Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
towards me—was unchanged and unchangeable. I knew by her stony
eye—opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to tears—that she was resolved
to consider me bad to the last; because to believe me good would give
her no generous pleasure: only a sense of mortification.
I felt pain, and then I felt ire; and then I felt a determination to
subdue her—to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will.
My tears had risen, just as in childhood: I ordered them back to their
source. I brought a chair to the bed-head: I sat down and leaned over
the pillow.
“You sent for me,” I said, “and I am here; and it is my intention to
stay till I see how you get on.”
“Oh, of course! You have seen my daughters?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you may tell them I wish you to stay till I can talk some things
over with you I have on my mind: to-night it is too late, and I have a
difficulty in recalling them. But there was something I wished to
say—let me see—”
The wandering look and changed utterance told what wreck had taken
place in her once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly, she drew the
bedclothes round her; my elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt, fixed
it down: she was at once irritated.
“Sit up!” said she; “don’t annoy me with holding the clothes fast. Are
you Jane Eyre?”
“I am Jane Eyre.”
“I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe.
Such a burden to be left on my hands—and so much annoyance as she
caused me, daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and
her sudden starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural watchings of
one’s movements! I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or
like a fiend—no child ever spoke or looked as she did; I was glad to
get her away from the house. What did they do with her at Lowood? The
fever broke out there, and many of the pupils died. She, however, did
not die: but I said she did—I wish she had died!”
“A strange wish, Mrs. Reed; why do you hate her so?”
“I had a dislike to her mother always; for she was my husband’s only
sister, and a great favourite with him: he opposed the family’s
disowning her when she made her low marriage; and when news came of her
death, he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby; though I
entreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its
maintenance. I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it—a sickly,
whining, pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all night long—not
screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering and moaning.
Reed pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it as if it had been
his own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed his own at that age. He
would try to make my children friendly to the little beggar: the
darlings could not bear it, and he was angry with them when they showed
their dislike. In his last illness, he had it brought continually to
his bedside; and but an hour before he died, he bound me by vow to keep
the creature. I would as soon have been charged with a pauper brat out
of a workhouse: but he was weak, naturally weak. John does not at all
resemble his father, and I am glad of it: John is like me and like my
brothers—he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish he would cease tormenting me
with letters for money! I have no more money to give him: we are
getting poor. I must send away half the servants and shut up part of
the house; or let it off. I can never submit to do that—yet how are we
to get on? Two-thirds of my income goes in paying the interest of
mortgages. John gambles dreadfully, and always loses—poor boy! He is
beset by sharpers: John is sunk and degraded—his look is frightful—I
feel ashamed for him when I see him.”
She was getting much excited. “I think I had better leave her now,”
said I to Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed.
“Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often talks in this way towards
night—in the morning she is calmer.”
I rose. “Stop!” exclaimed Mrs. Reed, “there is another thing I wished
to say. He threatens me—he continually threatens me with his own death,
or mine: and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great
wound in his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face. I am come to
a strange pass: I have heavy troubles. What is to be done? How is the
money to be had?”
Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught: she
succeeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed,
and sank into a dozing state. I then left her.
More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with
her. She continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor
forbade everything which could painfully excite her. Meantime, I got on
as well as I could with Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold,
indeed, at first. Eliza would sit half the day sewing, reading, or
writing, and scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister.
Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour, and
take no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for
occupation or amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with me,
and they served me for both.
Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to
take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in
sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened
momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of
imagination: a glimpse of sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a
ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad’s
head, crowned with lotus-flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in
a hedge-sparrow’s nest, under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom.
One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was to
be, I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad
point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and
prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage: that contour
gave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with
features. Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that
brow; then followed, naturally, a well-defined nose, with a straight
ridge and full nostrils; then a flexible-looking mouth, by no means
narrow; then a firm chin, with a decided cleft down the middle of it:
of course, some black whiskers were wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted
on the temples, and waved above the forehead. Now for the eyes: I had
left them to the last, because they required the most careful working.
