Chapter III

The next thing I remember, is waking up with a feeling as if I had had a frightful nightmare. Before long, I became aware that some one was lifting me up and supporting me in a sitting position.

In five minutes more I knew quite well that I was in my own bed. It was night: a candle burnt on the table; Bessie stood at the bed-foot with a basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near my pillow, leaning over me.

I felt a great relief, a feeling of protection and security, when I knew that there was a stranger in the room, an individual not belonging to Gateshead, and not related to Mrs. Reed. I knew him; it was Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary, sometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when the servants were ailing: for herself and the children she called a physician.

“Well, who am I?” he asked.

I said his name and gave him my hand: he took it, smiling and saying, “We shall do very well by-and-by.” Then he laid me down, and addressing Bessie asked her to be careful and not to disturb me during the night. Soon he left; to my grief: I felt so protected while he sat in the chair near my pillow; and as he closed the door after him, all the room darkened.

“Would you like to drink, or could you eat anything?” asked Bessie, rather softly.

“No, thank you, Bessie.”

“Then I think I shall go to bed, for it is past twelve o’clock; but you may call me if you want anything in the night.”

I dared to ask a question.

“Bessie, what is the matter with me? Am I ill?”

“You fell sick in the red-room with crying; you’ll be better soon, no doubt.”

Bessie went into the housemaid’s room, which was near. I heard her say —

“Sarah, come and sleep with me in the nursery; I don’t want to be alone with that poor child to-night: she might die; it’s such a strange thing she should have that fit: I wonder if she saw anything. Missis was rather too hard.”

Sarah came back with her; they both went to bed; they were whispering together for half-an-hour before they fell asleep.

For me, the watches of that long night went very slowly.

No severe illness followed this incident of the redroom; it only gave my nerves a shock which I feel to this day.

Next day, by noon, I was up and dressed, and sat by the nursery hearth. I felt physically weak and broken down. Yet, I thought, I ought to have been happy, for none of the Reeds were there, they were all gone out in the carriage with their mama. Sarah Abbot was sewing in another room, and Bessie, as she moved hither and thither^[11], putting away toys and arranging drawers, addressed to me every now and then a word of kindness. This state of things should have been to me a paradise of peace, but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such a state that nothing could calm them.

Bessie had been down into the kitchen, and she brought up with her a tart on a brightly painted china plate, which was my favourite. This precious plate was now placed on my knee, and I was invited to eat the delicate pastry upon it. But this favour came, like most other favours often wished for, too late! I could not eat the tart; I put both plate and tart away. Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word book acted as a stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver’s Travels from the library. This book I had again and again read with delight. Yet, when this volume was now placed in my hand, all was eerie and dreary. I closed the book and put it on the table, beside the untasted tart.

Bessie had now finished dusting and tidying the room, and began making a new bonnet for Georgiana’s doll. Meantime she sang: her song was —

“In the days when we went gipsying, A long time ago.”

I had often heard the song before, and always with delight; for Bessie had a sweet voice, – at least, I thought so. But now, I found in its melody a great sadness.

In the course of the morning Mr. Lloyd came again.

“What, already up!” said he, as he entered the nursery. “Well, nurse, how is she?”

Bessie answered that I was doing very well.

“Then she ought to look more cheerful. Come here, Miss Jane: your name is Jane, is it not?”

“Yes, sir, Jane Eyre.”

“Well, you have been crying, Miss Jane Eyre; can you tell me what about? Have you any pain?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh! I daresay she is crying because she could not go out with Missis in the carriage,” said Bessie.

“Surely not! I hate going out in the carriage. I cry because I am miserable.”

The good apothecary appeared a little puzzled. I was standing before him; he fixed his eyes on me very steadily. Finally, he said —

“What made you ill yesterday?”

“She had a fall,” said Bessie, again putting in her word.

“Fall! why, that is like a baby! Can’t she manage to walk at her age? She must be eight or nine years old.”

“I was knocked down,” was the blunt explanation, “but that did not make me ill,” I added.

A loud bell rang for the servants’ dinner; he knew what it was. “That’s for you, nurse,” said he; “you can go down; I’ll give Miss Jane a lecture till you come back.”

