Ewriting Format by Carl Peterson © 2002

Start the Text

Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!

Please take a look at the important information in this header.
We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
electronic path open for the next readers.

Please do not remove this.

This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book.
Do not change or edit it without written permission. The words
are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they
need about what they can legally do with the texts.


**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**

**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**

*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*

Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
further information is included below. We need your donations.
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541

As of 12/12/00 contributions are only being solicited from people in:
Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana,
Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota,
Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.

International donations are accepted,
but we don't know ANYTHING about how
to make them tax-deductible, or
even if they CAN be made deductible,
and don't have the staff to handle it
even if there are ways.

As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising
will begin in the additional states. Please feel
free to ask to check the status of your state.

International donations are accepted,
but we don't know ANYTHING about how
to make them tax-deductible, or
even if they CAN be made deductible,
and don't have the staff to handle it
even if there are ways.

These donations should be made to:

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109


Title: The Garotters

Author: William D. Howells

Release Date: May, 2002 [Etext #3237]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
[The actual date this file first posted = 02/05/01]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Project Gutenberg Etext of The Garotters, by William D. Howells
*****This file should be named gartt10.txt or gartt10.zip*****

Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, gartt11.txt
VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, gartt10a.txt

This etext was produced from the 1897 David Douglas edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions,
all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a
copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any
of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition.

We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance
of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after
the official publication date.

Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till
midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
and editing by those who wish to do so.

Most people start at our sites at:
http://gutenberg.net
http://promo.net/pg


Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is
also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.

http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext02
or
ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext02

Or /etext01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90

Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
as it appears in our Newsletters.


Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The
time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This
projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value
per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext
files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+
If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.

At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we
manage to get some real funding.

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.

We need your donations more than ever!

Presently, contributions are only being solicited from people in:
Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nevada,
Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina,
South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, and Wyoming.

As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising
will begin in the additional states.

These donations should be made to:

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Ave.
Oxford, MS 38655-4109


Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation,
EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541,
has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal
Revenue Service (IRS). Donations are tax-deductible to the extent
permitted by law. As the requirements for other states are met,
additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the
additional states.

All donations should be made to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation. Mail to:

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
PMB 113
1739 University Avenue
Oxford, MS 38655-4109 [USA]


We need your donations more than ever!

You can get up to date donation information at:

http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html


***

If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
you can always email directly to:

Michael S. Hart

hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org
if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if
it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . .

Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.

We would prefer to send you information by email.


***


Example command-line FTP session:

ftp ftp.ibiblio.org
login: anonymous
password: your@login
cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg
cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext02, etc.
dir [to see files]
get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99]
GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books]


**The Legal Small Print**


(Three Pages)

***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.

*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.

ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and
without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.

Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
any commercial products without permission.

To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time to the person you received it from. If you received it
on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.

THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
may have other legal rights.

INDEMNITY
You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this etext,
[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
or [3] any Defect.

DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
or:

[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this
requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however,
if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
including any form resulting from conversion by word
processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
*EITHER*:

[*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
does *not* contain characters other than those
intended by the author of the work, although tilde
(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
be used to convey punctuation intended by the
author, and additional characters may be used to
indicate hypertext links; OR

[*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
form by the program that displays the etext (as is
the case, for instance, with most word processors);
OR

[*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
or other equivalent proprietary form).

[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
"Small Print!" statement.

[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you
don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are
payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to
let us know your plans and to work out the details.

WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
in machine readable form.

The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
Money should be paid to the:
"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
hart@pobox.com

*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END*

Click here to start MP3 Text Speech

PREFACE A preface
to the first edition of
"Jane Eyre"
being unnecessary,
I gave none:

this second edition demands a few words both of acknowledgment and miscellaneous remark.

My thanks are due in three quarters.

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

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

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

The Press and the Public are but vague personifications
for me,
and I must thank them in vague terms;
but my Publishers are definite:

so are certain generous critics who have encouraged me as only large-hearted and high-minded men know how
to encourage a struggling stranger;
to them,
i.e.,
to my Publishers and the select Reviewers,
I say cordially,
Gentlemen,
I thank you from my heart.

Having thus acknowledged what I owe those who have aided and approved me,
I turn
to another class;
a small one,
so far as I know,
but not,
therefore,
to be overlooked.

I mean the timorous or carping few who doubt the tendency of such books as
"Jane Eyre:"
in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong;
whose ears detect in each protest against bigotry--that parent of crime--an insult
to piety,
that regent of God on earth.

I would suggest
to such doubters certain obvious distinctions;
I would remind them of certain simple truths.

Conventionality is not morality.

Self-righteousness is not religion.

To attack the first is not
to assail the last.

To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee,
is not
to lift an impious hand
to the Crown of Thorns.

These things and deeds are diametrically opposed:

they are as distinct as is vice from virtue.

Men too often confound them:

they should not be confounded:

appearance should not be mistaken
for truth;
narrow human doctrines,
that only tend
to elate and magnify a few,
should not be substituted
for the world-redeeming creed of Christ.

There is--I repeat it--a difference;
and it is a good,
and not a bad action
to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.

The world may not like
to see these ideas dissevered,
for it has been accustomed
to blend them;
finding it convenient
to make external show pass
for sterling worth--to let white-washed walls vouch
for clean shrines.

It may hate him who dares
to scrutinise and expose--to rase the gilding,
and show base metal under it--to penetrate the sepulchre,
and reveal charnel relics:

but hate as it will,
it is indebted
to him.

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

There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed
to tickle delicate ears:

who,
to my thinking,
comes before the great ones of society,
much as the son of Imlah came before the throned Kings of Judah and Israel;
and who speaks truth as deep,
with a power as prophet-like and as vital--a mien as dauntless and as daring.

Is the satirist of
"Vanity Fair"
admired in high places?

I cannot tell;
but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek fire of his sarcasm,
and over whom he flashes the levin-brand of his denunciation,
were
to take his warnings in time--they or their seed might yet escape a fatal Rimoth-Gilead.

Why have I alluded
to this man?

I have alluded
to him,
Reader,
because I think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique than his contemporaries have yet recognised;
because I regard him as the first social regenerator of the day--as the very master of that working corps who would restore
to rectitude the warped system of things;
because I think no commentator on his writings has yet found the comparison that suits him,
the terms which rightly characterise his talent.

They say he is like Fielding:

they talk of his wit,
humour,
comic powers.

He resembles Fielding as an eagle does a vulture:

Fielding could stoop on carrion,
but Thackeray never does.

His wit is bright,
his humour attractive,
but both bear the same relation
to his serious genius that the mere lambent sheet-lightning playing under the edge of the summer-cloud does
to the electric death-spark hid in its womb.

Finally,
I have alluded
to Mr. Thackeray,
because
to him--if he will accept the tribute of a total stranger--I have dedicated this second edition of
"JANE EYRE."

CURRER BELL.

December 21st,
1847.

NOTE
to THE THIRD EDITION I avail myself of the opportunity which a third edition of
"Jane Eyre"
affords me,
of again addressing a word
to the Public,
to explain that my claim
to the title of novelist rests on this one work alone.

If,
therefore,
the authorship of other works of fiction has been attributed
to me,
an honour is awarded where it is not merited;
and consequently,
denied where it is justly due.

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

CURRER BELL.

April 13th,
1848.

CHAPTER I There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

We had been wandering,
indeed,
in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning;
but since dinner
(Mrs. Reed,
when there was no company,
dined early)
the cold winter wind had brought
with it clouds so sombre,
and a rain so penetrating,
that further 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 breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room,
I slipped in there.

It contained a bookcase:

I soon possessed myself of a volume,
taking care that it should be one stored
with pictures.

I mounted into the window-seat:

gathering up my feet,
I sat cross-legged,
like a Turk;
and,
having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close,
I was shrined in double retirement.

Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view
to the right hand;
to the left were the clear panes of glass,
protecting,
but not separating me from the drear November day.

At intervals,
while turning over the leaves of my book,
I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon.

Afar,
it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud;
near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub,
with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.

I returned
to my book--Bewick's History of British Birds:

the letterpress thereof I cared little for,
generally speaking;
and yet there were certain introductory pages that,
child as I was,
I could not pass quite as a blank.

They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl;
of
"the solitary rocks and promontories"
by them only inhabited;
of the coast of Norway,
studded
with isles from its southern extremity,
the Lindeness,
or Naze,
to the North Cape -
"Where the Northern Ocean,
in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked,
melancholy isles Of farthest Thule;
and the Atlantic surge Pours in among the stormy Hebrides."

Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland,
Siberia,
Spitzbergen,
Nova Zembla,
Iceland,
Greenland,
with
"the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone,
and those forlorn regions of dreary space,--that reservoir of frost and snow,
where firm fields of ice,
the accumulation of centuries of winters,
glazed in Alpine heights above heights,
surround the pole,
and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold."

Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own:

shadowy,
like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children's brains,
but strangely impressive.

The words in these introductory pages connected themselves
with the succeeding vignettes,
and gave significance
to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray;
to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast;
to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking.

I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard,
with its inscribed headstone;
its gate,
its two trees,
its low horizon,
girdled by a broken wall,
and its newly-risen crescent,
attesting the hour of eventide.

The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea,
I believed
to be marine phantoMs. The fiend pinning down the thief's pack behind him,
I passed over quickly:

it was an object of terror.

So was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock,
surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows.

Each picture told a story;
mysterious often
to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings,
yet ever profoundly interesting:

as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings,
when she chanced
to be in good humour;
and when,
having brought her ironing-table
to the nursery hearth,
she allowed us
to sit about it,
and while she got up Mrs. Reed's lace frills,
and crimped her nightcap borders,
fed our eager attention
with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads;
or
(as at a later period I discovered)
from the pages of Pamela,
and Henry,
Earl of Moreland.

With Bewick on my knee,
I was then happy:

happy at least in my way.

I feared nothing but interruption,
and that came too soon.

The breakfast-room door opened.

"Boh! Madam Mope!"
cried the voice of John Reed;
then he paused:

he found the room apparently empty.

"Where the dickens is she!"
he continued.

