Works of C E Bronte

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The Works of 


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The Works of 


CHARLOTTE 
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BRONTE 


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THE COMPLETE NOVELS 


JANE EYRE _ 
BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE 


WUTHERING HEIGHTS 
BY EMILY BRONTE 


SHIRLEY 
BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE 


VILE TR Bmitin 
BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE 


THE PROFESSOR 
BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE 


Longmeadow Press 


“The paper used in this publication meets the minimum 
requirements of American National Standard for Information 
Sciences —Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, 


ANSI Z39.48-1984.” eo 


Copyright © 1981 by Crown Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. 


This Edition Published Exclusively for Longmeadow Press by 
Avenel Books, Inc. 


Printed and Bound in the United States of America 
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data 


Complete novels of Charlotte & Emily Bronté. Works of 
Charlotte & Emily Bronté. 


Contents: Jane Eyre / by Charlotte Bronté— Wuthering 
Heights / by Emily Bronté—Shirley / by Charlotte Bronté— 
[etc.] 

Originally published under title: The complete novels of 
Charlotte & Emily Bronté. 

1. English fiction—19th century. 2. English fiction— 
Women authors. I. Bronté, Charlotte, 1816-1855. II. 
Bronté, Emily, 1818-1848. III. Title: Works of Charlotte and 
Emily Bronté. 

PR4166 1985 823'.8'08 85-14986 


ISBN: 0-681-32276-4 
10; 9°38 776754372) tf 


CONTENTS 


TRITOGUCTION ge Sapte ren etree een ane et: ot eee Vii 
Jane ER yrew ee seer tee eee Mates eee cee ye, Cee Ft eee ee 1 
Wutneringel icightSep sets. 0. Seni he mele oe es tees hes Pat 
Shitlcyae eee oe ee ee ee tae ees Bee 443 
Nillcticeem erste Or Nr Mts Ol eee ee 769 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2024 


https://archive.org/details/worksofcebronteOO0Orudo 


Introduction 


HERE ARE all five novels of the two most famous Bronté sisters, Charlotte and Emily. 
Thackeray, the novelist of Vanity Fair, said of Charlotte, “Which of her readers has 
not become her friend?” Millions have felt that way about Charlotte Bronté since Jane 
Eyre became an overnight sensation almost a century and a half ago. Emily Bronté’s 
personality has always seemed more elusive, but the only novel from her pen, the 
somber Wuthering Heights, has its own equally wide and enthusiastic following. 

Here is Wuthering Heights, set on the Yorkshire moors, the classic story of 
persistent and ruinous passion with its unforgettable tale of Heathcliff’s obsession 
with Catherine and her family. Here too are all the novels of Charlotte Bronté. Jane 
Eyre tells of the penniless orphan who became a governess and her love for Mr. 
Rochester, the master of Thornfield Hall. Shirley is a tale of love and ambition and 
industrial unrest set among the wool mills of Yorkshire. In its title character, Charlotte 
gave a portrait of her sister Emily, who was dying as the book was being written. 
Villette is the story of Lucy Snowe’s progress in love and self-knowledge at a school in 
Brussels. The Bronté sisters had actually studied and taught in Brussels, and the 
autobiographical element is strong. Also included is The Professor, Charlotte’s first 
novel. Unpublished in her lifetime, it handles love themes similar to Villette’s, but 
from the man’s point of view. 

Charlotte and Emily were two of the six children of a country clergyman. Their 
mother died young, and the two elder sisters died in early childhood. The remaining 
four, Charlotte, Emily, sister Anne, and brother Branwell, were encouraged by their 
father in their precocity and lived in a world of literary fantasy. What they did, they 
did collectively. From childhood until they were fully adult, the four composed 
elaborate fantasy worlds in pairs: Charlotte with Branwell and Emily with Anne. 
They created these worlds at great length in tiny script on small sheets of paper which 
they bound into books. 

The sisters’ public literary career began when Charlotte decided to publish the 
poems that had been part of this childhood epic cycle in a collection which included 
poems by each of the three sisters. Then the sisters began to write a novel apiece in a 
kind of sisterly competition. They spent hours each evening walking around their 
parlor table and telling each other the plots and plans for the novels to come. Out of 
this competition came Wuthering Heights by Emily and The Professor by Charlotte. 

The sisters lived lives so brief—only Charlotte lived long enough to enjoy her 
fame, and even she died at age thirty-nine, just a few months after marrying her 
father’s curate. How did their private lives of relative isolation prepare them for the 
passionate expression of their novels? They were most at home in the world of the 
imagination. In their lives outside of their writing they met with one tragedy or failure 
after another. They took their education in bits and snatches between bouts of illness; 


vil 


Vili Introduction 


they failed to find students for the school they planned to open together—again a joint 
undertaking; their lives were brief, and Branwell, to whom they were devoted, failed 
most of all, dying from drink and drug addiction at age thirty-one. 

