Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Deluxe Edition Chapter 1.

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had
been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the
morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company,
dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so
sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out door exercise
was now out of the question.


I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly
afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight,
with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings
of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical
inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.


The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round
their mama in the drawing room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the
fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither
quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had
dispensed from joining the group; saying, "She regretted to be
under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until
she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation,
that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable
and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner
something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were she
really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented,
happy, little children." "What does Bessie say I have done?" I asked.

"Jane, I don't like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something
truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be
seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent."
A breakfast room adjoined the drawing room, I slipped in there. It
contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking
care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into
the window seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross legged, like
a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I
was shrined in double retirement.


Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the
left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating
me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over
the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon.
Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of
wet lawn and storm beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away
wildly before a long and lamentable blast.


I returned to my book Bewick's history of British Birds: the
letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and
yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I
could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of
the haunts of sea fowl; of "the solitary rocks and promontories"
by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles
from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape


"Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides."




Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of
Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland,
with "the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions
of dreary space, that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm
fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed
in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre
the multiplied rigours of extreme cold." Of these death white realms
I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half comprehended
notions that float dim through children's brains, but strangely
impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected
themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance
to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the
broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly
moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking.


I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard,
with its inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low
horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly risen crescent,
attesting the hour of eventide. The two ships becalmed
on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine phantoms.


The fiend pinning down the thief's pack behind him, I passed over
quickly: it was an object of terror.So was the black horned thing seated
aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows.
Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped
understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting:
as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter
evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having
brought her ironing table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us
to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed's lace frills, and
crimped her nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages
of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads;
or (as at a later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela,
and Henry, Earl of Moreland.


With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my
way. I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon.
The breakfast room door opened.

"Boh! Madam Mope!" cried the voice of John Reed; then he paused:
he found the room apparently empty. "Where the dickens is she!" he
continued. "Lizzy! Georgy! (calling to his sisters) Joan is
not here: tell mama she is run out into the rain bad animal!"



"It is well I drew the curtain," thought I; and I wished fervently
he might not discover my hiding place: nor would John Reed have
found it out himself; he was not quick either of vision or conception;
but Eliza just put her head in at the door, and said at once
"She is in the window seat, to be sure, Jack." And I
came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being
dragged forth by the said Jack.


"What do you want?" I asked, with awkward diffidence.
"Say, 'What do you want, Master Reed?'" was the answer. "I want
you to come here;" and seating himself in an arm chair, he intimated
by a gesture that I was to approach and stand before him.

John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older
than I, for I was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a
dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage,
heavy limbs and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually
at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared
eye and flabby cheeks. He ought now to have been at school; but
his mama had taken him home for a month or two, "on account of his
delicate health." Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed that he would
do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from
home; but the mother's heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and
inclined rather to the more refined idea that John's sallowness
was owing to over application and, perhaps, to pining after home.


John had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and
an antipathy to me. He bullied and punished me; not two or three
times in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually:
every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones
shrank when he came near. There were moments when I was bewildered
by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against
either his menaces or his inflictions; the servants did not like to
offend their young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs.
Reed was blind and deaf on the subject: she never saw him strike
or heard him abuse me, though he did both now and then in her very
presence, more frequently, however, behind her back.


Habitually obedient to John, I came up to his chair: he spent
some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he
could without damaging the roots: I knew he would soon strike,
and while dreading the blow, I mused on the disgusting and ugly
appearance of him who would presently deal it. I wonder if he
read that notion in my face; for, all at once, without speaking,
he struck suddenly and strongly. I tottered, and on regaining my
equilibrium retired back a step or two from his chair.


"That is for your impudence in answering mama awhile since," said
he, "and for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains, and for the
look you had in your eyes two minutes since, you rat!" Accustomed
to John Reed's abuse, I never had an idea of replying to it; my care
was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the insult.
"What were you doing behind the curtain?" he asked. "I was reading."
"Show the book." I returned to the window and fetched it thence.

"You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama
says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to
beg, and not to live here with gentlemen's children like us, and
eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama's expense.
Now, I'll teach you to rummage my bookshelves: for they ARE mine;
all the house belongs to me, or will do in a few years. Go and
stand by the door, out of the way of the mirror and the windows."


I did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when
I saw him lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I
instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm: not soon enough,
however; the volume was flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my
head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was
sharp: my terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded.


"Wicked and cruel boy!" I said. "You are like a murderer you
are like a slave driver you are like the Roman emperors! "I had
read Goldsmith's history of Rome, and had formed my opinion
of Nero, Caligula, etc. Also I had drawn parallels in silence,
which I never thought thus to have declared aloud. "What!
what!" he cried. "Did she say that to me? Did you hear
her, Eliza and Georgiana? Won't I tell mama? but first"

He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder:
he had closed with a desperate thing. I really saw in him a tyrant,
a murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle
down my neck, and was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering: these
sensations for the time predominated over fear, and I received him
in frantic sort. I don't very well know what I did with my hands,
but he called me "Rat! Rat!" and bellowed out aloud. Aid was
near him: Eliza and Georgiana had run for Mrs. Reed, who was gone
upstairs: she now came upon the scene, followed by Bessie and her
maid Abbot. We were parted: I heard the words "Dear! dear! What a
fury to fly at Master John!" "Did ever anybody see such a picture
of passion!" Then Mrs. Reed subjoined. "Take her away
to the red room, and lock her in there." Four hands
were immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Deluxe Edition Chapter 2.>