Chapter 07 (Jane Eyre (Full Cast))

01Chapter 7 of Jane Eyre.

02This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

03Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

04Chapter 7.

05My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age, and not the golden age either.

06It comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in habituating myself to new rules and unwanted tasks.

07The fear of failure in these points harassed me worse than the physical hardships of my lot, though these were no trifles.

08During January, February, and part of March, the deep snows, and, after their melting, the almost impassable roads, prevented our stirring beyond the garden walls, except to go to church.

09But within these limits we had to pass an hour every day in the open air.

10Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold.

11We had no boots.

12The snow got into our shoes and melted there.

13Our ungloved hands became numbed and covered with chillblains, as were our feet.

14I remember well the distracting irritation I endured from this cause every evening, when my feet inflamed, and the torture of thrusting the swelled raw and stiff toes into my shoes in the morning.

15Then the scanty supply of food was distressing.

16With the keen appetites of growing children, we had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid.

17From this deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed hardly on the younger pupils.

18Whenever the famished great girls had an opportunity, they would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion.

19Many a time I have shared between two claimants the precious morsel of brown bread distributed at tea-time, and, after relinquishing to a third half the contents of my mug of coffee, I have swallowed the remainder with an accompaniment of secret tears, forced from me by the exigency of hunger.

20Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season.

21We had to walk two miles to Brocklebridge Church, where our patron officiated.

22We set out cold.

23We arrived at church colder.

24During the morning service we became almost paralysed.

25It was too far to return to dinner, and an allowance of cold meat and bread, and the same penurious proportion observed in our ordinary meals, were served round between the services.

26At the close of the afternoon service we returned by an exposed and hilly road, where the bitter winter wind, blowing over a range of snowy summits to the north, almost flayed the skin from our faces.

27I can remember Miss Temple walking lightly and rapidly along our drooping line.

28Her plaid cloak, which the frosty wind fluttered, gathered close about her, and encouraging us by precept and example to keep up our spirits, and march forward as she said, Like stalwart soldiers.

29The other teachers, poor things, were generally themselves too much dejected to attempt the task of cheering others.

30How we longed for the light and heat of a blazing fire when we got back!

31But, to the little ones at least, this was denied.

32Each hearth in the schoolroom was immediately surrounded by a double row of great girls, and behind them the younger children crouched in groups, wrapping their starved arms in their pinafores.

33A little solace came at tea-time, in the shape of a double ration of bread, a whole instead of a half-slice, with the delicious addition of a thin scrape of butter.

34It was the hebdominal treat to which we all looked forward from Sabbath to Sabbath.

35I generally contrived to reserve a moiety of this bounteous repast for myself, but the remainder I was invariably obliged to part with.

36The Sunday evening was spent in repeating, by heart, the church catechism, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St.

37Matthew, and in listening to a long sermon read by Miss Miller, whose irrepressible yawns attested her weariness.

38A frequent interlude of these performances was the enactment of the part of Eutychus by some half-dozen of little girls who, overpowered with sleep, would fall down, if not out of the third loft, yet off the fourth form, and be taken up half-dead.

39The remedy was to thrust them forward into the centre of the schoolroom, and oblige them to stand there till the sermon was finished.

40Sometimes their feet failed them, and they sank together in a heap.

41They were then propped up with the monitor's high stools.

42I have not yet alluded to the visits of Mr.

43Brocklehurst, and indeed that gentleman was from home during the greater part of the first month after my arrival, perhaps prolonging his stay with his friend, the archdeacon.

44His absence was a relief to me.

45I need not say that I had my own reasons for dreading his coming, but come he did at last.

46One afternoon, I had then been three weeks at Lowood, as I was sitting with a slate in my hand, puzzling over some in long division, my eyes, raised in abstraction to the window, caught sight of a figure just passing.

47I recognised almost instinctively that gaunt outline, and when, two minutes after, all the schoolteachers included, rose en masse, it was not necessary for me to look up in order to ascertain whose entrance they thus greeted.

48A long stride measured the schoolroom, and presently beside Miss Temple, who herself had risen, stood the same black column which had frowned on me so ominously from the hearth-rug of Gateshead.

