CHAPTER IV

From my discourse with Mr. Lloyd, and from the above reported conference
between Bessie and Abbot, I gathered enough of hope to suffice as a motive for
wishing to get well: a change seemed near,—I desired and waited it in silence.
It tarried, however: days and weeks passed: I had regained my normal state of
health, but no new allusion was made to the subject over which I brooded. Mrs.
Reed surveyed me at times with a severe eye, but seldom addressed me: since my
illness, she had drawn a more marked line of separation than ever between me
and her own children; appointing me a small closet to sleep in by myself,
condemning me to take my meals alone, and pass all my time in the nursery,
while my cousins were constantly in the drawing-room. Not a hint, however, did
she drop about sending me to school: still I felt an instinctive certainty that
she would not long endure me under the same roof with her; for her glance, now
more than ever, when turned on me, expressed an insuperable and rooted
aversion.

Eliza and Georgiana, evidently acting according to orders, spoke to me as
little as possible: John thrust his tongue in his cheek whenever he saw me, and
once attempted chastisement; but as I instantly turned against him, roused by
the same sentiment of deep ire and desperate revolt which had stirred my
corruption before, he thought it better to desist, and ran from me uttering
execrations, and vowing I had burst his nose. I had indeed levelled at that
prominent feature as hard a blow as my knuckles could inflict; and when I saw
that either that or my look daunted him, I had the greatest inclination to
follow up my advantage to purpose; but he was already with his mama. I heard
him in a blubbering tone commence the tale 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; I do not choose that either you or your sisters should
associate with her.”

Here, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly, and without at all
deliberating on my words—

“They are not fit to associate with me.”

Mrs. Reed was rather a stout woman; but, on hearing this strange and audacious
declaration, she ran nimbly up the stair, swept me like a whirlwind into the
nursery, and crushing me down on the edge of my crib, dared me in an emphatic
voice to rise from that place, or utter one syllable during the remainder of
the day.

“What would Uncle Reed say to you, if he were alive?” was my scarcely voluntary
demand. I say scarcely voluntary, for it seemed as if my tongue pronounced
words without my will consenting to their utterance: something spoke out of me
over which I had no control.

“What?” said Mrs. Reed under her breath: her usually cold composed grey eye
became troubled with a look like fear; 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.

“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 rallied her spirits: she shook me most soundly, she boxed both
my ears, and then left me without a word. Bessie supplied the hiatus by a
homily of an hour’s length, in which she proved beyond a doubt that I was the
most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a roof. I half believed her;
for I felt indeed only bad feelings surging in my breast.

November, December, and half of January passed away. Christmas and the New Year
had been celebrated at Gateshead with the usual festive cheer; presents had
been interchanged, dinners and evening parties given. From every enjoyment I
was, of course, excluded: my share of the gaiety consisted in witnessing the
daily apparelling of Eliza and Georgiana, and seeing them descend to the
drawing-room, dressed out in thin muslin frocks and scarlet sashes, with hair
elaborately ringletted; and afterwards, in listening to the sound of the piano
or the harp played below, to the passing to and fro of the butler and footman,
to the jingling of glass and china as refreshments were handed, to the broken
hum of conversation as the drawing-room door opened and closed. When tired of
this occupation, I would retire from the stairhead to the solitary and silent
nursery: there, though somewhat sad, I was not miserable. To speak truth, I had
not the least wish to go into company, for in company I was very rarely
noticed; and if Bessie had but been kind and companionable, I should have
deemed it a treat to spend the evenings quietly with her, instead of passing
them under the formidable eye of Mrs. Reed, in a room full of ladies and
gentlemen. But Bessie, as soon as she had dressed her young ladies, used to
take herself off to the lively regions of the kitchen and housekeeper’s room,
generally bearing the candle along with her. I then sat with my doll on my knee
till the fire got low, glancing round occasionally to make sure that nothing
worse than myself haunted the shadowy room; and when the embers sank to a dull
red, I undressed hastily, tugging at knots and strings as I best might, and
sought shelter from cold and darkness in my crib. To this crib I always took my
doll; human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects
of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded
graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to remember
with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy, half fancying it alive
and capable of sensation. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my
night-gown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy,
believing it to be happy likewise.

