Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
death of his father: he was at Marsh End now, and would very likely
stay there a fortnight longer.”
“Was there any lady of the house?”
“Nay, there was naught but her, and she was housekeeper;” and of her,
reader, I could not bear to ask the relief for want of which I was
sinking; I could not yet beg; and again I crawled away.
Once more I took off my handkerchief—once more I thought of the cakes
of bread in the little shop. Oh, for but a crust! for but one mouthful
to allay the pang of famine! Instinctively I turned my face again to
the village; I found the shop again, and I went in; and though others
were there besides the woman I ventured the request—“Would she give me
a roll for this handkerchief?”
She looked at me with evident suspicion: “Nay, she never sold stuff i’
that way.”
Almost desperate, I asked for half a cake; she again refused. “How
could she tell where I had got the handkerchief?” she said.
“Would she take my gloves?”
“No! what could she do with them?”
Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say there is
enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I
can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral
degradation, blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a
recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on. I blamed none of those who
repulsed me. I felt it was what was to be expected, and what could not
be helped: an ordinary beggar is frequently an object of suspicion; a
well-dressed beggar inevitably so. To be sure, what I begged was
employment; but whose business was it to provide me with employment?
Not, certainly, that of persons who saw me then for the first time, and
who knew nothing about my character. And as to the woman who would not
take my handkerchief in exchange for her bread, why, she was right, if
the offer appeared to her sinister or the exchange unprofitable. Let me
condense now. I am sick of the subject.
A little before dark I passed a farm-house, at the open door of which
the farmer was sitting, eating his supper of bread and cheese. I
stopped and said—
“Will you give me a piece of bread? for I am very hungry.” He cast on
me a glance of surprise; but without answering, he cut a thick slice
from his loaf, and gave it to me. I imagine he did not think I was a
beggar, but only an eccentric sort of lady, who had taken a fancy to
his brown loaf. As soon as I was out of sight of his house, I sat down
and ate it.
I could not hope to get a lodging under a roof, and sought it in the
wood I have before alluded to. But my night was wretched, my rest
broken: the ground was damp, the air cold: besides, intruders passed
near me more than once, and I had again and again to change my
quarters: no sense of safety or tranquillity befriended me. Towards
morning it rained; the whole of the following day was wet. Do not ask
me, reader, to give a minute account of that day; as before, I sought
work; as before, I was repulsed; as before, I starved; but once did
food pass my lips. At the door of a cottage I saw a little girl about
to throw a mess of cold porridge into a pig trough. “Will you give me
that?” I asked.
“Will you give me that?” I asked
She stared at me. “Mother!” she exclaimed, “there is a woman wants me
to give her these porridge.”
“Well lass,” replied a voice within, “give it her if she’s a beggar. T’
pig doesn’t want it.”
The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured it
ravenously.
As the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary bridle-path,
which I had been pursuing an hour or more.
“My strength is quite failing me,” I said in a soliloquy. “I feel I
cannot go much farther. Shall I be an outcast again this night? While
the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched ground?
I fear I cannot do otherwise: for who will receive me? But it will be
very dreadful, with this feeling of hunger, faintness, chill, and this
sense of desolation—this total prostration of hope. In all likelihood,
though, I should die before morning. And why cannot I reconcile myself
to the prospect of death? Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life?
Because I know, or believe, Mr. Rochester is living: and then, to die
of want and cold is a fate to which nature cannot submit passively. Oh,
Providence! sustain me a little longer! Aid!—direct me!”
My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape. I saw I had
strayed far from the village: it was quite out of sight. The very
cultivation surrounding it had disappeared. I had, by cross-ways and
by-paths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland; and now, only a
few fields, almost as wild and unproductive as the heath from which
they were scarcely reclaimed, lay between me and the dusky hill.
“Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented
road,” I reflected. “And far better that crows and ravens—if any ravens
there be in these regions—should pick my flesh from my bones, than that
they should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin and moulder in a pauper’s
grave.”
To the hill, then, I turned. I reached it. It remained now only to find
a hollow where I could lie down, and feel at least hidden, if not
secure. But all the surface of the waste looked level. It showed no
variation but of tint: green, where rush and moss overgrew the marshes;
black, where the dry soil bore only heath. Dark as it was getting, I
could still see these changes, though but as mere alternations of light
and shade; for colour had faded with the daylight.
My eye still roved over the sullen swell and along the moor-edge,
vanishing amidst the wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far in
among the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up. “That is an _ignis
fatuus_,” was my first thought; and I expected it would soon vanish. It
burnt on, however, quite steadily, neither receding nor advancing. “Is
it, then, a bonfire just kindled?” I questioned. I watched to see
whether it would spread: but no; as it did not diminish, so it did not
enlarge. “It may be a candle in a house,” I then conjectured; “but if
so, I can never reach it. It is much too far away: and were it within a
yard of me, what would it avail? I should but knock at the door to have
it shut in my face.”