49I now glanced sideways at this piece of architecture.

50Yes, I was right.

51It was Mr.

52Brocklehurst, buttoned up in a surtout and looking longer, narrower and more rigid, than ever.

53I had my own reasons for being dismayed at this apparition.

54Too well I remembered the perfidious hints given by Mrs.

55Reed about my disposition, etc., the promise pledged by Mr.

56Brocklehurst to apprise Miss Temple and the teachers of my vicious nature.

57All along I had been dreading the fulfilment of this promise.

58I had been looking out daily for the coming man, whose information respecting my past life and conversation was to brand me as a bad child for ever.

59Now there he was.

60He stood at Miss Temple's side.

61He was speaking low in her ear.

62I did not doubt he was making disclosures of my villainy, and I watched her eye with painful anxiety, expecting every moment to see its dark orb turn on me a glance of repugnance and contempt.

63I listened to, and, as I happened to be seated quite at the top of the room, I caught most of what he said.

64Its import relieved me from immediate apprehension.

65I suppose, Miss Temple, the thread I bought Loughton will do.

66It struck me that it would be just of the quality for the calico chemises, and I sorted the needles to match.

67You may tell Miss Smith that I forgot to make a memorandum of the darning needles, but she shall have some paper sent in next week, and she is not, on any account, to give out more than one at a time to each pupil.

68If they have more, they are apt to be careless and lose them.

69And, oh, ma'am, I wish the woolen stockings were better looked to.

70When I was here last, I went into the kitchen garden and examined the clothes drying on the line.

71There was a quantity of black hose and a very bad state of repair.

72From the size of the holes in them, I was sure they had not been well mended from time to time.

73He paused.

74Your directions shall be attended to, sir, said Miss Temple.

75And, ma'am, he continued, The laundress tells me some of the girls have two clean tuckers in the week.

76It is too much.

77The rules limit them to one.

78I think I can explain that circumstance, sir.

79Agnes and Catherine Johnston were invited to take tea with some friends at Loughton last Thursday, and I gave them leave to put on clean tuckers for the occasion.

80Mr.

81Brocklehurst nodded.

82Well, if for once it may pass, but please not to let the circumstance occur too often.

83And there is another thing which surprised me.

84I find, in settling accounts with the housekeeper, that a lunch consisting of bread and cheese has twice been served out to the girls during the past fortnight.

85How is this?

86I looked over the regulations, and I find no such meal as lunch mentioned.

87Who introduced this innovation, and by what authority?

88I must be responsible for the circumstance, sir, replied Miss Temple.

89The breakfast was so ill-prepared that the pupils could not possibly eat it, and I dared not allow them to remain fasting till dinner-time.

90Madam, allow me an instant.

91You are aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying.

92Should any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of a meal, the under or the overdressing of a dish, the incident ought not to be neutralized by replacing with something more delicate the comfort loss, thus pampering the body and obviating the aim of this institution.

93It ought to be improved to the spiritual edification of the pupils by encouraging them to evince fortitude under temporary privation.

94A brief address on those occasions will not be mistimed, wherein a judicious instructor would take the opportunity of referring to the sufferings of the primitive Christians, to the torments of martyrs, to the exhortations of our blessed Lord himself, calling upon his disciples to take up their cross and follow him, to his warnings that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, to his divine consolations.

95If ye suffer hunger or thirst for my sake, happy are ye.

96O, madam, when you put bread and cheese instead of burnt porridge into these children's mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their mortal souls.

97Mr.

98Brocklehurst again paused, perhaps overcome by his feelings.

99Miss Temple had looked down when he first began to speak to her, but she now gazed straight before her, and her face, naturally pale as marble, appeared to be assuming also the coldness and fixity of that material, especially her mouth, closed as if it would have required a sculptor's chisel to open it, and her brow settled gradually into petrified severity.

100Meantime, Mr.

101Brocklehurst, standing on the hearth with his hands behind his back, majestically surveyed the whole school.

102Suddenly his eye gave a blink, as if it had met something that either dazzled or shocked its pupil.

