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                              1846

                          JANE EYRE

                     by Charlotte Bronte

                    THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE

                    TO THE SECOND EDITION


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
Chenaanah 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 Ramoth-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.

                    THE AUTHOR'S 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.

                       JANE EYRE


                       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 outdoor exercise was now out of
the question.

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

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

'What does Bessie say I have done?' I asked.

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

A small breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in
there. It contained a 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 armchair, 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 dependant,
mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought
to beg, and not to live here with gentlemen's children like us, and
eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama's expense. Now,
I'll teach you to rummage my 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, etc. 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 housemaid alone came here on
Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week's quiet
dust: and Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review
the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were
stored divers parchments, her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her
deceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the
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
gleaming mirror- I began to recall what I had heard of dead men,
troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes,
revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the
oppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit, harassed by the wrongs
of his sister's child, might quit its abode- whether in the church
vault or in the unknown world of the departed- and rise before me in
this chamber. I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest any
sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me,
or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me with
strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be
terrible if realised: with all my might I endeavoured to stifle it-
I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my
head and tried to look boldly round the dark room; at this moment a
light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon
penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight was still, and
this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and
quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this streak
of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by
some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for
horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift
darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world. My
heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I
deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was
oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down; I rushed to the door
and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the
outer passage; the key turned, Bessie and Abbot entered.

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

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

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

'What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something?' again demanded
Bessie.

'Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come.' I had now
got hold of Bessie's hand, and she did not snatch it from me.

'She has screamed out on purpose,' declared Abbot, in some disgust.
'And what a scream! If she had been in great pain one would have
excused it, but she only wanted to bring us all here: I know her
naughty tricks.'

'What is all this?' demanded another voice peremptorily; and Mrs.
Reed came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling
stormily. 'Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre
should be left in the red-room till I came to her myself.'

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

'Let her go,' was the only answer. 'Loose Bessie's hand, child: you
cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured. I abhor
artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that
tricks will not answer: you will now stay here an hour longer, and
it is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I
shall liberate you then.'

'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 intimated that he should call again the next day, he
departed; to my grief: I felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat
in the chair near my pillow; and as he closed the door after him,
all the room darkened and my heart again sank: inexpressible sadness
weighed it down.

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

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

'Would you like to drink, or could you eat anything?'

'No, thank you, Bessie.'

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

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

'Bessie, what is the matter with me? Am I ill?'

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

Bessie went into the housemaid's apartment, which was near. I heard
her say-

'Sarah, come and sleep with me in the nursery; I daren't for my
life be alone with that poor child tonight: 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 the candle went out. For me, the
watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; ear, eye,
and mind were alike strained by dread: such dread as children only can
feel.

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 fox-glove 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 were 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, Mis 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 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, 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 uttering execrations, and vowing I
had burst his nose. I had indeed levelled at that prominent feature as
hard a blow as my knuckles could inflict; and when I saw that either
that or my look daunted him, I had the greatest inclination to
follow up my advantage to purpose; but he was already with his mama. I
heard him in a blubbering tone commence the tale of how 'that nasty
Jane Eyre' had flown at him like a mad cat: he was stopped rather
harshly-

'Don't talk to me about her, John: I told you not to go near her;
she is not worthy of notice; I do not choose that either you or your
sisters should associate with her.'

Here, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly, and
without at all deliberating on my words-

'They are not fit to associate with me.'

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

'What would Uncle Reed say to you, if he were alive?' was my
scarcely voluntary demand. I say scarcely voluntary, for it seemed
as if my tongue pronounced words, without my will consenting 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 ringleted; 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 stair-head 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,
etc.). 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 have 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 be 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
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 so 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 sequestered; but I found no pleasure in the silent trees,
the falling fir-cones, the congealed relics of autumn, russet
leaves, swept by past winds in heaps, and now stiffened together. I
leaned against a gate, and looked into an empty field where no sheep
were feeding, where the short grass was nipped and blanched. It was
a very grey day; a most opaque sky, 'onding on snaw,' canopied all;
thence flakes fell at intervals, which settled on the hard path and on
the hoary lea without melting. I stood, a wretched child enough,
whispering to myself over and over again, 'What shall I do?- what
shall I do?'

All at once I heard a clear voice call, 'Miss Jane! where are
you? Come to lunch!'

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

'You naughty little thing!' she said. 'Why don't you come when
you are called?'

Bessie's presence, compared with the thoughts over which I had been
brooding, seemed cheerful; even though, as usual, she was somewhat
cross. The fact is, after my conflict with and victory over Mrs. Reed,
I was not disposed to care much for the nursemaid's transitory
anger; and I was disposed to bask in her youthful lightness of
heart. I just put my two arms round her and said, 'Come, Bessie! don't
scold.'

The action was more frank and fearless than any I was habituated to
indulge in: somehow it pleased her.

'You are a strange child, Miss Jane,' she said, as she looked
down at me; 'a little roving, solitary thing: and you are going to
school, I suppose?'

I nodded.

'And won't you be sorry to leave poor Bessie?'

'What does Bessie care for me? She is always scolding me.'

'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 daresay
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

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. Miss Miller was now the only teacher in the
room: a group of great girls standing about her spoke with serious and
sullen gestures. I heard the name of Mr. Brocklehurst pronounced by
some lips; at which Miss Miller shook her head disapprovingly; but she
made no great effort to check the general wrath; doubtless she
shared in it.

A clock in the schoolroom struck nine; Miss Miller left her circle,
and standing in the middle of the room, cried-

'Silence! To your seats!'

Discipline prevailed: in five minutes the confused throng was
resolved into order, and comparative silence quelled the Babel clamour
of tongues. The upper teachers now punctually resumed their posts: but
still, all seemed to wait. Ranged on benches down the sides of the
room, the eighty girls sat motionless and erect; a quaint assemblage
they appeared, all with plain locks combed from their faces, not a
curl visible; in brown dresses, made high and surrounded by a narrow
tucker about the throat, with little pockets of holland (shaped
something like a Highlander's purse) tied in front of their frocks,
and destined to serve the purpose of a work-bag: all, too, wearing
woollen stockings and country-made shoes, fastened with brass buckles.
Above twenty of those clad in this costume were full-grown girls, or
rather young women; it suited them ill, and gave an air of oddity even
to the prettiest.

I was still looking at them, and also at intervals examining the
teachers- none of whom precisely pleased me; for the stout one was a
little coarse, the dark one not a little fierce, the foreigner harsh
and grotesque, and Miss Miller, poor thing! looked purple,
weather-beaten, and over-worked- when, as my eye wandered from face to
face, the whole school rose simultaneously, as if moved by a common
spring.

What was the matter? I had heard no order given: I was puzzled. Ere
I had gathered my wits, the classes were again seated: but as all eyes
were now turned to one point, mine followed the general direction, and
encountered the personage who had received me last night. She stood at
the bottom of the long room, on the hearth; for there was a fire at
each end; she surveyed the two rows of girls silently and gravely.
Miss Miller, approaching, seemed to ask her a question, and having
received her answer, went back to her place, and said aloud-

'Monitor of the first class, fetch the globes!'

While the direction was being executed, the lady consulted moved
slowly up the room. I suppose I have a considerable organ of
veneration, for I retain yet the sense of admiring awe with which my
eyes traced her steps. Seen now, in broad day-light, she looked
tall, fair, and shapely; brown eyes with a benignant light in their
irids, and a fine pencilling of long lashes round, relieved the
whiteness of her large front; on each of her temples her hair, of a
very dark brown, was clustered in round curls, according to the
fashion of those times, when neither smooth bands nor long ringlets
were in vogue; her dress, also in the mode of the day, was of purple
cloth, relieved by a sort of Spanish trimming of black velvet; a
gold watch (watches were not so common then as now) shone at her
girdle. Let the reader add, to complete the picture, refined features;
a complexion, if pale, clear; and a stately air and carriage, and he
will have, at least, as clearly as words can give it, a correct idea
of the exterior of Miss Temple- Maria Temple, as I afterwards saw
the name written in a prayer-book intrusted to me to carry to church.

The superintendent of Lowood (for such was this lady) having
taken her seat before a pair of globes placed on one of the tables,
summoned the first class round her, and commenced giving a lesson on
geography; the lower classes were called by the teachers:
repetitions in history, grammar, etc., went on for an hour; writing
and arithmetic succeeded, and music lessons were given by Miss
Temple to some of the elder girls. The duration of each lesson was
measured by the clock, which at last struck twelve. The superintendent
rose-

'I have a word to address to the pupils,' said she.

The tumult of cessation from lessons was already breaking forth,
but it sank at her voice. She went on-

'You had this morning a breakfast which you could not eat; you must
be hungry:- I have ordered that a lunch of bread and cheese shall be
served to all.'

The teachers looked at her with a sort of surprise.

'It is to be done on my responsibility,' she added, in an
explanatory tone to them, and immediately afterwards left the room.

The bread and cheese was presently brought in and distributed, to
the high delight and refreshment of the whole school. The order was
now given 'To the garden!' Each put on a coarse straw bonnet, with
strings of coloured calico, and a cloak of grey frieze, I was
similarly equipped, and, following the stream, I made my way into
the open air.

