-modesty! I have examined Adèle, and find

you have taken great pains with her: she is not bright, she has no

talents; yet in a short time she has made much improvement.”

“Sir, you have now given me my ‘cadeau;’ I am obliged to you: it is the

meed teachers most covet—praise of their pupils’ progress.”

“Humph!” said Mr. Rochester, and he took his tea in silence.

“Come to the fire,” said the master, when the tray was taken away, and

Mrs. Fairfax had settled into a corner with her knitting; while Adèle

was leading me by the hand round the room, showing me the beautiful

books and ornaments on the consoles and chiffonnières. We obeyed, as in

duty bound; Adèle wanted to take a seat on my knee, but she was ordered

to amuse herself with Pilot.

“You have been resident in my house three months?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you came from—?”

“From Lowood school, in ——shire.”

“Ah! a charitable concern. How long were you there?”

“Eight years.”

“Eight years! you must be tenacious of life. I thought half the time in

such a place would have done up any constitution! No wonder you have

rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that

sort of face. When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I thought

unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand whether you

had bewitched my horse: I am not sure yet. Who are your parents?”

“I have none.”

“Nor ever had, I suppose: do you remember them?”

“No.”

“I thought not. And so you were waiting for your people when you sat on

that stile?”

“For whom, sir?”

“For the men in green: it was a proper moonlight evening for them. Did

I break through one of your rings, that you spread that damned ice on

the causeway?”

I shook my head. “The men in green all forsook England a hundred years

ago,” said I, speaking as seriously as he had done. “And not even in

Hay Lane, or the fields about it, could you find a trace of them. I

don’t think either summer or harvest, or winter moon, will ever shine

on their revels more.”

Mrs. Fairfax had dropped her knitting, and, with raised eyebrows,

seemed wondering what sort of talk this was.

“Well,” resumed Mr. Rochester, “if you disown parents, you must have

some sort of kinsfolk: uncles and aunts?”

“No; none that I ever saw.”

“And your home?”

“I have none.”

“Where do your brothers and sisters live?”

“I have no brothers or sisters.”

“Who recommended you to come here?”

“I advertised, and Mrs. Fairfax answered my advertisement.”

“Yes,” said the good lady, who now knew what ground we were upon, “and

I am daily thankful for the choice Providence led me to make. Miss Eyre

has been an invaluable companion to me, and a kind and careful teacher

to Adèle.”

“Don’t trouble yourself to give her a character,” returned Mr.

Rochester: “eulogiums will not bias me; I shall judge for myself. She

began by felling my horse.”

“Sir?” said Mrs. Fairfax.

“I have to thank her for this sprain.”

The widow looked bewildered.

“Miss Eyre, have you ever lived in a town?”

“No, sir.”

“Have you seen much society?”

“None but the pupils and teachers of Lowood, and now the inmates of

Thornfield.”

“Have you read much?”

“Only such books as came in my way; and they have not been numerous or

very learned.”

“You have lived the life of a nun: no doubt you are well drilled in

religious forms;—Brocklehurst, who I understand directs Lowood, is a

parson, is he not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you girls probably worshipped him, as a convent full of

religieuses would worship their director.”

“Oh, no.”

“You are very cool! No! What! a novice not worship her priest! That

sounds blasphemous.”

“I disliked Mr. Brocklehurst; and I was not alone in the feeling. He is

a harsh man; at once pompous and meddling; he cut off our hair; and for

economy’s sake bought us bad needles and thread, with which we could

hardly sew.”

“That was very false economy,” remarked Mrs. Fairfax, who now again

caught the drift of the dialogue.

“And was that the head and front of his offending?” demanded Mr.

Rochester.

“He starved us when he had the sole superintendence of the provision

department, before the committee was appointed; and he bored us with

long lectures once a week, and with evening readings from books of his

own inditing, about sudden deaths and judgments, which made us afraid

to go to bed.”

“What age were you when you went to Lowood?”

“About ten.”

“And you stayed there eight years: you are now, then, eighteen?”

I assented.

“Arithmetic, you see, is useful; without its aid, I should hardly have

been able to guess your age. It is a point difficult to fix where the

features and countenance are so much at variance as in your case. And

now what did you learn at Lowood? Can you play?”

“A little.”

“Of course: that is the established answer. Go into the library—I mean,

if you please.—(Excuse my tone of command; I am used to say, ‘Do this,’

and it is done: I cannot alter my customary habits for one new

inmate.)—Go, then, into the library; take a candle with you; leave the

door open; sit down to the piano, and play a tune.”

I departed, obeying his directions.

“Enough!” he called out in a few minutes. “You play _a little_, I see;

like any other English school-girl; perhaps rather better than some,

but not well.”

I closed the piano and returned. Mr. Rochester continued—

“Adèle showed me some sketches this morning, which she said were yours.

I don’t know whether they were entirely of your doing; probably a

master aided you?”

“No, indeed!” I interjected.

“Ah! that pricks pride. Well, fetch me your portfolio, if you can vouch

for its contents being original; but don’t pass your word unless you

are certain: I can recognise patchwork.”

“Then I will say nothing, and you shall judge for yourself, sir.”

I brought the portfolio from the library.

“Approach the table,” said he; and I wheeled it to his couch. Adèle and

Mrs. Fairfax drew near to see the pictures.

“No crowding,” said Mr. Rochester: “take the drawings from my hand as I

finish with them; but don’t push your faces up to mine.”

He deliberately scrutinised each sketch and painting. Three he laid

aside; the others, when he had examined them, he swept from him.

“Take them off to the other table, Mrs. Fairfax,” said he, “and look at

them with Adèle;—you” (glancing at me) “resume your seat, and answer my

questions. I perceive those pictures were done by one hand: was that

hand yours?”

“Yes.”

“And when did you find time to do them? They have taken much time, and

some thought.”

“I did them in the last two vacations I spent at Lowood, when I had no

other occupation.”

“Where did you get your copies?”

“Out of my head.”

“That head I see now on your shoulders?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Has it other furniture of the same kind within?”

“I should think it may have: I should hope—better.”

He spread the pictures before him, and again surveyed them alternately.

While he is so occupied, I will tell you, reader, what they are: and

first, I must premise that they are nothing wonderful. The subjects

had, indeed, risen vividly on my mind. As I saw them with the spiritual

eye, before I attempted to embody them, they were striking; but my hand

would not second my fancy, and in each case it had wrought out but a

pale portrait of the thing I had conceived.

These pictures were in water-colours. The first represented clouds low

and livid, rolling over a swollen sea: all the distance was in eclipse;

so, too, was the foreground; or rather, the nearest billows, for there

was no land. One gleam of light lifted into relief a half-submerged

mast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and large, with wings flecked with

foam; its beak held a gold bracelet set with gems, that I had touched

with as brilliant tints as my palette could yield, and as glittering

distinctness as my pencil could impart. Sinking below the bird and

mast, a drowned corpse glanced through the green water; a fair arm was

the only limb clearly visible, whence the bracelet had been washed or

torn.

The second picture contained for foreground only the dim peak of a

hill, with grass and some leaves slanting as if by a breeze. Beyond and

above spread an expanse of sky, dark blue as at twilight: rising into

the sky was a woman’s shape to the bust, portrayed in tints as dusk and

soft as I could combine. The dim forehead was crowned with a star; the

lineaments below were seen as through the suffusion of vapour; the eyes

shone dark and wild; the hair streamed shadowy, like a beamless cloud

torn by storm or by electric travail. On the neck lay a pale reflection

like moonlight; the same faint lustre touched the train of thin clouds

from which rose and bowed this vision of the Evening Star.

The third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter

sky: a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close

serried, along the horizon. Throwing these into distance, rose, in the

foreground, a head,—a colossal head, inclined towards the iceberg, and

resting against it. Two thin hands, joined under the forehead, and

supporting it, drew up before the lower features a sable veil; a brow

quite bloodless, white as bone, and an eye hollow and fixed, blank of

meaning but for the glassiness of despair, alone were visible. Above

the temples, amidst wreathed turban folds of black drapery, vague in

its character and consistency as cloud, gleamed a ring of white flame,

gemmed with sparkles of a more lurid tinge. This pale crescent was “the

likeness of a kingly crown;” what it diademed was “the shape which

shape had none.”

“Were you happy when you painted these pictures?” asked Mr. Rochester

presently.

“I was absorbed, sir: yes, and I was happy. To paint them, in short,

was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known.”

“That is not saying much. Your pleasures, by your own account, have

been few; but I daresay you did exist in a kind of artist’s dreamland

while you blent and arranged these strange tints. Did you sit at them

long each day?”

“I had nothing else to do, because it was the vacation, and I sat at

them from morning till noon, and from noon till night: the length of

the midsummer days favoured my inclination to apply.”

“And you felt self-satisfied with the result of your ardent labours?”

“Far from it. I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my

handiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was quite

powerless to realise.”

“Not quite: you have secured the shadow of your thought; but no more,

probably. You had not enough of the artist’s skill and science to give

it full being: yet the drawings are, for a school-girl, peculiar. As to

the thoughts, they are elfish. These eyes in the Evening Star you must

have seen in a dream. How could you make them look so clear, and yet

not at all brilliant? for the planet above quells their rays. And what

meaning is that in their solemn depth? And who taught you to paint

wind? There is a high gale in that sky, and on this hill-top. Where did

you see Latmos? For that is Latmos. There! put the drawings away!”

I had scarce tied the strings of the portfolio, when, looking at his

watch, he said abruptly—

“It is nine o’clock: what are you about, Miss Eyre, to let Adèle sit up

so long? Take her to bed.”

Adèle went to kiss him before quitting the room: he endured the caress,

but scarcely seemed to relish it more than Pilot would have done, nor

so much.

“I wish you all good-night, now,” said he, making a movement of the

hand towards the door, in token that he was tired of our company, and

wished to dismiss us. Mrs. Fairfax folded up her knitting: I took my

portfolio: we curtseyed to him, received a frigid bow in return, and so

withdrew.

“You said Mr. Rochester was not strikingly peculiar, Mrs. Fairfax,” I

observed, when I rejoined her in her room, after putting Adèle to bed.

“Well, is he?”

“I think so: he is very changeful and abrupt.”

“True: no doubt he may appear so to a stranger, but I am so accustomed

to his manner, I never think of it; and then, if he has peculiarities

of temper, allowance should be made.”

“Why?”

“Partly because it is his nature—and we can none of us help our nature;

and partly because he has painful thoughts, no doubt, to harass him,

and make his spirits unequal.”

“What about?”

“Family troubles, for one thing.”

“But he has no family.”

“Not now, but he has had—or, at least, relatives. He lost his elder

brother a few years since.”

“His _elder_ brother?”

“Yes. The present Mr. Rochester has not been very long in possession of

the property; only about nine years.”

“Nine years is a tolerable time. Was he so very fond of his brother as

to be still inconsolable for his loss?”

“Why, no—perhaps not. I believe there were some misunderstandings

between them. Mr. Rowland Rochester was not quite just to Mr. Edward;

and perhaps he prejudiced his father against him. The old gentleman was

fond of money, and anxious to keep the family estate together. He did

not like to diminish the property by division, and yet he was anxious

that Mr. Edward should have wealth, too, to keep up the consequence of

the name; and, soon after he was of age, some steps were taken that

were not quite fair, and made a great deal of mischief. Old Mr.

Rochester and Mr. Rowland combined to bring Mr. Edward into what he

considered a painful position, for the sake of making his fortune: what

the precise nature of that position was I never clearly knew, but his

spirit could not brook what he had to suffer in it. He is not very

forgiving: he broke with his family, and now for many years he has led

an unsettled kind of life. I don’t think he has ever been resident at

Thornfield for a fortnight together, since the death of his brother

without a will left him master of the estate; and, indeed, no wonder he

shuns the old place.”

“Why should he shun it?”

“Perhaps he thinks it gloomy.”

The answer was evasive. I should have liked something clearer; but Mrs.

Fairfax either could not, or would not, give me more explicit

information of the origin and nature of Mr. Rochester’s trials. She

averred they were a mystery to herself, and that what she knew was

chiefly from conjecture. It was evident, indeed, that she wished me to

drop the subject, which I did accordingly.

CHAPTER XIV

For several subsequent days I saw little of Mr. Rochester. In the

mornings he seemed much engaged with business, and, in the afternoon,

gentlemen from Millcote or the neighbourhood called, and sometimes

stayed to dine with him. When his sprain was well enough to admit of

horse exercise, he rode out a good deal; probably to return these

visits, as he generally did not come back till late at night.

During this interval, even Adèle was seldom sent for to his presence,

and all my acquaintance with him was confined to an occasional

rencontre in the hall, on the stairs, or in the gallery, when he would

sometimes pass me haughtily and coldly, just acknowledging my presence

by a distant nod or a cool glance, and sometimes bow and smile with

gentlemanlike affability. His changes of mood did not offend me,

because I saw that I had nothing to do with their alternation; the ebb

and flow depended on causes quite disconnected with me.

