'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; butyou 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 bebetter soon, no doubt.'
Bessie went into the housemaid's apartment, which was near. I heardher say-
'Sarah, come and sleep with me in the nursery; I daren't for mylife be alone with that poor child tonight: she might die; it's such astrange thing she should have that fit: I wonder if she sawanything. Missis was rather too hard.'
Sarah came back with her; they both went to bed; they werewhispering together for half an hour before they fell asleep. I caughtscraps of their conversation, from which I was able only toodistinctly to infer the main subject discussed.
'Something passed her, all dressed in white, and vanished'- 'Agreat black dog behind him'- 'Three loud raps on the chamber door'-'A light in the churchyard just over his grave,' etc., etc.
At last both slept: the fire and the candle went out. For me, thewatches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; ear, eye,and mind were alike strained by dread: such dread as children only canfeel.
No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of thered-room; it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel thereverberation to this day. Yes, Mrs. Reed, to you I owe some fearfulpangs of mental suffering, but I ought to forgive you, for you knewnot what you did: while rending my heart-strings, you thought you wereonly uprooting my bad propensities.
Next day, by noon, I was up and dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawlby the nursery hearth. I felt physically weak and broken down: butmy worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind: awretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears; no sooner hadI wiped one salt drop from my cheek than another followed. Yet, Ithought, 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 andthither, putting away toys and arranging drawers, addressed to meevery now and then a word of unwonted kindness. This state of thingsshould have been to me a paradise of peace, accustomed as I was to alife of ceaseless reprimand and thankless fagging; but, in fact, myracked 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 withher a tart on a certain brightly painted china plate, whose bird ofparadise, nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds, had beenwont to stir in me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration; andwhich plate I had often petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand inorder to examine it more closely, but had always hitherto beendeemed unworthy of such a privilege. This precious vessel was nowplaced on my knee, and I was cordially invited to eat the circlet ofdelicate pastry upon it. Vain favour! coming, like most otherfavours long deferred and often wished for, too late! I could noteat the tart; and the plumage of the bird, the tints of the flowers,seemed strangely faded: I put both plate and tart away. Bessie askedif 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. Thisbook I had again and again perused with delight. I considered it anarrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeperthan what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves, having soughtthem in vain among fox-glove leaves and bells, under mushrooms andbeneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at length madeup my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of England tosome savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker, and thepopulation more scant; whereas, Lilliput and Brobdingnag being, inmy creed, solid parts of the earth's surface, I doubted not that Imight one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes thelittle fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tinycows, sheep, and birds of the one realm; and the corn-fields,forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like menand women, of the other. Yet, when this cherished volume was nowplaced in my hand- when I turned over its leaves, and sought in itsmarvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find-all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmiesmalevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in mostdread and dangerous regions. I closed the book, which I dared nolonger peruse, and put it on the table, beside the untasted tart.
Bessie had now finished dusting and tidying the room, and havingwashed her hands, she opened a certain little drawer, full of splendidshreds of silk and satin, and began making a new bonnet forGeorgiana's doll. Meantime she sang: her song was-
'In the days when we were gipsying,
A long time ago.'
I had often heard the song before, and always with livelydelight; for Bessie had a sweet voice,- at least, I thought so. Butnow, though her voice was still sweet, I found in its melody anindescribable sadness. Sometimes, preoccupied with her work, shesang the refrain very low, very lingeringly; 'A long time ago' cameout like the saddest cadence of a funeral hymn. She passed intoanother 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. Shemight as well have said to the fire, 'don't burn!' but how could shedivine the morbid suffering to which I was a prey? In the course ofthe 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, Mis Jane: yourname is Jane, is it not?'
'Yes, sir, Jane Eyre.'
'Well, you have been crying, Miss Jane Eyre; can you tell me whatabout? Have you any pain?'
'No, sir.'