The garden was a wide enclosure, surrounded with walls so high as
to exclude every glimpse of prospect; a covered verandah ran down
one side, and broad walks bordered a middle space divided into
scores of little beds: these beds were assigned as gardens for the
pupils to cultivate, and each bed had an owner. When full of flowers
they would doubtless look pretty; but now, at the latter end of
January, all was wintry blight and brown decay. I shuddered as I stood
and looked round me: it was an inclement day for outdoor exercise; not
positively rainy, but darkened by a drizzling yellow fog; all under
foot was still soaking wet with the floods of yesterday. The
stronger among the girls ran about and engaged in active games, but
sundry pale and thin ones herded together for shelter and warmth in
the verandah; and amongst these, as the dense mist penetrated to their
shivering frames, I heard frequently the sound of a hollow cough.

As yet I had spoken to no one, nor did anybody seem to take
notice of me; I stood lonely enough: but to that feeling of
isolation I was accustomed; it did not oppress me much. I leant
against a pillar of the verandah, drew my grey mantle close about
me, and, trying to forget the cold which nipped me without, and the
unsatisfied hunger which gnawed me within, delivered myself up to
the employment of watching and thinking. My reflections were too
undefined and fragmentary to merit record: I hardly yet knew where I
was; Gateshead and my past life seemed floated away to an immeasurable
distance; the present was vague and strange, and of the future I could
form no conjecture. I looked round the convent-like garden, and then
up at the house- a large building, half of which seemed grey and
old, the other half quite new. The new part, containing the schoolroom
and dormitory, was lit by mullioned and latticed windows, which gave
it a church-like aspect; a stone tablet over the door bore this
inscription-
Brocklehurst, of Brocklehurst Hall, in this county.' 'Let your light
so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify
your Father which is in heaven.'- St. Matt. v. 16.

I read these words over and over again: I felt that an
explanation belonged to them, and was unable fully to penetrate
their import. I was still pondering the signification of
'Institution', and endeavouring to make out a connection between the
first words and the verse of Scripture, when the sound of a cough
close behind me made me turn my head. I saw a girl sitting on a
stone bench near; she was bent over a book, on the perusal of which
she seemed intent: from where I stood I could see the title- it was
Rasselas; a name that struck me as strange, and consequently
attractive. In turning a leaf she happened to look up, and I said to
her directly-

'Is your book interesting?' I had already formed the intention of
asking her to lend it to me some day.

'I like it,' she answered, after a pause of a second or two, during
which she examined me.

'What is it about?' I continued. I hardly know where I found the
hardihood thus to open a conversation with a stranger; the step was
contrary to my nature and habits: but I think her occupation touched a
chord of sympathy somewhere; for I too liked reading, though of a
frivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend the
serious or substantial.

'You may look at it,' replied the girl, offering me the book.

I did so; a brief examination convinced me that the contents were
less taking than the title: Rasselas looked dull to my trifling taste;
I saw nothing about fairies, nothing about genii; no bright variety
seemed spread over the closely-printed pages. I returned it to her;
she received it quietly, and without saying anything she was about
to relapse into her former studious mood: again I ventured to
disturb her-

'Can you tell me what the writing on that stone over the door
means? What is Lowood Institution?'

'This house where you are come to live.'

'And why do they call it Institution? Is it in any way different
from other schools?'

'It is partly a charity-school: you and I, and all the rest of
us, are charity-children. I suppose you are an orphan: are not
either your father or your mother dead?'

'Both died before I can remember.'

'Well, all the girls here have lost either one or both parents, and
this is called an institution for educating orphans.'

'Do we pay no money? Do they keep us for nothing?'

'We pay, or our friends pay, fifteen pounds a year for each.'

'Then why do they call us charity-children?'

'Because fifteen pounds is not enough for board and teaching, and
the deficiency is supplied by subscription.'

'Who subscribes?'

'Different benevolent-minded ladies and gentlemen in this
neighbourhood and in London.'

'Who was Naomi Brocklehurst?'

'The lady who built the new part of this house as that tablet
records, and whose son overlooks and directs everything here.'

'Why?'

'Because he is treasurer and manager of the establishment.'

'Then this house does not belong to that tall lady who wears a
watch, and who said we were to have some bread and cheese?'

'To Miss Temple? Oh, no! I wish it did: she has to answer to Mr.
Brocklehurst for all she does. Mr. Brocklehurst buys all our food
and all our clothes.'

'Does he live here?'

'No- two miles off, at a large hall.'

'Is he a good man?'

'He is a clergyman, and is said to do a great deal of good.'

'Did you say that tall lady was called Miss Temple?'

'Yes.'

'And what are the other teachers called?'

'The one with red cheeks is called Miss Smith; she attends to the
work, and cuts out- for we make our own clothes, our frocks, and
pelisses, and everything; the little one with black hair is Miss
Scatcherd; she teaches history and grammar, and hears the second class
repetitions; and the one who wears a shawl, and has a
pocket-handkerchief tied to her side with a yellow ribband, is
Madame Pierrot: she comes from Lisle, in France, and teaches French.'

'Do you like the teachers?'

'Well enough.'

'Do you like the little black one, and the Madame-? -I cannot
pronounce her name as you do.'

'Miss Scatcherd is hasty- you must take care not to offend her;
Madame Pierrot is not a bad sort of person.'

'But Miss Temple is the best- isn't she?'

'Miss Temple is very good and very clever; she is above the rest,
because she knows far more than they do.'

'Have you been long here?'

'Two years.'

'Are you an orphan?'

'My mother is dead.'

'Are you happy here?'

'You ask rather too many questions. I have given you answers enough
for the present: now I want to read.'

But at that moment the summons sounded for dinner; all re-entered
the house. The odour which now filled the refectory was scarcely
more appetising than that which had regaled our nostrils at breakfast:
the dinner was served in two huge tin-plated vessels, whence rose a
strong steam redolent of rancid fat. I found the mess to consist of
indifferent potatoes and strange shreds of rusty meat, mixed and
cooked together. Of this preparation a tolerably abundant plateful was
apportioned to each pupil. I ate what I could, and wondered within
myself whether every day's fare would be like this.

After dinner, we immediately adjourned to the schoolroom: lessons
recommenced, and were continued till five o'clock.

The only marked event of the afternoon was, that I saw the girl
with whom I had conversed in the verandah dismissed in disgrace by
Miss Scatcherd from a history class, and sent to stand in the middle
of the large schoolroom. The punishment seemed to me in a high
degree ignominious, especially for so great a girl- she looked
thirteen or upwards. I expected she would show signs of great distress
and shame; but to my surprise she neither wept nor blushed:
composed, though grave, she stood, the central mark of all eyes.
'How can she bear it so quietly- so firmly?' I asked of myself.
'Were I in her place, it seems to me I should wish the earth to open
and swallow me up. She looks as if she were thinking of something
beyond her punishment- beyond her situation: of something not round
her nor before her. I have heard of day-dreams- is she in a
day-dream now? Her eyes are fixed on the floor, but I am sure they
do not see it- her sight seems turned in, gone down into her heart:
she is looking at what she can remember, I believe; not at what is
really present. I wonder what sort of a girl she is- whether good or
naughty.'

Soon after five P.M. we had another meal, consisting of a small mug
of coffee, and half a slice of brown bread. I devoured my bread and
drank my coffee with relish; but I should have been glad of as much
more- I was still hungry. Half an hour's recreation succeeded, then
study; then the glass of water and the piece of oat-cake, prayers, and
bed. Such was my first day at Lowood.

                       CHAPTER VI


THE next day commenced as before, getting up and dressing by
rushlight; but this morning we were obliged to dispense with the
ceremony of washing; the water in the pitchers was frozen. A change
had taken place in the weather the preceding evening, and a keen
north-east wind, whistling through the crevices of our bedroom windows
all night long, had made us shiver in our beds, and turned the
contents of the ewers to ice.

Before the long hour and a half of prayers and Bible-reading was
over, I felt ready to perish with cold. Breakfast-time came at last,
and this morning the porridge was not burnt; the quality was
eatable, the quantity small. How small my portion seemed! I wished
it had been doubled.

In the course of the day I was enrolled a member of the fourth
class, and regular tasks and occupations were assigned me: hitherto, I
had only been a spectator of the proceedings at Lowood; I was now to
become an actor therein. At first, being little accustomed to learn by
heart, the lessons appeared to me both long and difficult; the
frequent change from task to task, too, bewildered me; and I was
glad when, about three o'clock in the afternoon, Miss Smith put into
my hands a border of muslin two yards long, together with needle,
thimble, etc., and sent me to sit in a quiet corner of the schoolroom,
with directions to hem the same. At that hour most of the others
were sewing likewise; but one class still stood round Miss Scatcherd's
chair reading, and as all was quiet, the subject of their lessons
could be heard, together with the manner in which each girl
acquitted herself, and the animadversions or commendations of Miss
Scatcherd on the performance. It was English history: among the
readers I observed my acquaintance of the verandah: at the
commencement of the lesson, her place had been at the top of the
class, but for some error of pronunciation, or some inattention to
stops, she was suddenly sent to the very bottom. Even in that
obscure position, Miss Scatcherd continued to make her an object of
constant notice; she was continually addressing to her such phrases as
the following:-

'Burns' (such it seems was her name: the girls here were all called
by their surnames, as boys are elsewhere), 'Burns, you are standing on
the side of your shoe; turn your toes out immediately.' 'Burns, you
poke your chin most unpleasantly; draw it in.' 'Burns, I insist on
your holding your head up; I will not have you before me in that
attitude,' etc. etc.

