Chapter 01 (Jane Eyre (Full Cast))

01Chapter 1 of Jane Eyre.

02There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

03We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning.

04But since dinner, Mrs.

05Reed, 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 outdoor exercise was now out of the question.

06I was glad of it.

07I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons.

08Dreadful 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, read.

09The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mamma in the drawing-room.

10She lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her, for the time neither quarrelling nor crying, looked perfectly happy.

11Me 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 most sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner, something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were.

12She really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy little children.

13What does Bessie say I have done?

14I asked.

15Jane, I don't like cavaliers or questioners.

16Besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner.

17Be seated somewhere, and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.

18A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room.

19I slipped in there.

20It contained a book-case.

21I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures.

22I mounted into the window-seat.

23Gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged like a Turk, and, having drawn the red-marine curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement.

24Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand.

25To the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me, from the drear November day.

26At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon.

27Afar it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud.

28Near, a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.

29I returned to my book, Bewick's History of British Birds.

30The letter-press thereof I cared little for, generally speaking.

31And yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank.

32They 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 Lindernes, or Nays, 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.

33Nor could I pass unnotice the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzburg, and 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 can centre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold.

34Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own, shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that flowed dim through children's brains, but strangely impressive.

35The 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.

36I 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.

37The two ships become done at a torpid sea, I believe to be marine phantoms.

38The fiend pinning down the thief's pack behind him, I passed over quickly.

39It was an object of terror.

40So was the black-horned thing, seated aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows.

41Each picture told a story, mysterious, often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting.

42As 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.

43Reed's lace frills and crimped her night-capped borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy-tales or other ballads, or, as at a later period I discovered, from the pages of Pamela and Henry, Earl of Morland.

44With Buick on my knee I was then happy—happy at least in my way.

45I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon.

46The breakfast-room door opened.

47Boo!

48Madam Mope!

49cried the voice of John Reed.

50Then he paused.

51He found the room apparently empty.

52Where the dickens is she?

53he continued.

54Lizzy!

55Georgie!

56calling to his sisters.

57Joan is not here.

58Tell Mama she has run out into the rain.

59Bad animal!

60It is well I drew the curtain, thought I, and I wished fervently he might not discover my hiding-place.

61Nor would John Reed have found it out himself.

62He 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.

63"'What do you want?' I asked, with awkward diffidence.

64"'Say, what do you want, Master Reed?' was the answer.

65"'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.

66John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old, four years older than I, for I was but ten.

67Large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin, thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities.

68He gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks.

69He ought now to have been at school, but his mamma had taken him home for a month or two.

70"'On account of his delicate health?' Mr.

71Miles, the master, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from home.

72But 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.

73John had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and an antipathy to me.

74He bullied and punished me, not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually.

75Every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bone shrank when he came near.

76There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions.

77The servants did not like to offend their young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs.

78Reed was blind and deaf on the subject.

79She 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.

80Habitually obedient to John, I came up to his chair.

81He spent some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could without damaging the roots.

82I 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.

83I wonder if he read that notion in my face, for all at once, without speaking, he struck, suddenly and strongly.

84I tottered, and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a step or two from his chair.

85"'That is for your impudence in answering Mama a while since,' said he.

86"'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.

87My care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the insult.

88"'What were you doing behind the curtain?' he asked.

89"'I was reading.' "'Show the book!' I returned to the window and fetched it thence.

90"'You have no business to take our books.

91You are a dependent, Mama says.

92You have no money.

93Your father left you none.

94You are 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.

95Now I'll teach you to rummage my bookshelves, for they are mine.

96All the house belongs to me, or will do in a few years.

97Go and stamp at the door, out of the way of the mirror and the windows.' I did so, not at first aware what was his intention.

98But when I saw him lift and poise the book, and stand and act to hurl it, I instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm.

99Not soon enough, however.

100The volume was flung.

101It hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it.

102The cut bled.

103The pain was sharp.

104My terror had passed its climax.

105Other feelings succeeded.

106"'Wicked and cruel boy,' I said.

107"'You are like a murderer.

108You are like a slave-driver.

109You are like the Roman emperors.' I had read Goldsmith's History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of Nero, Caligula, etc.

110Also, I had drawn parallels in silence, which I never thought thus to have declared aloud.

111"'What?

112What?' he cried.

113"'Did she say that to me?

114Did you hear her, Eliza, and Georgiana?

115Won't I tell Mama?' "'But first!' He ran headlong at me.

116I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder.

117He had closed with a desperate thing.

118I really saw in him a tyrant, a murderer.

119I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck, and was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering.

120These sensations for the time predominated over fear, and I received him in frantic sort.

121I don't very well know what I did with my hands, but he called me, "'Rat!

122Rat!' and bellowed out aloud.

123Aid was near him.

124Eliza and Georgiana had run for Mrs.

125Reed, who was gone upstairs.

126She now came upon the scene, followed by Bessie and her maid, Abbott.

127We were parted.

128I heard the words, "'Dear, dear, what a fury to fly at Master John!

129Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion?' Then Mrs.

130Reed subjoined, "'Take her away to the red room, and lock her in there.' Four hands were immediately laid upon me, and I was born upstairs." End of chapter 1