All Librivox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer please visit Librivox.org

Recording by Elizabeth Klett Jane Eyre by Charlotte BRONTË Chapter One

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."

"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 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 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.

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 dependent, 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.

END OF CHAPTER ONE