"Lizzy! Georgy!
(calling
to his sisters)
Joan is not here:

tell mama she is run out into the rain--bad animal!"
"It is well I drew the curtain,"
thought I;
and I wished fervently he might not discover my hiding-place:

nor would John Reed have found it out himself;
he was not quick either of vision or conception;
but Eliza just put her head in at the door,
and said at once -
"She is in the window-seat,
to be sure,
Jack."

And I came out immediately,
for I trembled at the idea of being dragged forth by the said Jack.

"What do you want?"
I asked,
with awkward diffidence.

"Say,
'What do you want,
Master Reed?'
"
was the answer.

"I want you
to come here;"
and seating himself in an arm-chair,
he intimated by a gesture that I was
to approach and stand before him.

John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old;
four years older than I,
for I was but ten:

large and stout
for his age,
with a dingy and unwholesome skin;
thick lineaments in a spacious visage,
heavy limbs and large extremities.

He gorged himself habitually at table,
which made him bilious,
and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks.

He ought now
to have been at school;
but his mama had taken him home
for a month or two,
"on account of his delicate health."

Mr. Miles,
the master,
affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from home;
but the mother's heart turned from an opinion so harsh,
and inclined rather
to the more refined idea that John's sallowness was owing
to over-application and,
perhaps,
to pining after home.

John had not much affection
for his mother and sisters,
and an antipathy
to me.

He bullied and punished me;
not two or three times in the week,
nor once or twice in the day,
but continually:

every nerve I had feared him,
and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near.

There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired,
because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions;
the servants did not like
to offend their young master by taking my part against him,
and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the subject:

she never saw him strike or heard him abuse me,
though he did both now and then in her very presence,
more frequently,
however,
behind her back.

Habitually obedient
to John,
I came up
to his chair:

he spent some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could without damaging the roots:

I knew he would soon strike,
and while dreading the blow,
I mused on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would presently deal it.

I wonder if he read that notion in my face;
for,
all at once,
without speaking,
he struck suddenly and strongly.

I tottered,
and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a step or two from his chair.

"That is
for your impudence in answering mama awhile since,"
said he,
"and
for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains,
and
for the look you had in your eyes two minutes since,
you rat!"
Accustomed
to John Reed's abuse,
I never had an idea of replying
to it;
my care was how
to endure the blow which would certainly follow the insult.

"What were you doing behind the curtain?"
he asked.

"I was reading."

"Show the book."

I returned
to the window and fetched it thence.

"You have no business
to take our books;
you are a dependent,
mama says;
you have no money;
your father left you none;
you ought
to beg,
and not
to live here
with gentlemen's children like us,
and eat the same meals we do,
and wear clothes at our mama's expense.

Now,
I'll teach you
to rummage my bookshelves:

for they ARE mine;
all the house belongs
to me,
or will do in a few years.

Go and stand by the door,
out of the way of the mirror and the windows."

I did so,
not at first aware what was his intention;
but when I saw him lift and poise the book and stand in act
to hurl it,
I instinctively started aside
with a cry of alarm:

not soon enough,
however;
the volume was flung,
it hit me,
and I fell,
striking my head against the door and cutting it.

The cut bled,
the pain was sharp:

my terror had passed its climax;
other feelings succeeded.

"Wicked and cruel boy!"
I said.

"You are like a murderer--you are like a slave-driver--you are like the Roman emperors!"
I had read Goldsmith's History of Rome,
and had formed my opinion of Nero,
Caligula,
&c.

Also I had drawn parallels in silence,
which I never thought thus
to have declared aloud.

"What! what!"
he cried.

"Did she say that
to me?

Did you hear her,
Eliza and Georgiana?

Won't I tell mama?

but first--"
He ran headlong at me:

I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder:

he had closed
with a desperate thing.

I really saw in him a tyrant,
a murderer.

I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck,
and was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering:

these sensations
for the time predominated over fear,
and I received him in frantic sort.

I don't very well know what I did
with my hands,
but he called me
"Rat! Rat!"
and bellowed out aloud.

Aid was near him:

Eliza and Georgiana had run
for Mrs. Reed,
who was gone upstairs:

she now came upon the scene,
followed by Bessie and her maid Abbot.

We were parted:

I heard the words -
"Dear! dear! What a fury
to fly at Master John!"
"Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion!"
Then Mrs. Reed subjoined -
"Take her away
to the red-room,
and lock her in there."

Four hands were immediately laid upon me,
and I was borne upstairs.

CHAPTER II I resisted all the way:

a new thing
for me,
and a circumstance which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were disposed
to entertain of me.

The fact is,
I was a trifle beside myself;
or rather OUT of myself,
as the French would say:

I was conscious that a moment's mutiny had already rendered me liable
to strange penalties,
and,
like any other rebel slave,
I felt resolved,
in my desperation,
to go all lengths.

"Hold her arms,
Miss Abbot:

she's like a mad cat."

"For shame!
for shame!"
cried the lady's-maid.

"What shocking conduct,
Miss Eyre,
to strike a young gentleman,
your benefactress's son! Your young master."

"Master! How is he my master?

Am I a servant?"
"No;
you are less than a servant,
for you do nothing
for your keep.

There,
sit down,
and think over your wickedness."

They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Reed,
and had thrust me upon a stool:

my impulse was
to rise from it like a spring;
their two pair of hands arrested me instantly.

"If you don't sit still,
you must be tied down,"
said Bessie.

"Miss Abbot,
lend me your garters;
she would break mine directly."

Miss Abbot turned
to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature.

This preparation
for bonds,
and the additional ignominy it inferred,
took a little of the excitement out of me.

"Don't take them off,"
I cried;
"I will not stir."

In guarantee whereof,
I attached myself
to my seat by my hands.

"Mind you don't,"
said Bessie;
and when she had ascertained that I was really subsiding,
she loosened her hold of me;
then she and Miss Abbot stood
with folded arms,
looking darkly and doubtfully on my face,
as incredulous of my sanity.

"She never did so before,"
at last said Bessie,
turning
to the Abigail.

"But it was always in her,"
was the reply.

"I've told Missis often my opinion about the child,
and Missis agreed
with me.

She's an underhand little thing:

I never saw a girl of her age
with so much cover."

Bessie answered not;
but ere long,
addressing me,
she said--"You ought
to be aware,
Miss,
that you are under obligations
to Mrs. Reed:

she keeps you:

if she were
to turn you off,
you would have
to go
to the poorhouse."

I had nothing
to say
to these words:

they were not new
to me:

my very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind.

This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear:

very painful and crushing,
but only half intelligible.

Miss Abbot joined in -
"And you ought not
to think yourself on an equality
with the Misses Reed and Master Reed,
because Missis kindly allows you
to be brought up
with them.

They will have a great deal of money,
and you will have none:

it is your place
to be humble,
and
to try
to make yourself agreeable
to them."

"What we tell you is
for your good,"
added Bessie,
in no harsh voice,
"you should try
to be useful and pleasant,
then,
perhaps,
you would have a home here;
but if you become passionate and rude,
Missis will send you away,
I am sure."

"Besides,"
said Miss Abbot,
"God will punish her:

He might strike her dead in the midst of her tantrums,
and then where would she go?

Come,
Bessie,
we will leave her:

I wouldn't have her heart
for anything.

Say your prayers,
Miss Eyre,
when you are by yourself;
for if you don't repent,
something bad might be permitted
to come down the chimney and fetch you away."

They went,
shutting the door,
and locking it behind them.

The red-room was a square chamber,
very seldom slept in,
I might say never,
indeed,
unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary
to turn
to account all the accommodation it contained:

yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion.

A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany,
hung
with curtains of deep red damask,
stood out like a tabernacle in the centre;
the two large windows,
with their blinds always drawn down,
were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery;
the carpet was red;
the table at the foot of the bed was covered
with a crimson cloth;
the walls were a soft fawn colour
with a blush of pink in it;
the wardrobe,
the toilet-table,
the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany.

Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high,
and glared white,
the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed,
spread
with a snowy Marseilles counterpane.

Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed,
also white,
with a footstool before it;
and looking,
as I thought,
like a pale throne.

This room was chill,
because it seldom had a fire;
it was silent,
because remote from the nursery and kitchen;
solemn,
because it was known
to be so seldom entered.

The house-maid alone came here on Saturdays,
to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week's quiet dust:

and Mrs. Reed herself,
at far intervals,
visited it
to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe,
where were stored divers parchments,
her jewel-casket,
and a miniature of her deceased husband;
and in those last words lies the secret of the red-room--the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.

Mr. Reed had been dead nine years:

it was in this chamber he breathed his last;
here he lay in state;
hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker's men;
and,
since that day,
a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion.

My seat,
to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted,
was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece;
the bed rose before me;
to my right hand there was the high,
dark wardrobe,
with subdued,
broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels;
to my left were the muffled windows;
a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty of the bed and room.

I was not quite sure whether they had locked the door;
and when I dared move,
I got up and went
to see.

Alas! yes:

no jail was ever more secure.

Returning,
I had
to cross before the looking-glass;
my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed.

All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality:

and the strange little figure there gazing at me,
with a white face and arms specking the gloom,
and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still,
had the effect of a real spirit:

I thought it like one of the tiny phantoms,
half fairy,
half imp,
Bessie's evening stories represented as coming out of lone,
ferny dells in moors,
and appearing before the eyes of belated travellers.

I returned
to my stool.

Superstition was
with me at that moment;
but it was not yet her hour
for complete victory:

my blood was still warm;
the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me
with its bitter vigour;
I had
to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed
to the dismal present.

All John Reed's violent tyrannies,
all his sisters'
proud indifference,
all his mother's aversion,
all the servants'
partiality,
turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well.

Why was I always suffering,
always browbeaten,
always accused,
for ever condemned?

Why could I never please?

Why was it useless
to try
to win any one's favour?

Eliza,
who was headstrong and selfish,
was respected.

Georgiana,
who had a spoiled temper,
a very acrid spite,
a captious and insolent carriage,
was universally indulged.

Her beauty,
her pink cheeks and golden curls,
seemed
to give delight
to all who looked at her,
and
to purchase indemnity
for every fault.

John no one thwarted,
much less punished;
though he twisted the necks of the pigeons,
killed the little pea-chicks,
set the dogs at the sheep,
stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit,
and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory:

he called his mother
"old girl,"
too;
sometimes reviled her
for her dark skin,
similar
to his own;
bluntly disregarded her wishes;
not unfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire;
and he was still
"her own darling."