But the paradox is that, despite the shortness of their lives, these sisters were 
“tenacious of life,” as Rochester says of Jane Eyre. Charlotte described Jane Austen's 
writings as more real than her own, but not more true. This was the key. They had 
learned their ideas of life from romantic sources—Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, the 
Arabian Nights, and the lives of heroes like Wellington. Life demanded action, but 
this action was to be obedient to inner passions. Ignorance and suppression of these 
deep interior motivations were to the sisters the chief cause of personal trouble and 
even of social injustice. For Emily, who had a visionary and mystical intensity of 
mind, the heart’s passion had an added inevitability. This is what gives her Wuthering 
Heights its demonic quality. 

The Brontés were accused of immorality in their writings by some critics of their 
time. Romantic novels have always found criticism of this kind. When the authors 
were revealed to be women, the prejudiced criticism was added that they were 
unladylike. In person, however, Thackeray saw Charlotte as “‘an austere little Joan of 
Arc, marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals.” The sisters’ 
tales of the heart are indeed often in revolt against convention and show strong 
feelings for the plight of women. What Charlotte said of her sisters is true also of 
herself: “They always wrote from the impulse of nature, the dictates of intuition, and 
from such stores of observation as their limited experience had enabled them to 
amass.” When you add unparalleled imagination, and the mark of genius and 
originality, then you have the Brontés. 


The Works of 


CHARLOTTE 
ScD 
EMILY... 
BRONTE 


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if 


Jane Eyre 


by 
Charlotte Bronté 


aft 


Chapter I 


THERE was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, 
indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. 
Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought 
with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise 
was now out of the question. 

I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful 
to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and 
a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness 
of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed. 

The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in 
the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings 
about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, 
she had dispensed from joining the group; saying, “‘She regretted to be under the 
necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and 
could discover by her own observation that I was endeavouring in good earnest to 
acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly 
manner,—something lighter, franker, more natural as it were—she really must 
exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children.” 

‘‘What does Bessie say I have done?’’ I asked. 

‘‘Jane, I don’t like cavillers or questioners: besides, there is something truly 
forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; 
and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.’’ 

A small breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room. I slipped in there. It contained 
a book-case: 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 letter-press 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— 


4 Jane Eyre 


‘‘Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls, 
Boils round the naked, melancholy isles 
Of farthest Thule; and the Atiantic 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 rigors 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 quiet 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 night- 
cap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from 
old fairy tales and older 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! Madame 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) Jane 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. 


Jane Eyre 5 


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 
on 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. 

“*T was reading.’’ 

“*Shew the book.’’ 

I returned to the window and fetched it thence. 

‘“You have no business to take our books; you are a dependant, 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 book-shelves: 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, etc. Also I had drawn parallels in silence, which I never thought thus to 
have declared aloud. 

‘*What! what!’’ he cried. ‘‘Did you 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 sufferings: these sensations for the time predominated over fear, and | 
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 


ee 


6 June Eyre 


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 I 


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 poor-house.”’ 

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.’’ 


Jane Eyre if 


“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 mi ght 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 spare 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 kitchens; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom 
entered. The housemaid 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 bed-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 up 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. ne 

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 brow-beaten, 
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 


8 Jane Eyre 


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!—aunjust!’’ 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. 


Jane Eyre 9 


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.’’ 

‘‘Oh 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. 


10 Jane Eyre 


Chapter III 


THE next thing I remember is, waking up with a feeling as if I had had a frightful 
night-mare, 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 church- 
yard just over his grave’’—etc., etc. 

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. 


Jane Eyre Ty 


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 heartstrings, you 
thought you were only up-rooting 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 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, 


12 Jane Eyre 


I found in its melody an indescribable sadness. Sometimes, pre-occupied with her 
work, she sang the refrain very low, very lingerly: “‘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’ d 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. 


“Ey'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 faill 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?’’ 

m Yess sir, Janewzyre, 

‘“‘Well, you have been crying, Miss Jane Eyre, can you tell me what about? 
Have you any pain?”’ 

cANONSICs 

‘“‘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 daresay 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. 


Jane Eyre 13 


"’ 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.”’ 

“*T 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. 

“IT 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 
Itai) 

‘“‘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?”’ 

‘*T think not, sir.”’ 

‘*None belonging to your father?”’ 

‘‘T 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 the degradation. 

