her in there." Four hands were immediately | brought up with them. They will have a great laid upon me, and I was borne up stairs.

CHAPTER II

deal of money, and you will have none; it is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to them.”

"What we tell you is for your good," added Bessie, in no harsh voice; you should try to be useful and pleasant, then perhaps you would have a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, missis will send you away,

I RESISTED all the way: a new thing for me, and a circumstance which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were disposed to entertain of me. The fact is, I│I am sure.” was a trifle beside myself; or, rather, out of myself, as the French would say; I 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.

"Hold her arms, Miss Abbot; she's like a

mad cat."

"For shame! for shame!" cried the lady'smaid. "What shocking conduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress's son! your young master!"

'Master! How is he my master? Am I a servant ?"

"No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep. There, sit down and think over your wickedness."

They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Reed, and had thrust me upon a stool; my impulse was to rise from it like a spring; their two pairs of hands arrested me instantly.

· Besides," said Miss Abbot, "God will pun ish her; he might strike her dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go? Come, Bessie, we will leave her; I wouldn't have her heart for any thing. Say your pray. ers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself; for if you don't repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away."

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

The bed-room was a spare chamber, very seldom slept in; I 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; yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the center; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls a soft fawn-color, with a blush of pink in it; the wardrope, the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly-polished old mahogany. Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-up matresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely less prominent was an ample, cushioned easy-chair near the head of the "Mind you don't," said Bessie; and when bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and she had ascertained that I was really subsid-looking, as I thought, like a pale throne. ing, she loosened her hold of me; then she and Miss Abbot stood with folded arms, looking a fire; it was silent, because remote from the darkly and doubtfully on my face, as incredulous of my sanity.

"If you don't sit still, you must be tied down," said Bessie. "Miss Abbot, lend me your garters; she would break mine directly." Miss Abbot turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature. This preparation for bonds, and the additional ignominy it inferred, took a little of the excitement out of me.

“Don't take them off,” I cried; “I will not stir."

In guaranty whereof I attached myself to my seat by my hands.

"She never did so before," at last said Bessie, turning to the Abigail.

"But it was always in her," was the reply. "I've told missis often my opinion about the child, and missis agreed with me. She's an underhand little thing; I never saw a girl of her age with so much cover."

Bessie answered not; but ere long, addressing me, she said,

“You ought to be aware, miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. Reed: she keeps you; if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poor-house."

I had nothing to say to these words; they were not new to me; my very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This reproach of my dependence had becorne a vague sing-song in my ear; very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible. Miss Abbot joined in:

"And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed, because missis kindly allows you to be

This room was chill, because it seldom had

nursery and kitchens; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom entered. The housemaid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week's quiet dust; and Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments, her jewelcasket, and a miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the red-room-the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.

Mr. Reed had been dead nine years; it was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by undertaker's men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from fre quent intrusion.

My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted, was a low ottoman, near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before me; to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the muffled windows; a great

in what darkness, what dense ignorance, wa the mental battle fought! I could not answer the ceaseless inward question-why I thus suf fered; now, at the distance of-I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.

100xing-glass between them repeated the va- | cant majesty of the bed and room. I was not quite sure whether they had locked the door; and, when I dared move, I got up, and went to see. Alas! yes; no ail was ever more secure. Returning, I had to cross before the I was a discord in Gateshead Hall; I was looking-glass; my fascinated glance involun- like nobody there; I had nothing in harmony tarily explored the depth it revealed. All with Mrs. Reed, or her children, or her chosen looked colder and darker in that visionary hol- vassalage. If they did not love me, in fact, as low than in reality; and the strange little figure little did I love them. They were not bound there gazing at me, with a white face and arms to regard with affection a thing that could not specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear sympathize with one among them; a heteromoving where all else was still, had the effect geneous thing, opposed to them in temperaof a real spirit. I thought it like one of the ment, in capacity, in propensities; a useless tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie's thing, incapable of serving their interest, or evening stories represented as coming up out adding to their pleasure; a noxious thing, cherof lone, ferny dells, in moors, and appearing ishing the germs of indignation at their treatbefore the eyes of belated travelers. I return- ment-of contempt of their judgment. I know ed to my stool. that, had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child, though equally dependent and friendless, Mrs. Reed would have endured my presence more complacently; her children would have entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants would have been less prone to make me the scape-goat of the nursery.

Superstition was with me at that moment, but it was not yet her hour for complete victory. My blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigor; I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present.

Daylight began to forsake the red-room. It was past four o'clock, and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. I heard the rain still beating continuously on the stair

All John Reed's violent tyrannies, all his sisters' proud indifference, all his mother's aversion, all the servants' partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always suffering, al-case window, and the wind howling in the grove ways browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one's favor? Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected. Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged. Her beauty-her pink cheeks and golden curlsseemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. John, 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; he called his mother" old girl," too; sometimes reviled her for her dark skin, similar to his own, bluntly disregarded her wishes; not unfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still "her own darling." I dared commit no fault; I strove to fulfill every duty; and I was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to night.