One day he had had company to dinner, and had sent for my portfolio; in

order, doubtless, to exhibit its contents: the gentlemen went away

early, to attend a public meeting at Millcote, as Mrs. Fairfax informed

me; but the night being wet and inclement, Mr. Rochester did not

accompany them. Soon after they were gone he rang the bell: a message

came that I and Adèle were to go downstairs. I brushed Adèle’s hair and

made her neat, and having ascertained that I was myself in my usual

Quaker trim, where there was nothing to retouch—all being too close and

plain, braided locks included, to admit of disarrangement—we descended,

Adèle wondering whether the _petit coffre_ was at length come; for,

owing to some mistake, its arrival had hitherto been delayed. She was

gratified: there it stood, a little carton, on the table when we

entered the dining-room. She appeared to know it by instinct.

“Ma boite! ma boite!” exclaimed she, running towards it.

“Yes, there is your ‘boite’ at last: take it into a corner, you genuine

daughter of Paris, and amuse yourself with disembowelling it,” said the

deep and rather sarcastic voice of Mr. Rochester, proceeding from the

depths of an immense easy-chair at the fireside. “And mind,” he

continued, “don’t bother me with any details of the anatomical process,

or any notice of the condition of the entrails: let your operation be

conducted in silence: tiens-toi tranquille, enfant; comprends-tu?”

Adèle seemed scarcely to need the warning; she had already retired to a

sofa with her treasure, and was busy untying the cord which secured the

lid. Having removed this impediment, and lifted certain silvery

envelopes of tissue paper, she merely exclaimed—

“Oh ciel! Que c’est beau!” and then remained absorbed in ecstatic

contemplation.

“Is Miss Eyre there?” now demanded the master, half rising from his

seat to look round to the door, near which I still stood.

“Ah! well, come forward; be seated here.” He drew a chair near his own.

“I am not fond of the prattle of children,” he continued; “for, old

bachelor as I am, I have no pleasant associations connected with their

lisp. It would be intolerable to me to pass a whole evening

_tête-à-tête_ with a brat. Don’t draw that chair farther off, Miss

Eyre; sit down exactly where I placed it—if you please, that is.

Confound these civilities! I continually forget them. Nor do I

particularly affect simple-minded old ladies. By-the-bye, I must have

mine in mind; it won’t do to neglect her; she is a Fairfax, or wed to

one; and blood is said to be thicker than water.”

He rang, and despatched an invitation to Mrs. Fairfax, who soon

arrived, knitting-basket in hand.

“Good evening, madam; I sent to you for a charitable purpose. I have

forbidden Adèle to talk to me about her presents, and she is bursting

with repletion; have the goodness to serve her as auditress and

interlocutrice; it will be one of the most benevolent acts you ever

performed.”

Adèle, indeed, no sooner saw Mrs. Fairfax, than she summoned her to her

sofa, and there quickly filled her lap with the porcelain, the ivory,

the waxen contents of her “boite;” pouring out, meantime, explanations

and raptures in such broken English as she was mistress of.

“Now I have performed the part of a good host,” pursued Mr. Rochester,

“put my guests into the way of amusing each other, I ought to be at

liberty to attend to my own pleasure. Miss Eyre, draw your chair still

a little farther forward: you are yet too far back; I cannot see you

without disturbing my position in this comfortable chair, which I have

no mind to do.”

I did as I was bid, though I would much rather have remained somewhat

in the shade; but Mr. Rochester had such a direct way of giving orders,

it seemed a matter of course to obey him promptly.

We were, as I have said, in the dining-room: the lustre, which had been

lit for dinner, filled the room with a festal breadth of light; the

large fire was all red and clear; the purple curtains hung rich and

ample before the lofty window and loftier arch; everything was still,

save the subdued chat of Adèle (she dared not speak loud), and, filling

up each pause, the beating of winter rain against the panes.

Mr. Rochester, as he sat in his damask-covered chair, looked different

to what I had seen him look before; not quite so stern—much less

gloomy. There was a smile on his lips, and his eyes sparkled, whether

with wine or not, I am not sure; but I think it very probable. He was,

in short, in his after-dinner mood; more expanded and genial, and also

more self-indulgent than the frigid and rigid temper of the morning;

still he looked preciously grim, cushioning his massive head against

the swelling back of his chair, and receiving the light of the fire on

his granite-hewn features, and in his great, dark eyes; for he had

great, dark eyes, and very fine eyes, too—not without a certain change

in their depths sometimes, which, if it was not softness, reminded you,

at least, of that feeling.

He had been looking two minutes at the fire, and I had been looking the

same length of time at him, when, turning suddenly, he caught my gaze

fastened on his physiognomy.

“You examine me, Miss Eyre,” said he: “do you think me handsome?”

I should, if I had deliberated, have replied to this question by

something conventionally vague and polite; but the answer somehow

slipped from my tongue before I was aware—“No, sir.”

“Ah! By my word! there is something singular about you,” said he: “you

have the air of a little _nonnette_; quaint, quiet, grave, and simple,

as you sit with your hands before you, and your eyes generally bent on

the carpet (except, by-the-bye, when they are directed piercingly to my

face; as just now, for instance); and when one asks you a question, or

makes a remark to which you are obliged to reply, you rap out a round

rejoinder, which, if not blunt, is at least brusque. What do you mean

by it?”

“Sir, I was too plain; I beg your pardon. I ought to have replied that

it was not easy to give an impromptu answer to a question about

appearances; that tastes mostly differ; and that beauty is of little

consequence, or something of that sort.”

“You ought to have replied no such thing. Beauty of little consequence,

indeed! And so, under pretence of softening the previous outrage, of

stroking and soothing me into placidity, you stick a sly penknife under

my ear! Go on: what fault do you find with me, pray? I suppose I have

all my limbs and all my features like any other man?”

“Mr. Rochester, allow me to disown my first answer: I intended no

pointed repartee: it was only a blunder.”

“Just so: I think so: and you shall be answerable for it. Criticise me:

does my forehead not please you?”

He lifted up the sable waves of hair which lay horizontally over his

brow, and showed a solid enough mass of intellectual organs, but an

abrupt deficiency where the suave sign of benevolence should have

risen.

“Now, ma’am, am I a fool?”

“Far from it, sir. You would, perhaps, think me rude if I inquired in

return whether you are a philanthropist?”

“There again! Another stick of the penknife, when she pretended to pat

my head: and that is because I said I did not like the society of

children and old women (low be it spoken!). No, young lady, I am not a

general philanthropist; but I bear a conscience;” and he pointed to the

prominences which are said to indicate that faculty, and which,

fortunately for him, were sufficiently conspicuous; giving, indeed, a

marked breadth to the upper part of his head: “and, besides, I once had

a kind of rude tenderness of heart. When I was as old as you, I was a

feeling fellow enough; partial to the unfledged, unfostered, and

unlucky; but Fortune has knocked me about since: she has even kneaded

me with her knuckles, and now I flatter myself I am hard and tough as

an India-rubber ball; pervious, though, through a chink or two still,

and with one sentient point in the middle of the lump. Yes: does that

leave hope for me?”

“Hope of what, sir?”

“Of my final re-transformation from India-rubber back to flesh?”

“Decidedly he has had too much wine,” I thought; and I did not know

what answer to make to his queer question: how could I tell whether he

was capable of being re-transformed?

“You looked very much puzzled, Miss Eyre; and though you are not pretty

any more than I am handsome, yet a puzzled air becomes you; besides, it

is convenient, for it keeps those searching eyes of yours away from my

physiognomy, and busies them with the worsted flowers of the rug; so

puzzle on. Young lady, I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative

to-night.”

With this announcement he rose from his chair, and stood, leaning his

arm on the marble mantelpiece: in that attitude his shape was seen

plainly as well as his face; his unusual breadth of chest,

disproportionate almost to his length of limb. I am sure most people

would have thought him an ugly man; yet there was so much unconscious

pride in his port; so much ease in his demeanour; such a look of

complete indifference to his own external appearance; so haughty a

reliance on the power of other qualities, intrinsic or adventitious, to

atone for the lack of mere personal attractiveness, that, in looking at

him, one inevitably shared the indifference, and, even in a blind,

imperfect sense, put faith in the confidence.

“I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative to-night,” he

repeated, “and that is why I sent for you: the fire and the chandelier

were not sufficient company for me; nor would Pilot have been, for none

of these can talk. Adèle is a degree better, but still far below the

mark; Mrs. Fairfax ditto; you, I am persuaded, can suit me if you will:

you puzzled me the first evening I invited you down here. I have almost

forgotten you since: other ideas have driven yours from my head; but

to-night I am resolved to be at ease; to dismiss what importunes, and

recall what pleases. It would please me now to draw you out—to learn

more of you—therefore speak.”

Instead of speaking, I smiled; and not a very complacent or submissive

smile either.

“Speak,” he urged.

“What about, sir?”

“Whatever you like. I leave both the choice of subject and the manner

of treating it entirely to yourself.”

Accordingly I sat and said nothing: “If he expects me to talk for the

mere sake of talking and showing off, he will find he has addressed

himself to the wrong person,” I thought.

“You are dumb, Miss Eyre.”

I was dumb still. He bent his head a little towards me, and with a

single hasty glance seemed to dive into my eyes.

“Stubborn?” he said, “and annoyed. Ah! it is consistent. I put my

request in an absurd, almost insolent form. Miss Eyre, I beg your

pardon. The fact is, once for all, I don’t wish to treat you like an

inferior: that is” (correcting himself), “I claim only such superiority

as must result from twenty years’ difference in age and a century’s

advance in experience. This is legitimate, _et j’y tiens_, as Adèle

would say; and it is by virtue of this superiority, and this alone,

that I desire you to have the goodness to talk to me a little now, and

divert my thoughts, which are galled with dwelling on one

point—cankering as a rusty nail.”

He had deigned an explanation, almost an apology, and I did not feel

insensible to his condescension, and would not seem so.

“I am willing to amuse you, if I can, sir—quite willing; but I cannot

introduce a topic, because how do I know what will interest you? Ask me

questions, and I will do my best to answer them.”

“Then, in the first place, do you agree with me that I have a right to

be a little masterful, abrupt, perhaps exacting, sometimes, on the

grounds I stated, namely, that I am old enough to be your father, and

that I have battled through a varied experience with many men of many

nations, and roamed over half the globe, while you have lived quietly

with one set of people in one house?”

“Do as you please, sir.”

“That is no answer; or rather it is a very irritating, because a very

evasive one. Reply clearly.”

“I don’t think, sir, you have a right to command me, merely because you

are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I

have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of

your time and experience.”

“Humph! Promptly spoken. But I won’t allow that, seeing that it would

never suit my case, as I have made an indifferent, not to say a bad,

use of both advantages. Leaving superiority out of the question, then,

you must still agree to receive my orders now and then, without being

piqued or hurt by the tone of command. Will you?”

I smiled: I thought to myself Mr. Rochester _is_ peculiar—he seems to

forget that he pays me £30 per annum for receiving his orders.

“The smile is very well,” said he, catching instantly the passing

expression; “but speak too.”

“I was thinking, sir, that very few masters would trouble themselves to

inquire whether or not their paid subordinates were piqued and hurt by

their orders.”

“Paid subordinates! What! you are my paid subordinate, are you? Oh yes,

I had forgotten the salary! Well then, on that mercenary ground, will

you agree to let me hector a little?”

“No, sir, not on that ground; but, on the ground that you did forget

it, and that you care whether or not a dependent is comfortable in his

dependency, I agree heartily.”

“And will you consent to dispense with a great many conventional forms

and phrases, without thinking that the omission arises from insolence?”

“I am sure, sir, I should never mistake informality for insolence: one

I rather like, the other nothing free-born would submit to, even for a

salary.”

“Humbug! Most things free-born will submit to anything for a salary;

therefore, keep to yourself, and don’t venture on generalities of which

you are intensely ignorant. However, I mentally shake hands with you

for your answer, despite its inaccuracy; and as much for the manner in

which it was said, as for the substance of the speech; the manner was

frank and sincere; one does not often see such a manner: no, on the

contrary, affectation, or coldness, or stupid, coarse-minded

misapprehension of one’s meaning are the usual rewards of candour. Not

three in three thousand raw school-girl-governesses would have answered

me as you have just done. But I don’t mean to flatter you: if you are

cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours:

Nature did it. And then, after all, I go too fast in my conclusions:

for what I yet know, you may be no better than the rest; you may have

intolerable defects to counterbalance your few good points.”

“And so may you,” I thought. My eye met his as the idea crossed my

mind: he seemed to read the glance, answering as if its import had been

spoken as well as imagined—

“Yes, yes, you are right,” said he; “I have plenty of faults of my own:

I know it, and I don’t wish to palliate them, I assure you. God wot I

need not be too severe about others; I have a past existence, a series

of deeds, a colour of life to contemplate within my own breast, which

might well call my sneers and censures from my neighbours to myself. I

started, or rather (for like other defaulters, I like to lay half the

blame on ill fortune and adverse circumstances) was thrust on to a

wrong tack at the age of one-and-twenty, and have never recovered the

right course since: but I might have been very different; I might have

been as good as you—wiser—almost as stainless. I envy you your peace of

mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory. Little girl, a

memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure—an

inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not?”