And I sank down where I stood, and hid my face against the ground. I
lay still a while: the night-wind swept over the hill and over me, and
died moaning in the distance; the rain fell fast, wetting me afresh to
the skin. Could I but have stiffened to the still frost—the friendly
numbness of death—it might have pelted on; I should not have felt it;
but my yet living flesh shuddered at its chilling influence. I rose ere
long.
The light was yet there, shining dim but constant through the rain. I
tried to walk again: I dragged my exhausted limbs slowly towards it. It
led me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog, which would have been
impassable in winter, and was splashy and shaking even now, in the
height of summer. Here I fell twice; but as often I rose and rallied my
faculties. This light was my forlorn hope: I must gain it.
Having crossed the marsh, I saw a trace of white over the moor. I
approached it; it was a road or a track: it led straight up to the
light, which now beamed from a sort of knoll, amidst a clump of
trees—firs, apparently, from what I could distinguish of the character
of their forms and foliage through the gloom. My star vanished as I
drew near: some obstacle had intervened between me and it. I put out my
hand to feel the dark mass before me: I discriminated the rough stones
of a low wall—above it, something like palisades, and within, a high
and prickly hedge. I groped on. Again a whitish object gleamed before
me: it was a gate—a wicket; it moved on its hinges as I touched it. On
each side stood a sable bush—holly or yew.
Entering the gate and passing the shrubs, the silhouette of a house
rose to view, black, low, and rather long; but the guiding light shone
nowhere. All was obscurity. Were the inmates retired to rest? I feared
it must be so. In seeking the door, I turned an angle: there shot out
the friendly gleam again, from the lozenged panes of a very small
latticed window, within a foot of the ground, made still smaller by the
growth of ivy or some other creeping plant, whose leaves clustered
thick over the portion of the house wall in which it was set. The
aperture was so screened and narrow, that curtain or shutter had been
deemed unnecessary; and when I stooped down and put aside the spray of
foliage shooting over it, I could see all within. I could see clearly a
room with a sanded floor, clean scoured; a dresser of walnut, with
pewter plates ranged in rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a
glowing peat-fire. I could see a clock, a white deal table, some
chairs. The candle, whose ray had been my beacon, burnt on the table;
and by its light an elderly woman, somewhat rough-looking, but
scrupulously clean, like all about her, was knitting a stocking.
I noticed these objects cursorily only—in them there was nothing
extraordinary. A group of more interest appeared near the hearth,
sitting still amidst the rosy peace and warmth suffusing it. Two young,
graceful women—ladies in every point—sat, one in a low rocking-chair,
the other on a lower stool; both wore deep mourning of crape and
bombazeen, which sombre garb singularly set off very fair necks and
faces: a large old pointer dog rested its massive head on the knee of
one girl—in the lap of the other was cushioned a black cat.
A strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants! Who were
they? They could not be the daughters of the elderly person at the
table; for she looked like a rustic, and they were all delicacy and
cultivation. I had nowhere seen such faces as theirs: and yet, as I
gazed on them, I seemed intimate with every lineament. I cannot call
them handsome—they were too pale and grave for the word: as they each
bent over a book, they looked thoughtful almost to severity. A stand
between them supported a second candle and two great volumes, to which
they frequently referred, comparing them, seemingly, with the smaller
books they held in their hands, like people consulting a dictionary to
aid them in the task of translation. This scene was as silent as if all
the figures had been shadows and the firelit apartment a picture: so
hushed was it, I could hear the cinders fall from the grate, the clock
tick in its obscure corner; and I even fancied I could distinguish the
click-click of the woman’s knitting-needles. When, therefore, a voice
broke the strange stillness at last, it was audible enough to me.
“Listen, Diana,” said one of the absorbed students; “Franz and old
Daniel are together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream
from which he has awakened in terror—listen!” And in a low voice she
read something, of which not one word was intelligible to me; for it
was in an unknown tongue—neither French nor Latin. Whether it were
Greek or German I could not tell.
“That is strong,” she said, when she had finished: “I relish it.” The
other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated,
while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read. At a later
day, I knew the language and the book; therefore, I will here quote the
line: though, when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on
sounding brass to me—conveying no meaning:—
“‘Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.’ Good! good!”
she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled. “There you have a
dim and mighty archangel fitly set before you! The line is worth a
hundred pages of fustian. ‘Ich wäge die Gedanken in der Schale meines
Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.’ I like it!”
Both were again silent.