Jane Eyre Read online

  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, forever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win anyone’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 forevery 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 judgement. I know that had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child—though equally dependent and friendless—Mrs Reed would have endured my presence more complacently; her children would have entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.

  Daylight began to forsake the red room. It was past four o’clock, and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. I heard the rain still beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind howling in the grove behind the hall. I grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire. All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so. What thought had I been but just conceiving of starving myself to death? That certainly was a crime and was I fit to die? Or was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting bourne? In such vault I had been told did Mr Reed lie buried, and led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with gathering dread. I could not remember him, but I knew that he was my own uncle—my mother’s brother—that he had taken me when a parentless infant to his house, and that in his last moments he had required a promise of Mrs Reed that she would rear and maintain me as one of her own children. Mrs Reed probably considered she had kept this promise and so she had, I dare say, as well as her nature would permit her, but how could she really like an interloper not of her race, and unconnected with her, after her husband’s death, by any tie? It must have been most irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her own family group.

  A singular notion dawned upon me. I doubted not—never doubted—that if Mr Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly, and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls—occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaning mirror—I began to recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed and I thought Mr Reed’s spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his sister’s child, might quit its abode—whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed—and rise before me in this chamber. I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realised, with all my might I endeavoured to stifle it—I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room, at this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No. Moonlight was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by some one across the lawn, but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world. My heart beat thick, my head grew hot. A sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings, something seemed near me, I was oppressed, suffocated, endurance broke down. I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer passage, the key turned, Bessie and Abbot entered.

  “Miss Eyre, are you ill?” said Bessie.

  “What a dreadful noise! It went quite through me!” exclaimed Abbot.

  “Take me out! Let me go into the nursery!” was my cry.

  “What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something?” again demanded Bessie.

  “Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come.” I had now got hold of Bessie’s hand, and she did not snatch it from me.

  “She has screamed out on purpose,” declared Abbot, in some disgust. “And what a scream! If she had been in great pain one would have excused it, but she only wanted to bring us all here. I know he
r 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 Three

  The next thing I remember is, waking up with a feeling as if I had had a frightful nightmare, and seeing before me a terrible red glare, crossed with thick black bars. I heard voices, too, speaking with a hollow sound, and as if muffled by a rush of wind or water. Agitation, uncertainty, and an all-predominating sense of terror confused my faculties. Ere long, I became aware that some one was handling me, lifting me up and supporting me in a sitting posture, and that more tenderly than I had ever been raised or upheld before. I rested my head against a pillow or an arm, and felt easy.

  In five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved. I knew quite well that I was in my own bed, and that the red glare was the nursery fire. It was night, a candle burnt on the table. Bessie stood at the bed-foot with a basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near my pillow, leaning over me.

  I felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection and security, when I knew that there was a stranger in the room, an individual not belonging to Gateshead, and not related to Mrs Reed. Turning from Bessie—though her presence was far less obnoxious to me than that of Abbot, for instance, would have been—I scrutinised the face of the gentleman. I knew him. It was Mr Lloyd, an apothecary, sometimes called in by Mrs Reed when the servants were ailing. For herself and the children she employed a physician.

  “Well, who am I?” he asked.

  I pronounced his name, offering him at the same time my hand, he took it, smiling and saying, “We shall do very well by-and-by.” Then he laid me down, and addressing Bessie, charged her to be very careful that I was not disturbed during the night. Having given some further directions, and intimates that he should call again the next day, he departed. To my grief, I felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat in the chair near my pillow and as he closed the door after him, all the room darkened and my heart again sank. Inexpressible sadness weighed it down.

  “Do you feel as if you should sleep, Miss?” asked Bessie, rather softly.

  Scarcely dared I answer her, for I feared the next sentence might be rough. “I will try.”

  “Would you like to drink, or could you eat anything?”

  “No, thank you, Bessie.”

  “Then I think I shall go to bed, for it is past twelve o’clock, but you may call me if you want anything in the night.”

  Wonderful civility this! It emboldened me to ask a question.

  “Bessie, what is the matter with me? Am I ill?”

  “You fell sick, I suppose, in the red room with crying. You’ll be better soon, no doubt.”

  Bessie went into the housemaid’s apartment, which was near. I heard her say, “Sarah, come and sleep with me in the nursery. I daren’t for my life be alone with that poor child to-night, she might die. It’s such a strange thing she should have that fit, I wonder if she saw anything. Missis was rather too hard.”

  Sarah came back with her. They both went to bed; they were whispering together for half-an-hour before they fell asleep. I caught scraps of their conversation, from which I was able only too distinctly to infer the main subject discussed.

  “Something passed her, all dressed in white, and vanished”—“A great black dog behind him”—“Three loud raps on the chamber door”—“A light in the churchyard just over his grave,” etcetera.

  At last both slept, the fire and the candle went out. For me, the watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness, strained by dread, such dread as children only can feel.

  No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red room, it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the reverberation to this day. Yes, Mrs Reed, to you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering, but I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did, while rending my heart-strings, you thought you were only uprooting my bad propensities.

  Next day, by noon, I was up and dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl by the nursery hearth. I felt physically weak and broken down, but my worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind, a wretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears. No sooner had I wiped one salt drop from my cheek than another followed. Yet, I thought, I ought to have been happy, for none of the Reeds were there, they were all gone out in the carriage with their Mama. Abbot, too, was sewing in another room, and Bessie, as she moved hither and thither, putting away toys and arranging drawers, addressed to me every now and then a word of unwonted kindness. This state of things should have been to me a paradise of peace, accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless fagging, but in fact, my racked nerves were now in such a state that no calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably.

  Bessie had been down into the kitchen, and she brought up with her a tart on a certain brightly painted china plate, whose bird of paradise, nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds, had been wont to stir in me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration; and which plate I had often petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand in order to examine it more closely, but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a privilege. This precious vessel was now placed on my knee, and I was cordially invited to eat the circlet of delicate pastry upon it. Vain favour! Coming, like most other favours long deferred and often wished for, too late! I could not eat the tart, and the plumage of the bird, the tints of the flowers, seemed strangely faded. I put both plate and tart away. Bessie asked if I would have a book, the word book acted as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver’s Travels from the library. This book I had again and again perused with delight. I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales, for as to the elves, having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant. Whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth’s surface, I doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of the one realm, and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other. Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand—when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find—all was eerie and dreary. The giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. I closed the book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table, beside th
e 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 gypsying, 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;