Memories

Daylight began to forsake the red-room; it was past four o'clock, and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight.  I heard the rain still beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind howling in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then my courage sank.  My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire.  All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so; what thought had I been but just conceiving of starving myself to death?  That certainly was a crime: and was I fit to die?  Or was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting bourne?  In such vault I had been told did Mr. Reed lie buried; and led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with gathering dread.  I could not remember him; but I knew that he was my own uncle--my mother's brother--that he had taken me when a parentless infant to his house; and that in his last moments he had required a promise of Mrs. Reed that she would rear and maintain me as one of her own children. Mrs. Reed probably considered she had kept this promise; and so she had, I dare say, as well as her nature would permit her; but how could she really like an interloper not of her race, and unconnected with her, after her husband's death, by any tie?  It must have been most irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her own family group.  A singular notion dawned upon me.  I doubted not--never doubted--that if Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls--occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaning mirror--I began to recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his sister's child, might quit its abode--whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed--and rise before me in this chamber.  I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me with strange pity.  This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I endeavoured to stifle it--I endeavoured to be firm.  Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room; at this moment a light gleamed on the wall.  Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind?  No; moonlight was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head.  I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world.  My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer passage; the key turned, Bessie and Abbot entered.

The Start

In five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved: I knew quite well that I was in my own bed, and that the red glare was the nursery fire.  It was night: a candle burnt on the table; Bessie stood at the bed- foot with a basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near my pillow, leaning over me.  I felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection and security, when I knew that there was a stranger in the room, an individual not belonging to Gateshead, and not related to Mrs. Reed. Turning from Bessie (though her presence was far less obnoxious to me than that of Abbot, for instance, would have been), I scrutinised the face of the gentleman: I knew him; it was Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary, sometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when the servants were ailing: for herself and the children she employed a physician.  "Well, who am I?" he asked.  I pronounced his name, offering him at the same time my hand: he took it, smiling and saying, "We shall do very well by-and-by."  Then he laid me down, and addressing Bessie, charged her to be very careful that I was not disturbed during the night.  Having given some further directions, and intimates that he should call again the next day, he departed; to my grief: I felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat in the chair near my pillow; and as he closed the door after him, all the room darkened and my heart again sank: inexpressible sadness weighed it down.  "Do you feel as if you should sleep, Miss?" asked Bessie, rather softly.  Scarcely dared I answer her; for I feared the next sentence might be rough.  "I will try."  "Would you like to drink, or could you eat anything?"  "No, thank you, Bessie."  "Then I think I shall go to bed, for it is past twelve o'clock; but you may call me if you want anything in the night."  Wonderful civility this!  It emboldened me to ask a question.  "Bessie, what is the matter with me?  Am I ill?"  "You fell sick, I suppose, in the red-room with crying; you'll be better soon, no doubt."  Bessie went into the housemaid's apartment, which was near.  I heard her say--  "Sarah, come and sleep with me in the nursery; I daren't for my life be alone with that poor child to-night: she might die; it's such a strange thing she should have that fit: I wonder if she saw anything.  Missis was rather too hard."

My Parents

Sarah came back with her; they both went to bed; they were whispering together for half-an-hour before they fell asleep.  I caught scraps of their conversation, from which I was able only too distinctly to infer the main subject discussed.  "Something passed her, all dressed in white, and vanished"--"A great black dog behind him"--"Three loud raps on the chamber door"--"A light in the churchyard just over his grave," &c. &c.  At last both slept: the fire and the candle went out.  For me, the watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; strained by dread: such dread as children only can feel.  No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red- room; it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the reverberation to this day.  Yes, Mrs. Reed, to you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering, but I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did: while rending my heart-strings, you thought you were only uprooting my bad propensities.  Next day, by noon, I was up and dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl by the nursery hearth.  I felt physically weak and broken down: but my worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one salt drop from my cheek than another followed.  Yet, I thought, I ought to have been happy, for none of the Reeds were there, they were all gone out in the carriage with their mama.  Abbot, too, was sewing in another room, and Bessie, as she moved hither and thither, putting away toys and arranging drawers, addressed to me every now and then a word of unwonted kindness.  This state of things should have been to me a paradise of peace, accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless fagging; but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such a state that no calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably.  Bessie had been down into the kitchen, and she brought up with her a tart on a certain brightly painted china plate, whose bird of paradise, nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds, had been wont to stir in me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration; and which plate I had often petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand in order to examine it more closely, but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a privilege.  This precious vessel was now placed on my knee, and I was cordially invited to eat the circlet of delicate pastry upon it.  Vain favour! coming, like most other favours long deferred and often wished for, too late!  I could not eat the tart; and the plumage of the bird, the tints of the flowers, seemed strangely faded: I put both plate and tart away.  Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word _book_ acted as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver's Travels from the library.  This book I had again and again perused with delight.  I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves, having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant; whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag 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.

Is this life?

ortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a French lady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with Madame Pierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last seven years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily--applying myself to take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as possible the pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain degree of readiness and correctness in the language, and was not likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela.  She came and shook hand with me when she heard that I was her governess; and as I led her in to breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue: she replied briefly at first, but after we were seated at the table, and she had examined me some ten minutes with her large hazel eyes, she suddenly commenced chattering fluently.  "Ah!" cried she, in French, "you speak my language as well as Mr. Rochester does: I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can Sophie.  She will be glad: nobody here understands her: Madame Fairfax is all English. Sophie is my nurse; she came with me over the sea in a great ship with a chimney that smoked--how it did smoke!--and I was sick, and so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester.  Mr. Rochester lay down on a sofa in a pretty room called the salon, and Sophie and I had little beds in another place.  I nearly fell out of mine; it was like a shelf.  And Mademoiselle--what is your name?"  "Eyre--Jane Eyre."  "Aire?  Bah!  I cannot say it.  Well, our ship stopped in the morning, before it was quite daylight, at a great city--a huge city, with very dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty clean town I came from; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach, which took us to a beautiful large house, larger than this and finer, called an hotel.  We stayed there nearly a week: I and Sophie used to walk every day in a great green place full of trees, called the Park; and there were many children there besides me, and a pond with beautiful birds in it, that I fed with crumbs."  "Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?" asked Mrs. Fairfax.  I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent tongue of Madame Pierrot.  "I wish," continued the good lady, "you would ask her a question or two about her parents: I wonder if she remembers them?"  "Adele," I inquired, "with whom did you live when you were in that pretty clean town you spoke of?"  "I lived long ago with mama; but she is gone to the Holy Virgin.  Mama used to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses.  A great many gentlemen and ladies came to see mama, and I used to dance before them, or to sit on their knees and sing to them: I liked it.  Shall I let you hear me sing now?"