Jane Eyre Chapter 02

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

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’ son!

your young master!”

“Master! How is he my master?

Am I a ervant?”

“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 pairs 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 guaranty 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 poor-house.”

I had nothing to say to these words;

they were not new to me;

my very first recollection 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 bed-room was a spare 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 a soft fawn-color,

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 Marseillesi 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 kitchens;

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 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 up 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 vigor;

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 brow-beaten,

always accused, forever condemned?

Why could I never please?

Why was it useless to try to win any one’s favor?

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,

l 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 disregardedher 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 further irrational violence,

I was loaded with general opprobrium.

“Unjust! unjust!” said my reason,

forced by the agonizing 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 sympathize with one among 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 scape-goat 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 stair-case window,

and the wind howling in the grove behind the hall.

I grew by degrees cold as a stone,

and then my courage sunk.

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—had 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 toward

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 realized.

With all my might I endeavored to stifle it—

I endeavored 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 wicked, 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.”

“Oh 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 almost 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 further parley.

I heard her sweeping away;

and soon after she was gone,

I suppose I had a species of fit;

unconsciousness closed the scene.

End of Chaper II