“How was your memory when you were eighteen, sir?”

“All right then; limpid, salubrious: no gush of bilge water had turned

it to fetid puddle. I was your equal at eighteen—quite your equal.

Nature meant me to be, on the whole, a good man, Miss Eyre; one of the

better kind, and you see I am not so. You would say you don’t see it;

at least I flatter myself I read as much in your eye (beware,

by-the-bye, what you express with that organ; I am quick at

interpreting its language). Then take my word for it,—I am not a

villain: you are not to suppose that—not to attribute to me any such

bad eminence; but, owing, I verily believe, rather to circumstances

than to my natural bent, I am a trite commonplace sinner, hackneyed in

all the poor petty dissipations with which the rich and worthless try

to put on life. Do you wonder that I avow this to you? Know, that in

the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the

involuntary confidant of your acquaintances’ secrets: people will

instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to

tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they

will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their

indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less

comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its

manifestations.”

“How do you know?—how can you guess all this, sir?”

“I know it well; therefore I proceed almost as freely as if I were

writing my thoughts in a diary. You would say, I should have been

superior to circumstances; so I should—so I should; but you see I was

not. When fate wronged me, I had not the wisdom to remain cool: I

turned desperate; then I degenerated. Now, when any vicious simpleton

excites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry, I cannot flatter myself that

I am better than he: I am forced to confess that he and I are on a

level. I wish I had stood firm—God knows I do! Dread remorse when you

are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.”

“Repentance is said to be its cure, sir.”

“It is not its cure. Reformation may be its cure; and I could reform—I

have strength yet for that—if—but where is the use of thinking of it,

hampered, burdened, cursed as I am? Besides, since happiness is

irrevocably denied me, I have a right to get pleasure out of life: and

I _will_ get it, cost what it may.”

“Then you will degenerate still more, sir.”

“Possibly: yet why should I, if I can get sweet, fresh pleasure? And I

may get it as sweet and fresh as the wild honey the bee gathers on the

moor.”

“It will sting—it will taste bitter, sir.”

“How do you know?—you never tried it. How very serious—how very solemn

you look: and you are as ignorant of the matter as this cameo head”

(taking one from the mantelpiece). “You have no right to preach to me,

you neophyte, that have not passed the porch of life, and are

absolutely unacquainted with its mysteries.”

“I only remind you of your own words, sir: you said error brought

remorse, and you pronounced remorse the poison of existence.”

“And who talks of error now? I scarcely think the notion that flittered

across my brain was an error. I believe it was an inspiration rather

than a temptation: it was very genial, very soothing—I know that. Here

it comes again! It is no devil, I assure you; or if it be, it has put

on the robes of an angel of light. I think I must admit so fair a guest

when it asks entrance to my heart.”

“Distrust it, sir; it is not a true angel.”

“Once more, how do you know? By what instinct do you pretend to

distinguish between a fallen seraph of the abyss and a messenger from

the eternal throne—between a guide and a seducer?”

“I judged by your countenance, sir, which was troubled when you said

the suggestion had returned upon you. I feel sure it will work you more

misery if you listen to it.”

“Not at all—it bears the most gracious message in the world: for the

rest, you are not my conscience-keeper, so don’t make yourself uneasy.

Here, come in, bonny wanderer!”

He said this as if he spoke to a vision, viewless to any eye but his

own; then, folding his arms, which he had half extended, on his chest,

he seemed to enclose in their embrace the invisible being.

“Now,” he continued, again addressing me, “I have received the

pilgrim—a disguised deity, as I verily believe. Already it has done me

good: my heart was a sort of charnel; it will now be a shrine.”

“To speak truth, sir, I don’t understand you at all: I cannot keep up

the conversation, because it has got out of my depth. Only one thing, I

know: you said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that

you regretted your own imperfection;—one thing I can comprehend: you

intimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane. It seems

to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to

become what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you

began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would

in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections,

to which you might revert with pleasure.”

“Justly thought; rightly said, Miss Eyre; and, at this moment, I am

paving hell with energy.”

“Sir?”

“I am laying down good intentions, which I believe durable as flint.

Certainly, my associates and pursuits shall be other than they have

been.”

“And better?”

“And better—so much better as pure ore is than foul dross. You seem to

doubt me; I don’t doubt myself: I know what my aim is, what my motives

are; and at this moment I pass a law, unalterable as that of the Medes

and Persians, that both are right.”

“They cannot be, sir, if they require a new statute to legalise them.”

“They are, Miss Eyre, though they absolutely require a new statute:

unheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules.”

“That sounds a dangerous maxim, sir; because one can see at once that

it is liable to abuse.”

“Sententious sage! so it is: but I swear by my household gods not to

abuse it.”

“You are human and fallible.”

“I am: so are you—what then?”

“The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the

divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.”

“What power?”

“That of saying of any strange, unsanctioned line of action,—‘Let it be

right.’”

“‘Let it be right’—the very words: you have pronounced them.”

“_May_ it be right then,” I said, as I rose, deeming it useless to

continue a discourse which was all darkness to me; and, besides,

sensible that the character of my interlocutor was beyond my

penetration; at least, beyond its present reach; and feeling the

uncertainty, the vague sense of insecurity, which accompanies a

conviction of ignorance.

“Where are you going?”

“To put Adèle to bed: it is past her bedtime.”

“You are afraid of me, because I talk like a Sphynx.”

“Your language is enigmatical, sir: but though I am bewildered, I am

certainly not afraid.”

“You _are_ afraid—your self-love dreads a blunder.”

“In that sense I do feel apprehensive—I have no wish to talk nonsense.”

“If you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should

mistake it for sense. Do you never laugh, Miss Eyre? Don’t trouble

yourself to answer—I see you laugh rarely; but you can laugh very

merrily: believe me, you are not naturally austere, any more than I am

naturally vicious. The Lowood constraint still clings to you somewhat;

controlling your features, muffling your voice, and restricting your

limbs; and you fear in the presence of a man and a brother—or father,

or master, or what you will—to smile too gaily, speak too freely, or

move too quickly: but, in time, I think you will learn to be natural

with me, as I find it impossible to be conventional with you; and then

your looks and movements will have more vivacity and variety than they

dare offer now. I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird

through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute

captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high. You are

still bent on going?”

“It has struck nine, sir.”

“Never mind,—wait a minute: Adèle is not ready to go to bed yet. My

position, Miss Eyre, with my back to the fire, and my face to the room,

favours observation. While talking to you, I have also occasionally

watched Adèle (I have my own reasons for thinking her a curious

study,—reasons that I may, nay, that I shall, impart to you some day).

She pulled out of her box, about ten minutes ago, a little pink silk

frock; rapture lit her face as she unfolded it; coquetry runs in her

blood, blends with her brains, and seasons the marrow of her bones. ‘Il

faut que je l’essaie!’ cried she, ‘et à l’instant même!’ and she rushed

out of the room. She is now with Sophie, undergoing a robing process:

in a few minutes she will re-enter; and I know what I shall see,—a

miniature of Céline Varens, as she used to appear on the boards at the

rising of—But never mind that. However, my tenderest feelings are about

to receive a shock: such is my presentiment; stay now, to see whether

it will be realised.”

Ere long, Adèle’s little foot was heard tripping across the hall. She

entered, transformed as her guardian had predicted. A dress of

rose-coloured satin, very short, and as full in the skirt as it could

be gathered, replaced the brown frock she had previously worn; a wreath

of rosebuds circled her forehead; her feet were dressed in silk

stockings and small white satin sandals.

“Est-ce que ma robe va bien?” cried she, bounding forwards; “et mes

souliers? et mes bas? Tenez, je crois que je vais danser!”

And spreading out her dress, she chasséed across the room till, having

reached Mr. Rochester, she wheeled lightly round before him on tip-toe,

then dropped on one knee at his feet, exclaiming—

“Monsieur, je vous remercie mille fois de votre bonté;” then rising,

she added, “C’est comme cela que maman faisait, n’est-ce pas,

monsieur?”

“Pre-cise-ly!” was the answer; “and, ‘comme cela,’ she charmed my

English gold out of my British breeches’ pocket. I have been green,

too, Miss Eyre,—ay, grass green: not a more vernal tint freshens you

now than once freshened me. My Spring is gone, however, but it has left

me that French floweret on my hands, which, in some moods, I would fain

be rid of. Not valuing now the root whence it sprang; having found that

it was of a sort which nothing but gold dust could manure, I have but

half a liking to the blossom, especially when it looks so artificial as

just now. I keep it and rear it rather on the Roman Catholic principle

of expiating numerous sins, great or small, by one good work. I’ll

explain all this some day. Good-night.”

CHAPTER XV

Mr. Rochester did, on a future occasion, explain it. It was one

afternoon, when he chanced to meet me and Adèle in the grounds: and

while she played with Pilot and her shuttlecock, he asked me to walk up

and down a long beech avenue within sight of her.

He then said that she was the daughter of a French opera-dancer, Céline

Varens, towards whom he had once cherished what he called a “_grande

passion_.” This passion Céline had professed to return with even

superior ardour. He thought himself her idol, ugly as he was: he

believed, as he said, that she preferred his “_taille d’athlète_” to

the elegance of the Apollo Belvidere.

“And, Miss Eyre, so much was I flattered by this preference of the

Gallic sylph for her British gnome, that I installed her in an hotel;

gave her a complete establishment of servants, a carriage, cashmeres,

diamonds, dentelles, &c. In short, I began the process of ruining

myself in the received style, like any other spoony. I had not, it

seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and

destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to

deviate an inch from the beaten centre. I had—as I deserved to have—the

fate of all other spoonies. Happening to call one evening when Céline

did not expect me, I found her out; but it was a warm night, and I was

tired with strolling through Paris, so I sat down in her boudoir; happy

to breathe the air consecrated so lately by her presence. No,—I

exaggerate; I never thought there was any consecrating virtue about

her: it was rather a sort of pastille perfume she had left; a scent of

musk and amber, than an odour of sanctity. I was just beginning to

stifle with the fumes of conservatory flowers and sprinkled essences,

when I bethought myself to open the window and step out on to the

balcony. It was moonlight and gaslight besides, and very still and

serene. The balcony was furnished with a chair or two; I sat down, and

took out a cigar,—I will take one now, if you will excuse me.”

Here ensued a pause, filled up by the producing and lighting of a

cigar; having placed it to his lips and breathed a trail of Havannah

incense on the freezing and sunless air, he went on—

“I liked bonbons too in those days, Miss Eyre, and I was

_croquant_—(overlook the barbarism)—_croquant_ chocolate comfits, and

smoking alternately, watching meantime the equipages that rolled along

the fashionable streets towards the neighbouring opera-house, when in

an elegant close carriage drawn by a beautiful pair of English horses,

and distinctly seen in the brilliant city-night, I recognised the

‘voiture’ I had given Céline. She was returning: of course my heart

thumped with impatience against the iron rails I leant upon. The

carriage stopped, as I had expected, at the hotel door; my flame (that

is the very word for an opera inamorata) alighted: though muffed in a

cloak—an unnecessary encumbrance, by-the-bye, on so warm a June

evening—I knew her instantly by her little foot, seen peeping from the

skirt of her dress, as she skipped from the carriage-step. Bending over

the balcony, I was about to murmur ‘Mon ange’—in a tone, of course,

which should be audible to the ear of love alone—when a figure jumped

from the carriage after her; cloaked also; but that was a spurred heel

which had rung on the pavement, and that was a hatted head which now

passed under the arched _porte cochère_ of the hotel.

“You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Eyre? Of course not: I need not

ask you; because you never felt love. You have both sentiments yet to

experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall

waken it. You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in

which your youth has hitherto slid away. Floating on with closed eyes

and muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in

the bed of the flood, nor hear the breakers boil at their base. But I

tell you—and you may mark my words—you will come some day to a craggy

pass in the channel, where the whole of life’s stream will be broken up

into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to

atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave

into a calmer current—as I am now.

“I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and

stillness of the world under this frost. I like Thornfield, its

antiquity, its retirement, its old crow-trees and thorn-trees, its grey

façade, and lines of dark windows reflecting that metal welkin: and yet

how long have I abhorred the very thought of it, shunned it like a

great plague-house? How I do still abhor—”

He ground his teeth and was silent: he arrested his step and struck his

boot against the hard ground. Some hated thought seemed to have him in

its grip, and to hold him so tightly that he could not advance.

We were ascending the avenue when he thus paused; the hall was before

us. Lifting his eye to its battlements, he cast over them a glare such

as I never saw before or since. Pain, shame, ire, impatience, disgust,

detestation, seemed momentarily to hold a quivering conflict in the

large pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrow. Wild was the wrestle which

should be paramount; but another feeling rose and triumphed: something

hard and cynical: self-willed and resolute: it settled his passion and

petrified his countenance: he went on—

“During the moment I was silent, Miss Eyre, I was arranging a point

with my destiny. She stood there, by that beech-trunk—a hag like one of

those who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres. ‘You like

Thornfield?’ she said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the

air a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the

house-front, between the upper and lower row of windows, ‘Like it if

you can! Like it if you dare!’