A chapter having been read through twice, the books were closed and
the girls examined. The lesson had comprised part of the reign of
Charles I, and there were sundry questions about tonnage and
poundage and ship-money, which most of them appeared unable to answer;
still, every little difficulty was solved instantly when it reached
Burns: her memory seemed to have retained the substance of the whole
lesson, and she was ready with answers on every point. I kept
expecting that Miss Scatcherd would praise her attention; but, instead
of that, she suddenly cried out-

'You dirty, disagreeable girl! you have never cleaned your nails
this morning!'

Burns made no answer: I wondered at her silence.

'Why,' thought I, 'does she not explain that she could neither
clean her nails nor wash her face, as the water was frozen?'

My attention was now called off by Miss Smith desiring me to hold a
skein of thread: while she was winding it, she talked to me from
time to time, asking whether I had ever been at school before, whether
I could mark, stitch, knit, etc.; till she dismissed me, I could not
pursue my observations on Miss Scatcherd's movements. When I
returned to my seat, that lady was just delivering an order of which I
did not catch the import; but Burns immediately left the class, and
going into the small inner room where the books were kept, returned in
half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at
one end. This ominous tool she presented to Miss Scatcherd with a
respectful curtsey; then she quietly, and without being told, unloosed
her pinafore, and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her
neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to
Burns's eye; and, while I paused from my sewing, because my fingers
quivered at this spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent
anger, not a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary
expression.

'Hardened girl!' exclaimed Miss Scatcherd; 'nothing can correct you
of your slatternly habits: carry the rod away.'

Burns obeyed: I looked at her narrowly as she emerged from the
book-closet; she was just putting back her handkerchief into her
pocket, and the trace of a tear glistened on her thin cheek.

The play-hour in the evening I thought the pleasantest fraction
of the day at Lowood: the bit of bread, the draught of coffee
swallowed at five o'clock had revived vitality, if it had not
satisfied hunger: the long restraint of the day was slackened; the
schoolroom felt warmer than in the morning- its fires being allowed to
burn a little more brightly, to supply, in some measure, the place
of candles, not yet introduced: the ruddy gloaming, the licensed
uproar, the confusion of many voices gave one a welcome sense of
liberty.

On the evening of the day on which I had seen Miss Scatcherd flog
her pupil, Burns, I wandered as usual among the forms and tables and
laughing groups without a companion, yet not feeling lonely: when I
passed the windows, I now and then lifted a blind, and looked out;
it snowed fast, a drift was already forming against the lower panes;
putting my ear close to the window, I could distinguish from the
gleeful tumult within, the disconsolate moan of the wind outside.

Probably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this
would have been the hour when I should most keenly have regretted
the separation; that wind would then have saddened my heart, this
obscure chaos would have disturbed my peace! as it was, I derived from
both a strange excitement, and reckless and feverish, I wished the
wind to howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and the
confusion to rise to clamour.

Jumping over forms, and creeping under tables, I made my way to one
of the fire-places; there, kneeling by the high wire fender, I found
Burns, absorbed, silent, abstracted from all round her by the
companionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of the
embers.

'Is it still Rasselas?' I asked, coming behind her.

'Yes,' she said, 'and I have just finished it.'

And in five minutes more she shut it up. I was glad of this.

'Now,' thought I, 'I can perhaps get her to talk.' I sat down by
her on the floor.

'What is your name besides Burns?'

'Helen.'

'Do you come a long way from here?'

'I come from a place farther north, quite on the borders of
Scotland.'

'Will you ever go back?'

'I hope so; but nobody can be sure of the future.'

'You must wish to leave Lowood?'

'No! why should I? I was sent to Lowood to get an education; and it
would be of no use going away until I have attained that object.'

'But that teacher, Miss Scatcherd, is so cruel to you?'

'Cruel? Not at all! She is severe: she dislikes my faults.'

'And if I were in your place I should dislike her; I should
resist her. If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her
hand; I should break it under her nose.'

'Probably you would do nothing of the sort: but if you did, Mr.
Brocklehurst would expel you from the school; that would be a great
grief to your relations. It is far better to endure patiently a
smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action
whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you; and
besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil.'

'But then it seems disgraceful to be flogged, and to be sent to
stand in the middle of a room full of people; and you are such a great
girl: I am far younger than you, and I could not bear it.'

'Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it:
it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be
required to bear.'

I heard her with wonder: I could not comprehend this doctrine of
endurance; and still less could I understand or sympathise with the
forbearance she expressed for her chastiser. Still I felt that Helen
Burns considered things by a light invisible to my eyes. I suspected
she might be right and I wrong; but I would not ponder the matter
deeply; like Felix, I put it off to a more convenient season.

'You say you have faults, Helen: what are they? To me you seem very
good.'

'Then learn from me, not to judge by appearances: I am, as Miss
Scatcherd said, slatternly; I seldom put, and never keep, things in
order; I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my
lessons; I have no method; and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot
bear to be subjected to systematic arrangements. This is all very
provoking to Miss Scatcherd, who is naturally neat, punctual, and
particular.'

'And cross and cruel,' I added; but Helen Burns would not admit
my addition: she kept silence.

'Is Miss Temple as severe to you as Miss Scatcherd?'

At the utterance of Miss Temple's name, a soft smile flitted over
her grave face.

'Miss Temple is full of goodness; it pains her to be severe to
any one, even the worst in the school: she sees my errors, and tells
me of them gently; and if I do anything worthy of praise, she gives me
my meed liberally. One strong proof of my wretchedly defective
nature is, that even her expostulations, so mild, so rational, have no
influence to cure me of my faults; and even her praise, though I value
it most highly, cannot stimulate me to continued care and foresight.'

'That is curious,' said I, 'it is so easy to be careful.'

'For you I have no doubt it is. I observed you in your class this
morning, and saw you were closely attentive: your thoughts never
seemed to wander while Miss Miller explained the lesson and questioned
you. Now, mine continually rove away; when I should be listening to
Miss Scatcherd, and collecting all she says with assiduity, often I
lose the very sound of her voice; I fall into a sort of dream.
Sometimes I think I am in Northumberland, and that the noises I hear
round me are the bubbling of a little brook which runs through
Deepden, near our house;- then, when it comes to my turn to reply, I
have to be awakened; and having heard nothing of what was read for
listening to the visionary brook, I have no answer ready.'

'Yet how well you replied this afternoon.'

'It was mere chance; the subject on which we had been reading had
interested me. This afternoon, instead of dreaming of Deepden, I was
wondering how a man who wished to do right could act so unjustly and
unwisely as Charles the First sometimes did; and I thought what a pity
it was that, with his integrity and conscientiousness, he could see no
farther than the prerogatives of the crown. If he had but been able to
look to a distance, and see how what they call the spirit of the age
was tending! Still, I like Charles- I respect him- I pity him, poor
murdered king! Yes, his enemies were the worst: they shed blood they
had no right to shed. How dared they kill him!'

Helen was talking to herself now: she had forgotten I could not
very well understand her- that I was ignorant, or nearly so, of the
subject she discussed. I recalled her to my level.

'And when Miss Temple teaches you, do your thoughts wander then?'

'No, certainly, not often: because Miss Temple has generally
something to say which is newer than my own reflections; her
language is singularly agreeable to me, and the information she
communicates is often just what I wished to gain.'

'Well, then, with Miss Temple you are good?'

'Yes, in a passive way: I make no effort; I follow as inclination
guides me. There is no merit in such goodness.'

'A great deal: you are good to those who are good to you. It is all
I ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to
those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all
their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never
alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a
reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should- so
hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.'

'You will change your mind, I hope, when you grow older: as yet you
are but a little untaught girl.'

'But I feel this, Helen; I must dislike those who, whatever I do to
please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish
me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show
me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.'

'Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine, but Christians
and civilised nations disown it.'

'How? I don't understand.'

'It is not violence that best overcomes hate- nor vengeance that
most certainly heals injury.'

'What then?'

'Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how He
acts; make His word your rule, and His conduct your example.'

'What does He say?'

'Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that
hate you and despitefully use you.'

'Then I should love Mrs. Reed, which I cannot do; I should bless
her son John, which is impossible.'

In her turn, Helen Burns asked me to explain, and I proceeded
forthwith to pour out, in my own way, the tale of my sufferings and
resentments. Bitter and truculent when excited, I spoke as I felt,
without reserve or softening.

Helen heard me patiently to the end: I expected she would then make
a remark, but she said nothing.

'Well,' I asked impatiently, 'is not Mrs. Reed a hard-hearted,
bad woman?'