103Turning, he said in more rapid accents than he had hitherto used, Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what, what is that girl with curled hair?

104Red hair, ma'am, curled, curled all over.

105And, extending his cane, he pointed to the awful object, his hands shaking as he did so.

106It is Julia Severn, replied Miss Temple, very quietly.

107Julia Severn, ma'am.

108And why has she, or any other, curled hair?

109Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of this house, does she conform to the world so openly, here in an evangelical charitable establishment, as to where her hair one mass of curls?

110Julia's hair curls naturally, returned Miss Temple, still more quietly.

111Naturally.

112Yes, but we are not to conform to nature.

113I wish these girls to be the children of grace.

114And why that abundance?

115I have again and again intimated that I desired the hair to be arranged closely, modestly, plainly.

116Miss Temple, that girl's hair must be cut off entirely.

117I will send a barber tomorrow, and I see others who have far too much of the excrescence.

118That tall girl.

119Tell to turn round.

120Tell all the first form to rise up and direct their faces to the wall.

121Miss Temple passed her handkerchief over her lips, as if to smooth away the involuntary smile that curled them.

122She gave the order, however, and when the first class could take in what was required of them, they obeyed.

123Leaning a little back on my bench, I could see the looks and grimaces with which they commented on this manoeuvre.

124It was a pity Mr.

125Brocklehurst could not see them too.

126He would perhaps have felt that, whatever he might do with the outside of the cup and platter, the inside was further beyond his interference than he imagined.

127He scrutinised the reverse of these living medals some five minutes, then pronounced sentence.

128These words fell like the knell of doom.

129All those top knots must be cut off.

130Miss Temple seemed to remonstrate.

131Madam, he pursued, I have a master to serve whose kingdom is not of this world.

132My mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh, to teach them to clothe themselves with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel.

133And each of the young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plates which vanity itself might have woven.

134These, I repeat, must be cut off.

135Think of the time wasted of...

136Mr.

137Brocklehurst was here interrupted.

138Three other visitors, ladies, now entered the room.

139They ought to have come a little sooner to have heard his lecture on dress, for they were splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs.

140The two younger of the trio, fine girls of sixteen and seventeen, had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled.

141The elder lady was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl trimmed with ermine, and she wore a false front of French curls.

142These ladies were deferentially received by Miss Temple as Mrs.

143and the Mrs.

144Brocklehurst, and conducted to seats of honour at the top of the room.

145It seems they had come in the carriage with their reverend relative, and had been conducting a rummaging scrutiny of the room upstairs, while he transacted business with the housekeeper, questioned the laundress, and lectured the superintendent.

146They now proceeded to address diverse remarks and reproofs to Miss Smith, who was charged with the care of the linen and the inspection of the dormitories.

147But I had no time to listen to what they said.

148Other matters called off and enchanted my attention.

149Hitherto, while gathering up the discourse of Mr.

150Brocklehurst and Miss Temple, I had not at the same time neglected precautions to secure my personal safety, which I thought would be affected if I could only elude observation.

151To this end I had sat well back on the form, and while seeming to be busy with my sum, had held my slate in such a manner as to conceal my face.

152I might have escaped notice, had not my treacherous slate somehow happened to slip from my hand, and, falling with an obtrusive crash, directly drawn every eye upon me.

153I knew it was all over now, and as I stooped to pick up the two fragments of slate, I rallied my forces for the worst.

154It came.

155A careless girl, said Mr.

156Brocklehurst, and immediately after, It is the new pupil I perceive.

157And before I could draw breath, I must not forget I have a word to say respecting her.

158Then aloud, how loud it seemed to me.

159Let the child who broke her slate come forward.

160Of my own accord I could not have stirred.

161I was paralyzed.

162But the two great girls who sit on each side of me set me on my legs and pushed me towards the dread judge.

163And then Miss Temple gently assisted me to his very feet, and I caught her whispered counsel.

164Don't be afraid, Jane.

165I saw it was an accident.

166You shall not be punished.

167The kind whisper went to my heart like a dagger.

