Chapter 02 (Jane Eyre (Full Cast))

01Chapter Two of Jane Eyre.

02This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

03Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

04Chapter Two.

05I resisted all the way.

06A new thing for me, and a circumstance which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bassie and Miss Abbott were disposed to entertain of me.

07The fact is, I was a trifle beside myself, or rather out of myself, as the French would say.

08I was conscious that a moment's mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and like any other rebel slave I felt resolved in my desperation to go all lengths.

09Hold her arms, Miss Abbott.

10She's like a mad cat.

11For shame, for shame, cried the lady's maid.

12What shocking conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress's son, your young master.

13Master?

14How is he my master?

15Am I a servant?

16No, you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep.

17There, sit down, and think over your wickedness.

18They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs.

19Reed, and had thrust me upon a stool.

20My impulse was to rise from it like a spring.

21Their two pair of hands arrested me instantly.

22If you don't sit still, you must be tied down, said Bessie.

23Miss Abbott, lend me your garters.

24She would break mine directly.

25Miss Abbott turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature.

26This preparation for bonds and the additional ignominy it inferred took a little of the excitement out of me.

27Don't take them off, I cried.

28I will not stir.

29In guarantee whereof, I attached myself to my seat by my hands.

30Mind you don't, said Bessie.

31And when she had ascertained that I was really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me.

32Then she and Miss Abbott stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as incredulous of my sanity.

33Miss Abbott, she never did so before, at last, said Bessie, turning to the Abigail.

34But it was always in her, was the reply.

35I've told Mrs.

36oft my opinion about the child, and Mrs.

37agree with me.

38She's an underhand little thing.

39I never saw a girl of her age, with so much cover.

40Bessie answered not, but ere long, addressing me, she said, You ought to be aware, miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs.

41Reed.

42She keeps you.

43If she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poorhouse.

44I had nothing to say to these words.

45They were not new to me.

46My very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind.

47This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear.

48Very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible.

49Miss Abbott joined in.

50And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Mrs.

51Reed and Master Reed, because Mrs.

52kindly allows you to be brought up with them.

53They will have a great deal of money, and you will have none.

54It is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to them.

55What we tell you is for your good, added Bessie, in no harsh voice.

56You should try to be youthful and pleasant.

57Then, perhaps, you would have a home here.

58But if you become passionate and rude, Mrs.

59will send you away, I am sure.

60Besides, said Miss Abbott, God will punish her.

61He might strike her dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then, where would she go?

62Come, Bessie, we will leave her.

63I wouldn't have a heart for anything.

64Say your prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself.

65For if you don't repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away.

66They went, shutting the door and locking it behind them.

67The red room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in.

68I might say never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it contained.

69Yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion.

70A bed, supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre.

71The two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and folds of similar drapery.

72The carpet was red.

73The table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth.

74The walls were a soft fawn colour, with a blush of pink in it.

75The wardrobe, the toilet table, the chairs, were of darkly polished old mahogany.

76Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane.

77Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair, near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it, and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.

78This room was chill because it seldom had a fire.

79It was silent because remote from the nursery and kitchen, solemn because it was known to be so seldom entered.

80The housemaid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors in the furniture a week's quiet dust.

81And Mrs.

82Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored diverse parchments, her jewel casket, and a miniature of her deceased husband.

83And in those last words lies the secret of the red room, the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.

84Mr.

85Reed had been dead nine years.

86It was in this chamber he breathed his last.

87Here he lay in state.

88Hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker's men, and since that day a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion.

89My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbott had left me riveted, was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece.

90The bed rose before me.

91To my right hand there was the high dark wardrobe, with subdued broken flexions faring the gloss of its panels.

92To my left were the muffled windows.

93A great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty of the bed and room.

94I was not quite sure whether they had locked the door, and when I dared move I got up and went to see.

95Alas, yes!

96No jail was ever more secure.

97Returning I had to cross before the looking-glass.

98My fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed.

99All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality, and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit.

100I thought it, like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie's evening stories represented as coming out of lone ferny dells and moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travellers.

101I returned to my stool.

102Superstition was with me at that moment.

103But it was not yet her hour for complete victory.

104My blood was still warm.

105The mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with his bitter vigour.

106I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present.

107All John Reed's violent tyrannies, all his sister's proud indifference, all his mother's aversion, all the servant's partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well.

108Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned?

109Why could I never please?

110Why was it useless to try to win anyone's favour?

111Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected.

112Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged.

113Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault.

114John no one thwarted, much less punished, though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks, set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory.

115He called his mother, Old girl, too, sometimes reviled her for a dark skin similar to his own, bluntly disregarded her wishes, not unfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire, and he was still...

116Her own darling!

117I dared commit no fault.

