Aethlos — JANE EYRE by Charlotte Bronte — Spencer Lord’s Weltanschauung

 
Jane Eyre
 
by Charlotte Bronte
 
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<