Jane Eyre | Page 3

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.