'She has been unkind to you, no doubt; because you see, she
dislikes your cast of character, as Miss Scatcherd does mine; but
how minutely you remember all she has done and said to you! What a
singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your
heart! No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings. Would you not
be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the
passionate emotions it excited? Life appears to me too short to be
spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. We are, and must be,
one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will
soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our
corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with
this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will
remain,- the impalpable principle of light and thought, pure as when
it left the Creator to inspire the creature: whence it came it will
return; perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than
man- perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale
human soul to brighten to the seraph! Surely it Will never, on the
contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend? No; I cannot
believe that: I hold another creed: which no one ever taught me, and
which I seldom mention; but in which I delight, and to which I
cling: for it extends hope to all: it makes Eternity a rest- a
mighty home, not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, I
can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can
so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last: with this creed
revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply
disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low: I live in calm,
looking to the end.'

Helen's head, always drooping, sank a little lower as she
finished this sentence. I saw by her look she wished no longer to talk
to me, but rather to converse with her own thoughts. She was not
allowed much time for meditation: a monitor, a great rough girl,
presently came up, exclaiming in a strong Cumberland accent-

'Helen Burns, if you don't go and put your drawer in order, and
fold up your work this minute, I'll tell Miss Scatcherd to come and
look at it!'

Helen sighed as her reverie fled, and getting up, obeyed the
monitor without reply as without delay.

                      CHAPTER VII


MY first quarter at Lowood seemed an age; and not the golden age
either; it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in
habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks. The fear of
failure in these points harassed me worse than the physical
hardships of my lot; though these were no trifles.

During January, February, and part of March, the deep snows, and,
after their melting, the almost impassable roads, prevented our
stirring beyond the garden walls, except to go to church; but within
these limits we had to pass an hour every day in the open air. Our
clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold: we had
no boots, the snow got into our shoes and melted there: our ungloved
hands became numbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet: I
remember well the distracting irritation I endured from this cause
every evening, when my feet inflamed; and the torture of thrusting the
swelled, raw, and stiff toes into my shoes in the morning. Then the
scanty supply of food was distressing: with the keen appetites of
growing children, we had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a
delicate invalid. From this deficiency of nourishment resulted an
abuse, which pressed hardly on the younger pupils: whenever the
famished great girls had an opportunity, they would coax or menace the
little ones out of their portion. Many a time I have shared between
two claimants the precious morsel of brown bread distributed at
teatime; and after relinquishing to a third half the contents of my
mug of coffee, I have swallowed the remainder with an accompaniment of
secret tears, forced from me by the exigency of hunger.

Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season. We had to walk
two miles to Brocklebridge Church, where our patron officiated. We set
out cold, we arrived at church colder: during the morning service we
became almost paralysed. It was too far to return to dinner, and an
allowance of cold meat and bread, in the same penurious proportion
observed in our ordinary meals, was served round between the services.

At the close of the afternoon service we returned by an exposed and
hilly road, where the bitter winter wind, blowing over a range of
snowy summits to the north, almost flayed the skin from our faces.

I can remember Miss Temple walking lightly and rapidly along our
drooping line, her plaid cloak, which the frosty wind fluttered,
gathered close about her, and encouraging us, by precept and
example, to keep up our spirits, and march forward, as she said, 'like
stalwart soldiers.' The other teachers, poor things, were generally
themselves too much dejected to attempt the task of cheering others.

How we longed for the light and heat of a blazing fire when we
got back! But, to the little ones at least, this was denied: each
hearth in the schoolroom was immediately surrounded by a double row of
great girls, and behind them the younger children crouched in
groups, wrapping their starved arms in their pinafores.

A little solace came at tea-time, in the shape of a double ration
of bread- a whole, instead of a half, slice- with the delicious
addition of a thin scrape of butter: it was the hebdomadal treat to
which we all looked forward from Sabbath to Sabbath. I generally
contrived to reserve a moiety of this bounteous repast for myself; but
the remainder I was invariably obliged to part with.

The Sunday evening was spent in repeating, by heart, the Church
Catechism, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St.
Matthew; and in listening to a long sermon, read by Miss Miller, whose
irrepressible yawns attested her weariness. A frequent interlude of
these performances was the enactment of the part of Eutychus by some
half-dozen of little girls, who, overpowered with sleep, would fall
down, if not out of the third loft, yet off the fourth form, and be
taken up half dead. The remedy was, to thrust them forward into the
centre of the schoolroom, and oblige them to stand there till the
sermon was finished. Sometimes their feet failed them, and they sank
together in a heap; they were then propped up with the monitors'
high stools.

I have not yet alluded to the visits of Mr. Brocklehurst; and
indeed that gentleman was from home during the greater part of the
first month after my arrival; perhaps prolonging his stay with his
friend the archdeacon: his absence was a relief to me. I need not
say that I had my own reasons for dreading his coming: but come he did
at last.

One afternoon (I had then been three weeks at Lowood), as I was
sitting with a slate in my hand, puzzling over a sum in long division,
my eyes, raised in abstraction to the window, caught sight of a figure
just passing: I recognised almost instinctively that gaunt outline;
and when, two minutes after, all the school, teachers included, rose
en masse, it was not necessary for me to look up in order to ascertain
whose entrance they thus greeted. A long stride measured the
schoolroom, and presently beside Miss Temple, who herself had risen,
stood the same black column which had frowned on me so ominously
from the hearthrug of Gateshead. I now glanced sideways at this
piece of architecture. Yes, I was right: it was Mr. Brocklehurst,
buttoned up in a surtout, and looking longer, narrower, and more rigid
than ever.

I had my own reasons for being dismayed at this apparition; too
well I remembered the perfidious hints given by Mrs. Reed about my
disposition, etc.; the promise pledged by Mr. Brocklehurst to
apprise Miss Temple and the teachers of my vicious nature. All along I
had been dreading the fulfilment of this promise,- I had been
looking out daily for the 'Coming Man,' whose information respecting
my past life and conversation was to brand me as a bad child for ever:
now there he was.

He stood at Miss Temple's side; he was speaking low in her ear: I
did not doubt he was making disclosures of my villainy; and I
watched her eye with painful anxiety, expecting every moment to see
its dark orb turn on me a glance of repugnance and contempt. I
listened too; and as I happened to be seated quite at the top of the
room, I caught most of what he said: its import relieved me from
immediate apprehension.

'I suppose, Miss Temple, the thread I bought at Lowton will do;
it struck me that it would be just of the quality for the calico
chemises, and I sorted the needles to match. You may tell Miss Smith
that I forgot to make a memorandum of the darning needles, but she
shall have some papers sent in next week; and she is not, on any
account, to give out more than one at a time to each pupil: if they
have more, they are apt to be careless and lose them. And, O ma'am!
I wish the woollen stockings were better looked to!- when I was here
last, I went into the kitchen-garden and examined the clothes drying
on the line; there was a quantity of black hose in a very bad state of
repair: from the size of the holes in them I was sure they had not
been well mended from time to time.'

He paused.

'Your directions shall be attended to, sir,' said Miss Temple.

'And, ma'am,' he continued, 'the laundress tells me some of the
girls have two clean tuckers in the week: it is too much; the rules
limit them to one.'

'I think I can explain that circumstance, sir. Agnes and
Catherine Johnstone were invited to take tea with some friends at
Lowton last Thursday, and I gave them leave to put on clean tuckers
for the occasion.'

Mr. Brocklehurst nodded.

'Well, for once it may pass; but please not to let the circumstance
occur too often. And there is another thing which surprised me; I
find, in settling accounts with the housekeeper, that a lunch,
consisting of bread and cheese, has twice been served out to the girls
during the past fortnight. How is this? I looked over the regulations,
and I find no such meal as lunch mentioned. Who introduced this
innovation? and by what authority?'

'I must be responsible for the circumstance, sir,' replied Miss
Temple: 'the breakfast was so ill prepared that the pupils could not
possibly eat it; and I dared not allow them to remain fasting till
dinner-time.'

'Madam, allow me an instant. You are aware that my plan in bringing
up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and
indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should
any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as
the spoiling of a meal, the under or the over dressing of a dish,
the incident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something
more delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and
obviating the aim of this institution; it ought to be improved to
the spiritual edification of the pupils, by encouraging them to evince
fortitude under the temporary privation. A brief address on those
occasions would not be mistimed, wherein a judicious instructor
would take the opportunity of referring to the sufferings of the
primitive Christians; to the torments of martyrs; to the
exhortations of our blessed Lord Himself, calling upon His disciples
to take up their cross and follow Him; to His warnings that man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out
of the mouth of God; to His divine consolations, "If ye suffer
hunger or thirst for My sake, happy are ye." Oh, madam, when you put
bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children's
mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think
how you starve their immortal souls!'

Mr. Brocklehurst again paused- perhaps overcome by his feelings.
Miss Temple had looked down when he first began to speak to her; but
she now gazed straight before her, and her face, naturally pale as
marble, appeared to be assuming also the coldness and fixity of that
material; especially her mouth, closed as if it would have required
a sculptor's chisel to open it, and her brow settled gradually into
petrified severity.