‘*No; I should not like to belong to poor people,’’ was my reply. 

‘‘Not even if they were kind to you?”’ 


14 Jane Eyre 


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?”’ 

‘‘T 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. 

‘‘T 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 com- 
munications 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.”’ 


Jane Eyre ih 


“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 fo 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.”’ 


16 Jane Eyre 


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 doors opened 
and closed. When tired of this occupation, I would retire from the stair-head to the 
solitary and silent nursery: there, though somewhat sad, I was not miserable. To 
speak the truth, I had not the least wish to go into company, for in company I was 
very rarely noticed; and if Bessie had 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 knot 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 


Jane Eyre Le 


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. | 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, etc.). Having 
spread the quilt and folded my night-dress, | 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 ncthing 
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 wash-stand, 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, 


18 Jane Eyre 


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?’’ 


> Lenyyeats.ra 
‘*So much?’’ was the doubtful answer; and he prolonged his scrutiny for some 
minutes. Presently he addressed me:—*‘Your name, little girl?’ 


Jane. Eyre ssits6 

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.”’ 

oy should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?”’ 

pe NO MSI 

‘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 doubts I only cast my eyes down on the 
two large feet planted on the rug, and sighed, wishing myself far enough away. 

“‘T 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. 


Jane Eyre 19 


ey eESs.Sit: 

“Do you read your Bible?’’ 

**Sometimes.”’ 

**With pleasure? Are you fond of it?’ 

‘*T 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 ginger-bread 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.”’ 

‘*T 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.’ ”’ 


20 Jane Eyre 


‘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; | advocate consistency in 
all things.”’ 

sGonueney 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.” 

‘‘T 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. | 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 
byes 

‘*Good bye, Mr. Brocklehurst; remember me to Mrs. and Miss Brocklehurst, 
and to Augusta and Theodore, and Master Broughton Brocklehurst.”’ 

‘‘T 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 eye-brows 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:— 

‘Tam 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 


Jane Eyre ay 


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 amy glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as long 
as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks 
me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you 
makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.”’ 

‘“‘How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?’’ 

‘“How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth. You think I have 
no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live 
so: and you have no pity. I shall remember how you thrust me back— roughly and 
violently thrust me back—into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying 
day; though I was in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, 
‘Have mercy! Have mercy, aunt Reed!’ And that punishment you made me suffer 
because your wicked boy struck me—knocked me down for nothing. I will tell 
anybody who asks me questions, this exact tale. People think you a good woman, 
but you are bad; hard-hearted. You are deceitful!”’ 

Ere I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult, with the strangest 
sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as if an invisible bond had 
burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty. Not without cause was 
this sentiment: Mrs. Reed looked frightened; her work had slipped from her knee; 
she was lifting up her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and even twisting her face 
as if she would cry. 

‘‘Jane, you are under a mistake: what is the matter with you? Why do you tremble 
so violently? Would you like to drink some water?’’ 

““No, Mrs. Reed.’’ 

‘Is there anything else you wish for, Jane? I assure you, I desire to be your 
friend.”’ 

‘‘Not you. You told Mr. Brocklehurst I had a bad character, a deceitful disposition; 
and I’ll let everybody at Lowood know what you are, and what you have done.”’ 

‘‘Jane, you don’t understand these things: children must be corrected for their 
faults.”’ 

‘Deceit is not my fault!’’ I cried out in a savage, high voice. 

‘‘But you are passionate, Jane, that you must allow; and now return to the 
nursery—there’s a dear—and lie down a little.”’ 

‘‘I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, 
for I hate to live here.”’ 

“*T 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 


22 Jane Eyre 


hour’s silence and reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the 
dreariness of my hated and hating position. ateal 

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. Willirigly 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 sequestered: 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.”’ 


A eb oceuce you’re such a queer, frightened, shy, little thing. You should be 
older.’’ 


‘‘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.”’ 

“‘T 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.”’ 


Jane Eyre 23} 


“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 sharp little 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 ”’ IT 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 am rather sorry.”’ 

‘‘Just now! and rather! How coolly my little lady says it! I daresay now if I were 
to ask you for a kiss you wouldn’t give it to me: you’d say you’d rather not.”’ 

“‘T'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 6 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 bed-room, 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 bed-clothes, 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.”’ 

‘*Oh, 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. 


24 Jane Eyre 


The moon was set, and it was very dark; Bessie carried a lantern, whose light 
glanced on wet steps and gravel road soddened 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. 

wel eSirn 

‘*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, 


Jane Eyre 2D. 