'Oh! I daresay she is crying because she could not go out withMissis 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 falsecharge, I answered promptly, 'I never cried for such a thing in mylife: 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 standingbefore him; he fixed his eyes on me very steadily: his eyes were smalland grey; not very bright, but I daresay I should think them shrewdnow: he had a hard-featured yet good-natured looking face. Havingconsidered 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 walkat her age? She must be eight or nine years old.'
'I was knocked down,' was the blunt explanation, jerked out of meby 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 bellrang 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 lecturetill you come back.'
Bessie would rather have stayed, but she was obliged to go, becausepunctuality at meals was rigidly enforced at Gates-head 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, youare a baby after all! You are afraid of ghosts?'
'Of Mr. Reed's ghost I am: he died in that room, and was laid outthere. Neither Bessie nor any one else will go into it at night, ifthey can help it; and it was cruel to shut me up alone without acandle,- so cruel that I think I shall never forget it.'
'Nonsense! And is it that makes you so miserable? Are you afraidnow in daylight?'
'No: but night will come again before long: and besides,- I amunhappy,- 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 itwas to frame any answer! Children can feel, but they cannot analysetheir feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected inthought, they know not how to express the result of the process inwords. Fearful, however, of losing this first and only opportunityof 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 thered-room.'
Mr. Lloyd a second time produced his snuff-box.
'Don't you think Gateshead Hall a very beautiful house?' askedhe. '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 behere than a servant.'
'Pooh! you can't be silly enough to wish to leave such a splendidplace?'
'If I had anywhere else to go, I should be glad to leave it; butI 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 Imight have some poor, low relations called Eyre, but she knewnothing about them.'
'If you had such, would you like to go to them?'
I reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so tochildren: they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectablepoverty; 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 ofbeing kind; and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt theirmanners, to be uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor women I sawsometimes nursing their children or washing their clothes at thecottage doors of the village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enoughto 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 abeggarly 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: Bessiesometimes spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks,wore backboards, and were expected to be exceedingly genteel andprecise: John Reed hated his school, and abused his master; but JohnReed's tastes were no rule for mine, and if Bessie's accounts ofschool-discipline (gathered from the young ladies of a family whereshe had lived before coming to Gateshead) were somewhat appalling, herdetails of certain accomplishments attained by these same young ladieswere, I thought, equally attractive. She boasted of beautifulpaintings of landscapes and flowers by them executed; of songs theycould sing and pieces they could play, of purses they could net, ofFrench books they could translate; till my spirit was moved toemulation as I listened. Besides, school would be a complete change:it implied a long journey, an entire separation from Gateshead, anentrance into a new life.
'I should indeed like to go to school,' was the audibleconclusion of my musings.
'Well, well! who knows what may happen?' said Mr. Lloyd, as hegot 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 heardrolling up the gravel-walk.
'Is that your mistress, nurse?' asked Mr. Lloyd. 'I should liketo speak to her before I go.'
Bessie invited him to walk into the breakfast-room, and led the wayout. In the interview which followed between him and Mrs. Reed, Ipresume, from after-occurrences, that the apothecary ventured torecommend my being sent to school; and the recommendation was no doubtreadily enough adopted; for as Abbot said, in discussing the subjectwith Bessie when both sat sewing in the nursery one night, after I wasin bed, and, as they thought, asleep, 'Missis was, she dared say, gladenough to get rid of such a tiresome, ill-conditioned child, whoalways looked as if she were watching everybody, and scheming plotsunderhand.' Abbot, I think, gave me credit for being a sort ofinfantine Guy Fawkes.
On that same occasion I learned, for the first time, from MissAbbot's communications to Bessie, that my father had been a poorclergyman; that my mother had married him against the wishes of herfriends, who considered the match beneath her; that my grandfatherReed was so irritated at her disobedience, he cut her off without ashilling; that after my mother and father had been married a year, thelatter caught the typhus fever while visiting among the poor of alarge manufacturing town where his curacy was situated, and where thatdisease was then prevalent: that my mother took the infection fromhim, and both died within a month of each other.