Meantime, Mr. Brocklehurst, standing on the hearth with his hands
behind his back, majestically surveyed the whole school. Suddenly
his eye gave a blink, as if it had met something that either dazzled
or shocked its pupil; turning, he said in more rapid accents than he
had hitherto used-

'Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what- what is that girl with curled
hair? Red hair, ma'am, curled- curled all over?' And extending his
cane he pointed to the awful object, his hand shaking as he did so.

'It is Julia Severn,' replied Miss Temple, very quietly.

'Julia Severn, ma'am! And why has she, or any other, curled hair?
Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of this house, does
she conform to the world so openly- here in an evangelical, charitable
establishment- as to wear her hair one mass of curls?'

'Julia's hair curls naturally,' returned Miss Temple, still more
quietly.

'Naturally! Yes, but we are not to conform to nature; I wish
these girls to be the children of Grace: and why that abundance? I
have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged
closely, modestly, plainly. Miss Temple, that girl's hair must be
cut off entirely; I will send a barber tomorrow: and I see others
who have far too much of the excrescence- that tall girl, tell her
to turn round. Tell all the first form to rise up and direct their
faces to the wall.'

Miss Temple passed her handkerchief over her lips, as if to
smooth away the involuntary smile that curled them; she gave the
order, however, and when the first class could take in what was
required of them, they obeyed. Leaning a little back on my bench, I
could see the looks and grimaces with which they commented on this
manoeuvre: it was a pity Mr. Brocklehurst could not see them too; he
would perhaps have felt that, whatever he might do with the outside of
the cup and platter, the inside was further beyond his interference
than he imagined.

He scrutinised the reverse of these living medals some five
minutes, then pronounced sentence. These words fell like the knell
of doom-

'All those top-knots must be cut off.'

Miss Temple seemed to remonstrate.

'Madam,' he pursued, 'I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not
of this world: my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of
the flesh; to teach them to clothe themselves with shame-facedness and
sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel; and each of the
young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which
vanity itself might have woven; these, I repeat, must be cut off;
think of the time wasted, of-'

Mr. Brocklehurst was here interrupted: three other visitors,
ladies, now entered the room. They ought to have come a little
sooner to have heard his lecture on dress, for they were splendidly
attired in velvet, silk, and furs. The two younger of the trio (fine
girls of sixteen and seventeen) had grey beaver hats, then in fashion,
shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful
head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled;
the elder lady was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with
ermine, and she wore a false front of French curls.

These ladies were deferentially received by Miss Temple, as Mrs.
and the Misses Brocklehurst, and conducted to seats of honour at the
top of the room. It seems they had come in the carriage with their
reverend relative, and had been conducting a rummaging scrutiny of the
room upstairs, while he transacted business with the housekeeper,
questioned the laundress, and lectured the superintendent. They now
proceeded to address divers remarks and reproofs to Miss Smith, who
was charged with the care of the linen and the inspection of the
dormitories: but I had no time to listen to what they said; other
matters called off and enchained my attention.

Hitherto, while gathering up the discourse of Mr. Brocklehurst
and Miss Temple, I had not, at the same time, neglected precautions to
secure my personal safety; which I thought would be effected, if I
could only elude observation. To this end, I had sat well back on
the form, and while seeming to be busy with my sum, had held my
slate in such a manner as to conceal my face: I might have escaped
notice, had not my treacherous slate somehow happened to slip from
my hand, and falling with an obtrusive crash, directly drawn every eye
upon me; I knew it was all over now, and, as I stooped to pick up
the two fragments of slate, I rallied my forces for the worst. It
came.

'A careless girl!' said Mr. Brocklehurst, and immediately after-
'It is the new pupil, I perceive.' And before I could draw breath,
'I must not forget I have a word to say respecting her.' Then aloud:
how loud it seemed to me! 'Let the child who broke her slate come
forward!'

Of my own accord I could not have stirred; I was paralysed: but the
two great girls who sat on each side of me, set me on my legs and
pushed me towards the dread judge, and then Miss Temple gently
assisted me to his very feet, and I caught her whispered counsel-

'Don't be afraid, Jane, I saw it was an accident; you shall not
be punished.'

The kind whisper went to my heart like a dagger.

'Another minute, and she will despise me for a hypocrite,'
thought I; and an impulse of fury against Reed, Brocklehurst, and
Co. bounded in my pulses at the conviction. I was no Helen Burns.

'Fetch that stool,' said Mr. Brocklehurst, pointing to a very
high one from which a monitor had just risen: it was brought.

'Place the child upon it.'

And I was placed there, by whom I don't know: I was in no condition
to note particulars; I was only aware that they had hoisted me up to
the height of Mr. Brocklehurst's nose, that he was within a yard of
me, and that a spread of shot orange and purple silk pelisses and a
cloud of silvery plumage extended and waved below me.

Mr. Brocklehurst hemmed.

'Ladies,' said he, turning to his family, 'Miss Temple, teachers,
and children, you all see this girl?'

Of course they did; for I felt their eyes directed like
burning-glasses against my scorched skin.

'You see she is yet young; you observe she possesses the ordinary
form of childhood; God has graciously given her the shape that He
has given to all of us; no signal deformity points her out as a marked
character. Who would think that the Evil One had already found a
servant and agent in her? Yet such, I grieve to say, is the case.'

A pause- in which I began to steady the palsy of my nerves, and
to feel that the Rubicon was passed; and that the trial, no longer
to be shirked, must be firmly sustained.

'My dear children,' pursued the black marble clergyman, with
pathos, 'this is a sad, a melancholy occasion; for it becomes my
duty to warn you, that this girl, who might be one of God's own lambs,
is a little castaway: not a member of the true flock, but evidently an
interloper and an alien. You must be on your guard against her; you
must shun her example; if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her
from your sports, and shut her out from your converse. Teachers, you
must watch her: keep your eyes on her movements, weigh well her words,
scrutinise her actions, punish her body to save her soul: if,
indeed, such salvation be possible, for (my tongue falters while I
tell it) this girl, this child, the native of a Christian land,
worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma and
kneels before Juggernaut- this girl is- a liar!'

Now came a pause of ten minutes, during which I, by this time in
perfect possession of my wits, observed all the female Brocklehursts
produce their pocket-handkerchiefs and apply them to their optics,
while the elderly lady swayed herself to and fro, and the two
younger ones whispered, 'How shocking!'

Mr. Brocklehurst resumed.

'This I learned from her benefactress; from the pious and
charitable lady who adopted her in her orphan state, reared her as her
own daughter, and whose kindness, whose generosity the unhappy girl
repaid by an ingratitude so bad, so dreadful, that at last her
excellent patroness was obliged to separate her from her own young
ones, fearful lest her vicious example should contaminate their
purity: she has sent her here to be healed, even as the Jews of old
sent their diseased to the troubled pool of Bethesda; and, teachers,
superintendent, I beg of you not to allow the waters to stagnate round
her.'

With this sublime conclusion, Mr. Brocklehurst adjusted the top
button of his surtout, muttered something to his family, who rose,
bowed to Miss Temple, and then all the great people sailed in state
from the room. Turning at the door, my judge said-

'Let her stand half an hour longer on that stool, and let no one
speak to her during the remainder of the day.'

There was I, then, mounted aloft; I, who had said I could not
bear the shame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the
room, was now exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy. What my
sensations were, no language can describe; but just as they all
rose, stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up
and passed me: in passing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange light
inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through
me! How the new feeling bore me up! It was as if a martyr, a hero, had
passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the transit. I
mastered the rising hysteria, lifted up my head, and took a firm stand
on the stool. Helen Burns asked some slight questions about her work
of Miss Smith, was chidden for the triviality of the inquiry, returned
to her place, and smiled at me as she again went by. What a smile! I
remember it now, and I know that it was the effluence of fine
intellect, of true courage; it lit up her marked lineaments, her
thin face, her sunken grey eye, like a reflection from the aspect of
an angel. Yet at that moment Helen Burns wore on her arm 'the untidy
badge;' scarcely an hour ago I had heard her condemned by Miss
Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and water on the morrow because she had
blotted an exercise in copying it out. Such is the imperfect nature of
man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes
like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those minute defects, and are blind
to the full brightness of the orb.

                      CHAPTER VIII


ERE the half-hour ended, five o'clock struck; school was dismissed,
and all were gone into the refectory to tea. I now ventured to
descend: it was deep dusk; I retired into a corner and sat down on the
floor. The spell by which I had been so far supported began to
dissolve; reaction took place, and soon, so overwhelming was the grief
that seized me, I sank prostrate with my face to the ground. Now I
wept: Helen Burns was not here; nothing sustained me; left to myself I
abandoned myself, and my tears watered the boards. I had meant to be
so good, and to do so much at Lowood: to make so many friends, to earn
respect and win affection. Already I had made visible progress; that
very morning I had reached the head of my class; Miss Miller had
praised me warmly; Miss Temple had smiled approbation; she had
promised to teach me drawing, and to let me learn French, if I
continued to make similar improvement two months longer: and then I
was well received by my fellow-pupils; treated as an equal by those of
my own age, and not molested by any; now, here I lay again crushed and
trodden on; and could I ever rise more?