“‘I will like it,’ said I; ‘I dare like it;’ and” (he subjoined

moodily) “I will keep my word; I will break obstacles to happiness, to

goodness—yes, goodness. I wish to be a better man than I have been,

than I am; as Job’s leviathan broke the spear, the dart, and the

habergeon, hindrances which others count as iron and brass, I will

esteem but straw and rotten wood.”

Adèle here ran before him with her shuttlecock. “Away!” he cried

harshly; “keep at a distance, child; or go in to Sophie!” Continuing

then to pursue his walk in silence, I ventured to recall him to the

point whence he had abruptly diverged—

“Did you leave the balcony, sir,” I asked, “when Mdlle. Varens

entered?”

I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question, but, on

the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he turned his

eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow. “Oh, I had

forgotten Céline! Well, to resume. When I saw my charmer thus come in

accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake

of jealousy, rising on undulating coils from the moonlit balcony,

glided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two minutes to my

heart’s core. Strange!” he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the

point. “Strange that I should choose you for the confidant of all this,

young lady; passing strange that you should listen to me quietly, as if

it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell

stories of his opera-mistresses to a quaint, inexperienced girl like

you! But the last singularity explains the first, as I intimated once

before: you, with your gravity, considerateness, and caution were made

to be the recipient of secrets. Besides, I know what sort of a mind I

have placed in communication with my own: I know it is one not liable

to take infection: it is a peculiar mind: it is a unique one. Happily I

do not mean to harm it: but, if I did, it would not take harm from me.

The more you and I converse, the better; for while I cannot blight you,

you may refresh me.” After this digression he proceeded—

“I remained in the balcony. ‘They will come to her boudoir, no doubt,’

thought I: ‘let me prepare an ambush.’ So putting my hand in through

the open window, I drew the curtain over it, leaving only an opening

through which I could take observations; then I closed the casement,

all but a chink just wide enough to furnish an outlet to lovers’

whispered vows: then I stole back to my chair; and as I resumed it the

pair came in. My eye was quickly at the aperture. Céline’s chamber-maid

entered, lit a lamp, left it on the table, and withdrew. The couple

were thus revealed to me clearly: both removed their cloaks, and there

was ‘the Varens,’ shining in satin and jewels,—my gifts of course,—and

there was her companion in an officer’s uniform; and I knew him for a

young roué of a vicomte—a brainless and vicious youth whom I had

sometimes met in society, and had never thought of hating because I

despised him so absolutely. On recognising him, the fang of the snake

Jealousy was instantly broken; because at the same moment my love for

Céline sank under an extinguisher. A woman who could betray me for such

a rival was not worth contending for; she deserved only scorn; less,

however, than I, who had been her dupe.

“They began to talk; their conversation eased me completely: frivolous,

mercenary, heartless, and senseless, it was rather calculated to weary

than enrage a listener. A card of mine lay on the table; this being

perceived, brought my name under discussion. Neither of them possessed

energy or wit to belabour me soundly, but they insulted me as coarsely

as they could in their little way: especially Céline, who even waxed

rather brilliant on my personal defects—deformities she termed them.

Now it had been her custom to launch out into fervent admiration of

what she called my ‘_beauté mâle_:’ wherein she differed diametrically

from you, who told me point-blank, at the second interview, that you

did not think me handsome. The contrast struck me at the time and—”

Adèle here came running up again.

“Monsieur, John has just been to say that your agent has called and

wishes to see you.”

“Ah! in that case I must abridge. Opening the window, I walked in upon

them; liberated Céline from my protection; gave her notice to vacate

her hotel; offered her a purse for immediate exigencies; disregarded

screams, hysterics, prayers, protestations, convulsions; made an

appointment with the vicomte for a meeting at the Bois de Boulogne.

Next morning I had the pleasure of encountering him; left a bullet in

one of his poor etiolated arms, feeble as the wing of a chicken in the

pip, and then thought I had done with the whole crew. But unluckily the

Varens, six months before, had given me this filette Adèle, who, she

affirmed, was my daughter; and perhaps she may be, though I see no

proofs of such grim paternity written in her countenance: Pilot is more

like me than she. Some years after I had broken with the mother, she

abandoned her child, and ran away to Italy with a musician or singer. I

acknowledged no natural claim on Adèle’s part to be supported by me,

nor do I now acknowledge any, for I am not her father; but hearing that

she was quite destitute, I e’en took the poor thing out of the slime

and mud of Paris, and transplanted it here, to grow up clean in the

wholesome soil of an English country garden. Mrs. Fairfax found you to

train it; but now you know that it is the illegitimate offspring of a

French opera-girl, you will perhaps think differently of your post and

protégée: you will be coming to me some day with notice that you have

found another place—that you beg me to look out for a new governess,

&c.—Eh?”

“No: Adèle is not answerable for either her mother’s faults or yours: I

have a regard for her; and now that I know she is, in a sense,

parentless—forsaken by her mother and disowned by you, sir—I shall

cling closer to her than before. How could I possibly prefer the spoilt

pet of a wealthy family, who would hate her governess as a nuisance, to

a lonely little orphan, who leans towards her as a friend?”

“Oh, that is the light in which you view it! Well, I must go in now;

and you too: it darkens.”

But I stayed out a few minutes longer with Adèle and Pilot—ran a race

with her, and played a game of battledore and shuttlecock. When we went

in, and I had removed her bonnet and coat, I took her on my knee; kept

her there an hour, allowing her to prattle as she liked: not rebuking

even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to

stray when much noticed, and which betrayed in her a superficiality of

character, inherited probably from her mother, hardly congenial to an

English mind. Still she had her merits; and I was disposed to

appreciate all that was good in her to the utmost. I sought in her

countenance and features a likeness to Mr. Rochester, but found none:

no trait, no turn of expression announced relationship. It was a pity:

if she could but have been proved to resemble him, he would have

thought more of her.

It was not till after I had withdrawn to my own chamber for the night,

that I steadily reviewed the tale Mr. Rochester had told me. As he had

said, there was probably nothing at all extraordinary in the substance

of the narrative itself: a wealthy Englishman’s passion for a French

dancer, and her treachery to him, were every-day matters enough, no

doubt, in society; but there was something decidedly strange in the

paroxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized him when he was in the

act of expressing the present contentment of his mood, and his newly

revived pleasure in the old hall and its environs. I meditated

wonderingly on this incident; but gradually quitting it, as I found it

for the present inexplicable, I turned to the consideration of my

master’s manner to myself. The confidence he had thought fit to repose

in me seemed a tribute to my discretion: I regarded and accepted it as

such. His deportment had now for some weeks been more uniform towards

me than at the first. I never seemed in his way; he did not take fits

of chilling hauteur: when he met me unexpectedly, the encounter seemed

welcome; he had always a word and sometimes a smile for me: when

summoned by formal invitation to his presence, I was honoured by a

cordiality of reception that made me feel I really possessed the power

to amuse him, and that these evening conferences were sought as much

for his pleasure as for my benefit.

I, indeed, talked comparatively little, but I heard him talk with

relish. It was his nature to be communicative; he liked to open to a

mind unacquainted with the world glimpses of its scenes and ways (I do

not mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways, but such as derived their

interest from the great scale on which they were acted, the strange

novelty by which they were characterised); and I had a keen delight in

receiving the new ideas he offered, in imagining the new pictures he

portrayed, and following him in thought through the new regions he

disclosed, never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion.

The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint: the friendly

frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to

him. I felt at times as if he were my relation rather than my master:

yet he was imperious sometimes still; but I did not mind that; I saw it

was his way. So happy, so gratified did I become with this new interest

added to life, that I ceased to pine after kindred: my thin

crescent-destiny seemed to enlarge; the blanks of existence were filled

up; my bodily health improved; I gathered flesh and strength.

And was Mr. Rochester now ugly in my eyes? No, reader: gratitude, and

many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object

I best liked to see; his presence in a room was more cheering than the

brightest fire. Yet I had not forgotten his faults; indeed, I could

not, for he brought them frequently before me. He was proud, sardonic,

harsh to inferiority of every description: in my secret soul I knew

that his great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many

others. He was moody, too; unaccountably so; I more than once, when

sent for to read to him, found him sitting in his library alone, with

his head bent on his folded arms; and, when he looked up, a morose,

almost a malignant, scowl blackened his features. But I believed that

his moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of morality (I say

_former_, for now he seemed corrected of them) had their source in some

cruel cross of fate. I believed he was naturally a man of better

tendencies, higher principles, and purer tastes than such as

circumstances had developed, education instilled, or destiny

encouraged. I thought there were excellent materials in him; though for

the present they hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled. I cannot

deny that I grieved for his grief, whatever that was, and would have

given much to assuage it.

Though I had now extinguished my candle and was laid down in bed, I

could not sleep for thinking of his look when he paused in the avenue,

and told how his destiny had risen up before him, and dared him to be

happy at Thornfield.

“Why not?” I asked myself. “What alienates him from the house? Will he

leave it again soon? Mrs. Fairfax said he seldom stayed here longer

than a fortnight at a time; and he has now been resident eight weeks.

If he does go, the change will be doleful. Suppose he should be absent

spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will

seem!”

I hardly know whether I had slept or not after this musing; at any

rate, I started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and

lugubrious, which sounded, I thought, just above me. I wished I had

kept my candle burning: the night was drearily dark; my spirits were

depressed. I rose and sat up in bed, listening. The sound was hushed.

I tried again to sleep; but my heart beat anxiously: my inward

tranquillity was broken. The clock, far down in the hall, struck two.

Just then it seemed my chamber-door was touched; as if fingers had

swept the panels in groping a way along the dark gallery outside. I

said, “Who is there?” Nothing answered. I was chilled with fear.

All at once I remembered that it might be Pilot, who, when the

kitchen-door chanced to be left open, not unfrequently found his way up

to the threshold of Mr. Rochester’s chamber: I had seen him lying there

myself in the mornings. The idea calmed me somewhat: I lay down.

Silence composes the nerves; and as an unbroken hush now reigned again

through the whole house, I began to feel the return of slumber. But it

was not fated that I should sleep that night. A dream had scarcely

approached my ear, when it fled affrighted, scared by a marrow-freezing

incident enough.

This was a demoniac laugh—low, suppressed, and deep—uttered, as it

seemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber door. The head of my bed was

near the door, and I thought at first the goblin-laugher stood at my

bedside—or rather, crouched by my pillow: but I rose, looked round, and

could see nothing; while, as I still gazed, the unnatural sound was

reiterated: and I knew it came from behind the panels. My first impulse

was to rise and fasten the bolt; my next, again to cry out, “Who is

there?”

Something gurgled and moaned. Ere long, steps retreated up the gallery

towards the third-storey staircase: a door had lately been made to shut

in that staircase; I heard it open and close, and all was still.

“Was that Grace Poole? and is she possessed with a devil?” thought I.

Impossible now to remain longer by myself: I must go to Mrs. Fairfax. I

hurried on my frock and a shawl; I withdrew the bolt and opened the

door with a trembling hand. There was a candle burning just outside,

and on the matting in the gallery. I was surprised at this

circumstance: but still more was I amazed to perceive the air quite

dim, as if filled with smoke; and, while looking to the right hand and

left, to find whence these blue wreaths issued, I became further aware

of a strong smell of burning.

Something creaked: it was a door ajar; and that door was Mr.

Rochester’s, and the smoke rushed in a cloud from thence. I thought no

more of Mrs. Fairfax; I thought no more of Grace Poole, or the laugh:

in an instant, I was within the chamber. Tongues of flame darted round

the bed: the curtains were on fire. In the midst of blaze and vapour,

Mr. Rochester lay stretched motionless, in deep sleep.

“Wake! wake!” I cried. I shook him, but he only murmured and turned:

the smoke had stupefied him. Not a moment could be lost: the very

sheets were kindling, I rushed to his basin and ewer; fortunately, one

was wide and the other deep, and both were filled with water. I heaved

them up, deluged the bed and its occupant, flew back to my own room,

brought my own water-jug, baptized the couch afresh, and, by God’s aid,

succeeded in extinguishing the flames which were devouring it.

The hiss of the quenched element, the breakage of a pitcher which I

flung from my hand when I had emptied it, and, above all, the splash of

the shower-bath I had liberally bestowed, roused Mr. Rochester at last.

Though it was now dark, I knew he was awake; because I heard him

fulminating strange anathemas at finding himself lying in a pool of

water.

“Is there a flood?” he cried.

“No, sir,” I answered; “but there has been a fire: get up, do; you are

quenched now; I will fetch you a candle.”

“In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?” he

demanded. “What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the

room besides you? Have you plotted to drown me?”

“I will fetch you a candle, sir; and, in Heaven’s name, get up.

Somebody has plotted something: you cannot too soon find out who and

what it is.”

“There! I am up now; but at your peril you fetch a candle yet: wait two

minutes till I get into some dry garments, if any dry there be—yes,

here is my dressing-gown. Now run!”

