And things go on

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 out-door 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."

Do other people feel like this?

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 arm-chair, 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. 

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."

Another new drug

"Then she ought to look more cheerful.  Come here, Miss Jane: your name is Jane, is it not?"  "Yes, sir, Jane Eyre."  "Well, you have been crying, Miss Jane Eyre; can you tell me what about? Have you any pain?"  "No, sir."  "Oh!  I daresay she is crying because she could not go out with Missis in the carriage," interposed Bessie.  "Surely not! why, she is too old for such pettishness."  I thought so too; and my self-esteem being wounded by the false charge, I answered promptly, "I never cried for such a thing in my life: I hate going out in the carriage.  I cry because I am miserable."  "Oh fie, Miss!" said Bessie.  The good apothecary appeared a little puzzled.  I was standing before him; he fixed his eyes on me very steadily: his eyes were small and grey; not very bright, but I dare say I should think them shrewd now: he had a hard-featured yet good-natured looking face.  Having considered me at leisure, he said--  "What made you ill yesterday?"  "She had a fall," said Bessie, again putting in her word.  "Fall! why, that is like a baby again!  Can't she manage to walk at her age?  She must be eight or nine years old."  "I was knocked down," was the blunt explanation, jerked out of me by another pang of mortified pride; "but that did not make me ill," I added; while Mr. Lloyd helped himself to a pinch of snuff.  As he was returning the box to his waistcoat pocket, a loud bell rang for the servants' dinner; he knew what it was.  "That's for you, nurse," said he; "you can go down; I'll give Miss Jane a lecture till you come back."  Bessie would rather have stayed, but she was obliged to go, because punctuality at meals was rigidly enforced at Gateshead Hall.  "The fall did not make you ill; what did, then?" pursued Mr. Lloyd when Bessie was gone.  "I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost till after dark."

Survival of the fittest

"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.

Easter holidays

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 tittering 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.

dot dot dot

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 had 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. 

Therapy, psychiatrists and my bad moods

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?"

A bit of a moan

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.

I hate the rain

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--