Long did the hours seem while I waited the departure of the company, and
listened for the sound of Bessie’s step on the stairs: sometimes she would come
up in the interval to seek her thimble or her scissors, or perhaps to bring me
something by way of supper—a bun or a cheese-cake—then she would sit on the bed
while I ate it, and when I had finished, she would tuck the clothes round me,
and twice she kissed me, and said, “Good night, Miss Jane.” When thus gentle,
Bessie seemed to me the best, prettiest, kindest being in the world; and I
wished most intensely that she would always be so pleasant and amiable, and
never push me about, or scold, or task me unreasonably, as she was too often
wont to do. Bessie Lee must, I think, have been a girl of good natural
capacity, for she was smart in all she did, and had a remarkable knack of
narrative; so, at least, I judge from the impression made on me by her nursery
tales. She was pretty too, if my recollections of her face and person are
correct. I remember her as a slim young woman, with black hair, dark eyes, very
nice features, and good, clear complexion; but she had a capricious and hasty
temper, and indifferent ideas of principle or justice: still, such as she was,
I preferred her to any one else at Gateshead Hall.

It was the fifteenth of January, about nine o’clock in the morning: Bessie was
gone down to breakfast; my cousins had not yet been summoned to their mama;
Eliza was putting on her bonnet and warm garden-coat to go and feed her
poultry, an occupation of which she was fond: and not less so of selling the
eggs to the housekeeper and hoarding up the money she thus obtained. She had a
turn for traffic, and a marked propensity for saving; shown not only in the
vending of eggs and chickens, but also in driving hard bargains with the
gardener about flower-roots, seeds, and slips of plants; that functionary
having orders from Mrs. Reed to buy of his young lady all the products of her
parterre she wished to sell: and Eliza would have sold the hair off her head if
she could have made a handsome profit thereby. As to her money, she first
secreted it in odd corners, wrapped in a rag or an old curl-paper; but some of
these hoards having been discovered by the housemaid, Eliza, fearful of one day
losing her valued treasure, consented to intrust it to her mother, at a
usurious rate of interest—fifty or sixty per cent.; which interest she exacted
every quarter, keeping her accounts in a little book with anxious accuracy.

Georgiana sat on a high stool, dressing her hair at the glass, and interweaving
her curls with artificial flowers and faded feathers, of which she had found a
store in a drawer in the attic. I was making my bed, having received strict
orders from Bessie to get it arranged before she returned (for Bessie now
frequently employed me as a sort of under-nurserymaid, to tidy the room, dust
the chairs, &c.). Having spread the quilt and folded my night-dress, I went
to the window-seat to put in order some picture-books and doll’s house
furniture scattered there; an abrupt command from Georgiana to let her
playthings alone (for the tiny chairs and mirrors, the fairy plates and cups,
were her property) stopped my proceedings; and then, for lack of other
occupation, I fell to breathing on the frost-flowers with which the window was
fretted, and thus clearing a space in the glass through which I might look out
on the grounds, where all was still and petrified under the influence of a hard
frost.

From this window were visible the porter’s lodge and the carriage-road, and
just as I had dissolved so much of the silver-white foliage veiling the panes
as left room to look out, I saw the gates thrown open and a carriage roll
through. I watched it ascending the drive with indifference; carriages often
came to Gateshead, but none ever brought visitors in whom I was interested; it
stopped in front of the house, the door-bell rang loudly, the new-comer was
admitted. All this being nothing to me, my vacant attention soon found livelier
attraction in the spectacle of a little hungry robin, which came and chirruped
on the twigs of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the
casement. The remains of my breakfast of bread and milk stood on the table, and
having crumbled a morsel of roll, I was tugging at the sash to put out the
crumbs on the window-sill, when Bessie came running upstairs into the nursery.

“Miss Jane, take off your pinafore; what are you doing there? Have you washed
your hands and face this morning?” I gave another tug before I answered, for I
wanted the bird to be secure of its bread: the sash yielded; I scattered the
crumbs, some on the stone sill, some on the cherry-tree bough, then, closing
the window, I replied—

“No, Bessie; I have only just finished dusting.”

“Troublesome, careless child! and what are you doing now? You look quite red,
as if you had been about some mischief: what were you opening the window for?”

