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 housemaid 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.