الفصل الفصل 2 · I resisted all the way: a new thing for me, and a circumstance which

. I resisted all the way: a new thing for me, and a circumstance which

greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were

disposed to entertain of me. The fact is, I was a trifle beside myself;

or rather _out_ of myself, as the French would say: I was conscious

that a moment’s mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange

penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my

desperation, to go all lengths.

“Hold her arms, Miss Abbot: she’s like a mad cat.”

“For shame! for shame!” cried the lady’s-maid. “What shocking conduct,

Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress’s son! Your

young master.”

“Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant?”

“No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep.

There, sit down, and think over your wickedness.”

They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Reed,

and had thrust me upon a stool: my impulse was to rise from it like a

spring; their two pair of hands arrested me instantly.

“If you don’t sit still, you must be tied down,” said Bessie. “Miss

Abbot, lend me your garters; she would break mine directly.”

Miss Abbot turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature. This

preparation for bonds, and the additional ignominy it inferred, took a

little of the excitement out of me.

“Don’t take them off,” I cried; “I will not stir.”

In guarantee whereof, I attached myself to my seat by my hands.

“Mind you don’t,” said Bessie; and when she had ascertained that I was

really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me; then she and Miss Abbot

stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as

incredulous of my sanity.

“She never did so before,” at last said Bessie, turning to the Abigail.

“But it was always in her,” was the reply. “I’ve told Missis often my

opinion about the child, and Missis agreed with me. She’s an underhand

little thing: I never saw a girl of her age with so much cover.”

Bessie answered not; but ere long, addressing me, she said—

“You ought to be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs.

Reed: she keeps you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go

to the poorhouse.”

I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very

first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This

reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very

painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. Miss Abbot joined in—

“And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses

Reed and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up

with them. They will have a great deal of money, and you will have

none: it is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself

agreeable to them.”

“What we tell you is for your good,” added Bessie, in no harsh voice,

“you should try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, you would

have a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, Missis will

send you away, I am sure.”

“Besides,” said Miss Abbot, “God will punish her: He might strike her

dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go? Come,

Bessie, we will leave her: I wouldn’t have her heart for anything. Say

your prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself; for if you don’t

repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and

fetch you away.”

They went, shutting the door, and locking it behind them.

The red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say

never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead

Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it

contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the

mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with

curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre;

the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half

shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red;

the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the

walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe,

the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany. Out

of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the

piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy

Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned

easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool

before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.

This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent,

because remote from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was

known to be so seldom entered. The house-maid alone came here on

Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week’s quiet

dust: and Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the

contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored

divers parchments, her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased

husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the red-room—the

spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.

Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed

his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the

undertaker’s men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration

had guarded it from frequent intrusion.

My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted,

was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before

me; to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued,

broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the

muffled windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant

majesty of the bed and room. I was not quite sure whether they had

locked the door; and when I dared move, I got up and went to see. Alas!

yes: no jail was ever more secure. Returning, I had to cross before the

looking-glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it

revealed. All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in

reality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white

face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving

where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it

like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie’s evening

stories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and

appearing before the eyes of belated travellers. I returned to my

stool.

Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour

for complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted

slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a

rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal

present.

All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sisters’ proud indifference,

all his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in

my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I

always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever

condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win

any one’s favour? Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected.

Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and

insolent carriage, was universally indulged. Her beauty, her pink

cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at

her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. John no one thwarted,

much less punished; though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed

the little pea-chicks, set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse

vines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the

conservatory: he called his mother “old girl,” too; sometimes reviled

her for her dark skin, similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her

wishes; not unfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire; and he was

still “her own darling.” I dared commit no fault: I strove to fulfil

every duty; and I was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking,

from morning to noon, and from noon to night.

My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received: no

one had reproved John for wantonly striking me; and because I had

turned against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded

with general opprobrium.

“Unjust!—unjust!” said my reason, forced by the agonising stimulus into

precocious though transitory power: and Resolve, equally wrought up,

instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable

oppression—as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never

eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.

What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon! How all my

brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what

darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought! I could

not answer the ceaseless inward question—_why_ I thus suffered; now, at

the distance of—I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.

I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; I had

nothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen

vassalage. If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them.

They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that could not

sympathise with one amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to

them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a useless thing,

incapable of serving their interest, or adding to their pleasure; a

noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment,

of contempt of their judgment. I know that had I been a sanguine,

brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child—though equally

dependent and friendless—Mrs. Reed would have endured my presence more

complacently; her children would have entertained for me more of the

cordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants would have been less prone

to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.

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 gleaming 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.

“Miss Eyre, are you ill?” said Bessie.

“What a dreadful noise! it went quite through me!” exclaimed Abbot.

“Take me out! Let me go into the nursery!” was my cry.

“What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something?” again demanded

Bessie.

“Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come.” I had now got

hold of Bessie’s hand, and she did not snatch it from me.

“She has screamed out on purpose,” declared Abbot, in some disgust.

“And what a scream! If she had been in great pain one would have

excused it, but she only wanted to bring us all here: I know her

naughty tricks.”

“What is all this?” demanded another voice peremptorily; and Mrs. Reed

came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling

stormily. “Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre

should be left in the red-room till I came to her myself.”

“Miss Jane screamed so loud, ma’am,” pleaded Bessie.

“Let her go,” was the only answer. “Loose Bessie’s hand, child: you

cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured. I abhor

artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that

tricks will not answer: you will now stay here an hour longer, and it

is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall

liberate you then.”

“O aunt! have pity! Forgive me! I cannot endure it—let me be punished

some other way! I shall be killed if—”

“Silence! This violence is all most repulsive:” and so, no doubt, she

felt it. I was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked

on me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous

duplicity.

Bessie and Abbot having retreated, Mrs. Reed, impatient of my now

frantic anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked me

in, without farther parley. I heard her sweeping away; and soon after

she was gone, I suppose I had a species of fit: unconsciousness closed

the scene.