Jane Eyre

‘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’—etc., etc.

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

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

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

Bessie had been down into the kitchen, and she brought up with her a tart on a certain brightly painted china plate, whose bird of paradise, nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds, had been wont to stir in me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration; and which plate I had petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand in order to examine it more closely, but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a privilege. This precious vessel was now placed on my knee, and I was cordially invited to eat the circlet of delicate pastry upon it. Vain favour! coming, like most other favours long deferred and often wished for, too late! I could not eat the tart: and the plumage of the bird, the tints of the flowers, seemed strangely faded: I put both plate and tart away. Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word book acted as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver’s Travels from the library. This book I had again and again perused with delight. I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves, having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant; whereas Lilliput and Brobdingnag 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, pre-occupied 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 drearyOver 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 onlyWatch’d o’er the steps of a poor orphan child.

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

‘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 daresay I should think them shrewd now: he had a hard-featured yet good-natured looking face. Having considered me at leisure, he said—

‘What made you ill yesterday?’

‘She had a fall,’ said Bessie, again putting in her word.

‘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.’