I did run; I brought the candle which still remained in the gallery. He

took it from my hand, held it up, and surveyed the bed, all blackened

and scorched, the sheets drenched, the carpet round swimming in water.

“What is it? and who did it?” he asked.

I briefly related to him what had transpired: the strange laugh I had

heard in the gallery: the step ascending to the third storey; the

smoke,—the smell of fire which had conducted me to his room; in what

state I had found matters there, and how I had deluged him with all the

water I could lay hands on.

“What is it and who did it?” he asked

He listened very gravely; his face, as I went on, expressed more

concern than astonishment; he did not immediately speak when I had

concluded.

“Shall I call Mrs. Fairfax?” I asked.

“Mrs. Fairfax? No; what the deuce would you call her for? What can she

do? Let her sleep unmolested.”

“Then I will fetch Leah, and wake John and his wife.”

“Not at all: just be still. You have a shawl on. If you are not warm

enough, you may take my cloak yonder; wrap it about you, and sit down

in the arm-chair: there,—I will put it on. Now place your feet on the

stool, to keep them out of the wet. I am going to leave you a few

minutes. I shall take the candle. Remain where you are till I return;

be as still as a mouse. I must pay a visit to the second storey. Don’t

move, remember, or call any one.”

He went: I watched the light withdraw. He passed up the gallery very

softly, unclosed the staircase door with as little noise as possible,

shut it after him, and the last ray vanished. I was left in total

darkness. I listened for some noise, but heard nothing. A very long

time elapsed. I grew weary: it was cold, in spite of the cloak; and

then I did not see the use of staying, as I was not to rouse the house.

I was on the point of risking Mr. Rochester’s displeasure by disobeying

his orders, when the light once more gleamed dimly on the gallery wall,

and I heard his unshod feet tread the matting. “I hope it is he,”

thought I, “and not something worse.”

He re-entered, pale and very gloomy. “I have found it all out,” said

he, setting his candle down on the washstand; “it is as I thought.”

“How, sir?”

He made no reply, but stood with his arms folded, looking on the

ground. At the end of a few minutes he inquired in rather a peculiar

tone—

“I forget whether you said you saw anything when you opened your

chamber door.”

“No, sir, only the candlestick on the ground.”

“But you heard an odd laugh? You have heard that laugh before, I should

think, or something like it?”

“Yes, sir: there is a woman who sews here, called Grace Poole,—she

laughs in that way. She is a singular person.”

“Just so. Grace Poole—you have guessed it. She is, as you say,

singular—very. Well, I shall reflect on the subject. Meantime, I am

glad that you are the only person, besides myself, acquainted with the

precise details of to-night’s incident. You are no talking fool: say

nothing about it. I will account for this state of affairs” (pointing

to the bed): “and now return to your own room. I shall do very well on

the sofa in the library for the rest of the night. It is near four:—in

two hours the servants will be up.”

“Good-night, then, sir,” said I, departing.

He seemed surprised—very inconsistently so, as he had just told me to

go.

“What!” he exclaimed, “are you quitting me already, and in that way?”

“You said I might go, sir.”

“But not without taking leave; not without a word or two of

acknowledgment and good-will: not, in short, in that brief, dry

fashion. Why, you have saved my life!—snatched me from a horrible and

excruciating death! and you walk past me as if we were mutual

strangers! At least shake hands.”

He held out his hand; I gave him mine: he took it first in one, then in

both his own.

“You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a

debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been

tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation:

but you: it is different;—I feel your benefits no burden, Jane.”

He paused; gazed at me: words almost visible trembled on his lips,—but

his voice was checked.

“Good-night again, sir. There is no debt, benefit, burden, obligation,

in the case.”

“I knew,” he continued, “you would do me good in some way, at some

time;—I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression

and smile did not”—(again he stopped)—“did not” (he proceeded hastily)

“strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of

natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of

truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, good-night!”

Strange energy was in his voice, strange fire in his look.

“I am glad I happened to be awake,” I said: and then I was going.

“What! you _will_ go?”

“I am cold, sir.”

“Cold? Yes,—and standing in a pool! Go, then, Jane; go!” But he still

retained my hand, and I could not free it. I bethought myself of an

expedient.

“I think I hear Mrs. Fairfax move, sir,” said I.

“Well, leave me:” he relaxed his fingers, and I was gone.

I regained my couch, but never thought of sleep. Till morning dawned I

was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble

rolled under surges of joy. I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild

waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a

freshening gale, wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards

the bourne: but I could not reach it, even in fancy—a counteracting

breeze blew off land, and continually drove me back. Sense would resist

delirium: judgment would warn passion. Too feverish to rest, I rose as

soon as day dawned.

CHAPTER XVI

I both wished and feared to see Mr. Rochester on the day which followed

this sleepless night: I wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to

meet his eye. During the early part of the morning, I momentarily

expected his coming; he was not in the frequent habit of entering the

schoolroom, but he did step in for a few minutes sometimes, and I had

the impression that he was sure to visit it that day.

But the morning passed just as usual: nothing happened to interrupt the

quiet course of Adèle’s studies; only soon after breakfast, I heard

some bustle in the neighbourhood of Mr. Rochester’s chamber, Mrs.

Fairfax’s voice, and Leah’s, and the cook’s—that is, John’s wife—and

even John’s own gruff tones. There were exclamations of “What a mercy

master was not burnt in his bed!” “It is always dangerous to keep a

candle lit at night.” “How providential that he had presence of mind to

think of the water-jug!” “I wonder he waked nobody!” “It is to be hoped

he will not take cold with sleeping on the library sofa,” &c.

To much confabulation succeeded a sound of scrubbing and setting to

rights; and when I passed the room, in going downstairs to dinner, I

saw through the open door that all was again restored to complete

order; only the bed was stripped of its hangings. Leah stood up in the

window-seat, rubbing the panes of glass dimmed with smoke. I was about

to address her, for I wished to know what account had been given of the

affair: but, on advancing, I saw a second person in the chamber—a woman

sitting on a chair by the bedside, and sewing rings to new curtains.

That woman was no other than Grace Poole.

There she sat, staid and taciturn-looking, as usual, in her brown stuff

gown, her check apron, white handkerchief, and cap. She was intent on

her work, in which her whole thoughts seemed absorbed: on her hard

forehead, and in her commonplace features, was nothing either of the

paleness or desperation one would have expected to see marking the

countenance of a woman who had attempted murder, and whose intended

victim had followed her last night to her lair, and (as I believed),

charged her with the crime she wished to perpetrate. I was

amazed—confounded. She looked up, while I still gazed at her: no start,

no increase or failure of colour betrayed emotion, consciousness of

guilt, or fear of detection. She said “Good morning, Miss,” in her

usual phlegmatic and brief manner; and taking up another ring and more

tape, went on with her sewing.

“I will put her to some test,” thought I: “such absolute

impenetrability is past comprehension.”

“Good morning, Grace,” I said. “Has anything happened here? I thought I

heard the servants all talking together a while ago.”

“Only master had been reading in his bed last night; he fell asleep

with his candle lit, and the curtains got on fire; but, fortunately, he

awoke before the bed-clothes or the wood-work caught, and contrived to

quench the flames with the water in the ewer.”

“A strange affair!” I said, in a low voice: then, looking at her

fixedly—“Did Mr. Rochester wake nobody? Did no one hear him move?”

She again raised her eyes to me, and this time there was something of

consciousness in their expression. She seemed to examine me warily;

then she answered—

“The servants sleep so far off, you know, Miss, they would not be

likely to hear. Mrs. Fairfax’s room and yours are the nearest to

master’s; but Mrs. Fairfax said she heard nothing: when people get

elderly, they often sleep heavy.” She paused, and then added, with a

sort of assumed indifference, but still in a marked and significant

tone—“But you are young, Miss; and I should say a light sleeper:

perhaps you may have heard a noise?”

“I did,” said I, dropping my voice, so that Leah, who was still

polishing the panes, could not hear me, “and at first I thought it was

Pilot: but Pilot cannot laugh; and I am certain I heard a laugh, and a

strange one.”

She took a new needleful of thread, waxed it carefully, threaded her

needle with a steady hand, and then observed, with perfect composure—

“It is hardly likely master would laugh, I should think, Miss, when he

was in such danger: You must have been dreaming.”

“I was not dreaming,” I said, with some warmth, for her brazen coolness

provoked me. Again she looked at me; and with the same scrutinising and

conscious eye.

“Have you told master that you heard a laugh?” she inquired.

“I have not had the opportunity of speaking to him this morning.”

“You did not think of opening your door and looking out into the

gallery?” she further asked.

She appeared to be cross-questioning me, attempting to draw from me

information unawares. The idea struck me that if she discovered I knew

or suspected her guilt, she would be playing of some of her malignant

pranks on me; I thought it advisable to be on my guard.

“On the contrary,” said I, “I bolted my door.”

“Then you are not in the habit of bolting your door every night before

you get into bed?”

“Fiend! she wants to know my habits, that she may lay her plans

accordingly!” Indignation again prevailed over prudence: I replied

sharply, “Hitherto I have often omitted to fasten the bolt: I did not

think it necessary. I was not aware any danger or annoyance was to be

dreaded at Thornfield Hall: but in future” (and I laid marked stress on

the words) “I shall take good care to make all secure before I venture

to lie down.”

“It will be wise so to do,” was her answer: “this neighbourhood is as

quiet as any I know, and I never heard of the hall being attempted by

robbers since it was a house; though there are hundreds of pounds’

worth of plate in the plate-closet, as is well known. And you see, for

such a large house, there are very few servants, because master has

never lived here much; and when he does come, being a bachelor, he

needs little waiting on: but I always think it best to err on the safe

side; a door is soon fastened, and it is as well to have a drawn bolt

between one and any mischief that may be about. A deal of people, Miss,

are for trusting all to Providence; but I say Providence will not

dispense with the means, though He often blesses them when they are

used discreetly.” And here she closed her harangue: a long one for her,

and uttered with the demureness of a Quakeress.

I still stood absolutely dumfoundered at what appeared to me her

miraculous self-possession and most inscrutable hypocrisy, when the

cook entered.

“Mrs. Poole,” said she, addressing Grace, “the servants’ dinner will

soon be ready: will you come down?”

“No; just put my pint of porter and bit of pudding on a tray, and I’ll

carry it upstairs.”

“You’ll have some meat?”

“Just a morsel, and a taste of cheese, that’s all.”

“And the sago?”

“Never mind it at present: I shall be coming down before teatime: I’ll

make it myself.”

The cook here turned to me, saying that Mrs. Fairfax was waiting for

me: so I departed.

I hardly heard Mrs. Fairfax’s account of the curtain conflagration

during dinner, so much was I occupied in puzzling my brains over the

enigmatical character of Grace Poole, and still more in pondering the

problem of her position at Thornfield and questioning why she had not

been given into custody that morning, or, at the very least, dismissed

from her master’s service. He had almost as much as declared his

conviction of her criminality last night: what mysterious cause

withheld him from accusing her? Why had he enjoined me, too, to

secrecy? It was strange: a bold, vindictive, and haughty gentleman

seemed somehow in the power of one of the meanest of his dependents; so

much in her power, that even when she lifted her hand against his life,

he dared not openly charge her with the attempt, much less punish her

for it.

Had Grace been young and handsome, I should have been tempted to think

that tenderer feelings than prudence or fear influenced Mr. Rochester

in her behalf; but, hard-favoured and matronly as she was, the idea

could not be admitted. “Yet,” I reflected, “she has been young once;

her youth would be contemporary with her master’s: Mrs. Fairfax told me

once, she had lived here many years. I don’t think she can ever have

been pretty; but, for aught I know, she may possess originality and

strength of character to compensate for the want of personal

advantages. Mr. Rochester is an amateur of the decided and eccentric:

Grace is eccentric at least. What if a former caprice (a freak very

possible to a nature so sudden and headstrong as his) has delivered him

into her power, and she now exercises over his actions a secret

influence, the result of his own indiscretion, which he cannot shake

off, and dare not disregard?” But, having reached this point of

conjecture, Mrs. Poole’s square, flat figure, and uncomely, dry, even

coarse face, recurred so distinctly to my mind’s eye, that I thought,

“No; impossible! my supposition cannot be correct. Yet,” suggested the

secret voice which talks to us in our own hearts, “_you_ are not

beautiful either, and perhaps Mr. Rochester approves you: at any rate,

you have often felt as if he did; and last night—remember his words;

remember his look; remember his voice!”

I well remembered all; language, glance, and tone seemed at the moment

vividly renewed. I was now in the schoolroom; Adèle was drawing; I bent

over her and directed her pencil. She looked up with a sort of start.

“Qu’avez-vous, mademoiselle?” said she. “Vos doigts tremblent comme la

feuille, et vos joues sont rouges: mais, rouges comme des cerises!”

“I am hot, Adèle, with stooping!” She went on sketching; I went on

thinking.

