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Recording by Elizabeth Klett Jane Eyre by Charlotte BRONTË Chapter Four

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.

"What?" said Mrs. Reed under her breath: her usually cold composed grey

eye became troubled with a look like fear; she took her hand from my arm,

and gazed at me as if she really did not know whether I were child or

fiend.

I was now in for it.

"My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and can see all you do and think; and so can

papa and mama: they know how you shut me up all day long, and how you

wish me dead."

Mrs. Reed soon rallied her spirits: she shook me most soundly, she boxed

both my ears, and then left me without a word.

Bessie supplied the hiatus by a homily of an hour's length, in

which she proved beyond a doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned

child ever reared under a roof.

I half believed her; for I felt indeed only bad feelings surging

in my breast.

November, December, and half of January passed away.

Christmas and the New Year had been celebrated at Gateshead

with the usual festive cheer; presents had been interchanged, dinners and

evening parties given.

From every enjoyment I was, of course, excluded:

my share of the gaiety consisted in witnessing the daily apparelling

of Eliza and Georgiana, and seeing them descend to the drawing-room, dressed

out in thin muslin frocks and scarlet sashes, with hair elaborately

ringletted; and afterwards, in listening to the sound of the

piano or the harp played below, to the passing to and fro of the butler

and footman, to the jingling of glass and china as refreshments

were handed, to the broken hum of conversation as the drawing-room door

opened and closed.

When tired of this occupation, I would retire from

the stairhead to the solitary and silent nursery: there, though

somewhat sad, I was not miserable.

To speak truth, I had not the least wish to go into company,

for in company I was very rarely noticed; and if Bessie had but been kind

and companionable, I should have deemed it a treat to spend the evenings

quietly with her, instead of passing them under the formidable eye of

Mrs. Reed, in a room full of ladies and gentlemen.

But Bessie, as soon as she had dressed her young ladies, used

to take herself off to the lively regions of the kitchen and housekeeper's

room, generally bearing the candle along with her.

I then sat with my doll on my knee till the fire got low, glancing round occasionally

to make sure that nothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room; and

when the embers sank to a dull red, I undressed hastily, tugging at knots

and strings as I best might, and sought shelter from cold and darkness

in my crib.

To this crib I always took my doll; human beings must love

something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived

to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image,

shabby as a miniature scarecrow.

It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I

doated on this little toy, half fancying it alive and capable of

sensation.

I could not sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown; and

when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it

to be happy likewise.

Long did the hours seem while I waited the departure of the company, and

listened for the sound of Bessie's step on the stairs: sometimes she

would come up in the interval to seek her thimble or her scissors, or

perhaps to bring me something by way of supper--a bun or a

cheese-cake--then she would sit on the bed while I ate it, and when I had

finished, she would tuck the clothes round me, and twice she kissed me,

and said, "Good night, Miss Jane."

When thus gentle, Bessie seemed to me the best, prettiest, kindest being in the

world; and I wished most intensely that she would always be so pleasant

and amiable, and never push me about, or scold, or task me unreasonably,

as she was too often wont to do.

Bessie Lee must, I think, have been a girl of good natural

capacity, for she was smart in all she did, and had a remarkable knack of

narrative; so, at least, I judge from the impression made on me by her

nursery tales.

She was pretty too, if my recollections of her face and

person are correct.

I remember her as a slim young woman, with black

hair, dark eyes, very nice features, and good, clear complexion; but she

had a capricious and hasty temper, and indifferent ideas of principle or

justice: still, such as she was, I preferred her to any one else at

Gateshead Hall.

It was the fifteenth of January, about nine o'clock in the morning:

Bessie was gone down to breakfast; my cousins had not yet been summoned

to their mama; Eliza was putting on her bonnet and warm garden-coat to go

and feed her poultry, an occupation of which she was fond: and not less

so of selling the eggs to the housekeeper and hoarding up the money she

thus obtained.

She had a turn for traffic, and a marked propensity for

saving; shown not only in the vending of eggs and chickens, but also in

driving hard bargains with the gardener about flower-roots, seeds, and

slips of plants; that functionary having orders from Mrs. Reed to buy of

his young lady all the products of her parterre she wished to sell: and

Eliza would have sold the hair off her head if she could have made a

handsome profit thereby.

As to her money, she first secreted it in odd

corners, wrapped in a rag or an old curl-paper; but some of these hoards

having been discovered by the housemaid, Eliza, fearful of one day losing

her valued treasure, consented to intrust it to her mother, at a usurious

rate of interest--fifty or sixty per cent.; which interest she exacted

every quarter, keeping her accounts in a little book with anxious

accuracy.

Georgiana sat on a high stool, dressing her hair at the glass, and

interweaving her curls with artificial flowers and faded feathers, of

which she had found a store in a drawer in the attic.

I was making my bed, having received strict orders from Bessie

to get it arranged before she returned (for Bessie now frequently employed

me as a sort of under- nurserymaid, to tidy the room, dust the chairs,

&c.).

Having spread the quilt and folded my night-dress, I went to

the window-seat to put in order some picture-books and doll's house

furniture scattered there; an abrupt command from Georgiana to let her playthings

alone (for the tiny chairs and mirrors, the fairy plates and cups,

were her property) stopped my proceedings; and then, for lack of other

occupation, I fell to breathing on the frost-flowers with which

the window was fretted, and thus clearing a space in the glass through

which I might look out on the grounds, where all was still and petrified

under the influence of a hard frost.

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.