I dared commit no fault:

I strove
to fulfil every duty;
and I was termed naughty and tiresome,
sullen and sneaking,
from morning
to noon,
and from noon
to night.

My head still ached and bled
with the blow and fall I had received:

no one had reproved John
for wantonly striking me;
and because I had turned against him
to avert farther irrational violence,
I was loaded
with general opprobrium.

"Unjust!--unjust!"
said my reason,
forced by the agonising stimulus into precocious though transitory power:

and Resolve,
equally wrought up,
instigated some strange expedient
to achieve escape from insupportable oppression--as running away,
or,
if that could not be effected,
never eating or drinking more,
and letting myself die.

What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon! How all my brain was in tumult,
and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what darkness,
what dense ignorance,
was the mental battle fought! I could not answer the ceaseless inward question--WHY I thus suffered;
now,
at the distance of--I will not say how many years,
I see it clearly.

I was a discord in Gateshead Hall:

I was like nobody there;
I had nothing in harmony
with Mrs. Reed or her children,
or her chosen vassalage.

If they did not love me,
in fact,
as little did I love them.

They were not bound
to regard
with affection a thing that could not sympathise
with one amongst them;
a heterogeneous thing,
opposed
to them in temperament,
in capacity,
in propensities;
a useless thing,
incapable of serving their interest,
or adding
to their pleasure;
a noxious thing,
cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment,
of contempt of their judgment.

I know that had I been a sanguine,
brilliant,
careless,
exacting,
handsome,
romping child--though equally dependent and friendless--Mrs. Reed would have endured my presence more complacently;
her children would have entertained
for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling;
the servants would have been less prone
to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.

Daylight began
to forsake the red-room;
it was past four o'clock,
and the beclouded afternoon was tending
to drear twilight.

I heard the rain still beating continuously on the staircase window,
and the wind howling in the grove behind the hall;
I grew by degrees cold as a stone,
and then my courage sank.

My habitual mood of humiliation,
self-doubt,
forlorn depression,
fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire.

All said I was wicked,
and perhaps I might be so;
what thought had I been but just conceiving of starving myself
to death?

That certainly was a crime:

and was I fit
to die?

Or was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting bourne?

In such vault I had been told did Mr. Reed lie buried;
and led by this thought
to recall his idea,
I dwelt on it
with gathering dread.

I could not remember him;
but I knew that he was my own uncle--my mother's brother--that he had taken me when a parentless infant
to his house;
and that in his last moments he had required a promise of Mrs. Reed that she would rear and maintain me as one of her own children.

Mrs. Reed probably considered she had kept this promise;
and so she had,
I dare say,
as well as her nature would permit her;
but how could she really like an interloper not of her race,
and unconnected
with her,
after her husband's death,
by any tie?

It must have been most irksome
to find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge
to stand in the stead of a parent
to a strange child she could not love,
and
to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her own family group.

A singular notion dawned upon me.

I doubted not--never doubted-- that if Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly;
and now,
as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls-- occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaning mirror--I began
to recall what I had heard of dead men,
troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes,
revisiting the earth
to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed;
and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit,
harassed by the wrongs of his sister's child,
might quit its abode--whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed--and rise before me in this chamber.

I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs,
fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice
to comfort me,
or elicit from the gloom some haloed face,
bending over me
with strange pity.

This idea,
consolatory in theory,
I felt would be terrible if realised:

with all my might I endeavoured
to stifle it- -I endeavoured
to be firm.

Shaking my hair from my eyes,
I lifted my head and tried
to look boldly round the dark room;
at this moment a light gleamed on the wall.

Was it,
I asked myself,
a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind?

No;
moonlight was still,
and this stirred;
while I gazed,
it glided up
to the ceiling and quivered over my head.

I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was,
in all likelihood,
a gleam from a lantern carried by some one across the lawn:

but then,
prepared as my mind was
for horror,
shaken as my nerves were by agitation,
I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world.

My heart beat thick,
my head grew hot;
a sound filled my ears,
which I deemed the rushing of wings;
something seemed near me;
I was oppressed,
suffocated:

endurance broke down;
I rushed
to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort.

Steps came running along the outer passage;
the key turned,
Bessie and Abbot entered.

"Miss Eyre,
are you ill?"
said Bessie.

"What a dreadful noise! it went quite through me!"
exclaimed Abbot.

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

"What for?

Are you hurt?

Have you seen something?"
again demanded Bessie.

"Oh! I saw a light,
and I thought a ghost would come."

I had now got hold of Bessie's hand,
and she did not snatch it from me.

"She has screamed out on purpose,"
declared Abbot,
in some disgust.

"And what a scream! If she had been in great pain one would have excused it,
but she only wanted
to bring us all here:

I know her naughty tricks."

"What is all this?"
demanded another voice peremptorily;
and Mrs. Reed came along the corridor,
her cap flying wide,
her gown rustling stormily.

"Abbot and Bessie,
I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre should be left in the red-room till I came
to her myself."

"Miss Jane screamed so loud,
ma'am,"
pleaded Bessie.

"Let her go,"
was the only answer.

"Loose Bessie's hand,
child:

you cannot succeed in getting out by these means,
be assured.

I abhor artifice,
particularly in children;
it is my duty
to show you that tricks will not answer:

you will now stay here an hour longer,
and it is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you then."

"O aunt! have pity! Forgive me! I cannot endure it--let me be punished some other way! I shall be killed if--"
"Silence! This violence is all most repulsive:"
and so,
no doubt,
she felt it.

I was a precocious actress in her eyes;
she sincerely looked on me as a compound of virulent passions,
mean spirit,
and dangerous duplicity.

Bessie and Abbot having retreated,
Mrs. Reed,
impatient of my now frantic anguish and wild sobs,
abruptly thrust me back and locked me in,
without farther parley.

I heard her sweeping away;
and soon after she was gone,
I suppose I had a species of fit:

unconsciousness closed the scene.

CHAPTER III The next thing I remember is,
waking up
with a feeling as if I had had a frightful nightmare,
and seeing before me a terrible red glare,
crossed
with thick black bars.

I heard voices,
too,
speaking
with a hollow sound,
and as if muffled by a rush of wind or water:

agitation,
uncertainty,
and an all-predominating sense of terror confused my faculties.

Ere long,
I became aware that some one was handling me;
lifting me up and supporting me in a sitting posture,
and that more tenderly than I had ever been raised or upheld before.

I rested my head against a pillow or an arm,
and felt easy.

In five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved:

I knew quite well that I was in my own bed,
and that the red glare was the nursery fire.

It was night:

a candle burnt on the table;
Bessie stood at the bed-foot
with a basin in her hand,
and a gentleman sat in a chair near my pillow,
leaning over me.

I felt an inexpressible relief,
a soothing conviction of protection and security,
when I knew that there was a stranger in the room,
an individual not belonging
to Gateshead.,
and not related
to Mrs. Reed.

Turning from Bessie
(though her presence was far less obnoxious
to me than that of Abbot,
for instance,
would have been),
I scrutinised the face of the gentleman:

I knew him;
it was Mr. Lloyd,
an apothecary,
sometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when the servants were ailing:

for herself and the children she employed a physician.

"Well,
who am I?"
he asked.

I pronounced his name,
offering him at the same time my hand:

he took it,
smiling and saying,
"We shall do very well by-and-by."

Then he laid me down,
and addressing Bessie,
charged her
to be very careful that I was not disturbed during the night.

Having given some further directions,
and intimates that he should call again the next day,
he departed;
to my grief:

I felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat in the chair near my pillow;
and as he closed the door after him,
all the room darkened and my heart again sank:

inexpressible sadness weighed it down.

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

Scarcely dared I answer her;
for I feared the next sentence might be rough.

"I will try."

"Would you like
to drink,
or could you eat anything?"
"No,
thank you,
Bessie."

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

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

"Bessie,
what is the matter
with me?

Am I ill?"
"You fell sick,
I suppose,
in the red-room
with crying;
you'll be better soon,
no doubt."

Bessie went into the housemaid's apartment,
which was near.

I heard her say -
"Sarah,
come and sleep
with me in the nursery;
I daren't
for my life be alone
with that poor child to-night:

she might die;
it's such a strange thing she should have that fit:

I wonder if she saw anything.

Missis was rather too hard."

Sarah came back
with her;
they both went
to bed;
they were whispering together
for half-an-hour before they fell asleep.

I caught scraps of their conversation,
from which I was able only too distinctly
to infer the main subject discussed.

"Something passed her,
all dressed in white,
and vanished"--"A great black dog behind him"--"Three loud raps on the chamber door"--"A light in the churchyard just over his grave,"
&c.

&c.

At last both slept:

the fire and the candle went out.

For me,
the watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness;
strained by dread:

such dread as children only can feel.

No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room;
it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the reverberation
to this day.

Yes,
Mrs. Reed,
to you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering,
but I ought
to forgive you,
for you knew not what you did:

while rending my heart-strings,
you thought you were only uprooting my bad propensities.

Next day,
by noon,
I was up and dressed,
and sat wrapped in a shawl by the nursery hearth.

I felt physically weak and broken down:

but my worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind:

a wretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears;
no sooner had I wiped one salt drop from my cheek than another followed.

Yet,
I thought,
I ought
to have been happy,
for none of the Reeds were there,
they were all gone out in the carriage
with their mama.

Abbot,
too,
was sewing in another room,
and Bessie,
as she moved hither and thither,
putting away toys and arranging drawers,
addressed
to me every now and then a word of unwonted kindness.

This state of things should have been
to me a paradise of peace,
accustomed as I was
to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless fagging;
but,
in fact,
my racked nerves were now in such a state that no calm could soothe,
and no pleasure excite them agreeably.

Bessie had been down into the kitchen,
and she brought up
with her a tart on a certain brightly painted china plate,
whose bird of paradise,
nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds,
had been wont
to stir in me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration;
and which plate I had often petitioned
to be allowed
to take in my hand in order
to examine it more closely,
but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a privilege.

This precious vessel was now placed on my knee,
and I was cordially invited
to eat the circlet of delicate pastry upon it.