I hastened to drive from my mind the hateful notion I had been

conceiving respecting Grace Poole; it disgusted me. I compared myself

with her, and found we were different. Bessie Leaven had said I was

quite a lady; and she spoke truth—I was a lady. And now I looked much

better than I did when Bessie saw me; I had more colour and more flesh,

more life, more vivacity, because I had brighter hopes and keener

enjoyments.

“Evening approaches,” said I, as I looked towards the window. “I have

never heard Mr. Rochester’s voice or step in the house to-day; but

surely I shall see him before night: I feared the meeting in the

morning; now I desire it, because expectation has been so long baffled

that it is grown impatient.”

When dusk actually closed, and when Adèle left me to go and play in the

nursery with Sophie, I did most keenly desire it. I listened for the

bell to ring below; I listened for Leah coming up with a message; I

fancied sometimes I heard Mr. Rochester’s own tread, and I turned to

the door, expecting it to open and admit him. The door remained shut;

darkness only came in through the window. Still it was not late; he

often sent for me at seven and eight o’clock, and it was yet but six.

Surely I should not be wholly disappointed to-night, when I had so many

things to say to him! I wanted again to introduce the subject of Grace

Poole, and to hear what he would answer; I wanted to ask him plainly if

he really believed it was she who had made last night’s hideous

attempt; and if so, why he kept her wickedness a secret. It little

mattered whether my curiosity irritated him; I knew the pleasure of

vexing and soothing him by turns; it was one I chiefly delighted in,

and a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far; beyond the

verge of provocation I never ventured; on the extreme brink I liked

well to try my skill. Retaining every minute form of respect, every

propriety of my station, I could still meet him in argument without

fear or uneasy restraint; this suited both him and me.

A tread creaked on the stairs at last. Leah made her appearance; but it

was only to intimate that tea was ready in Mrs. Fairfax’s room. Thither

I repaired, glad at least to go downstairs; for that brought me, I

imagined, nearer to Mr. Rochester’s presence.

“You must want your tea,” said the good lady, as I joined her; “you ate

so little at dinner. I am afraid,” she continued, “you are not well

to-day: you look flushed and feverish.”

“Oh, quite well! I never felt better.”

“Then you must prove it by evincing a good appetite; will you fill the

teapot while I knit off this needle?” Having completed her task, she

rose to draw down the blind, which she had hitherto kept up, by way, I

suppose, of making the most of daylight, though dusk was now fast

deepening into total obscurity.

“It is fair to-night,” said she, as she looked through the panes,

“though not starlight; Mr. Rochester has, on the whole, had a

favourable day for his journey.”

“Journey!—Is Mr. Rochester gone anywhere? I did not know he was out.”

“Oh, he set off the moment he had breakfasted! He is gone to the Leas,

Mr. Eshton’s place, ten miles on the other side Millcote. I believe

there is quite a party assembled there; Lord Ingram, Sir George Lynn,

Colonel Dent, and others.”

“Do you expect him back to-night?”

“No—nor to-morrow either; I should think he is very likely to stay a

week or more: when these fine, fashionable people get together, they

are so surrounded by elegance and gaiety, so well provided with all

that can please and entertain, they are in no hurry to separate.

Gentlemen especially are often in request on such occasions; and Mr.

Rochester is so talented and so lively in society, that I believe he is

a general favourite: the ladies are very fond of him; though you would

not think his appearance calculated to recommend him particularly in

their eyes: but I suppose his acquirements and abilities, perhaps his

wealth and good blood, make amends for any little fault of look.”

“Are there ladies at the Leas?”

“There are Mrs. Eshton and her three daughters—very elegant young

ladies indeed; and there are the Honourable Blanche and Mary Ingram,

most beautiful women, I suppose: indeed I have seen Blanche, six or

seven years since, when she was a girl of eighteen. She came here to a

Christmas ball and party Mr. Rochester gave. You should have seen the

dining-room that day—how richly it was decorated, how brilliantly lit

up! I should think there were fifty ladies and gentlemen present—all of

the first county families; and Miss Ingram was considered the belle of

the evening.”

“You saw her, you say, Mrs. Fairfax: what was she like?”

“Yes, I saw her. The dining-room doors were thrown open; and, as it was

Christmas-time, the servants were allowed to assemble in the hall, to

hear some of the ladies sing and play. Mr. Rochester would have me to

come in, and I sat down in a quiet corner and watched them. I never saw

a more splendid scene: the ladies were magnificently dressed; most of

them—at least most of the younger ones—looked handsome; but Miss Ingram

was certainly the queen.”

“And what was she like?”

“Tall, fine bust, sloping shoulders; long, graceful neck: olive

complexion, dark and clear; noble features; eyes rather like Mr.

Rochester’s: large and black, and as brilliant as her jewels. And then

she had such a fine head of hair; raven-black and so becomingly

arranged: a crown of thick plaits behind, and in front the longest, the

glossiest curls I ever saw. She was dressed in pure white; an

amber-coloured scarf was passed over her shoulder and across her

breast, tied at the side, and descending in long, fringed ends below

her knee. She wore an amber-coloured flower, too, in her hair: it

contrasted well with the jetty mass of her curls.”

“She was greatly admired, of course?”

“Yes, indeed: and not only for her beauty, but for her accomplishments.

She was one of the ladies who sang: a gentleman accompanied her on the

piano. She and Mr. Rochester sang a duet.”

“Mr. Rochester? I was not aware he could sing.”

“Oh! he has a fine bass voice, and an excellent taste for music.”

“And Miss Ingram: what sort of a voice had she?”

“A very rich and powerful one: she sang delightfully; it was a treat to

listen to her;—and she played afterwards. I am no judge of music, but

Mr. Rochester is; and I heard him say her execution was remarkably

good.”

“And this beautiful and accomplished lady, she is not yet married?”

“It appears not: I fancy neither she nor her sister have very large

fortunes. Old Lord Ingram’s estates were chiefly entailed, and the

eldest son came in for everything almost.”

“But I wonder no wealthy nobleman or gentleman has taken a fancy to

her: Mr. Rochester, for instance. He is rich, is he not?”

“Oh! yes. But you see there is a considerable difference in age: Mr.

Rochester is nearly forty; she is but twenty-five.”

“What of that? More unequal matches are made every day.”

“True: yet I should scarcely fancy Mr. Rochester would entertain an

idea of the sort. But you eat nothing: you have scarcely tasted since

you began tea.”

“No: I am too thirsty to eat. Will you let me have another cup?”

I was about again to revert to the probability of a union between Mr.

Rochester and the beautiful Blanche; but Adèle came in, and the

conversation was turned into another channel.

When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got; looked into

my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and endeavoured to bring

back with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination’s

boundless and trackless waste, into the safe fold of common sense.

Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes,

wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night—of the

general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight

past; Reason having come forward and told, in her own quiet way, a

plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and

rabidly devoured the ideal;—I pronounced judgment to this effect:—

That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of

life; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet

lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar.

“_You_,” I said, “a favourite with Mr. Rochester? _You_ gifted with the

power of pleasing him? _You_ of importance to him in any way? Go! your

folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens

of preference—equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man

of the world to a dependent and a novice. How dared you? Poor stupid

dupe!—Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to

yourself this morning the brief scene of last night?—Cover your face

and be ashamed! He said something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind

puppy! Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed

senselessness! It does good to no woman to be flattered by her

superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in

all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned

and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and

responded to, must lead, _ignis-fatuus_-like, into miry wilds whence

there is no extrication.

“Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence: to-morrow, place the glass

before you, and draw in chalk your own picture, faithfully, without

softening one defect; omit no harsh line, smooth away no displeasing

irregularity; write under it, ‘Portrait of a Governess, disconnected,

poor, and plain.’

“Afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory—you have one prepared in your

drawing-box: take your palette, mix your freshest, finest, clearest

tints; choose your most delicate camel-hair pencils; delineate

carefully the loveliest face you can imagine; paint it in your softest

shades and sweetest lines, according to the description given by Mrs.

Fairfax of Blanche Ingram; remember the raven ringlets, the oriental

eye;—What! you revert to Mr. Rochester as a model! Order! No snivel!—no

sentiment!—no regret! I will endure only sense and resolution. Recall

the august yet harmonious lineaments, the Grecian neck and bust; let

the round and dazzling arm be visible, and the delicate hand; omit

neither diamond ring nor gold bracelet; portray faithfully the attire,

aërial lace and glistening satin, graceful scarf and golden rose; call

it ‘Blanche, an accomplished lady of rank.’

“Whenever, in future, you should chance to fancy Mr. Rochester thinks

well of you, take out these two pictures and compare them: say, ‘Mr.

Rochester might probably win that noble lady’s love, if he chose to

strive for it; is it likely he would waste a serious thought on this

indigent and insignificant plebeian?’”

“I’ll do it,” I resolved: and having framed this determination, I grew

calm, and fell asleep.

I kept my word. An hour or two sufficed to sketch my own portrait in

crayons; and in less than a fortnight I had completed an ivory

miniature of an imaginary Blanche Ingram. It looked a lovely face

enough, and when compared with the real head in chalk, the contrast was

as great as self-control could desire. I derived benefit from the task:

it had kept my head and hands employed, and had given force and

fixedness to the new impressions I wished to stamp indelibly on my

heart.

Ere long, I had reason to congratulate myself on the course of

wholesome discipline to which I had thus forced my feelings to submit.

Thanks to it, I was able to meet subsequent occurrences with a decent

calm, which, had they found me unprepared, I should probably have been

unequal to maintain, even externally.

CHAPTER XVII

A week passed, and no news arrived of Mr. Rochester: ten days, and

still he did not come. Mrs. Fairfax said she should not be surprised if

he were to go straight from the Leas to London, and thence to the

Continent, and not show his face again at Thornfield for a year to

come; he had not unfrequently quitted it in a manner quite as abrupt

and unexpected. When I heard this, I was beginning to feel a strange

chill and failing at the heart. I was actually permitting myself to

experience a sickening sense of disappointment; but rallying my wits,

and recollecting my principles, I at once called my sensations to

order; and it was wonderful how I got over the temporary blunder—how I

cleared up the mistake of supposing Mr. Rochester’s movements a matter

in which I had any cause to take a vital interest. Not that I humbled

myself by a slavish notion of inferiority: on the contrary, I just

said—

“You have nothing to do with the master of Thornfield, further than to

receive the salary he gives you for teaching his protégée, and to be

grateful for such respectful and kind treatment as, if you do your

duty, you have a right to expect at his hands. Be sure that is the only

tie he seriously acknowledges between you and him; so don’t make him

the object of your fine feelings, your raptures, agonies, and so forth.

He is not of your order: keep to your caste, and be too self-respecting

to lavish the love of the whole heart, soul, and strength, where such a

gift is not wanted and would be despised.”

I went on with my day’s business tranquilly; but ever and anon vague

suggestions kept wandering across my brain of reasons why I should quit

Thornfield; and I kept involuntarily framing advertisements and

pondering conjectures about new situations: these thoughts I did not

think to check; they might germinate and bear fruit if they could.

Mr. Rochester had been absent upwards of a fortnight, when the post

brought Mrs. Fairfax a letter.

“It is from the master,” said she, as she looked at the direction. “Now

I suppose we shall know whether we are to expect his return or not.”

And while she broke the seal and perused the document, I went on taking

my coffee (we were at breakfast): it was hot, and I attributed to that

circumstance a fiery glow which suddenly rose to my face. Why my hand

shook, and why I involuntarily spilt half the contents of my cup into

my saucer, I did not choose to consider.

“Well, I sometimes think we are too quiet; but we run a chance of being

busy enough now: for a little while at least,” said Mrs. Fairfax, still

holding the note before her spectacles.

Ere I permitted myself to request an explanation, I tied the string of

Adèle’s pinafore, which happened to be loose: having helped her also to

another bun and refilled her mug with milk, I said, nonchalantly—

“Mr. Rochester is not likely to return soon, I suppose?”

“Indeed he is—in three days, he says: that will be next Thursday; and

not alone either. I don’t know how many of the fine people at the Leas

are coming with him: he sends directions for all the best bedrooms to

be prepared; and the library and drawing-rooms are to be cleaned out; I

am to get more kitchen hands from the George Inn, at Millcote, and from

wherever else I can; and the ladies will bring their maids and the

gentlemen their valets: so we shall have a full house of it.” And Mrs.

Fairfax swallowed her breakfast and hastened away to commence

operations.

The three days were, as she had foretold, busy enough. I had thought

all the rooms at Thornfield beautifully clean and well arranged; but it

appears I was mistaken. Three women were got to help; and such

scrubbing, such brushing, such washing of paint and beating of carpets,

such taking down and putting up of pictures, such polishing of mirrors

and lustres, such lighting of fires in bedrooms, such airing of sheets

and feather-beds on hearths, I never beheld, either before or since.

Adèle ran quite wild in the midst of it: the preparations for company

and the prospect of their arrival, seemed to throw her into ecstasies.

She would have Sophie to look over all her “toilettes,” as she called

frocks; to furbish up any that were “_passées_,” and to air and arrange

the new. For herself, she did nothing but caper about in the front

chambers, jump on and off the bedsteads, and lie on the mattresses and

piled-up bolsters and pillows before the enormous fires roaring in the

chimneys. From school duties she was exonerated: Mrs. Fairfax had

pressed me into her service, and I was all day in the storeroom,

helping (or hindering) her and the cook; learning to make custards and

cheese-cakes and French pastry, to truss game and garnish

desert-dishes.