I drew them large; I shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and
sombre; the irids lustrous and large. “Good! but not quite the thing,”
I thought, as I surveyed the effect: “they want more force and spirit;”
and I wrought the shades blacker, that the lights might flash more
brilliantly—a happy touch or two secured success. There, I had a
friend’s face under my gaze; and what did it signify that those young
ladies turned their backs on me? I looked at it; I smiled at the
speaking likeness: I was absorbed and content.
“Is that a portrait of some one you know?” asked Eliza, who had
approached me unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy head,
and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Of course, I lied: it was, in
fact, a very faithful representation of Mr. Rochester. But what was
that to her, or to any one but myself? Georgiana also advanced to look.
The other drawings pleased her much, but she called that “an ugly man.”
They both seemed surprised at my skill. I offered to sketch their
portraits; and each, in turn, sat for a pencil outline. Then Georgiana
produced her album. I promised to contribute a water-colour drawing:
this put her at once into good humour. She proposed a walk in the
grounds. Before we had been out two hours, we were deep in a
confidential conversation: she had favoured me with a description of
the brilliant winter she had spent in London two seasons ago—of the
admiration she had there excited—the attention she had received; and I
even got hints of the titled conquest she had made. In the course of
the afternoon and evening these hints were enlarged on: various soft
conversations were reported, and sentimental scenes represented; and,
in short, a volume of a novel of fashionable life was that day
improvised by her for my benefit. The communications were renewed from
day to day: they always ran on the same theme—herself, her loves, and
woes. It was strange she never once adverted either to her mother’s
illness, or her brother’s death, or the present gloomy state of the
family prospects. Her mind seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of
past gaiety, and aspirations after dissipations to come. She passed
about five minutes each day in her mother’s sick-room, and no more.
Eliza still spoke little: she had evidently no time to talk. I never
saw a busier person than she seemed to be; yet it was difficult to say
what she did: or rather, to discover any result of her diligence. She
had an alarm to call her up early. I know not how she occupied herself
before breakfast, but after that meal she divided her time into regular
portions, and each hour had its allotted task. Three times a day she
studied a little book, which I found, on inspection, was a Common
Prayer Book. I asked her once what was the great attraction of that
volume, and she said, “the Rubric.” Three hours she gave to stitching,
with gold thread, the border of a square crimson cloth, almost large
enough for a carpet. In answer to my inquiries after the use of this
article, she informed me it was a covering for the altar of a new
church lately erected near Gateshead. Two hours she devoted to her
diary; two to working by herself in the kitchen-garden; and one to the
regulation of her accounts. She seemed to want no company; no
conversation. I believe she was happy in her way: this routine sufficed
for her; and nothing annoyed her so much as the occurrence of any
incident which forced her to vary its clockwork regularity.
She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than
usual, that John’s conduct, and the threatened ruin of the family, had
been a source of profound affliction to her: but she had now, she said,
settled her mind, and formed her resolution. Her own fortune she had
taken care to secure; and when her mother died—and it was wholly
improbable, she tranquilly remarked, that she should either recover or
linger long—she would execute a long-cherished project: seek a
retirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured from
disturbance, and place safe barriers between herself and a frivolous
world. I asked if Georgiana would accompany her.
“Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common: they never had
had. She would not be burdened with her society for any consideration.
Georgiana should take her own course; and she, Eliza, would take hers.”
Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of her time
in lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the house, and
wishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send her an
invitation up to town. “It would be so much better,” she said, “if she
could only get out of the way for a month or two, till all was over.” I
did not ask what she meant by “all being over,” but I suppose she
referred to the expected decease of her mother and the gloomy sequel of
funeral rites. Eliza generally took no more notice of her sister’s
indolence and complaints than if no such murmuring, lounging object had
been before her. One day, however, as she put away her account-book and
unfolded her embroidery, she suddenly took her up thus—
“Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly never
allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for you make
no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a