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Recording by Elizabeth Klett Jane Eyre by Charlotte BRONTË Chapter Two

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

gleaning 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,