'Never,' I thought; and ardently I wished to die. While sobbing out
this wish in broken accents, some one approached: I started up-
again Helen Burns was near me; the fading fires just showed her coming
up the long, vacant room; she brought my coffee and bread.

'Come, eat something,' she said; but I put both away from me,
feeling as if a drop or a crumb would have choked me in my present
condition. Helen regarded me, probably with surprise: I could not
now abate my agitation, though I tried hard; I continued to weep
aloud. She sat down on the ground near me, embraced her knees with her
arms, and rested her head upon them; in that attitude she remained
silent as an Indian. I was the first who spoke-

'Helen, why do you stay with a girl whom everybody believes to be a
liar?'

'Everybody, Jane? Why, there are only eighty people who have
heard you called so, and the world contains hundreds of millions.'

'But what have I to do with millions? The eighty, I know, despise
me.'

'Jane, you are mistaken: probably not one in the school either
despises or dislikes you: many, I am sure, pity you much.'

'How can they pity me after what Mr. Brocklehurst has said?'

'Mr. Brocklehurst is not a god: nor is he even a great and
admired man; he is little liked here; he never took steps to make
himself liked. Had he treated you as an especial favourite, you
would have found enemies, declared or covert, all around you; as it
is, the greater number would offer you sympathy if they dared.
Teachers and pupils may look coldly on you for a day or two, but
friendly feelings are concealed in their hearts; and if you
persevere in doing well, these feelings will ere long appear so much
the more evidently for their temporary suppression. Besides, Jane'-
she paused.

'Well, Helen?' said I, putting my hand into hers: she chafed my
fingers gently to warm them, and went on-

'If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your
own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would
not be without friends.'

'No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not
enough: if others don't love me I would rather die than live- I cannot
bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real
affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love,
I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to
let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it
dash its hoof at my chest-'

'Hush, Jane! you think too much of the love of human beings; you
are too impulsive, too vehement; the sovereign hand that created
your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other
resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you.
Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible
world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is
everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to
guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on
all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise
our innocence (if innocent we be: as I know you are of this charge
which Mr. Brocklehurst has weakly and pompously repeated at secondhand
from Mrs. Reed; for I read a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and on
your clear front), and God waits only the separation of spirit from
flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink
overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is
so certain an entrance to happiness- to glory?'

I was silent; Helen had calmed me; but in the tranquillity she
imparted there was an alloy of inexpressible sadness. I felt the
impression of woe as she spoke, but I could not tell whence it came;
and when, having done speaking, she breathed a little fast and coughed
a short cough, I momentarily forgot my own sorrows to yield to a vague
concern for her.

Resting my head on Helen's shoulder, I put my arms round her waist;
she drew me to her, and we reposed in silence. We had not sat long
thus, when another person came in. Some heavy clouds, swept from the
sky by a rising wind, had left the moon bare; and her light, streaming
in through a window near, shone full both on us and on the approaching
figure, which we at once recognised as Miss Temple.

'I came on purpose to find you, Jane Eyre,' said she; 'I want you
in my room; and as Helen Burns is with you, she may come too.'

We went; following the superintendent's guidance, we had to
thread some intricate passages, and mount a staircase before we
reached her apartment; it contained a good fire, and looked
cheerful. Miss Temple told Helen Burns to be seated in a low arm-chair
on one side of the hearth, and herself taking another, she called me
to her side.

'Is it all over?' she asked, looking down at my face. 'Have you
cried your grief away?'

'I am afraid I never shall do that.'

'Why?'

'Because I have been wrongly accused; and you, ma'am, and everybody
else, will now think me wicked.'

'We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child.
Continue to act as a good girl, and you will satisfy us.'

'Shall I, Miss Temple?'

'You will,' said she, passing her arm round me. 'And now tell me
who is the lady whom Mr. Brocklehurst called your benefactress?'

'Mrs. Reed, my uncle's wife. My uncle is dead, and he left me to
her care.'

'Did she not, then, adopt you of her own accord?'

'No, ma'am; she was sorry to have to do it: but my uncle, as I have
often heard the servants say, got her to promise before he died that
she would always keep me.'

'Well now, Jane, you know, or at least I will tell you, that when a
criminal is accused, he is always allowed to speak in his own defence.
You have been charged with falsehood; defend yourself to me as well as
you can. Say whatever your memory suggests as true; but add nothing
and exaggerate nothing.'

I resolved, in the depth of my heart, that I would be most
moderate- most correct; and, having reflected a few minutes in order
to arrange coherently what I had to say, I told her all the story of
my sad childhood. Exhausted by emotion, my language was more subdued
than it generally was when it developed that sad theme; and mindful of
Helen's warnings against the indulgence of resentment, I infused
into the narrative far less of gall and wormwood than ordinary. Thus
restrained and simplified, it sounded more credible: I felt as I
went on that Miss Temple fully believed me.

In the course of the tale I had mentioned Mr. Lloyd as having
come to see me after the fit: for I never forgot the, to me, frightful
episode of the red-room: in detailing which, my excitement was sure,
in some degree, to break bounds; for nothing could soften in my
recollection the spasm of agony which clutched my heart when Mrs. Reed
spurned my wild supplication for pardon, and locked me a second time
in the dark and haunted chamber.

I had finished: Miss Temple regarded me a few minutes in silence;
she then said-

'I know something of Mr. Lloyd; I shall write to him; if his
reply agrees with your statement, you shall be publicly cleared from
every imputation; to me, Jane, you are clear now.'

She kissed me, and still keeping me at her side (where I was well
contented to stand for I derived a child's pleasure from the
contemplation of her face, her dress, her one or two ornaments, her
white forehead, her clustered and shining curls, and beaming dark
eyes), she proceeded to address Helen Burns.

'How are you to-night, Helen? Have you coughed much to-day?'

'Not quite so much, I think, ma'am.'

'And the pain in your chest?'

'It is a little better.'

Miss Temple got up, took her hand and examined her pulse; then
she returned to her own seat: as she resumed it, I heard her sigh low.
She was pensive a few minutes, then rousing herself, she said
cheerfully-

'But you two are my visitors to-night; I must treat you as such.'
She rang her bell.

'Barbara,' she said to the servant who answered it, 'I have not yet
had tea; bring the tray and place cups for these two young ladies.'

And a tray was soon brought. How pretty, to my eyes, did the
china cups and bright teapot look, placed on the little round table
near the fire! How fragrant was the steam of the beverage, and the
scent of the toast! of which, however, I, to my dismay (for I was
beginning to be hungry), discerned only a very small portion: Miss
Temple discerned it too.

'Barbara,' said she, 'can you not bring a little more bread and
butter? There is not enough for three.'

Barbara went out: she returned soon-

'Madam, Mrs. Harden says she has sent up the usual quantity.'

Mrs. Harden, be it observed, was the housekeeper: a woman after Mr.
Brocklehurst's own heart, made up of equal parts of whalebone and
iron.

'Oh, very well!' returned Miss Temple; 'we must make it do,
Barbara, I suppose.' And as the girl withdrew she added, smiling,
'Fortunately, I have it in my power to supply deficiencies for this
once.'

Having invited Helen and me to approach the table, and placed
before each of us a cup of tea with one delicious but thin morsel of
toast, she got up, unlocked a drawer, and taking from it a parcel
wrapped in paper, disclosed presently to our eyes a good-sized
seed-cake.

'I meant to give each of you some of this to take with you,' said
she, 'but as there is so little toast, you must have it now,' and
she proceeded to cut slices with a generous hand.

We feasted that evening as on nectar and ambrosia; and not the
least delight of the entertainment was the smile of gratification with
which our hostess regarded us, as we satisfied our famished
appetites on the delicate fare she liberally supplied.

Tea over and the tray removed, she again summoned us to the fire;
we sat one on each side of her, and now a conversation followed
between her and Helen, which it was indeed a privilege to be
admitted to hear.

Miss Temple had always something of serenity in her air, of state
in her mien, of refined propriety in her language, which precluded
deviation into the ardent, the excited, the eager: something which
chastened the pleasure of those who looked on her and listened to her,
by a controlling sense of awe; and such was my feeling now: but as
to Helen Burns, I was struck with wonder.

The refreshing meal, the brilliant fire, the presence and
kindness of her beloved instructress, or, perhaps, more than all
these, something in her own unique mind, had roused her powers
within her. They woke, they kindled: first, they glowed in the
bright tint of her cheek, which till this hour I had never seen but
pale and bloodless; then they shone in the liquid lustre of her
eyes, which had suddenly acquired a beauty more singular than that
of Miss Temple's- a beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash,
nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance. Then her
soul sat on her lips, and language flowed, from what source I cannot
tell. Has a girl of fourteen a heart large enough, vigorous enough, to
hold the swelling spring of pure, full, fervid eloquence? Such was the
characteristic of Helen's discourse on that, to me, memorable evening;
her spirit seemed hastening to live within a very brief span as much
as many live during a protracted existence.