The party were expected to arrive on Thursday afternoon, in time for

dinner at six. During the intervening period I had no time to nurse

chimeras; and I believe I was as active and gay as anybody—Adèle

excepted. Still, now and then, I received a damping check to my

cheerfulness; and was, in spite of myself, thrown back on the region of

doubts and portents, and dark conjectures. This was when I chanced to

see the third-storey staircase door (which of late had always been kept

locked) open slowly, and give passage to the form of Grace Poole, in

prim cap, white apron, and handkerchief; when I watched her glide along

the gallery, her quiet tread muffled in a list slipper; when I saw her

look into the bustling, topsy-turvy bedrooms,—just say a word, perhaps,

to the charwoman about the proper way to polish a grate, or clean a

marble mantelpiece, or take stains from papered walls, and then pass

on. She would thus descend to the kitchen once a day, eat her dinner,

smoke a moderate pipe on the hearth, and go back, carrying her pot of

porter with her, for her private solace, in her own gloomy, upper

haunt. Only one hour in the twenty-four did she pass with her

fellow-servants below; all the rest of her time was spent in some

low-ceiled, oaken chamber of the second storey: there she sat and

sewed—and probably laughed drearily to herself,—as companionless as a

prisoner in his dungeon.

The strangest thing of all was, that not a soul in the house, except

me, noticed her habits, or seemed to marvel at them: no one discussed

her position or employment; no one pitied her solitude or isolation. I

once, indeed, overheard part of a dialogue between Leah and one of the

charwomen, of which Grace formed the subject. Leah had been saying

something I had not caught, and the charwoman remarked—

“She gets good wages, I guess?”

“Yes,” said Leah; “I wish I had as good; not that mine are to complain

of,—there’s no stinginess at Thornfield; but they’re not one fifth of

the sum Mrs. Poole receives. And she is laying by: she goes every

quarter to the bank at Millcote. I should not wonder but she has saved

enough to keep her independent if she liked to leave; but I suppose

she’s got used to the place; and then she’s not forty yet, and strong

and able for anything. It is too soon for her to give up business.”

“She is a good hand, I daresay,” said the charwoman.

“Ah!—she understands what she has to do,—nobody better,” rejoined Leah

significantly; “and it is not every one could fill her shoes—not for

all the money she gets.”

“That it is not!” was the reply. “I wonder whether the master—”

The charwoman was going on; but here Leah turned and perceived me, and

she instantly gave her companion a nudge.

“Doesn’t she know?” I heard the woman whisper.

Leah shook her head, and the conversation was of course dropped. All I

had gathered from it amounted to this,—that there was a mystery at

Thornfield; and that from participation in that mystery I was purposely

excluded.

Thursday came: all work had been completed the previous evening;

carpets were laid down, bed-hangings festooned, radiant white

counterpanes spread, toilet tables arranged, furniture rubbed, flowers

piled in vases: both chambers and saloons looked as fresh and bright as

hands could make them. The hall, too, was scoured; and the great carved

clock, as well as the steps and banisters of the staircase, were

polished to the brightness of glass; in the dining-room, the sideboard

flashed resplendent with plate; in the drawing-room and boudoir, vases

of exotics bloomed on all sides.

Afternoon arrived: Mrs. Fairfax assumed her best black satin gown, her

gloves, and her gold watch; for it was her part to receive the

company,—to conduct the ladies to their rooms, &c. Adèle, too, would be

dressed: though I thought she had little chance of being introduced to

the party that day at least. However, to please her, I allowed Sophie

to apparel her in one of her short, full muslin frocks. For myself, I

had no need to make any change; I should not be called upon to quit my

sanctum of the schoolroom; for a sanctum it was now become to me,—“a

very pleasant refuge in time of trouble.”

It had been a mild, serene spring day—one of those days which, towards

the end of March or the beginning of April, rise shining over the earth

as heralds of summer. It was drawing to an end now; but the evening was

even warm, and I sat at work in the schoolroom with the window open.

“It gets late,” said Mrs. Fairfax, entering in rustling state. “I am

glad I ordered dinner an hour after the time Mr. Rochester mentioned;

for it is past six now. I have sent John down to the gates to see if

there is anything on the road: one can see a long way from thence in

the direction of Millcote.” She went to the window. “Here he is!” said

she. “Well, John” (leaning out), “any news?”

“They’re coming, ma’am,” was the answer. “They’ll be here in ten

minutes.”

Adèle flew to the window. I followed, taking care to stand on one side,

so that, screened by the curtain, I could see without being seen.

The ten minutes John had given seemed very long, but at last wheels

were heard; four equestrians galloped up the drive, and after them came

two open carriages. Fluttering veils and waving plumes filled the

vehicles; two of the cavaliers were young, dashing-looking gentlemen;

the third was Mr. Rochester, on his black horse, Mesrour, Pilot

bounding before him; at his side rode a lady, and he and she were the

first of the party. Her purple riding-habit almost swept the ground,

her veil streamed long on the breeze; mingling with its transparent

folds, and gleaming through them, shone rich raven ringlets.

“Miss Ingram!” exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax, and away she hurried to her post

below.

The cavalcade, following the sweep of the drive, quickly turned the

angle of the house, and I lost sight of it. Adèle now petitioned to go

down; but I took her on my knee, and gave her to understand that she

must not on any account think of venturing in sight of the ladies,

either now or at any other time, unless expressly sent for: that Mr.

Rochester would be very angry, &c. “Some natural tears she shed” on

being told this; but as I began to look very grave, she consented at

last to wipe them.

A joyous stir was now audible in the hall: gentlemen’s deep tones and

ladies’ silvery accents blent harmoniously together, and

distinguishable above all, though not loud, was the sonorous voice of

the master of Thornfield Hall, welcoming his fair and gallant guests

under its roof. Then light steps ascended the stairs; and there was a

tripping through the gallery, and soft cheerful laughs, and opening and

closing doors, and, for a time, a hush.

“Elles changent de toilettes,” said Adèle; who, listening attentively,

had followed every movement; and she sighed.

“Chez maman,” said she, “quand il y avait du monde, je le suivais

partout, au salon et à leurs chambres; souvent je regardais les femmes

de chambre coiffer et habiller les dames, et c’était si amusant: comme

cela on apprend.”

“Don’t you feel hungry, Adèle?”

“Mais oui, mademoiselle: voilà cinq ou six heures que nous n’avons pas

mangé.”

“Well now, while the ladies are in their rooms, I will venture down and

get you something to eat.”

And issuing from my asylum with precaution, I sought a back-stairs

which conducted directly to the kitchen. All in that region was fire

and commotion; the soup and fish were in the last stage of projection,

and the cook hung over her crucibles in a frame of mind and body

threatening spontaneous combustion. In the servants’ hall two coachmen

and three gentlemen’s gentlemen stood or sat round the fire; the

abigails, I suppose, were upstairs with their mistresses; the new

servants, that had been hired from Millcote, were bustling about

everywhere. Threading this chaos, I at last reached the larder; there I

took possession of a cold chicken, a roll of bread, some tarts, a plate

or two and a knife and fork: with this booty I made a hasty retreat. I

had regained the gallery, and was just shutting the back-door behind

me, when an accelerated hum warned me that the ladies were about to

issue from their chambers. I could not proceed to the schoolroom

without passing some of their doors, and running the risk of being

surprised with my cargo of victualage; so I stood still at this end,

which, being windowless, was dark: quite dark now, for the sun was set

and twilight gathering.

Presently the chambers gave up their fair tenants one after another:

each came out gaily and airily, with dress that gleamed lustrous

through the dusk. For a moment they stood grouped together at the other

extremity of the gallery, conversing in a key of sweet subdued

vivacity: they then descended the staircase almost as noiselessly as a

bright mist rolls down a hill. Their collective appearance had left on

me an impression of high-born elegance, such as I had never before

received.

I found Adèle peeping through the schoolroom door, which she held ajar.

“What beautiful ladies!” cried she in English. “Oh, I wish I might go

to them! Do you think Mr. Rochester will send for us by-and-by, after

dinner?”

“No, indeed, I don’t; Mr. Rochester has something else to think about.

Never mind the ladies to-night; perhaps you will see them to-morrow:

here is your dinner.”

She was really hungry, so the chicken and tarts served to divert her

attention for a time. It was well I secured this forage, or both she,

I, and Sophie, to whom I conveyed a share of our repast, would have run

a chance of getting no dinner at all: every one downstairs was too much

engaged to think of us. The dessert was not carried out till after

nine; and at ten footmen were still running to and fro with trays and

coffee-cups. I allowed Adèle to sit up much later than usual; for she

declared she could not possibly go to sleep while the doors kept

opening and shutting below, and people bustling about. Besides, she

added, a message might possibly come from Mr. Rochester when she was

undressed; “et alors quel dommage!”

I told her stories as long as she would listen to them; and then for a

change I took her out into the gallery. The hall lamp was now lit, and

it amused her to look over the balustrade and watch the servants

passing backwards and forwards. When the evening was far advanced, a

sound of music issued from the drawing-room, whither the piano had been

removed; Adèle and I sat down on the top step of the stairs to listen.

Presently a voice blent with the rich tones of the instrument; it was a

lady who sang, and very sweet her notes were. The solo over, a duet

followed, and then a glee: a joyous conversational murmur filled up the

intervals. I listened long: suddenly I discovered that my ear was

wholly intent on analysing the mingled sounds, and trying to

discriminate amidst the confusion of accents those of Mr. Rochester;

and when it caught them, which it soon did, it found a further task in

framing the tones, rendered by distance inarticulate, into words.

The clock struck eleven. I looked at Adèle, whose head leant against my

shoulder; her eyes were waxing heavy, so I took her up in my arms and

carried her off to bed. It was near one before the gentlemen and ladies

sought their chambers.

The next day was as fine as its predecessor: it was devoted by the

party to an excursion to some site in the neighbourhood. They set out

early in the forenoon, some on horseback, the rest in carriages; I

witnessed both the departure and the return. Miss Ingram, as before,

was the only lady equestrian; and, as before, Mr. Rochester galloped at

her side; the two rode a little apart from the rest. I pointed out this

circumstance to Mrs. Fairfax, who was standing at the window with me—

“You said it was not likely they should think of being married,” said

I, “but you see Mr. Rochester evidently prefers her to any of the other

ladies.”

“Yes, I daresay: no doubt he admires her.”

“And she him,” I added; “look how she leans her head towards him as if

she were conversing confidentially; I wish I could see her face; I have

never had a glimpse of it yet.”

“You will see her this evening,” answered Mrs. Fairfax. “I happened to

remark to Mr. Rochester how much Adèle wished to be introduced to the

ladies, and he said: ‘Oh! let her come into the drawing-room after

dinner; and request Miss Eyre to accompany her.’”

“Yes; he said that from mere politeness: I need not go, I am sure,” I

answered.

“Well, I observed to him that as you were unused to company, I did not

think you would like appearing before so gay a party—all strangers; and

he replied, in his quick way—‘Nonsense! If she objects, tell her it is

my particular wish; and if she resists, say I shall come and fetch her

in case of contumacy.’”

“I will not give him that trouble,” I answered. “I will go, if no

better may be; but I don’t like it. Shall you be there, Mrs. Fairfax?”

“No; I pleaded off, and he admitted my plea. I’ll tell you how to

manage so as to avoid the embarrassment of making a formal entrance,

which is the most disagreeable part of the business. You must go into

the drawing-room while it is empty, before the ladies leave the

dinner-table; choose your seat in any quiet nook you like; you need not

stay long after the gentlemen come in, unless you please: just let Mr.

Rochester see you are there and then slip away—nobody will notice you.”

“Will these people remain long, do you think?”

“Perhaps two or three weeks, certainly not more. After the Easter

recess, Sir George Lynn, who was lately elected member for Millcote,

will have to go up to town and take his seat; I daresay Mr. Rochester

will accompany him: it surprises me that he has already made so

protracted a stay at Thornfield.”

It was with some trepidation that I perceived the hour approach when I

was to repair with my charge to the drawing-room. Adèle had been in a

state of ecstasy all day, after hearing she was to be presented to the

ladies in the evening; and it was not till Sophie commenced the

operation of dressing her that she sobered down. Then the importance of

the process quickly steadied her, and by the time she had her curls

arranged in well-smoothed, drooping clusters, her pink satin frock put

on, her long sash tied, and her lace mittens adjusted, she looked as

grave as any judge. No need to warn her not to disarrange her attire:

when she was dressed, she sat demurely down in her little chair, taking

care previously to lift up the satin skirt for fear she should crease

it, and assured me she would not stir thence till I was ready. This I

quickly was: my best dress (the silver-grey one, purchased for Miss

Temple’s wedding, and never worn since) was soon put on; my hair was

soon smoothed; my sole ornament, the pearl brooch, soon assumed. We

descended.

