Men and Sex

"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 his hollow horn, and away we rattled over the "stony street" of L-.

Just a few things to think about…

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?"