They conversed of things I had never heard of; of nations and times
past; of countries far away; of secrets of nature discovered or
guessed at: they spoke of books: how many they had read! What stores
of knowledge they possessed! Then they seemed so familiar with
French names and French authors: but my amazement reached its climax
when Miss Temple asked Helen if she sometimes snatched a moment to
recall the Latin her father had taught her, and taking a book from a
shelf, bade her read and construe a page of Virgil; and Helen
obeyed, my organ of veneration expanding at every sounding line. She
had scarcely finished ere the bell announced bedtime! no delay could
be admitted; Miss Temple embraced us both, saying, as she drew us to
her heart-

'God bless you, my children!'

Helen she held a little longer than me: she let her go more
reluctantly; it was Helen her eye followed to the door; it was for her
she a second time breathed a sad sigh; for her she wiped a tear from
her cheek.

On reaching the bedroom, we heard the voice of Miss Scatcherd:
she was examining drawers; she had just pulled out Helen Burns's,
and when we entered Helen was greeted with a sharp reprimand, and told
that to-morrow she should have half a dozen of untidily folded
articles pinned to her shoulder.

'My things were indeed in shameful disorder,' murmured Helen to me,
in a low voice: 'I intended to have arranged them, but I forgot.'

Next morning, Miss Scatcherd wrote in conspicuous characters on a
piece of pasteboard the word 'Slattern,' and bound it like a
phylactery round Helen's large, mild, intelligent, and
benign-looking forehead. She wore it till evening, patient,
unresentful, regarding it as a deserved punishment. The moment Miss
Scatcherd withdrew after afternoon school, I ran to Helen, tore it
off, and thrust it into the fire: the fury of which she was
incapable had been burning in my soul all day, and tears, hot and
large, had continually been scalding my cheek; for the spectacle of
her sad resignation gave me an intolerable pain at the heart.

About a week subsequently to the incidents above narrated, Miss
Temple, who had written to Mr. Lloyd, received his answer: it appeared
that what he said went to corroborate my account. Miss Temple,
having assembled the whole school, announced that inquiry had been
made into the charges alleged against Jane Eyre, and that she was most
happy to be able to pronounce her completely cleared from every
imputation. The teachers then shook hands with me and kissed me, and a
murmur of pleasure ran through the ranks of my companions.

Thus relieved of a grievous load, I from that hour set to work
afresh, resolved to pioneer my way through every difficulty: I
toiled hard, and my success was proportionate to my efforts; my
memory, not naturally tenacious, improved with practice; exercise
sharpened my wits; in a few weeks I was promoted to a higher class; in
less than two months I was allowed to commence French and drawing. I
learned the first two tenses of the verb Etre, and sketched my first
cottage (whose walls, by the bye, outrivalled in slope those of the
leaning tower of Pisa), on the same day. That night, on going to
bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper of hot
roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was wont
to amuse my inward cravings: I feasted instead on the spectacle of
ideal drawings, which I saw in the dark; all the work of my own hands:
freely pencilled houses and trees, picturesque rocks and ruins,
Cuyp-like groups of cattle, sweet paintings of butterflies hovering
over unblown roses, of birds picking at ripe cherries, of wrens' nests
enclosing pearl-like eggs, wreathed about with young ivy sprays. I
examined, too, in thought, the possibility of my ever being able to
translate currently a certain little French story which Madame Pierrot
had that day shown me; nor was that problem solved to my
satisfaction ere I fell sweetly asleep.

Well has Solomon said- 'Better is a dinner of herbs where love
is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.'

I would not now have exchanged Lowood with all its privations for
Gateshead and its daily luxuries.

                       CHAPTER IX


BUT the privations, or rather the hardships, of Lowood lessened.
Spring drew on: she was indeed already come; the frosts of winter
had ceased; its snows were melted, its cutting winds ameliorated. My
wretched feet, flayed and swollen to lameness by the sharp air of
January, began to heal and subside under the gentler breathings of
April; the nights and mornings no longer by their Canadian temperature
froze the very blood in our veins; we could now endure the play-hour
passed in the garden: sometimes on a sunny day it began even to be
pleasant and genial, and a greenness grew over those brown beds,
which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed
them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.
Flowers peeped out amongst the leaves; snowdrops, crocuses, purple
auriculas, and golden-eyed pansies. On Thursday afternoons
(half-holidays) we now took walks, and found still sweeter flowers
opening by the wayside, under the hedges.

I discovered, too, that a great pleasure, an enjoyment which the
horizon only bounded, lay all outside the high and spike-guarded walls
of our garden: this pleasure consisted in prospect of noble summits
girdling a great hill-hollow, rich in verdure and shadow; in a
bright beck, full of dark stones and sparkling eddies. How different
had this scene looked when I viewed it laid out beneath the iron sky
of winter, stiffened in frost, shrouded with snow!- when mists as
chill as death wandered to the impulse of east winds along those
purple peaks, and rolled down 'ing' and holm till they blended with
the frozen fog of the beck! That beck itself was then a torrent,
turbid and curbless: it tore asunder the wood, and sent a raving sound
through the air, often thickened with wild rain or whirling sleet; and
for the forest on its banks, that showed only ranks of skeletons.

April advanced to May: a bright, serene May it was; days of blue
sky, placid sunshine, and soft western or southern gales filled up its
duration. And now vegetation matured with vigour; Lowood shook loose
its tresses; it became all green, all flowery; its great elm, ash, and
oak skeletons were restored to majestic life; woodland plants sprang
up profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled
its hollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth
of its wild primrose plants: I have seen their pale gold gleam in
overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre. All this I
enjoyed often and fully, free, unwatched, and almost alone: for this
unwonted liberty and pleasure there was a cause, to which it now
becomes my task to advert.

Have I not described a pleasant site for a dwelling, when I speak
of it as bosomed in hill and wood, and rising from the verge of a
stream? Assuredly, pleasant enough: but whether healthy or not is
another question.

That forest-dell, where Lowood lay, was the cradle of fog and
fog-bred pestilence; which, quickening with the quickening spring,
crept into the Orphan Asylum, breathed typhus through its crowded
schoolroom and dormitory, and, ere May arrived, transformed the
seminary into an hospital.

Semi-starvation and neglected colds had predisposed most of the
pupils to receive infection: forty-five out of the eighty girls lay
ill at one time. Classes were broken up, rules relaxed. The few who
continued well were allowed almost unlimited license; because the
medical attendant insisted on the necessity of frequent exercise to
keep them in health: and had it been otherwise, no one had leisure
to watch or restrain them. Miss Temple's whole attention was
absorbed by the patients: she lived in the sick-room, never quitting
it except to snatch a few hours' rest at night. The teachers were
fully occupied with packing up and making other necessary preparations
for the departure of those girls who were fortunate enough to have
friends and relations able and willing to remove them from the seat of
contagion. Many, already smitten, went home only to die: some died
at the school, and were buried quietly and quickly, the nature of
the malady forbidding delay.

While disease had thus become an inhabitant of Lowood, and death
its frequent visitor; while there was gloom and fear within its walls;
while its rooms and passages steamed with hospital smells, the drug
and the pastille striving vainly to overcome the effluvia of
mortality, that bright May shone unclouded over the bold hills and
beautiful woodland out of doors. Its garden, too, glowed with flowers:
hollyhocks had sprung up tall as trees, lilies had opened, tulips
and roses were in bloom; the borders of the little beds were gay
with pink thrift and crimson double daisies; the sweetbriars gave out,
morning and evening, their scent of spice and apples; and these
fragrant treasures were all useless for most of the inmates of Lowood,
except to furnish now and then a handful of herbs and blossoms to
put in a coffin.

But I, and the rest who continued well, enjoyed fully the
beauties of the scene and season; they let us ramble in the wood, like
gipsies, from morning till night; we did what we liked, went where
we liked: we lived better too. Mr. Brocklehurst and his family never
came near Lowood now: household matters were not scrutinised into; the
cross housekeeper was gone, driven away by the fear of infection;
her successor, who had been matron at the Lowton Dispensary, unused to
the ways of her new abode, provided with comparative liberality.
Besides, there were fewer to feed; the sick could eat little; our
breakfast-basins were better filled; when there was no time to prepare
a regular dinner, which often happened, she would give us a large
piece of cold pie, or a thick slice of bread and cheese, and this we
carried away with us to the wood, where we each chose the spot we
liked best, and dined sumptuously.

My favourite seat was a smooth and broad stone, rising white and
dry from the very middle of the beck, and only to be got at by
wading through the water; a feat I accomplished barefoot. The stone
was just broad enough to accommodate, comfortably, another girl and
me, at that time my chosen comrade- one Mary Ann Wilson; a shrewd,
observant personage, whose society I took pleasure in, partly
because she was witty and original, and partly because she had a
manner which set me at my ease. Some years older than I, she knew more
of the world, and could tell me many things I liked to hear: with
her my curiosity found gratification: to my faults also she gave ample
indulgence, never imposing curb or rein on anything I said. She had
a turn for narrative, I for analysis; she liked to inform, I to
question; so we got on swimmingly together, deriving much
entertainment, if not much improvement, from our mutual intercourse.