Vain favour! coming,
like most other favours long deferred and often wished for,
too late! I could not eat the tart;
and the plumage of the bird,
the tints of the flowers,
seemed strangely faded:

I put both plate and tart away.

Bessie asked if I would have a book:

the word BOOK acted as a transient stimulus,
and I begged her
to fetch Gulliver's Travels from the library.

This book I had again and again perused
with delight.

I considered it a narrative of facts,
and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales:

for as
to the elves,
having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells,
under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks,
I had at length made up my mind
to the sad truth,
that they were all gone out of England
to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker,
and the population more scant;
whereas,
Lilliput and Brobdignag being,
in my creed,
solid parts of the earth's surface,
I doubted not that I might one day,
by taking a long voyage,
see
with my own eyes the little fields,
houses,
and trees,
the diminutive people,
the tiny cows,
sheep,
and birds of the one realm;
and the corn-fields forest-high,
the mighty mastiffs,
the monster cats,
the tower-like men and women,
of the other.

Yet,
when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand--when I turned over its leaves,
and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had,
till now,
never failed
to find--all was eerie and dreary;
the giants were gaunt goblins,
the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps,
Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions.

I closed the book,
which I dared no longer peruse,
and put it on the table,
beside the untasted tart.

Bessie had now finished dusting and tidying the room,
and having washed her hands,
she opened a certain little drawer,
full of splendid shreds of silk and satin,
and began making a new bonnet
for Georgiana's doll.

Meantime she sang:

her song was -
"In the days when we went gipsying,
A long time ago."

I had often heard the song before,
and always
with lively delight;
for Bessie had a sweet voice,--at least,
I thought so.

But now,
though her voice was still sweet,
I found in its melody an indescribable sadness.

Sometimes,
preoccupied
with her work,
she sang the refrain very low,
very lingeringly;
"A long time ago"
came out like the saddest cadence of a funeral hymn.

She passed into another ballad,
this time a really doleful one.

"My feet they are sore,
and my limbs they are weary;
Long is the way,
and the mountains are wild;
Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary Over the path of the poor orphan child.

Why did they send me so far and so lonely,
Up where the moors spread and grey rocks are piled?

Men are hard-hearted,
and kind angels only Watch o'er the steps of a poor orphan child.

Yet distant and soft the night breeze is blowing,
Clouds there are none,
and clear stars beam mild,
God,
in His mercy,
protection is showing,
Comfort and hope
to the poor orphan child.

Ev'n should I fall o'er the broken bridge passing,
Or stray in the marshes,
by false lights beguiled,
Still will my Father,
with promise and blessing,
Take
to His bosom the poor orphan child.

There is a thought that
for strength should avail me,
Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled;
Heaven is a home,
and a rest will not fail me;
God is a friend
to the poor orphan child."

"Come,
Miss Jane,
don't cry,"
said Bessie as she finished.

She might as well have said
to the fire,
"don't burn!"
but how could she divine the morbid suffering
to which I was a prey?

In the course of the morning Mr. Lloyd came again.

"What,
already up!"
said he,
as he entered the nursery.

"Well,
nurse,
how is she?"
Bessie answered that I was doing very well.

"Then she ought
to look more cheerful.

Come here,
Miss Jane:

your name is Jane,
is it not?"
"Yes,
sir,
Jane Eyre."

"Well,
you have been crying,
Miss Jane Eyre;
can you tell me what about?

Have you any pain?"
"No,
sir."

"Oh! I daresay she is crying because she could not go out
with Missis in the carriage,"
interposed Bessie.

"Surely not! why,
she is too old
for such pettishness."

I thought so too;
and my self-esteem being wounded by the false charge,
I answered promptly,
"I never cried
for such a thing in my life:

I hate going out in the carriage.

I cry because I am miserable."

"Oh fie,
Miss!"
said Bessie.

The good apothecary appeared a little puzzled.

I was standing before him;
he fixed his eyes on me very steadily:

his eyes were small and grey;
not very bright,
but I dare say I should think them shrewd now:

he had a hard-featured yet good-natured looking face.

Having considered me at leisure,
he said -
"What made you ill yesterday?"
"She had a fall,"
said Bessie,
again putting in her word.

"Fall! why,
that is like a baby again! Can't she manage
to walk at her age?

She must be eight or nine years old."

"I was knocked down,"
was the blunt explanation,
jerked out of me by another pang of mortified pride;
"but that did not make me ill,"
I added;
while Mr. Lloyd helped himself
to a pinch of snuff.

As he was returning the box
to his waistcoat pocket,
a loud bell rang
for the servants'
dinner;
he knew what it was.

"That's
for you,
nurse,"
said he;
"you can go down;
I'll give Miss Jane a lecture till you come back."

Bessie would rather have stayed,
but she was obliged
to go,
because punctuality at meals was rigidly enforced at Gateshead Hall.

"The fall did not make you ill;
what did,
then?"
pursued Mr. Lloyd when Bessie was gone.

"I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost till after dark."

I saw Mr. Lloyd smile and frown at the same time.

"Ghost! What,
you are a baby after all! You are afraid of ghosts?"
"Of Mr. Reed's ghost I am:

he died in that room,
and was laid out there.

Neither Bessie nor any one else will go into it at night,
if they can help it;
and it was cruel
to shut me up alone without a candle,--so cruel that I think I shall never forget it."

"Nonsense! And is it that makes you so miserable?

Are you afraid now in daylight?"
"No:

but night will come again before long:

and besides,--I am unhappy,--very unhappy,
for other things."

"What other things?

Can you tell me some of them?"
How much I wished
to reply fully
to this question! How difficult it was
to frame any answer! Children can feel,
but they cannot analyse their feelings;
and if the analysis is partially effected in thought,
they know not how
to express the result of the process in words.

Fearful,
however,
of losing this first and only opportunity of relieving my grief by imparting it,
I,
after a disturbed pause,
contrived
to frame a meagre,
though,
as far as it went,
true response.

"For one thing,
I have no father or mother,
brothers or sisters."

"You have a kind aunt and cousins."

Again I paused;
then bunglingly enounced -
"But John Reed knocked me down,
and my aunt shut me up in the red- room."

Mr. Lloyd a second time produced his snuff-box.

"Don't you think Gateshead Hall a very beautiful house?"
asked he.

"Are you not very thankful
to have such a fine place
to live at?"
"It is not my house,
sir;
and Abbot says I have less right
to be here than a servant."

"Pooh! you can't be silly enough
to wish
to leave such a splendid place?"
"If I had anywhere else
to go,
I should be glad
to leave it;
but I can never get away from Gateshead till I am a woman."

"Perhaps you may--who knows?

Have you any relations besides Mrs. Reed?"
"I think not,
sir."

"None belonging
to your father?"
"I don't know.

I asked Aunt Reed once,
and she said possibly I might have some poor,
low relations called Eyre,
but she knew nothing about them."

"If you had such,
would you like
to go
to them?"
I reflected.

Poverty looks grim
to grown people;
still more so
to children:

they have not much idea of industrious,
working,
respectable poverty;
they think of the word only as connected
with ragged clothes,
scanty food,
fireless grates,
rude manners,
and debasing vices:

poverty
for me was synonymous
with degradation.

"No;
I should not like
to belong
to poor people,"
was my reply.

"Not even if they were kind
to you?"
I shook my head:

I could not see how poor people had the means of being kind;
and then
to learn
to speak like them,
to adopt their manners,
to be uneducated,
to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes nursing their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of the village of Gateshead:

no,
I was not heroic enough
to purchase liberty at the price of caste.

"But are your relatives so very poor?

Are they working people?"
"I cannot tell;
Aunt.

Reed says if I have any,
they must be a beggarly set:

I should not like
to go a begging."

"Would you like
to go
to school?"
Again I reflected:

I scarcely knew what school was:

Bessie sometimes spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks,
wore backboards,
and were expected
to be exceedingly genteel and precise:

John Reed hated his school,
and abused his master;
but John Reed's tastes were no rule
for mine,
and if Bessie's accounts of school-discipline
(gathered from the young ladies of a family where she had lived before coming
to Gateshead)
were somewhat appalling,
her details of certain accomplishments attained by these same young ladies were,
I thought,
equally attractive.

She boasted of beautiful paintings of landscapes and flowers by them executed;
of songs they could sing and pieces they could play,
of purses they could net,
of French books they could translate;
till my spirit was moved
to emulation as I listened.

Besides,
school would be a complete change:

it implied a long journey,
an entire separation from Gateshead,
an entrance into a new life.

"I should indeed like
to go
to school,"
was the audible conclusion of my musings.

"Well,
well! who knows what may happen?"
said Mr. Lloyd,
as he got up.

"The child ought
to have change of air and scene,"
he added,
speaking
to himself;
"nerves not in a good state."

Bessie now returned;
at the same moment the carriage was heard rolling up the gravel-walk.

"Is that your mistress,
nurse?"
asked Mr. Lloyd.

"I should like
to speak
to her before I go."

Bessie invited him
to walk into the breakfast-room,
and led the way out.

In the interview which followed between him and Mrs. Reed,
I presume,
from after-occurrences,
that the apothecary ventured
to recommend my being sent
to school;
and the recommendation was no doubt readily enough adopted;
for as Abbot said,
in discussing the subject
with Bessie when both sat sewing in the nursery one night,
after I was in bed,
and,
as they thought,
asleep,
"Missis was,
she dared say,
glad enough
to get rid of such a tiresome,
ill- conditioned child,
who always looked as if she were watching everybody,
and scheming plots underhand."

Abbot,
I think,
gave me credit
for being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes.

On that same occasion I learned,
for the first time,
from Miss Abbot's communications
to Bessie,
that my father had been a poor clergyman;
that my mother had married him against the wishes of her friends,
who considered the match beneath her;
that my grandfather Reed was so irritated at her disobedience,
he cut her off without a shilling;
that after my mother and father had been married a year,
the latter caught the typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing town where his curacy was situated,
and where that disease was then prevalent:

that my mother took the infection from him,
and both died within a month of each other.

Bessie,
when she heard this narrative,
sighed and said,
"Poor Miss Jane is
to be pitied,
too,
Abbot."

"Yes,"
responded Abbot;
"if she were a nice,
pretty child,
one might compassionate her forlornness;
but one really cannot care
for such a little toad as that."