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 coun- 
tenance; 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 bed-room was; except that, like the school-room, 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; 
amid silence and complete darkness, I fell asleep. 


26 Jane Eyre 


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 burnt 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 school-room: 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 semi-circles, 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 school- 
room. 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 school- 
room was in a glorious tumult; for that space of time, it seemed to be permitted to 


Jane Eyre DT, 


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 school-room 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 designed 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 entrusted 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 in geography; the lower classes were called 
by the teachers: repetitions in history, grammar, etc., went on for an hour; writing 
and arithmetic succeeded, and music lessons were given by Miss Temple to some 


28 Jane Eyre 


of the elder girls. The duration of each lesson was measured by the clock, which 
at last struck twelve. The superintendent rose:— 

‘‘T 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 enclosure, 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 out-door exercise; not positively rainy, but darkened 
by a drizzling yellow fog; all underfoot 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 school-room 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 
vO may a your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.’’—St. 
att. 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 had 
bent over a book, on the perusal of which she seemed intent: from where I stood 
I could see the titl—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. 


Jane Eyre 29 


“'T 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 
ne about to relapse into her former studious mood: again I ventured to disturb 

er:— 

‘“*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?”’ 

PN REO 

‘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 every thing; 
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 riband, is Madame Pierrot: she 
comes from Lisle, in France, and teaches French.”’ 


30 Jane Eyre 


‘‘Do you like the teachers?”’ 

‘*Well enough.”’ 

‘‘Do you like the little black one, and the Madame 
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 school-room: 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 school-room. 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 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. 


? —] cannot pronounce 


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 bed- 


Jane Eyre Ey} 


room 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, etc., and sent me to sit in a 
quiet corner of the school-room, with direction 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,’’ etc., etc. 

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, etc.; 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 courtesy; 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. 


10? 


Sy) Jane Eyre 


‘‘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 school-room 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, | 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. 

“Tt is 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?”’ 

sHelente 

**Do you come a long way from here?’’ 

“IT come from a place further north; quite on the borders of Scotland.’’ 

‘Will you ever go back?’’ 

‘IT 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 to 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: | am far younger than you, 
and I could not bear it.’’ 


Jane Eyre 313) 


_**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.”’ 

Iheard 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 no 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 wakened; 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 con- 
scientiousness, 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.’’ 


34 Jane Eyre 


‘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 life 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 


Jane Eyre 35 


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 VIT 


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 school-room 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. 


36 Jane Eyre 


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 toa 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 school-room, 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 school-room, and presently 
beside Miss Temple, who herself had risen, stood the same black column which 
had frowned on me so ominously from the hearth-rug 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, etc.; 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, oh 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.”’ 


Jane Eyre Sy 


“T 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 look over the 
regulations, and I find no such meal as lunch mentioned. Who introduced this 
innovation! and by what authority?’’ 

‘IT 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—waat 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.”’ 


38 Jane Eyre 


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 manceuvre: 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 these 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 elderly 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 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 rooms 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 enchained 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 ‘‘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. 


Jane Eyre 39 


“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:— 

“Tet 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 


40 Jane Eyre 


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 | 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 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 


Jane Eyre 4] 


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?’’ 

‘*T 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 me.”’ 

‘*Shall I, Miss Temple?’’ 


42 Jane Eyre 


‘*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 
men” 
‘“‘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 as 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?”’ 

“Tt 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:— 

. ee you two are my visitors to-night; I must treat you as such.’’ She rang the 
ell. 

‘‘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 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.”’ 


’ 


Jane Eyre 43 


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; ard 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 bed-room, 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.”’ 


44 Jane Eyre 


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-by, 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 wrens’ 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-book 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 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. 


Jane Eyre 45 


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 school-room 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 
licence; 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 
sweet-briars 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 


46 Jane Eyre 


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. é 

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, com- 
fortably, 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 ever 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 moon-rise: 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 | 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 


Jane Eyre 47 


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?’’ 

meV eS. ¢ 

‘*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 
school-room: 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 
oi 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 key-hole, 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, 


48 Jane Eyre 


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.”’ 

‘‘T 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 ,— 

“Tam very happy, Jane; and when you hear that | 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?”’ 

‘‘IT 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?’’ 


Jane Eyre 49 


MIX CS: & 

“*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 a 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 gray 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 entrusted 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 


50 Jane Eyre 


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 further! I recalled the time when I had travelled that very road in a coach; 
| 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 


Jane Eyre 5] 


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; is it 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 sad 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, 
and 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 inclose 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. 


a2 Jane Eyre 


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 letter, 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 a 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 régle. I now felt that an elderly lady was 
no bad ingredient in the business I had on hand.
…[truncated]