And where, meantime, was Helen Burns? Why did I not spend these
sweet days of liberty with her? Had I forgotten her? or was I so
worthless as to have grown tired of her pure society? Surely the
Mary Ann Wilson I have mentioned was inferior to my first
acquaintance: she could only tell me amusing stories, and
reciprocate any racy and pungent gossip I chose to indulge in;
while, if I have spoken truth of Helen, she was qualified to give
those who enjoyed the privilege of her converse a taste of far
higher things.

True, reader; and I knew and felt this: and though I am a defective
being, with many faults and few redeeming points, yet I never tired of
Helen Burns; nor ever ceased to cherish for her a sentiment of
attachment, as strong, tender, and respectful as any that ever
animated my heart. How could it be otherwise, when Helen, at all times
and under all circumstances, evinced for me a quiet and faithful
friendship, which ill-humour never soured, nor irritation never
troubled? But Helen was ill at present: for some weeks she had been
removed from my sight to I knew not what room upstairs. She was not, I
was told, in the hospital portion of the house with the fever
patients; for her complaint was consumption, not typhus: and by
consumption I, in my ignorance, understood something mild, which
time and care would be sure to alleviate.

I was confirmed in this idea by the fact of her once or twice
coming downstairs on very warm sunny afternoons, and being taken by
Miss Temple into the garden; but, on these occasions, I was not
allowed to go and speak to her; I only saw her from the schoolroom
window, and then not distinctly; for she was much wrapped up, and
sat at a distance under the verandah.

One evening, in the beginning of June, I had stayed out very late
with Mary Ann in the wood; we had, as usual, separated ourselves
from the others, and had wandered far; so far that we lost our way,
and had to ask it at a lonely cottage, where a man and woman lived,
who looked after a herd of half-wild swine that fed on the mast in the
wood. When we got back, it was after moonrise: a pony, which we knew
to be the surgeon's, was standing at the garden door. Mary Ann
remarked that she supposed some one must be very ill, as Mr. Bates had
been sent for at that time of the evening. She went into the house;
I stayed behind a few minutes to plant in my garden a handful of roots
I had dug up in the forest, and which I feared would wither if I
left them till the morning. This done, I lingered yet a little longer:
the flowers smelt so sweet as the dew fell; it was such a pleasant
evening, so serene, so warm; the still glowing west promised so fairly
another fine day on the morrow; the moon rose with such majesty in the
grave east. I was noting these things and enjoying them as a child
might, when it entered my mind as it had never done before:-

'How sad to be lying now on a sick bed, and to be in danger of
dying! This world is pleasant- it would be dreary to be called from
it, and to have to go who knows where?'

And then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what
had been infused into it concerning heaven and hell; and for the first
time it recoiled, baffled; and for the first time glancing behind,
on each side, and before it, it saw all round an unfathomed gulf: it
felt the one point where it stood- the present; all the rest was
formless cloud and vacant depth; and it shuddered at the thought of
tottering, and plunging amid that chaos. While pondering this new
idea, I heard the front door open; Mr. Bates came out, and with him
was a nurse. After she had seen him mount his horse and depart, she
was about to close the door, but I ran up to her.

'How is Helen Burns?'

'Very poorly,' was the answer.

'Is it her Mr. Bates has been to see?'

'Yes.'

'And what does he say about her?'

'He says she'll not be here long.'

This phrase, uttered in my hearing yesterday, would have only
conveyed the notion that she was about to be removed to
Northumberland, to her own home. I should not have suspected that it
meant she was dying; but I knew instantly now! It opened clear on my
comprehension that Helen Burns was numbering her last days in this
world, and that she was going to be taken to the region of spirits, if
such region there were. I experienced a shock of horror, then a strong
thrill of grief, then a desire- a necessity to see her; and I asked in
what room she lay.

'She is in Miss Temple's room,' said the nurse.

'May I go up and speak to her?'

'Oh no, child! It is not likely; and now it is time for you to come
in; you'll catch the fever if you stop out when the dew is falling.'

The nurse closed the front door; I went in by the side entrance
which led to the schoolroom: I was just in time; it was nine
o'clock, and Miss Miller was calling the pupils to go to bed.

It might be two hours later, probably near eleven, when I- not
having been able to fall asleep, and deeming, from the perfect silence
of the dormitory, that my companions were all wrapt in profound
repose- rose softly, put on my frock over my night-dress, and, without
shoes, crept from the apartment, and set off in quest of Miss Temple's
room. It was quite at the other end of the house; but I knew my way;
and the light of the unclouded summer moon, entering here and there at
passage windows, enabled me to find it without difficulty. An odour of
camphor and burnt vinegar warned me when I came near the fever room:
and I passed its door quickly, fearful lest the nurse who sat up all
night should hear me. I dreaded being discovered and sent back; for
I must see Helen,- I must embrace her before she died,- I must give
her one last kiss, exchange with her one last word.

Having descended a staircase, traversed a portion of the house
below, and succeeded in opening and shutting, without noise, two
doors, I reached another flight of steps; these I mounted, and then
just opposite to me was Miss Temple's room. A light shone through
the keyhole and from under the door; a profound stillness pervaded the
vicinity. Coming near, I found the door slightly ajar; probably to
admit some fresh air into the close abode of sickness. Indisposed to
hesitate, and full of impatient impulses- soul and senses quivering
with keen throes- I put it back and looked in. My eye sought Helen,
and feared to find death.

Close by Miss Temple's bed, and half covered with its white
curtains, there stood a little crib. I saw the outline of a form under
the clothes, but the face was hid by the hangings: the nurse I had
spoken to in the garden sat in an easy-chair asleep; an unsnuffed
candle burnt dimly on the table. Miss Temple was not to be seen: I
knew afterwards that she had been called to a delirious patient in the
fever-room. I advanced; then paused by the crib side: my hand was on
the curtain, but I preferred speaking before I withdrew it. I still
recoiled at the dread of seeing a corpse.

'Helen!' I whispered softly, 'are you awake?'

She stirred herself, put back the curtain, and I saw her face,
pale, wasted, but quite composed: she looked so little changed that my
fear was instantly dissipated.

'Can it be you, Jane?' she asked, in her own gentle voice.

'Oh!' I thought, 'she is not going to die; they are mistaken: she
could not speak and look so calmly if she were.'

I got on to her crib and kissed her: her forehead was cold, and her
cheek both cold and thin, and so were her hand and wrist; but she
smiled as of old.

'Why are you come here, Jane? It is past eleven o'clock: I heard it
strike some minutes since.'

'I came to see you, Helen: I heard you were very ill, and I could
not sleep till I had spoken to you.'

'You came to bid me good-bye, then: you are just in time probably.'

'Are you going somewhere, Helen? Are you going home?'

'Yes; to my long home- my last home.'

'No, no, Helen!' I stopped, distressed. While I tried to devour
my tears, a fit of coughing seized Helen; it did not, however, wake
the nurse; when it was over, she lay some minutes exhausted; then
she whispered-

'Jane, your little feet are bare; lie down and cover yourself
with my quilt.'

I did so: she put her arm over me, and I nestled close to her.
After a long silence, she resumed, still whispering-

'I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead, you
must be sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. We
all must die one day, and the illness which is removing me is not
painful; it is gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest. I leave no
one to regret me much: I have only a father; and he is lately married,
and will not miss me. By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings.
I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the
world: I should have been continually at fault.'

'But where are you going to, Helen? Can you see? Do you know?'

'I believe; I have faith: I am going to God.'

'Where is God? What is God?'

'My Maker and yours, who will never destroy what He created. I rely
implicitly on His power, and confide wholly in His goodness: I count
the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore me to
Him, reveal Him to me.'

'You are sure, then, Helen, that there is such a place as heaven,
and that our souls can get to it when we die?'

'I am sure there is a future state; I believe God is good; I can
resign my immortal part to Him without any misgiving. God is my
father; God is my friend: I love Him; I believe He loves me.'

'And shall I see you again, Helen, when I die?'

'You will come to the same region of happiness: be received by
the same mighty, universal Parent, no doubt, dear Jane.'

Again I questioned, but this time only in thought. 'Where is that
region? Does it exist?' And I clasped my arms closer around Helen; she
seemed dearer to me than ever; I felt as if I could not let her go;
I lay with my face hidden on her neck. Presently she said, in the
sweetest tone-

'How comfortable I am! That last fit of coughing has tired me a
little; I feel as if I could sleep: but don't leave me, Jane; I like
to have you near me.'

'I'll stay with you, dear Helen: no one shall take me away.'

'Are you warm, darling?'

'Yes.'

'Good-night, Jane.'

'Good-night, Helen.'

She kissed me, and I her, and we both soon slumbered.

When I awoke it was day: an unusual movement roused me; I looked
up; I was in somebody's arms; the nurse held me; she was carrying me
through the passage back to the dormitory. I was not reprimanded for
leaving my bed; people had something else to think about; no
explanation was afforded then to my many questions; but a day or two
afterwards I learned that Miss Temple, on returning to her own room at
dawn, had found me laid in the little crib; my face against Helen
Burns's shoulder, my arms round her neck. I was asleep, and Helen was-
dead.

Her grave is in Brocklebridge churchyard: for fifteen years after
her death it was only covered by a grassy mound; but now a grey marble
tablet marks the spot, inscribed with her name, and the word
'Resurgam.'