"Not a great deal,
to be sure,"
agreed Bessie:

"at any rate,
a beauty like Miss Georgiana would be more moving in the same condition."

"Yes,
I doat on Miss Georgiana!"
cried the fervent Abbot.

"Little darling!--with her long curls and her blue eyes,
and such a sweet colour as she has;
just as if she were painted!--Bessie,
I could fancy a Welsh rabbit
for supper."

"So could I--with a roast onion.

Come,
we'll go down."

They went.

CHAPTER IV From my discourse
with Mr. Lloyd,
and from the above reported conference between Bessie and Abbot,
I gathered enough of hope
to suffice as a motive
for wishing
to get well:

a change seemed near,- -I desired and waited it in silence.

It tarried,
however:

days and weeks passed:

I had regained my normal state of health,
but no new allusion was made
to the subject over which I brooded.

Mrs. Reed surveyed me at times
with a severe eye,
but seldom addressed me:

since my illness,
she had drawn a more marked line of separation than ever between me and her own children;
appointing me a small closet
to sleep in by myself,
condemning me
to take my meals alone,
and pass all my time in the nursery,
while my cousins were constantly in the drawing-room.

Not a hint,
however,
did she drop about sending me
to school:

still I felt an instinctive certainty that she would not long endure me under the same roof
with her;
for her glance,
now more than ever,
when turned on me,
expressed an insuperable and rooted aversion.

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 tittering execrations,
and vowing I had burst his nose.

I had indeed levelled at that prominent feature as hard a blow as my knuckles could inflict;
and when I saw that either that or my look daunted him,
I had the greatest inclination
to follow up my advantage
to purpose;
but he was already
with his mama.

I heard him in a blubbering tone commence the tale of how
"that nasty Jane Eyre"
had flown at him like a mad cat:

he was stopped rather harshly -
"Don't talk
to me about her,
John:

I told you not
to go near her;
she is not worthy of notice;
I do not choose that either you or your sisters should associate
with her."

Here,
leaning over the banister,
I cried out suddenly,
and without at all deliberating on my words -
"They are not fit
to associate
with me."

Mrs. Reed was rather a stout woman;
but,
on hearing this strange and audacious declaration,
she ran nimbly up the stair,
swept me like a whirlwind into the nursery,
and crushing me down on the edge of my crib,
dared me in an emphatic voice
to rise from that place,
or utter one syllable during the remainder of the day.

"What would Uncle Reed say
to you,
if he were alive?"
was my scarcely voluntary demand.

I say scarcely voluntary,
for it seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting
to their utterance:

something spoke out of me over which I had no control.

"What?"
said Mrs. Reed under her breath:

her usually cold composed grey eye became troubled
with a look like fear;
she took her hand from my arm,
and gazed at me as if she really did not know whether I were child or fiend.

I was now in
for it.

"My Uncle Reed is in heaven,
and can see all you do and think;
and so can papa and mama:

they know how you shut me up all day long,
and how you wish me dead."

Mrs. Reed soon rallied her spirits:

she shook me most soundly,
she boxed both my ears,
and then left me without a word.

Bessie supplied the hiatus by a homily of an hour's length,
in which she proved beyond a doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a roof.

I half believed her;
for I felt indeed only bad feelings surging in my breast.

November,
December,
and half of January passed away.

Christmas and the New Year had been celebrated at Gateshead
with the usual festive cheer;
presents had been interchanged,
dinners and evening parties given.

From every enjoyment I was,
of course,
excluded:

my share of the gaiety consisted in witnessing the daily apparelling of Eliza and Georgiana,
and seeing them descend
to the drawing-room,
dressed out in thin muslin frocks and scarlet sashes,
with hair elaborately ringletted;
and afterwards,
in listening
to the sound of the piano or the harp played below,
to the passing
to and fro of the butler and footman,
to the jingling of glass and china as refreshments were handed,
to the broken hum of conversation as the drawing-room door opened and closed.

When tired of this occupation,
I would retire from the stairhead
to the solitary and silent nursery:

there,
though somewhat sad,
I was not miserable.

To speak truth,
I had not the least wish
to go into company,
for in company I was very rarely noticed;
and if Bessie had but been kind and companionable,
I should have deemed it a treat
to spend the evenings quietly
with her,
instead of passing them under the formidable eye of Mrs. Reed,
in a room full of ladies and gentlemen.

But Bessie,
as soon as she had dressed her young ladies,
used
to take herself off
to the lively regions of the kitchen and housekeeper's room,
generally bearing the candle along
with her.

I then sat
with my doll on my knee till the fire got low,
glancing round occasionally
to make sure that nothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room;
and when the embers sank
to a dull red,
I undressed hastily,
tugging at knots and strings as I best might,
and sought shelter from cold and darkness in my crib.

To this crib I always took my doll;
human beings must love something,
and,
in the dearth of worthier objects of affection,
I contrived
to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image,
shabby as a miniature scarecrow.

It puzzles me now
to remember
with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy,
half fancying it alive and capable of sensation.

I could not sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown;
and when it lay there safe and warm,
I was comparatively happy,
believing it
to be happy likewise.

Long did the hours seem while I waited the departure of the company,
and listened
for the sound of Bessie's step on the stairs:

sometimes she would come up in the interval
to seek her thimble or her scissors,
or perhaps
to bring me something by way of supper--a bun or a cheese-cake--then she would sit on the bed while I ate it,
and when I had finished,
she would tuck the clothes round me,
and twice she kissed me,
and said,
"Good night,
Miss Jane."

When thus gentle,
Bessie seemed
to me the best,
prettiest,
kindest being in the world;
and I wished most intensely that she would always be so pleasant and amiable,
and never push me about,
or scold,
or task me unreasonably,
as she was too often wont
to do.

Bessie Lee must,
I think,
have been a girl of good natural capacity,
for she was smart in all she did,
and had a remarkable knack of narrative;
so,
at least,
I judge from the impression made on me by her nursery tales.

She was pretty too,
if my recollections of her face and person are correct.

I remember her as a slim young woman,
with black hair,
dark eyes,
very nice features,
and good,
clear complexion;
but she had a capricious and hasty temper,
and indifferent ideas of principle or justice:

still,
such as she was,
I preferred her
to any one else at Gateshead Hall.

It was the fifteenth of January,
about nine o'clock in the morning:

Bessie was gone down
to breakfast;
my cousins had not yet been summoned
to their mama;
Eliza was putting on her bonnet and warm garden-coat
to go and feed her poultry,
an occupation of which she was fond:

and not less so of selling the eggs
to the housekeeper and hoarding up the money she thus obtained.

She had a turn
for traffic,
and a marked propensity
for saving;
shown not only in the vending of eggs and chickens,
but also in driving hard bargains
with the gardener about flower-roots,
seeds,
and slips of plants;
that functionary having orders from Mrs. Reed
to buy of his young lady all the products of her parterre she wished
to sell:

and Eliza would have sold the hair off her head if she could have made a handsome profit thereby.

As
to her money,
she first secreted it in odd corners,
wrapped in a rag or an old curl-paper;
but some of these hoards having been discovered by the housemaid,
Eliza,
fearful of one day losing her valued treasure,
consented
to intrust it
to her mother,
at a usurious rate of interest--fifty or sixty per cent.;
which interest she exacted every quarter,
keeping her accounts in a little book
with anxious accuracy.

Georgiana sat on a high stool,
dressing her hair at the glass,
and interweaving her curls
with artificial flowers and faded feathers,
of which she had found a store in a drawer in the attic.

I was making my bed,
having received strict orders from Bessie
to get it arranged before she returned
(for Bessie now frequently employed me as a sort of under-nurserymaid,
to tidy the room,
dust the chairs,
&c.).

Having spread the quilt and folded my night-dress,
I went
to the window-seat
to put in order some picture-books and doll's house furniture scattered there;
an abrupt command from Georgiana
to let her playthings alone
(for the tiny chairs and mirrors,
the fairy plates and cups,
were her property)
stopped my proceedings;
and then,
for lack of other occupation,
I fell
to breathing on the frost-flowers
with which the window was fretted,
and thus clearing a space in the glass through which I might look out on the grounds,
where all was still and petrified under the influence of a hard frost.

From this window were visible the porter's lodge and the carriage- road,
and just as I had dissolved so much of the silver-white foliage veiling the panes as left room
to look out,
I saw the gates thrown open and a carriage roll through.

I watched it ascending the drive
with indifference;
carriages often came
to Gateshead,
but none ever brought visitors in whom I was interested;
it stopped in front of the house,
the door-bell rang loudly,
the new-comer was admitted.

All this being nothing
to me,
my vacant attention soon found livelier attraction in the spectacle of a little hungry robin,
which came and chirruped on the twigs of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the casement.

The remains of my breakfast of bread and milk stood on the table,
and having crumbled a morsel of roll,
I was tugging at the sash
to put out the crumbs on the window- sill,
when Bessie came running upstairs into the nursery.

"Miss Jane,
take off your pinafore;
what are you doing there?

Have you washed your hands and face this morning?"
I gave another tug before I answered,
for I wanted the bird
to be secure of its bread:

the sash yielded;
I scattered the crumbs,
some on the stone sill,
some on the cherry-tree bough,
then,
closing the window,
I replied -
"No,
Bessie;
I have only just finished dusting."

"Troublesome,
careless child! and what are you doing now?

You look quite red,
as if you had been about some mischief:

what were you opening the window for?"
I was spared the trouble of answering,
for Bessie seemed in too great a hurry
to listen
to explanations;
she hauled me
to the washstand,
inflicted a merciless,
but happily brief scrub on my face and hands
with soap,
water,
and a coarse towel;
disciplined my head
with a bristly brush,
denuded me of my pinafore,
and then hurrying me
to the top of the stairs,
bid me go down directly,
as I was wanted in the breakfast-room.

I would have asked who wanted me:

I would have demanded if Mrs. Reed was there;
but Bessie was already gone,
and had closed the nursery-door upon me.

I slowly descended.

For nearly three months,
I had never been called
to Mrs. Reed's presence;
restricted so long
to the nursery,
the breakfast,
dining,
and drawing-rooms were become
for me awful regions,
on which it dismayed me
to intrude.

I now stood in the empty hall;
before me was the breakfast-room door,
and I stopped,
intimidated and trembling.