Bessie would rather have stayed, but she was obliged to go, because punctuality at meals was strictly observed at Gateshead Hall.

“The fall did not make you ill; what did, then?” continued Mr. Lloyd when Bessie was gone.

“I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost till after dark.”

I saw Mr. Lloyd smile and frown at the same time.

“Ghost! What, you are a baby after all! You are afraid of ghosts?”

“Of Mr. Reed’s ghost I am: he died in that room, and was laid out there. Neither Bessie nor any one else will go into it at night, if they can help it; and it was cruel to shut me up alone without a candle, – so cruel that I think I shall never forget it.”

“Nonsense! And is it that makes you so miserable? Are you afraid now in daylight?”

“No: but night will come again before long: and besides, – I am unhappy, – very unhappy, for other things.”

“What other things? Can you tell me some of them?”

How much I wished to reply fully to this question but how difficult it was!

“For one thing, I have no father or mother, brothers or sisters.”

“You have a kind aunt and cousins.”

Again I paused; then said —

“But John Reed knocked me down, and my aunt shut me up in the red-room.”

“Don’t you think Gateshead Hall a very beautiful house?” asked he. “Are you not very thankful to have such a fine place to live at?”

“It is not my house, sir; and Abbot says I have less right to be here than a servant.”

“Pooh! you can’t be silly enough to wish to leave such a splendid place?”

“If I had anywhere else to go, I should be glad to leave it; but I can never get away from Gateshead till I am a woman.”

“Perhaps you may – who knows? Have you any relations besides Mrs. Reed?”

“I think not, sir.”

“None belonging to your father?”

“I don’t know. I asked Aunt Reed once, and she said possibly I might have some poor, low relations called Eyre, but she knew nothing about them.”

“If you had such, would you like to go to them?”

I reflected. Poverty looks awful to grown people; so poverty for me was synonymous with degradation.

“No; I should not like to belong to poor people,” was my reply.

“Not even if they were kind to you?”

I shook my head: I could not see how poor people could be kind; and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their manners, to be uneducated: no, I was not heroic enough to buy liberty at such a price.

“Would you like to go to school?”

Again I reflected: I scarcely knew what school was: John Reed hated his school, and abused his master; but John Reed’s tastes were no rule for mine; and if Bessie’s memories of school-discipline were somewhat awful, the young ladies’ accomplishments were, I thought, attractive. Bessie showed me beautiful paintings of landscapes and flowers painted by them; told me of songs they could sing, of French books they could translate. Besides, school would be a complete change: it meant a long journey, an entire separation from Gateshead, an entrance into a new life.

“I should indeed like to go to school,” was my conclusion.

“Well, well! who knows what may happen?” said Mr. Lloyd, as he got up. “The child ought to have change of air and scene,” he added, speaking to himself; “nerves not in a good state.”

Bessie now returned; at the same moment the carriage was heard.

“Is that your mistress, nurse?” asked Mr. Lloyd.

“I should like to speak to her before I go.”

In the interview which followed between him and Mrs. Reed, the apothecary recommended my being sent to school; and it was no doubt readily adopted.

On that same occasion I learned, for the first time, that my father had been a poor clergyman; that my mother had married him against the wishes of her family, who considered the match beneath her; that my grandfather Reed was so irritated, he cut her off without a shilling; that after my mother and father had been married a year, my father caught the typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing town where he worked, and where that disease was then prevalent: that my mother took the infection from him, and both died within a month of each other.

Chapter IV

Eliza and Georgiana, evidently acting according to orders, spoke to me as little as possible: John once attempted an attack on me, but I instantly turned against him and planted a hard blow on his nose. He immediately ran to his mama. I heard him begin the story 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; neither you nor your sisters should associate with her.”

Here, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly – “They are not fit to associate with me.”

Mrs. Reed was rather a stout woman; but, on hearing this declaration, she ran up the stair, dragged me into the nursery, pushed me down on the bed and told me to stay in that place or never say a word during the remainder of the day.

“What would Uncle Reed say to you, if he were alive?” It seemed as if something spoke out of me over which I had no control.

“What?” said Mrs. Reed under her breath: 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^[12].

“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 came to herself: she shook me most soundly, she boxed both my ears^[13], and then left me without a word.