Fortunately there was another entrance to the drawing-room than that

through the saloon where they were all seated at dinner. We found the

apartment vacant; a large fire burning silently on the marble hearth,

and wax candles shining in bright solitude, amid the exquisite flowers

with which the tables were adorned. The crimson curtain hung before the

arch: slight as was the separation this drapery formed from the party

in the adjoining saloon, they spoke in so low a key that nothing of

their conversation could be distinguished beyond a soothing murmur.

Adèle, who appeared to be still under the influence of a most

solemnising impression, sat down, without a word, on the footstool I

pointed out to her. I retired to a window-seat, and taking a book from

a table near, endeavoured to read. Adèle brought her stool to my feet;

ere long she touched my knee.

“What is it, Adèle?”

“Est-ce que je ne puis pas prendre une seule de ces fleurs magnifiques,

mademoiselle? Seulement pour completer ma toilette.”

“You think too much of your ‘toilette,’ Adèle: but you may have a

flower.” And I took a rose from a vase and fastened it in her sash. She

sighed a sigh of ineffable satisfaction, as if her cup of happiness

were now full. I turned my face away to conceal a smile I could not

suppress: there was something ludicrous as well as painful in the

little Parisienne’s earnest and innate devotion to matters of dress.

A soft sound of rising now became audible; the curtain was swept back

from the arch; through it appeared the dining-room, with its lit lustre

pouring down light on the silver and glass of a magnificent

dessert-service covering a long table; a band of ladies stood in the

opening; they entered, and the curtain fell behind them.

There were but eight; yet, somehow, as they flocked in, they gave the

impression of a much larger number. Some of them were very tall; many

were dressed in white; and all had a sweeping amplitude of array that

seemed to magnify their persons as a mist magnifies the moon. I rose

and curtseyed to them: one or two bent their heads in return, the

others only stared at me.

They dispersed about the room, reminding me, by the lightness and

buoyancy of their movements, of a flock of white plumy birds. Some of

them threw themselves in half-reclining positions on the sofas and

ottomans: some bent over the tables and examined the flowers and books:

the rest gathered in a group round the fire: all talked in a low but

clear tone which seemed habitual to them. I knew their names

afterwards, and may as well mention them now.

First, there was Mrs. Eshton and two of her daughters. She had

evidently been a handsome woman, and was well preserved still. Of her

daughters, the eldest, Amy, was rather little: naïve, and child-like in

face and manner, and piquant in form; her white muslin dress and blue

sash became her well. The second, Louisa, was taller and more elegant

in figure; with a very pretty face, of that order the French term

_minois chiffoné_: both sisters were fair as lilies.

Lady Lynn was a large and stout personage of about forty, very erect,

very haughty-looking, richly dressed in a satin robe of changeful

sheen: her dark hair shone glossily under the shade of an azure plume,

and within the circlet of a band of gems.

Mrs. Colonel Dent was less showy; but, I thought, more lady-like. She

had a slight figure, a pale, gentle face, and fair hair. Her black

satin dress, her scarf of rich foreign lace, and her pearl ornaments,

pleased me better than the rainbow radiance of the titled dame.

But the three most distinguished—partly, perhaps, because the tallest

figures of the band—were the Dowager Lady Ingram and her daughters,

Blanche and Mary. They were all three of the loftiest stature of women.

The Dowager might be between forty and fifty: her shape was still fine;

her hair (by candle-light at least) still black; her teeth, too, were

still apparently perfect. Most people would have termed her a splendid

woman of her age: and so she was, no doubt, physically speaking; but

then there was an expression of almost insupportable haughtiness in her

bearing and countenance. She had Roman features and a double chin,

disappearing into a throat like a pillar: these features appeared to me

not only inflated and darkened, but even furrowed with pride; and the

chin was sustained by the same principle, in a position of almost

preternatural erectness. She had, likewise, a fierce and a hard eye: it

reminded me of Mrs. Reed’s; she mouthed her words in speaking; her

voice was deep, its inflections very pompous, very dogmatical,—very

intolerable, in short. A crimson velvet robe, and a shawl turban of

some gold-wrought Indian fabric, invested her (I suppose she thought)

with a truly imperial dignity.

Blanche and Mary were of equal stature,—straight and tall as poplars.

Mary was too slim for her height, but Blanche was moulded like a Dian.

I regarded her, of course, with special interest. First, I wished to

see whether her appearance accorded with Mrs. Fairfax’s description;

secondly, whether it at all resembled the fancy miniature I had painted

of her; and thirdly—it will out!—whether it were such as I should fancy

likely to suit Mr. Rochester’s taste.

As far as person went, she answered point for point, both to my picture

and Mrs. Fairfax’s description. The noble bust, the sloping shoulders,

the graceful neck, the dark eyes and black ringlets were all there;—but

her face? Her face was like her mother’s; a youthful unfurrowed

likeness: the same low brow, the same high features, the same pride. It

was not, however, so saturnine a pride! she laughed continually; her

laugh was satirical, and so was the habitual expression of her arched

and haughty lip.

Genius is said to be self-conscious. I cannot tell whether Miss Ingram

was a genius, but she was self-conscious—remarkably self-conscious

indeed. She entered into a discourse on botany with the gentle Mrs.

Dent. It seemed Mrs. Dent had not studied that science: though, as she

said, she liked flowers, “especially wild ones;” Miss Ingram had, and

she ran over its vocabulary with an air. I presently perceived she was

(what is vernacularly termed) _trailing_ Mrs. Dent; that is, playing on

her ignorance; her _trail_ might be clever, but it was decidedly not

good-natured. She played: her execution was brilliant; she sang: her

voice was fine; she talked French apart to her mamma; and she talked it

well, with fluency and with a good accent.

Mary had a milder and more open countenance than Blanche; softer

features too, and a skin some shades fairer (Miss Ingram was dark as a

Spaniard)—but Mary was deficient in life: her face lacked expression,

her eye lustre; she had nothing to say, and having once taken her seat,

remained fixed like a statue in its niche. The sisters were both

attired in spotless white.

And did I now think Miss Ingram such a choice as Mr. Rochester would be

likely to make? I could not tell—I did not know his taste in female

beauty. If he liked the majestic, she was the very type of majesty:

then she was accomplished, sprightly. Most gentlemen would admire her,

I thought; and that he _did_ admire her, I already seemed to have

obtained proof: to remove the last shade of doubt, it remained but to

see them together.

You are not to suppose, reader, that Adèle has all this time been

sitting motionless on the stool at my feet: no; when the ladies

entered, she rose, advanced to meet them, made a stately reverence, and

said with gravity—

“Bon jour, mesdames.”

And Miss Ingram had looked down at her with a mocking air, and

exclaimed, “Oh, what a little puppet!”

Lady Lynn had remarked, “It is Mr. Rochester’s ward, I suppose—the

little French girl he was speaking of.”

Mrs. Dent had kindly taken her hand, and given her a kiss. Amy and

Louisa Eshton had cried out simultaneously—

“What a love of a child!”

And then they had called her to a sofa, where she now sat, ensconced

between them, chattering alternately in French and broken English;

absorbing not only the young ladies’ attention, but that of Mrs. Eshton

and Lady Lynn, and getting spoilt to her heart’s content.

At last coffee is brought in, and the gentlemen are summoned. I sit in

the shade—if any shade there be in this brilliantly-lit apartment; the

window-curtain half hides me. Again the arch yawns; they come. The

collective appearance of the gentlemen, like that of the ladies, is

very imposing: they are all costumed in black; most of them are tall,

some young. Henry and Frederick Lynn are very dashing sparks indeed;

and Colonel Dent is a fine soldierly man. Mr. Eshton, the magistrate of

the district, is gentleman-like: his hair is quite white, his eyebrows

and whiskers still dark, which gives him something of the appearance of

a “père noble de théâtre.” Lord Ingram, like his sisters, is very tall;

like them, also, he is handsome; but he shares Mary’s apathetic and

listless look: he seems to have more length of limb than vivacity of

blood or vigour of brain.

And where is Mr. Rochester?

He comes in last: I am not looking at the arch, yet I see him enter. I

try to concentrate my attention on those netting-needles, on the meshes

of the purse I am forming—I wish to think only of the work I have in my

hands, to see only the silver beads and silk threads that lie in my

lap; whereas, I distinctly behold his figure, and I inevitably recall

the moment when I last saw it; just after I had rendered him, what he

deemed, an essential service, and he, holding my hand, and looking down

on my face, surveyed me with eyes that revealed a heart full and eager

to overflow; in whose emotions I had a part. How near had I approached

him at that moment! What had occurred since, calculated to change his

and my relative positions? Yet now, how distant, how far estranged we

were! So far estranged, that I did not expect him to come and speak to

me. I did not wonder, when, without looking at me, he took a seat at

the other side of the room, and began conversing with some of the

ladies.

No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and that I

might gaze without being observed, than my eyes were drawn

involuntarily to his face; I could not keep their lids under control:

they would rise, and the irids would fix on him. I looked, and had an

acute pleasure in looking,—a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold,

with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing

man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned,

yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.

Most true is it that “beauty is in the eye of the gazer.” My master’s

colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows,

deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth,—all energy, decision,

will,—were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than

beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite

mastered me,—that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them

in his. I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought

hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and

now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived,

green and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.

I compared him with his guests. What was the gallant grace of the

Lynns, the languid elegance of Lord Ingram,—even the military

distinction of Colonel Dent, contrasted with his look of native pith

and genuine power? I had no sympathy in their appearance, their

expression: yet I could imagine that most observers would call them

attractive, handsome, imposing; while they would pronounce Mr.

Rochester at once harsh-featured and melancholy-looking. I saw them

smile, laugh—it was nothing; the light of the candles had as much soul

in it as their smile; the tinkle of the bell as much significance as

their laugh. I saw Mr. Rochester smile:—his stern features softened;

his eye grew both brilliant and gentle, its ray both searching and

sweet. He was talking, at the moment, to Louisa and Amy Eshton. I

wondered to see them receive with calm that look which seemed to me so

penetrating: I expected their eyes to fall, their colour to rise under

it; yet I was glad when I found they were in no sense moved. “He is not

to them what he is to me,” I thought: “he is not of their kind. I

believe he is of mine;—I am sure he is—I feel akin to him—I understand

the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth

sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood

and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him. Did I say, a few days

since, that I had nothing to do with him but to receive my salary at

his hands? Did I forbid myself to think of him in any other light than

as a paymaster? Blasphemy against nature! Every good, true, vigorous

feeling I have gathers impulsively round him. I know I must conceal my

sentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he cannot care

much for me. For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I

have his force to influence, and his spell to attract; I mean only that

I have certain tastes and feelings in common with him. I must, then,

repeat continually that we are for ever sundered:—and yet, while I

breathe and think, I must love him.”

Coffee is handed. The ladies, since the gentlemen entered, have become

lively as larks; conversation waxes brisk and merry. Colonel Dent and

Mr. Eshton argue on politics; their wives listen. The two proud

dowagers, Lady Lynn and Lady Ingram, confabulate together. Sir

George—whom, by-the-bye, I have forgotten to describe,—a very big, and

very fresh-looking country gentleman, stands before their sofa,

coffee-cup in hand, and occasionally puts in a word. Mr. Frederick Lynn

has taken a seat beside Mary Ingram, and is showing her the engravings

of a splendid volume: she looks, smiles now and then, but apparently

says little. The tall and phlegmatic Lord Ingram leans with folded arms

on the chair-back of the little and lively Amy Eshton; she glances up

at him, and chatters like a wren: she likes him better than she does

Mr. Rochester. Henry Lynn has taken possession of an ottoman at the

feet of Louisa: Adèle shares it with him: he is trying to talk French

with her, and Louisa laughs at his blunders. With whom will Blanche

Ingram pair? She is standing alone at the table, bending gracefully

over an album. She seems waiting to be sought; but she will not wait

too long: she herself selects a mate.

Mr. Rochester, having quitted the Eshtons, stands on the hearth as

solitary as she stands by the table: she confronts him, taking her

station on the opposite side of the mantelpiece.

“Mr. Rochester, I thought you were not fond of children?”

“Nor am I.”

“Then, what induced you to take charge of such a little doll as that?”

(pointing to Adèle). “Where did you pick her up?”

“I did not pick her up; she was left on my hands.”

“You should have sent her to school.”

“I could not afford it: schools are so dear.”

“Why, I suppose you have a governess for her: I saw a person with her

just now—is she gone? Oh, no! there she is still, behind the

window-curtain. You pay her, of course; I should think it quite as

expensive,—more so; for you have them both to keep in addition.”

I feared—or should I say, hoped?—the allusion to me would make Mr.

Rochester glance my way; and I involuntarily shrank farther into the

shade: but he never turned his eyes.

“I have not considered the subject,” said he indifferently, looking

straight before him.

“No, you men never do consider economy and common sense. You should

hear mama on the chapter of governesses: Mary and I have had, I should

think, a dozen at least in our day; half of them detestable and the

rest ridiculous, and all incubi—were they not, mama?”

“Did you speak, my own?”