What a miserable little poltroon had fear,
engendered of unjust punishment,
made of me in those days! I feared
to return
to the nursery,
and feared
to go forward
to the parlour;
ten minutes I stood in agitated hesitation;
the vehement ringing of the breakfast-room bell decided me;
I MUST enter.

"Who could want me?"
I asked inwardly,
as
with both hands I turned the stiff door-handle,
which,
for a second or two,
resisted my efforts.

"What should I see besides Aunt Reed in the apartment?--a man or a woman?"
The handle turned,
the door unclosed,
and passing through and curtseying low,
I looked up at--a black pillar!--such,
at least,
appeared
to me,
at first sight,
the straight,
narrow,
sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug:

the grim face at the top was like a carved mask,
placed above the shaft by way of capital.

Mrs. Reed occupied her usual seat by the fireside;
she made a signal
to me
to approach;
I did so,
and she introduced me
to the stony stranger
with the words:

"This is the little girl respecting whom I applied
to you."

HE,
for it was a man,
turned his head slowly towards where I stood,
and having examined me
with the two inquisitive-looking grey eyes which twinkled under a pair of bushy brows,
said solemnly,
and in a bass voice,
"Her size is small:

what is her age?"
"Ten years."

"So much?"
was the doubtful answer;
and he prolonged his scrutiny
for some minutes.

Presently he addressed me--"Your name,
little girl?"
"Jane Eyre,
sir."

In uttering these words I looked up:

he seemed
to me a tall gentleman;
but then I was very little;
his features were large,
and they and all the lines of his frame were equally harsh and prim.

"Well,
Jane Eyre,
and are you a good child?"
Impossible
to reply
to this in the affirmative:

my little world held a contrary opinion:

I was silent.

Mrs. Reed answered
for me by an expressive shake of the head,
adding soon,
"Perhaps the less said on that subject the better,
Mr. Brocklehurst."

"Sorry indeed
to hear it! she and I must have some talk;"
and bending from the perpendicular,
he installed his person in the arm- chair opposite Mrs. Reed's.

"Come here,"
he said.

I stepped across the rug;
he placed me square and straight before him.

What a face he had,
now that it was almost on a level
with mine! what a great nose! and what a mouth! and what large prominent teeth!
"No sight so sad as that of a naughty child,"
he began,
"especially a naughty little girl.

Do you know where the wicked go after death?"
"They go
to hell,"
was my ready and orthodox answer.

"And what is hell?

Can you tell me that?"
"A pit full of fire."

"And should you like
to fall into that pit,
and
to be burning there
for ever?"
"No,
sir."

"What must you do
to avoid it?"
I deliberated a moment;
my answer,
when it did come,
was objectionable:

"I must keep in good health,
and not die."

"How can you keep in good health?

Children younger than you die daily.

I buried a little child of five years old only a day or two since,--a good little child,
whose soul is now in heaven.

It is
to be feared the same could not be said of you were you
to be called hence."

Not being in a condition
to remove his doubt,
I only cast my eyes down on the two large feet planted on the rug,
and sighed,
wishing myself far enough away.

"I hope that sigh is from the heart,
and that you repent of ever having been the occasion of discomfort
to your excellent benefactress."

"Benefactress! benefactress!"
said I inwardly:

"they all call Mrs. Reed my benefactress;
if so,
a benefactress is a disagreeable thing."

"Do you say your prayers night and morning?"
continued my interrogator.

"Yes,
sir."

"Do you read your Bible?"
"Sometimes."

"With pleasure?

Are you fond of it?"
"I like Revelations,
and the book of Daniel,
and Genesis and Samuel,
and a little bit of Exodus,
and some parts of Kings and Chronicles,
and Job and Jonah."

"And the Psalms?

I hope you like them?"
"No,
sir."

"No?

oh,
shocking! I have a little boy,
younger than you,
who knows six Psalms by heart:

and when you ask him which he would rather have,
a gingerbread-nut
to eat or a verse of a Psalm
to learn,
he says:

'Oh! the verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalms;'
says he,
'I wish
to be a little angel here below;'
he then gets two nuts in recompense
for his infant piety."

"Psalms are not interesting,"
I remarked.

"That proves you have a wicked heart;
and you must pray
to God
to change it:

to give you a new and clean one:

to take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

I was about
to propound a question,
touching the manner in which that operation of changing my heart was
to be performed,
when Mrs. Reed interposed,
telling me
to sit down;
she then proceeded
to carry on the conversation herself.

"Mr. Brocklehurst,
I believe I intimated in the letter which I wrote
to you three weeks ago,
that this little girl has not quite the character and disposition I could wish:

should you admit her into Lowood school,
I should be glad if the superintendent and teachers were requested
to keep a strict eye on her,
and,
above all,
to guard against her worst fault,
a tendency
to deceit.

I mention this in your hearing,
Jane,
that you may not attempt
to impose on Mr. Brocklehurst."

Well might I dread,
well might I dislike Mrs. Reed;
for it was her nature
to wound me cruelly;
never was I happy in her presence;
however carefully I obeyed,
however strenuously I strove
to please her,
my efforts were still repulsed and repaid by such sentences as the above.

Now,
uttered before a stranger,
the accusation cut me
to the heart;
I dimly perceived that she was already obliterating hope from the new phase of existence which she destined me
to enter;
I felt,
though I could not have expressed the feeling,
that she was sowing aversion and unkindness along my future path;
I saw myself transformed under Mr. Brocklehurst's eye into an artful,
noxious child,
and what could I do
to remedy the injury?

"Nothing,
indeed,"
thought I,
as I struggled
to repress a sob,
and hastily wiped away some tears,
the impotent evidences of my anguish.

"Deceit is,
indeed,
a sad fault in a child,"
said Mr. Brocklehurst;
"it is akin
to falsehood,
and all liars will have their portion in the lake burning
with fire and brimstone;
she shall,
however,
be watched,
Mrs. Reed.

I will speak
to Miss Temple and the teachers."

"I should wish her
to be brought up in a manner suiting her prospects,"
continued my benefactress;
"to be made useful,
to be kept humble:

as
for the vacations,
she will,
with your permission,
spend them always at Lowood."

"Your decisions are perfectly judicious,
madam,"
returned Mr. Brocklehurst.

"Humility is a Christian grace,
and one peculiarly appropriate
to the pupils of Lowood;
I,
therefore,
direct that especial care shall be bestowed on its cultivation amongst them.

I have studied how best
to mortify in them the worldly sentiment of pride;
and,
only the other day,
I had a pleasing proof of my success.

My second daughter,
Augusta,
went
with her mama
to visit the school,
and on her return she exclaimed:

'Oh,
dear papa,
how quiet and plain all the girls at Lowood look,
with their hair combed behind their ears,
and their long pinafores,
and those little holland pockets outside their frocks--they are almost like poor people's children! and,'
said she,
'they looked at my dress and mama's,
as if they had never seen a silk gown before.'
"
"This is the state of things I quite approve,"
returned Mrs. Reed;
"had I sought all England over,
I could scarcely have found a system more exactly fitting a child like Jane Eyre.

Consistency,
my dear Mr. Brocklehurst;
I advocate consistency in all things."

"Consistency,
madam,
is the first of Christian duties;
and it has been observed in every arrangement connected
with the establishment of Lowood:

plain fare,
simple attire,
unsophisticated accommodations,
hardy and active habits;
such is the order of the day in the house and its inhabitants."

"Quite right,
sir.

I may then depend upon this child being received as a pupil at Lowood,
and there being trained in conformity
to her position and prospects?"
"Madam,
you may:

she shall be placed in that nursery of chosen plants,
and I trust she will show herself grateful
for the inestimable privilege of her election."

"I will send her,
then,
as soon as possible,
Mr. Brocklehurst;
for,
I assure you,
I feel anxious
to be relieved of a responsibility that was becoming too irksome."

"No doubt,
no doubt,
madam;
and now I wish you good morning.

I shall return
to Brocklehurst Hall in the course of a week or two:

my good friend,
the Archdeacon,
will not permit me
to leave him sooner.

I shall send Miss Temple notice that she is
to expect a new girl,
so that there will he no difficulty about receiving her.

Good-bye."

"Good-bye,
Mr. Brocklehurst;
remember me
to Mrs. and Miss Brocklehurst,
and
to Augusta and Theodore,
and Master Broughton Brocklehurst."

"I will,
madam.

Little girl,
here is a book entitled the
'Child's Guide,'
read it
with prayer,
especially that part containing
'An account of the awfully sudden death of Martha G -,
a naughty child addicted
to falsehood and deceit.'
"
With these words Mr. Brocklehurst put into my hand a thin pamphlet sewn in a cover,
and having rung
for his carriage,
he departed.

Mrs. Reed and I were left alone:

some minutes passed in silence;
she was sewing,
I was watching her.

Mrs. Reed might be at that time some six or seven and thirty;
she was a woman of robust frame,
square-shouldered and strong-limbed,
not tall,
and,
though stout,
not obese:

she had a somewhat large face,
the under jaw being much developed and very solid;
her brow was low,
her chin large and prominent,
mouth and nose sufficiently regular;
under her light eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth;
her skin was dark and opaque,
her hair nearly flaxen;
her constitution was sound as a bell--illness never came near her;
she was an exact,
clever manager;
her household and tenantry were thoroughly under her control;
her children only at times defied her authority and laughed it
to scorn;
she dressed well,
and had a presence and port calculated
to set off handsome attire.

Sitting on a low stool,
a few yards from her arm-chair,
I examined her figure;
I perused her features.

In my hand I held the tract containing the sudden death of the Liar,
to which narrative my attention had been pointed as
to an appropriate warning.

What had just passed;
what Mrs. Reed had said concerning me
to Mr. Brocklehurst;
the whole tenor of their conversation,
was recent,
raw,
and stinging in my mind;
I had felt every word as acutely as I had heard it plainly,
and a passion of resentment fomented now within me.

Mrs. Reed looked up from her work;
her eye settled on mine,
her fingers at the same time suspended their nimble movements.

"Go out of the room;
return
to the nursery,"
was her mandate.

My look or something else must have struck her as offensive,
for she spoke
with extreme though suppressed irritation.