I was spared the trouble of answering, for Bessie seemed in too great a hurry
to listen to explanations; she hauled me to the washstand, inflicted a
merciless, but happily brief scrub on my face and hands with soap, water, and a
coarse towel; disciplined my head with a bristly brush, denuded me of my
pinafore, and then hurrying me to the top of the stairs, bid me go down
directly, as I was wanted in the breakfast-room.

I would have asked who wanted me: I would have demanded if Mrs. Reed was there;
but Bessie was already gone, and had closed the nursery-door upon me. I slowly
descended. For nearly three months, I had never been called to Mrs. Reed’s
presence; restricted so long to the nursery, the breakfast, dining, and
drawing-rooms were become for me awful regions, on which it dismayed me to
intrude.

I now stood in the empty hall; before me was the breakfast-room door, and I
stopped, intimidated and trembling. What a miserable little poltroon had fear,
engendered of unjust punishment, made of me in those days! I feared to return
to the nursery, and feared to go forward to the parlour; ten minutes I stood in
agitated hesitation; the vehement ringing of the breakfast-room bell decided
me; I must enter.
must
“Who could want me?” I asked inwardly, as with both hands I turned the stiff
door-handle, which, for a second or two, resisted my efforts. “What should I
see besides Aunt Reed in the apartment?—a man or a woman?” The handle turned,
the door unclosed, and passing through and curtseying low, I looked up at—a
black pillar!—such, at least, appeared to me, at first sight, the straight,
narrow, sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug: the grim face at the top
was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft by way of capital.

Mrs. Reed occupied her usual seat by the fireside; she made a signal to me to
approach; I did so, and she introduced me to the stony stranger with the words:
“This is the little girl respecting whom I applied to you.”

He, for it was a man, turned his head slowly towards where I stood, and
having examined me with the two inquisitive-looking grey eyes which twinkled
under a pair of bushy brows, said solemnly, and in a bass voice, “Her size is
small: what is her age?”
He
“Ten years.”

“So much?” was the doubtful answer; and he prolonged his scrutiny for some
minutes. Presently he addressed me—“Your name, little girl?”

“Jane Eyre, sir.”

In uttering these words I looked up: he seemed to me a tall gentleman; but then
I was very little; his features were large, and they and all the lines of his
frame were equally harsh and prim.

“Well, Jane Eyre, and are you a good child?”

Impossible to reply to this in the affirmative: my little world held a contrary
opinion: I was silent. Mrs. Reed answered for me by an expressive shake of the
head, adding soon, “Perhaps the less said on that subject the better, Mr.
Brocklehurst.”

“Sorry indeed to hear it! she and I must have some talk;” and bending from the
perpendicular, he installed his person in the arm-chair opposite Mrs. Reed’s.
“Come here,” he said.

I stepped across the rug; he placed me square and straight before him. What a
face he had, now that it was almost on a level with mine! what a great nose!
and what a mouth! and what large prominent teeth!

“No sight so sad as that of a naughty child,” he began, “especially a naughty
little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?”

“They go to hell,” was my ready and orthodox answer.

“And what is hell? Can you tell me that?”

“A pit full of fire.”

“And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?”

“No, sir.”

“What must you do to avoid it?”

I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: “I must
keep in good health, and not die.”

“How can you keep in good health? Children younger than you die daily. I buried
a little child of five years old only a day or two since,—a good little child,
whose soul is now in heaven. It is to be feared the same could not be said of
you were you to be called hence.”

Not being in a condition to remove his doubt, I only cast my eyes down on the
two large feet planted on the rug, and sighed, wishing myself far enough away.

“I hope that sigh is from the heart, and that you repent of ever having been
the occasion of discomfort to your excellent benefactress.”

“Benefactress! benefactress!” said I inwardly: “they all call Mrs. Reed my
benefactress; if so, a benefactress is a disagreeable thing.”

“Do you say your prayers night and morning?” continued my interrogator.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you read your Bible?”

“Sometimes.”

“With pleasure? Are you fond of it?”

“I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel, and a
little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job and
Jonah.”

“And the Psalms? I hope you like them?”

“No, sir.”

“No? oh, shocking! I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms
by heart: and when you ask him which he would rather have, a gingerbread-nut to
eat or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: ‘Oh! the verse of a Psalm! angels
sing Psalms;’ says he, ‘I wish to be a little angel here below;’ he then gets
two nuts in recompense for his infant piety.”