118I strove to fulfil every duty, and I was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking from morning to noon, and from noon to night.

119My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received.

120No one had reproved John for wantonly striking me, and because I had turned against him to avert further irrational violence, I was loaded with general opprobrium.

121Un-just!

122Un-just!

123said my reason, forced by the agonizing stimulus into precocious though transitory power.

124And resolve equally wrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression, as running away, or if that could not be effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.

125What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon!

126How all my brain was in tumult, and my heart in insurrection!

127Yet in what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought?

128I could not answer the ceaseless inward question, why I thus suffered.

129Now, at the distance of—I will not say how many years—I see it clearly.

130I was a discord in Gateshead Hall.

131I was like nobody there.

132I had nothing in harmony with Mrs.

133Reed or her children or her chosen vassalage.

134If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them.

135They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathize with one amongst them.

136A heterogeneous thing.

137Opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities.

138A useless thing.

139Incapable of serving their interest or adding to their pleasure.

140A noxious thing.

141Cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment.

142Of contempt of the judgment.

143I know that had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child, though equally dependent and friendless, Mrs.

144Reed would have endured my presence more complacently.

145Her children would have entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling.

146The servants would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.

147Daylight began to forsake the red room.

148It was past four o'clock, and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight.

149I heard the rain still beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind howling in the grove behind the hall.

150I grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then my courage sank.

151My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire.

152All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so.

153What thought had I been but just conceiving of, starving myself to death?

154That certainly was a crime, and was I fit to die?

155Or was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting boon?

156In such vault, I had been told, did Mr.

157Reed lie buried?

158And led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with gathering dread.

159I could not remember him.

160But I knew that he was my own uncle, my mother's brother, that he had taken me when a parentless infant to his house, and that in his last moments he had required a promise of Mrs.

161Reed, that she would rear and maintain me as one of her own children.

162Mrs.

163Reed probably considered she had kept this promise.

164And so she had, I dare say, as well as her nature would permit her.

165But how could she really like an interloper not of her race, and unconnected with her after her husband's death by any tie?

166It must have been most irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of parent to a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her own family group.

167A singular notion dawned upon me.

168I doubted not, never doubted, that if Mr.

169Reed had been alive, he would have treated me kindly.

170And now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls, occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaming mirror, I began to recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed.

171And I thought Mr.

172Reed's spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his sister's child, might quit its abode, whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed, and rise before me in this chamber.

173I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or licit from the gloom some hallowed face bending over me with strange pity.

174This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realized.

175With all my might I endeavored to stifle it.

176I endeavored to be firm.

177Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room.

178At this moment a light gleamed on the wall.

179Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind?

180No, moonlight was still, and this stirred.

181While I gazed it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head.

182I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by someone across the lawn.

183But then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world.

184My heart beat thick.

185My head grew hot.

186A sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings.

187Something seemed near me.

188I was oppressed, suffocated.

189Endurance broke down.

190I rushed the door and shook the lock in desperate effort.

191Steps came running along the outer passage.

192The key turned.

193Bessie and Abbott entered.

194Miss Eyre, are you ill?

195said Bessie.

196What a dreadful noise!

197It went quite through me, exclaimed Abbott.

198Take me out!

199Let me go into the nursery!

200was my cry.

201What for?

202Are you hurt?

203Have you seen something?

204again demanded Bessie.

205Oh, I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come.

206I had now got hold of Bessie's hand, and she did not snatch it from me.

207She has screamed on purpose, declared Abbott, in some disgust.

208And what a scream!

209If she had been in great pain, one would have excused it.

210But she only wanted to bring us all here, and know her naughty tricks.

211What is all this?

212demanded another voice peremptorily, and Mrs.

213Reed came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling stormily.

214Abbott and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre should be left in the red room till I came to her myself.

215Miss Jane screamed so loud, ma'am, pleaded Bessie.

216Let her go!

217was the only answer.

218Loose Bessie's hand, child.

219You cannot succeed in getting out by this means.

220Be short!

221I abhor artifice, particularly in children.

222It is my duty to show you that tricks will not answer.

223You will now stare here an hour longer, and it is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you then.

224Oh, aunt, have pity!

225Forgive me!

226I cannot endure it!

227Let me be punished some other way!

228I shall be killed if— Silence!

229This violence is almost repulsive!

230And so, no doubt, she felt it.

231I was a precocious actress in her eyes.

232She sincerely looked on me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous duplicity.

233Bessie and Abbott having retreated, Mrs.

234Reed, impatient of my now frantic anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked me in without further parley.

235I heard her sweeping away, and soon after she was gone, I suppose I had a species of fit.

236Unconsciousness closed the scene.

237End of chapter 2 End of chapter 2