I got up,
I went
to the door;
I came back again;
I walked
to the window,
across the room,
then close up
to her.

SPEAK I must:

I had been trodden on severely,
and MUST turn:

but how?

What strength had I
to dart retaliation at my antagonist?

I gathered my energies and launched them in this blunt sentence -
"I am not deceitful:

if I were,
I should say I loved you;
but I declare I do not love you:

I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed;
and this book about the liar,
you may give
to your girl,
Georgiana,
for it is she who tells lies,
and not I."

Mrs. Reed's hands still lay on her work inactive:

her eye of ice continued
to dwell freezingly on mine.

"What more have you
to say?"
she asked,
rather in the tone in which a person might address an opponent of adult age than such as is ordinarily used
to a child.

That eye of hers,
that voice stirred every antipathy I had.

Shaking from head
to foot,
thrilled
with ungovernable excitement,
I continued -
"I am glad you are no relation of mine:

I will never call you aunt again as long as I live.

I will never come
to see you when I am grown up;
and if any one asks me how I liked you,
and how you treated me,
I will say the very thought of you makes me sick,
and that you treated me
with miserable cruelty."

"How dare you affirm that,
Jane Eyre?"
"How dare I,
Mrs. Reed?

How dare I?

Because it is the TRUTH.

You think I have no feelings,
and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness;
but I cannot live so:

and you have no pity.

I shall remember how you thrust me back--roughly and violently thrust me back--into the red-room,
and locked me up there,
to my dying day;
though I was in agony;
though I cried out,
while suffocating
with distress,
'Have mercy! Have mercy,
Aunt Reed!'
And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me--knocked me down
for nothing.

I will tell anybody who asks me questions,
this exact tale.

People think you a good woman,
but you are bad,
hard- hearted.

YOU are deceitful!"
Ere I had finished this reply,
my soul began
to expand,
to exult,
with the strangest sense of freedom,
of triumph,
I ever felt.

It seemed as if an invisible bond had burst,
and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty.

Not without cause was this sentiment:

Mrs. Reed looked frightened;
her work had slipped from her knee;
she was lifting up her hands,
rocking herself
to and fro,
and even twisting her face as if she would cry.

"Jane,
you are under a mistake:

what is the matter
with you?

Why do you tremble so violently?

Would you like
to drink some water?"
"No,
Mrs. Reed."

"Is there anything else you wish for,
Jane?

I assure you,
I desire
to be your friend."

"Not you.

You told Mr. Brocklehurst I had a bad character,
a deceitful disposition;
and I'll let everybody at Lowood know what you are,
and what you have done."

"Jane,
you don't understand these things:

children must be corrected
for their faults."

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

"But you are passionate,
Jane,
that you must allow:

and now return
to the nursery--there's a dear--and lie down a little."

"I am not your dear;
I cannot lie down:

send me
to school soon,
Mrs. Reed,
for I hate
to live here."

"I will indeed send her
to school soon,"
murmured Mrs. Reed sotto voce;
and gathering up her work,
she abruptly quitted the apartment.

I was left there alone--winner of the field.

It was the hardest battle I had fought,
and the first victory I had gained:

I stood awhile on the rug,
where Mr. Brocklehurst had stood,
and I enjoyed my conqueror's solitude.

First,
I smiled
to myself and felt elate;
but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the accelerated throb of my pulses.

A child cannot quarrel
with its elders,
as I had done;
cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play,
as I had given mine,
without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction.

A ridge of lighted heath,
alive,
glancing,
devouring,
would have been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed:

the same ridge,
black and blasted after the flames are dead,
would have represented as meetly my subsequent condition,
when half-an-hour's silence and reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct,
and the dreariness of my hated and hating position.

Something of vengeance I had tasted
for the first time;
as aromatic wine it seemed,
on swallowing,
warm and racy:

its after-flavour,
metallic and corroding,
gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.

Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed's pardon;
but I knew,
partly from experience and partly from instinct,
that was the way
to make her repulse me
with double scorn,
thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature.

I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking;
fain find nourishment
for some less fiendish feeling than that of sombre indignation.

I took a book--some Arabian tales;
I sat down and endeavoured
to read.

I could make no sense of the subject;
my own thoughts swam always between me and the page I had usually found fascinating.

I opened the glass-door in the breakfast-room:

the shrubbery was quite still:

the black frost reigned,
unbroken by sun or breeze,
through the grounds.

I covered my head and arms
with the skirt of my frock,
and went out
to walk in a part of the plantation which was quite sequestrated;
but I found no pleasure in the silent trees,
the falling fir-cones,
the congealed relics of autumn,
russet leaves,
swept by past winds in heaps,
and now stiffened together.

I leaned against a gate,
and looked into an empty field where no sheep were feeding,
where the short grass was nipped and blanched.

It was a very grey day;
a most opaque sky,
"onding on snaw,"
canopied all;
thence flakes felt it intervals,
which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea without melting.

I stood,
a wretched child enough,
whispering
to myself over and over again,
"What shall I do?--what shall I do?"
All at once I heard a clear voice call,
"Miss Jane! where are you?

Come
to lunch!"
It was Bessie,
I knew well enough;
but I did not stir;
her light step came tripping down the path.

"You naughty little thing!"
she said.

"Why don't you come when you are called?"
Bessie's presence,
compared
with the thoughts over which I had been brooding,
seemed cheerful;
even though,
as usual,
she was somewhat cross.

The fact is,
after my conflict
with and victory over Mrs. Reed,
I was not disposed
to care much
for the nursemaid's transitory anger;
and I WAS disposed
to bask in her youthful lightness of heart.

I just put my two arms round her and said,
"Come,
Bessie! don't scold."

The action was more frank and fearless than any I was habituated
to indulge in:

somehow it pleased her.

"You are a strange child,
Miss Jane,"
she said,
as she looked down at me;
"a little roving,
solitary thing:

and you are going
to school,
I suppose?"
I nodded.

"And won't you be sorry
to leave poor Bessie?"
"What does Bessie care
for me?

She is always scolding me."

"Because you're such a queer,
frightened,
shy little thing.

You should be bolder."

"What!
to get more knocks?"
"Nonsense! But you are rather put upon,
that's certain.

My mother said,
when she came
to see me last week,
that she would not like a little one of her own
to be in your place.--Now,
come in,
and I've some good news
for you."

"I don't think you have,
Bessie."

"Child! what do you mean?

What sorrowful eyes you fix on me! Well,
but Missis and the young ladies and Master John are going out
to tea this afternoon,
and you shall have tea
with me.

I'll ask cook
to bake you a little cake,
and then you shall help me
to look over your drawers;
for I am soon
to pack your trunk.

Missis intends you
to leave Gateshead in a day or two,
and you shall choose what toys you like
to take
with you."

"Bessie,
you must promise not
to scold me any more till I go."

"Well,
I will;
but mind you are a very good girl,
and don't be afraid of me.

Don't start when I chance
to speak rather sharply;
it's so provoking."

"I don't think I shall ever be afraid of you again,
Bessie,
because I have got used
to you,
and I shall soon have another set of people
to dread."

"If you dread them they'll dislike you."

"As you do,
Bessie?"
"I don't dislike you,
Miss;
I believe I am fonder of you than of all the others."

"You don't show it."

"You little sharp thing! you've got quite a new way of talking.

What makes you so venturesome and hardy?"
"Why,
I shall soon be away from you,
and besides"--I was going
to say something about what had passed between me and Mrs. Reed,
but on second thoughts I considered it better
to remain silent on that head.

"And so you're glad
to leave me?"
"Not at all,
Bessie;
indeed,
just now I'm rather sorry."

"Just now! and rather! How coolly my little lady says it! I dare say now if I were
to ask you
for a kiss you wouldn't give it me:

you'd say you'd RATHER not."

"I'll kiss you and welcome:

bend your head down."

Bessie stooped;
we mutually embraced,
and I followed her into the house quite comforted.

That afternoon lapsed in peace and harmony;
and in the evening Bessie told me some of her most enchaining stories,
and sang me some of her sweetest songs.

Even
for me life had its gleams of sunshine.

CHAPTER V Five o'clock had hardly struck on the morning of the 19th of January,
when Bessie brought a candle into my closet and found me already up and nearly dressed.

I had risen half-an-hour before her entrance,
and had washed my face,
and put on my clothes by the light of a half-moon just setting,
whose rays streamed through the narrow window near my crib.

I was
to leave Gateshead that day by a coach which passed the lodge gates at six a.m.

Bessie was the only person yet risen;
she had lit a fire in the nursery,
where she now proceeded
to make my breakfast.

Few children can eat when excited
with the thoughts of a journey;
nor could I.

Bessie,
having pressed me in vain
to take a few spoonfuls of the boiled milk and bread she had prepared
for me,
wrapped up some biscuits in a paper and put them into my bag;
then she helped me on
with my pelisse and bonnet,
and wrapping herself in a shawl,
she and I left the nursery.

As we passed Mrs. Reed's bedroom,
she said,
"Will you go in and bid Missis good-bye?"
"No,
Bessie:

she came
to my crib last night when you were gone down
to supper,
and said I need not disturb her in the morning,
or my cousins either;
and she told me
to remember that she had always been my best friend,
and
to speak of her and be grateful
to her accordingly."

"What did you say,
Miss?"
"Nothing:

I covered my face
with the bedclothes,
and turned from her
to the wall."

"That was wrong,
Miss Jane."

"It was quite right,
Bessie.

Your Missis has not been my friend:

she has been my foe."

"O Miss Jane! don't say so!"
"Good-bye
to Gateshead!"
cried I,
as we passed through the hall and went out at the front door.

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

Raw and chill was the winter morning:

my teeth chattered as I hastened down the drive.

There was a light in the porter's lodge:

when we reached it,
we found the porter's wife just kindling her fire:

my trunk,
which had been carried down the evening before,
stood corded at the door.

It wanted but a few minutes of six,
and shortly after that hour had struck,
the distant roll of wheels announced the coming coach;
I went
to the door and watched its lamps approach rapidly through the gloom.

"Is she going by herself?"
asked the porter's wife.

"Yes."

"And how far is it?"
"Fifty miles."

"What a long way! I wonder Mrs. Reed is not afraid
to trust her so far alone."