“Psalms are not interesting,” I remarked.

“That proves you have a wicked heart; and you must pray to God to change it: to
give you a new and clean one: to take away your heart of stone and give you a
heart of flesh.”

I was about to propound a question, touching the manner in which that operation
of changing my heart was to be performed, when Mrs. Reed interposed, telling me
to sit down; she then proceeded to carry on the conversation herself.

“Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe I intimated in the letter which I wrote to you
three weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite the character and
disposition I could wish: should you admit her into Lowood school, I should be
glad if the superintendent and teachers were requested to keep a strict eye on
her, and, above all, to guard against her worst fault, a tendency to deceit. I
mention this in your hearing, Jane, that you may not attempt to impose on Mr.
Brocklehurst.”

Well might I dread, well might I dislike Mrs. Reed; for it was her nature to
wound me cruelly; never was I happy in her presence; however carefully I
obeyed, however strenuously I strove to please her, my efforts were still
repulsed and repaid by such sentences as the above. Now, uttered before a
stranger, the accusation cut me to the heart; I dimly perceived that she was
already obliterating hope from the new phase of existence which she destined me
to enter; I felt, though I could not have expressed the feeling, that she was
sowing aversion and unkindness along my future path; I saw myself transformed
under Mr. Brocklehurst’s eye into an artful, noxious child, and what could I do
to remedy the injury?

“Nothing, indeed,” thought I, as I struggled to repress a sob, and hastily
wiped away some tears, the impotent evidences of my anguish.

“Deceit is, indeed, a sad fault in a child,” said Mr. Brocklehurst; “it is akin
to falsehood, and all liars will have their portion in the lake burning with
fire and brimstone; she shall, however, be watched, Mrs. Reed. I will speak to
Miss Temple and the teachers.”

“I should wish her to be brought up in a manner suiting her prospects,”
continued my benefactress; “to be made useful, to be kept humble: as for the
vacations, she will, with your permission, spend them always at Lowood.”

“Your decisions are perfectly judicious, madam,” returned Mr. Brocklehurst.
“Humility is a Christian grace, and one peculiarly appropriate to the pupils of
Lowood; I, therefore, direct that especial care shall be bestowed on its
cultivation amongst them. I have studied how best to mortify in them the
worldly sentiment of pride; and, only the other day, I had a pleasing proof of
my success. My second daughter, Augusta, went with her mama to visit the
school, and on her return she exclaimed: ‘Oh, dear papa, how quiet and plain
all the girls at Lowood look, with their hair combed behind their ears, and
their long pinafores, and those little holland pockets outside their
frocks—they are almost like poor people’s children! and,’ said she, ‘they
looked at my dress and mama’s, as if they had never seen a silk gown before.’”

“This is the state of things I quite approve,” returned Mrs. Reed; “had I
sought all England over, I could scarcely have found a system more exactly
fitting a child like Jane Eyre. Consistency, my dear Mr. Brocklehurst; I
advocate consistency in all things.”

“Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties; and it has been observed
in every arrangement connected with the establishment of Lowood: plain fare,
simple attire, unsophisticated accommodations, hardy and active habits; such is
the order of the day in the house and its inhabitants.”

“Quite right, sir. I may then depend upon this child being received as a pupil
at Lowood, and there being trained in conformity to her position and
prospects?”

“Madam, you may: she shall be placed in that nursery of chosen plants, and I
trust she will show herself grateful for the inestimable privilege of her
election.”

“I will send her, then, as soon as possible, Mr. Brocklehurst; for, I assure
you, I feel anxious to be relieved of a responsibility that was becoming too
irksome.”

“No doubt, no doubt, madam; and now I wish you good morning. I shall return to
Brocklehurst Hall in the course of a week or two: my good friend, the
Archdeacon, will not permit me to leave him sooner. I shall send Miss Temple
notice that she is to expect a new girl, so that there will be no difficulty
about receiving her. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Brocklehurst; remember me to Mrs. and Miss Brocklehurst, and to
Augusta and Theodore, and Master Broughton Brocklehurst.”

“I will, madam. Little girl, here is a book entitled the ‘Child’s Guide’; read
it with prayer, especially that part containing ‘An account of the awfully
sudden death of Martha G——, a naughty child addicted to falsehood and deceit.’”