168Another minute and she will despise me for a hypocrite, thought I, and an impulse of fury against Reed, Brocklehurst and company, bounded in my pulses at the conviction.

169I was no Helen Burns.

170Fetch that stool, said Mr.

171Brocklehurst, pointing to a very high one from which a monitor had just risen.

172It was brought.

173Place the child upon it.

174And I was placed there, by whom, I don't know, I was in no condition to note particulars.

175I was only aware that they had hoisted me up to the height of Mr.

176Brocklehurst's nose, that he was within a yard of me, and that a spread of shot-orange and purple silk pelisses in a cloud of silvery plumage extended and waved below me.

177Mr.

178Brocklehurst hemmed.

179Ladies, said he, turning to his family.

180Miss Temple, teachers and children, you all see this girl.

181Of course they did, for I felt their eyes directed like burning glasses against my scorched skin.

182You see, she is yet young.

183You observe she possesses the ordinary form of childhood.

184God has graciously given her the shape that he has given to all of us.

185No signal deformity points her out as a marked character.

186Who would think that the evil one had already found a servant and agent in her?

187Yet such I grieve to say is the case.

188A pause in which I began to steady the palsy of my nerves and to feel that the Rubicon was past and that the trial, no longer to be shirked, must be firmly sustained.

189My dear children, pursued the black marble clergyman with pathos, this is a sad, a melancholy occasion, for it becomes my duty to warn you that this girl, who might be one of God's own lambs, is a little castaway, not a member of the true flock, but evidently an interloper and an alien.

190You must be on your guard against her.

191You must shun her example.

192If necessary, avoid her company.

193Exclude her from your sports, and shut her out from your converse.

194Teachers, you must watch her.

195Keep your eyes on her movements.

196Weigh well her words.

197Scrutinize her actions.

198Punish her body to save her soul.

199If indeed such salvation be possible, for my tongue falters when I tell it.

200This girl, this child, the native of a Christian land, worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut, this girl is a liar.

201Now came a pause of ten minutes, during which I, by this time in perfect possession of my wits, observed all the female brocklehursts produce their pocket-handkerchiefs and apply them to their optics, while the elderly lady swayed herself to and fro, and the two younger ones whispered, How shocking!

202Mr.

203Brocklehurst resumed.

204This I learned from her benefactress, from the pious and charitable lady who adopted her in an orphan state, reared her as her own daughter, and whose kindness, whose generosity, the unhappy girl repaid by an ingratitude so bad, so dreadful, that at last her excellent patroness was obliged to separate her from her own young ones, fearful, lest her vicious example should contaminate, their purity.

205She has sent her here to be healed, even as the Jews of old sent their diseased to the troubled pool of Bethesda, and teaches, superintendent, I beg of you not to allow the waters to stagnate round her.

206With this sublime conclusion, Mr.

207Brocklehurst adjusted the top button of his surtout, muttered something to his family, who rose, bowed to Miss Temple, and then all the great people sailed in state from the room.

208Turning at the door, my judge said, Let her stand half an hour longer on that stool, and let no one speak to her during the remainder of the day.

209There was I then, mounted aloft.

210I, who had said I could not bear the shame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the room, was now exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy.

211What my sensations were, no language can describe, but just as they all rose, stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me.

212In passing, she lifted her eyes.

213What a strange light inspired them.

214What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me.

215How the new feeling bore me up.

216It was if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave or victim and imparted strength in the transit.

217I mastered the rising hysteria, lifted up my head and took a firm stand on the stool.

218Helen Burns asked some slight question about her work of Miss Smith, was chidden for the triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place and smiled at me as she again went by.

219What a smile!

220I remember it now and I know that it was the effluence of fine intellect, of true courage.

221It lit up her marked lineaments, her thin face, her sunken grey eye, like a reflection from the aspect of an angel.

222Yet at that moment Helen Burns wore on her arm the untidy badge.

223Scarcely an hour ago I had heard her condemned by Miss Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and water on the morrow because she had blotted an exercise in copying it out.

224Such is the imperfect nature of man.

225Such spots are there on the disk of the clearest planet and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those minute defects and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.

226End of chapter 7