The coach drew up;
there it was at the gates
with its four horses and its top laden
with passengers:

the guard and coachman loudly urged haste;
my trunk was hoisted up;
I was taken from Bessie's neck,
to which I clung
with kisses.

"Be sure and take good care of her,"
cried she
to the guard,
as he lifted me into the inside.

"Ay,
ay!"
was the answer:

the door was slapped to,
a voice exclaimed
"All right,"
and on we drove.

Thus was I severed from Bessie and Gateshead;
thus whirled away
to unknown,
and,
as I then deemed,
remote and mysterious regions.

I remember but little of the journey;
I only know that the day seemed
to me of a preternatural length,
and that we appeared
to travel over hundreds of miles of road.

We passed through several towns,
and in one,
a very large one,
the coach stopped;
the horses were taken out,
and the passengers alighted
to dine.

I was carried into an inn,
where the guard wanted me
to have some dinner;
but,
as I had no appetite,
he left me in an immense room
with a fireplace at each end,
a chandelier pendent from the ceiling,
and a little red gallery high up against the wall filled
with musical instruments.

Here I walked about
for a long time,
feeling very strange,
and mortally apprehensive of some one coming in and kidnapping me;
for I believed in kidnappers,
their exploits having frequently figured in Bessie's fireside chronicles.

At last the guard returned;
once more I was stowed away in the coach,
my protector mounted his own seat,
sounded his hollow horn,
and away we rattled over the
"stony street"
of L-.

The afternoon came on wet and somewhat misty:

as it waned into dusk,
I began
to feel that we were getting very far indeed from Gateshead:

we ceased
to pass through towns;
the country changed;
great grey hills heaved up round the horizon:

as twilight deepened,
we descended a valley,
dark
with wood,
and long after night had overclouded the prospect,
I heard a wild wind rushing amongst trees.

Lulled by the sound,
I at last dropped asleep;
I had not long slumbered when the sudden cessation of motion awoke me;
the coach- door was open,
and a person like a servant was standing at it:

I saw her face and dress by the light of the lamps.

"Is there a little girl called Jane Eyre here?"
she asked.

I answered
"Yes,"
and was then lifted out;
my trunk was handed down,
and the coach instantly drove away.

I was stiff
with long sitting,
and bewildered
with the noise and motion of the coach:

Gathering my faculties,
I looked about me.

Rain,
wind,
and darkness filled the air;
nevertheless,
I dimly discerned a wall before me and a door open in it;
through this door I passed
with my new guide:

she shut and locked it behind her.

There was now visible a house or houses--for the building spread far--with many windows,
and lights burning in some;
we went up a broad pebbly path,
splashing wet,
and were admitted at a door;
then the servant led me through a passage into a room
with a fire,
where she left me alone.

I stood and warmed my numbed fingers over the blaze,
then I looked round;
there was no candle,
but the uncertain light from the hearth showed,
by intervals,
papered walls,
carpet,
curtains,
shining mahogany furniture:

it was a parlour,
not so spacious or splendid as the drawing-room at Gateshead,
but comfortable enough.

I was puzzling
to make out the subject of a picture on the wall,
when the door opened,
and an individual carrying a light entered;
another followed close behind.

The first was a tall lady
with dark hair,
dark eyes,
and a pale and large forehead;
her figure was partly enveloped in a shawl,
her countenance was grave,
her bearing erect.

"The child is very young
to be sent alone,"
said she,
putting her candle down on the table.

She considered me attentively
for a minute or two,
then further added -
"She had better be put
to bed soon;
she looks tired:

are you tired?"
she asked,
placing her hand on my shoulder.

"A little,
ma'am."

"And hungry too,
no doubt:

let her have some supper before she goes
to bed,
Miss Miller.

Is this the first time you have left your parents
to come
to school,
my little girl?"
I explained
to her that I had no parents.

She inquired how long they had been dead:

then how old I was,
what was my name,
whether I could read,
write,
and sew a little:

then she touched my cheek gently
with her forefinger,
and saying,
"She hoped I should be a good child,"
dismissed me along
with Miss Miller.

The lady I had left might be about twenty-nine;
the one who went
with me appeared some years younger:

the first impressed me by her voice,
look,
and air.

Miss Miller was more ordinary;
ruddy in complexion,
though of a careworn countenance;
hurried in gait and action,
like one who had always a multiplicity of tasks on hand:

she looked,
indeed,
what I afterwards found she really was,
an under-teacher.

Led by her,
I passed from compartment
to compartment,
from passage
to passage,
of a large and irregular building;
till,
emerging from the total and somewhat dreary silence pervading that portion of the house we had traversed,
we came upon the hum of many voices,
and presently entered a wide,
long room,
with great deal tables,
two at each end,
on each of which burnt a pair of candles,
and seated all round on benches,
a congregation of girls of every age,
from nine or ten
to twenty.

Seen by the dim light of the dips,
their number
to me appeared countless,
though not in reality exceeding eighty;
they were uniformly dressed in brown stuff frocks of quaint fashion,
and long holland pinafores.

It was the hour of study;
they were engaged in conning over their to- morrow's task,
and the hum I had heard was the combined result of their whispered repetitions.

Miss Miller signed
to me
to sit on a bench near the door,
then walking up
to the top of the long room she cried out -
"Monitors,
collect the lesson-books and put them away! Four tall girls arose from different tables,
and going round,
gathered the books and removed them.

Miss Miller again gave the word of command -
"Monitors,
fetch the supper-trays!"
The tall girls went out and returned presently,
each bearing a tray,
with portions of something,
I knew not what,
arranged thereon,
and a pitcher of water and mug in the middle of each tray.

The portions were handed round;
those who liked took a draught of the water,
the mug being common
to all.

When it came
to my turn,
I drank,
for I was thirsty,
but did not touch the food,
excitement and fatigue rendering me incapable of eating:

I now saw,
however,
that it was a thin oaten cake shared into fragments.

The meal over,
prayers were read by Miss Miller,
and the classes filed off,
two and two,
upstairs.

Overpowered by this time
with weariness,
I scarcely noticed what sort of a place the bedroom was,
except that,
like the schoolroom,
I saw it was very long.

To-night I was
to be Miss Miller's bed-fellow;
she helped me
to undress:

when laid down I glanced at the long rows of beds,
each of which was quickly filled
with two occupants;
in ten minutes the single light was extinguished,
and amidst silence and complete darkness I fell asleep.

The night passed rapidly.

I was too tired even
to dream;
I only once awoke
to hear the wind rave in furious gusts,
and the rain fall in torrents,
and
to be sensible that Miss Miller had taken her place by my side.

When I again unclosed my eyes,
a loud bell was ringing;
the girls were up and dressing;
day had not yet begun
to dawn,
and a rushlight or two burned in the room.

I too rose reluctantly;
it was bitter cold,
and I dressed as well as I could
for shivering,
and washed when there was a basin at liberty,
which did not occur soon,
as there was but one basin
to six girls,
on the stands down the middle of the room.

Again the bell rang:

all formed in file,
two and two,
and in that order descended the stairs and entered the cold and dimly lit schoolroom:

here prayers were read by Miss Miller;
afterwards she called out -
"Form classes!"
A great tumult succeeded
for some minutes,
during which Miss Miller repeatedly exclaimed,
"Silence!"
and
"Order!"
When it subsided,
I saw them all drawn up in four semicircles,
before four chairs,
placed at the four tables;
all held books in their hands,
and a great book,
like a Bible,
lay on each table,
before the vacant seat.

A pause of some seconds succeeded,
filled up by the low,
vague hum of numbers;
Miss Miller walked from class
to class,
hushing this indefinite sound.

A distant bell tinkled:

immediately three ladies entered the room,
each walked
to a table and took her seat.

Miss Miller assumed the fourth vacant chair,
which was that nearest the door,
and around which the smallest of the children were assembled:

to this inferior class I was called,
and placed at the bottom of it.

Business now began,
the day's Collect was repeated,
then certain texts of Scripture were said,
and
to these succeeded a protracted reading of chapters in the Bible,
which lasted an hour.

By the time that exercise was terminated,
day had fully dawned.

The indefatigable bell now sounded
for the fourth time:

the classes were marshalled and marched into another room
to breakfast:

how glad I was
to behold a prospect of getting something
to eat! I was now nearly sick from inanition,
having taken so little the day before.

The refectory was a great,
low-ceiled,
gloomy room;
on two long tables smoked basins of something hot,
which,
however,
to my dismay,
sent forth an odour far from inviting.

I saw a universal manifestation of discontent when the fumes of the repast met the nostrils of those destined
to swallow it;
from the van of the procession,
the tall girls of the first class,
rose the whispered words -
"Disgusting! The porridge is burnt again!"
"Silence!"
ejaculated a voice;
not that of Miss Miller,
but one of the upper teachers,
a little and dark personage,
smartly dressed,
but of somewhat morose aspect,
who installed herself at the top of one table,
while a more buxom lady presided at the other.

I looked in vain
for her I had first seen the night before;
she was not visible:

Miss Miller occupied the foot of the table where I sat,
and a strange,
foreign-looking,
elderly lady,
the French teacher,
as I afterwards found,
took the corresponding seat at the other board.

A long grace was said and a hymn sung;
then a servant brought in some tea
for the teachers,
and the meal began.

Ravenous,
and now very faint,
I devoured a spoonful or two of my portion without thinking of its taste;
but the first edge of hunger blunted,
I perceived I had got in hand a nauseous mess;
burnt porridge is almost as bad as rotten potatoes;
famine itself soon sickens over it.

The spoons were moved slowly:

I saw each girl taste her food and try
to swallow it;
but in most cases the effort was soon relinquished.

Breakfast was over,
and none had breakfasted.

Thanks being returned
for what we had not got,
and a second hymn chanted,
the refectory was evacuated
for the schoolroom.

I was one of the last
to go out,
and in passing the tables,
I saw one teacher take a basin of the porridge and taste it;
she looked at the others;
all their countenances expressed displeasure,
and one of them,
the stout one,
whispered -
"Abominable stuff! How shameful!"
A quarter of an hour passed before lessons again began,
during which the schoolroom was in a glorious tumult;
for that space of time it seemed
to be permitted
to talk loud and more freely,
and they used their privilege.

The whole conversation ran on the breakfast,
which one and all abused roundly.

Poor things! it was the sole consolation they had.