With these words Mr. Brocklehurst put into my hand a thin pamphlet sewn in a
cover, and having rung for his carriage, he departed.

Mrs. Reed and I were left alone: some minutes passed in silence; she was
sewing, I was watching her. Mrs. Reed might be at that time some six or seven
and thirty; she was a woman of robust frame, square-shouldered and
strong-limbed, not tall, and, though stout, not obese: she had a somewhat large
face, the under jaw being much developed and very solid; her brow was low, her
chin large and prominent, mouth and nose sufficiently regular; under her light
eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth; her skin was dark and opaque, her
hair nearly flaxen; her constitution was sound as a bell—illness never came
near her; she was an exact, clever manager; her household and tenantry were
thoroughly under her control; her children only at times defied her authority
and laughed it to scorn; she dressed well, and had a presence and port
calculated to set off handsome attire.

Sitting on a low stool, a few yards from her arm-chair, I examined her figure;
I perused her features. In my hand I held the tract containing the sudden death
of the Liar, to which narrative my attention had been pointed as to an
appropriate warning. What had just passed; what Mrs. Reed had said concerning
me to Mr. Brocklehurst; the whole tenor of their conversation, was recent, raw,
and stinging in my mind; I had felt every word as acutely as I had heard it
plainly, and a passion of resentment fomented now within me.

Mrs. Reed looked up from her work; her eye settled on mine, her fingers at the
same time suspended their nimble movements.

“Go out of the room; return to the nursery,” was her mandate. My look or
something else must have struck her as offensive, for she spoke with extreme
though suppressed irritation. I got up, I went to the door; I came back again;
I walked to the window, across the room, then close up to her.

Speak I must: I had been trodden on severely, and must turn: but
how? What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist? I gathered my
energies and launched them in this blunt sentence—
Speakmust
“I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare
I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John
Reed; and this book about the liar, you may give to your girl, Georgiana, for
it is she who tells lies, and not I.”
you;
Mrs. Reed’s hands still lay on her work inactive: her eye of ice continued to
dwell freezingly on mine.

“What more have you to say?” she asked, rather in the tone in which a person
might address an opponent of adult age than such as is ordinarily used to a
child.

That eye of hers, that voice stirred every antipathy I had. Shaking from head
to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement, I continued—

“I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as
long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one
asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of
you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.”

“How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?”

“How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth. You think I
have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I
cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall remember how you thrust me
back—roughly and violently thrust me back—into the red-room, and locked me up
there, to my dying day; though I was in agony; though I cried out, while
suffocating with distress, ‘Have mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed!’ And that
punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me—knocked me down
for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions, this exact tale. People
think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. You are
deceitful!”
truthYou

Ere I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult, with the
strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as if an
invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for
liberty. Not without cause was this sentiment: Mrs. Reed looked frightened; her
work had slipped from her knee; she was lifting up her hands, rocking herself
to and fro, and even twisting her face as if she would cry.

“Jane, you are under a mistake: what is the matter with you? Why do you tremble
so violently? Would you like to drink some water?”

“No, Mrs. Reed.”

“Is there anything else you wish for, Jane? I assure you, I desire to be your
friend.”

“Not you. You told Mr. Brocklehurst I had a bad character, a deceitful
disposition; and I’ll let everybody at Lowood know what you are, and what you
have done.”

“Jane, you don’t understand these things: children must be corrected for their
faults.”

“Deceit is not my fault!” I cried out in a savage, high voice.

“But you are passionate, Jane, that you must allow: and now return to the
nursery—there’s a dear—and lie down a little.”

“I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for
I hate to live here.”

“I will indeed send her to school soon,” murmured Mrs. Reed sotto voce;
and gathering up her work, she abruptly quitted the apartment.
sotto voce
I was left there alone—winner of the field. It was the hardest battle I had
fought, and the first victory I had gained: I stood awhile on the rug, where
Mr. Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed my conqueror’s solitude. First, I
smiled to myself and felt elate; but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as
fast as did the accelerated throb of my pulses. A child cannot quarrel with its
elders, as I had done; cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I
had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the
chill of reaction. A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would
have been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed: the
same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented
as meetly my subsequent condition, when half-an-hour’s silence and reflection
had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness of my hated and
hating position.

Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it
seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and
corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned. Willingly would I now
have gone and asked Mrs. Reed’s pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and
partly from instinct, that was the way to make her repulse me with double
scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature.

I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking; fain
find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than that of sombre
indignation. I took a book—some Arabian tales; I sat down and endeavoured to
read. I could make no sense of the subject; my own thoughts swam always between
me and the page I had usually found fascinating. I opened the glass-door in the
breakfast-room: the shrubbery was quite still: the black frost reigned,
unbroken by sun or breeze, through the grounds. I covered my head and arms with
the skirt of my frock, and went out to walk in a part of the plantation which
was quite sequestrated; but I found no pleasure in the silent trees, the
falling fir-cones, the congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past
winds in heaps, and now stiffened together. I leaned against a gate, and looked
into an empty field where no sheep were feeding, where the short grass was
nipped and blanched. It was a very grey day; a most opaque sky, “onding on
snaw,” canopied all; thence flakes fell at intervals, which settled on the hard
path and on the hoary lea without melting. I stood, a wretched child enough,
whispering to myself over and over again, “What shall I do?—what shall I do?”

All at once I heard a clear voice call, “Miss Jane! where are you? Come to
lunch!”

It was Bessie, I knew well enough; but I did not stir; her light step came
tripping down the path.

“You naughty little thing!” she said. “Why don’t you come when you are called?”

Bessie’s presence, compared with the thoughts over which I had been brooding,
seemed cheerful; even though, as usual, she was somewhat cross. The fact is,
after my conflict with and victory over Mrs. Reed, I was not disposed to care
much for the nursemaid’s transitory anger; and I was disposed to bask in
her youthful lightness of heart. I just put my two arms round her and said,
“Come, Bessie! don’t scold.”
was
The action was more frank and fearless than any I was habituated to indulge in:
somehow it pleased her.

“You are a strange child, Miss Jane,” she said, as she looked down at me; “a
little roving, solitary thing: and you are going to school, I suppose?”

I nodded.

“And won’t you be sorry to leave poor Bessie?”

“What does Bessie care for me? She is always scolding me.”

“Because you’re such a queer, frightened, shy little thing. You should be
bolder.”

“What! to get more knocks?”

“Nonsense! But you are rather put upon, that’s certain. My mother said, when
she came to see me last week, that she would not like a little one of her own
to be in your place.—Now, come in, and I’ve some good news for you.”

“I don’t think you have, Bessie.”

“Child! what do you mean? What sorrowful eyes you fix on me! Well, but Missis
and the young ladies and Master John are going out to tea this afternoon, and
you shall have tea with me. I’ll ask cook to bake you a little cake, and then
you shall help me to look over your drawers; for I am soon to pack your trunk.
Missis intends you to leave Gateshead in a day or two, and you shall choose
what toys you like to take with you.”

“Bessie, you must promise not to scold me any more till I go.”

“Well, I will; but mind you are a very good girl, and don’t be afraid of me.
Don’t start when I chance to speak rather sharply; it’s so provoking.”

“I don’t think I shall ever be afraid of you again, Bessie, because I have got
used to you, and I shall soon have another set of people to dread.”

“If you dread them they’ll dislike you.”

“As you do, Bessie?”

“I don’t dislike you, Miss; I believe I am fonder of you than of all the
others.”

“You don’t show it.”

“You little sharp thing! you’ve got quite a new way of talking. What makes you
so venturesome and hardy?”

“Why, I shall soon be away from you, and besides”—I was going to say something
about what had passed between me and Mrs. Reed, but on second thoughts I
considered it better to remain silent on that head.

“And so you’re glad to leave me?”

“Not at all, Bessie; indeed, just now I’m rather sorry.”

“Just now! and rather! How coolly my little lady says it! I dare say now if I
were to ask you for a kiss you wouldn’t give it me: you’d say you’d
rather not.”
rather
“I’ll kiss you and welcome: bend your head down.” Bessie stooped; we mutually
embraced, and I followed her into the house quite comforted. That afternoon
lapsed in peace and harmony; and in the evening Bessie told me some of her most
enchanting stories, and sang me some of her sweetest songs. Even for me life
had its gleams of sunshine.