My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received. No one had reproved John for wantonly striking me; and because I had turned against him to avert further irra tional violence, I was loaded with general opprobrium.

"Unjust! unjust!" said my reason, forced by the agonizing stimulus into precocious, though transitory power; and 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.

What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon! How all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet

behind the hall. I grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then my courage sunk. My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire. All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so-what thought had I been but just con ceiving, of starving myself to death? That certainly was a crime; and was I fit to die? or was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting bourne? In such vault, I had been told, did Mr. Reed lie buried; and led by this thought to recall his idea, 1 dwelt on it with gathering dread. I could not remember him, but 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. Reed that she would rear and maintain me as one of her own children. Mrs. Reed probably considered she had kept this promise; and so she had, I dare say, as well as her nature would permit her; but how could she really like an interloper not of her race, and unconnected with her, after her husband's death, by any tie? It must have been most irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on he own family group.

A singular notion dawned upon me. I doubt ed not-had never doubted-that, if Mr. Reed had been alive, he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls, occasionally, also, turning a fascinated eye toward 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 op pressed; and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit, har

looked on me as a compound of virulent pas. sions, mean spirit, and dangerous duplicity.

Bessie and Abbot having retreated, Mrs Reed, impatient of my now frantic anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked me in, without further parley. I heard her sweeping away; and soon after she was gone, I suppose I had a species of fit: unconsciousness closed the scene.

CHAPTER III.

assed 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. I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face bending over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realized. With all my might I endeavored to stifle it-I endeavored to be firm. Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room. At this moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray THE next thing I remember is, waking up from the moon penetrating some aperture in with a feeling as if I had had a frightful nightthe blind? No; moonlight was still, and this mare, and seeing before me a terrible red stirred. While I gazed, it glided up to the ceil-glare, crossed with thick, black bars. I heard ing and quivered over my head. I can now voices, too, speakir.g with a hollow sound, and conjecture readily that this streak of light was, as if muffled by a rush of wind or water: ag.in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern, car-tation, uncertainty, and an all-predominating ried by some one across the lawn; but then, sense of terror confused my faculties. Eie prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as long, I became aware that some one was handmy nerves were by agitation, I thought the ling me; lifting me up and supporting me in swift-darting beam was a herald of some com- a sitting posture: and that more tenderly than ing vision from another world. My heart beat I ever been raised or upheld before. Í restI thick-my head grew hot; a sound filled my ed my head against a pillow or an arm, and felt ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; easy. something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated; endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer pass age; the key turned; Bessie and Abbot entered.

Miss Eyre, are you ill?" said Bessie. "What a dreadful noise! it went quite through me!" exclaimed Abbot.

sery!"

nur

"Take me out! Let me go into the was my cry. "What for? Are you hurt? Have you scen something?" again demanded Bessie.

"Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come." I had now got hold of Bessie's hand, and she did not snatch it from me. "She has screamed out on purpose;" declared Abbot, in some disgust. "And what a scream! If she had been in great pain one would have excused it, but she only wanted to bring us all here: I know her wicked, naughty tricks."

In five minutes more, the cloud of bewilderment dissolved: I knew quite well that I was in my own bed, and that the red glare was the nursery fire. It was night: a candle burned on the table; Bessie stood at the bed-foot with a a basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near my pillow, leaning over me.

I felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection and security, when I knew that there was a stranger in the room; an individual not belonging to Gateshead, and not related to Mrs. Reed. Turning from Bess:e (though her presence was far less obnoxious to me than that of Abbot, for instance, would have been), I scrutinized the face of the gentleman : I knew him; it was Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary, sometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when the servants were ailing; for herself and the children she employed a physician.

"Well, who am I?" he asked.

I pronounced his name, offering him at the same time my hand: he took it, smiling and saying, "We shall do very well by and by." Then he laid me down, and addressing Bessie, charged her to be very careful that I was not disturbed during the night. Having given

“What is all this?" demanded another voice peremptorily; and Mrs. Reed came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling stormily. "Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyre should be left in the red-some further directions, and intimated that he room till I came to her myself."

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

should call again the next day, he departed, to my grief; I felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat in the chair near my pillow; and as he closed the door after him, all the room darkened and my heart again sunk: inexpress

Let her go," was the only answer. "Loose Bessie's hand, child: you can not succeed in getting out by these means, be assured. I ab-ible sadness weighed it down. hor artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that tricks will not answer; you will now stay here an hour longer, and it is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you then." "Oh aunt, have pity! Forgive me! I can not endure it-let me be punished some other way! I shall be killed if—”

"Do you feel as if you should sleep, miss?" asked Bessie, rather softly.

"Silence! This violence is almost repulsive:” and so, no doubt, she felt it. I was a precocious actress in her eyes: she sincerely

Scarcely dared I answer her; for I feared the next sentence might be rough. "I will try."

Would you like to drink, or could you eat any thing?"

"No, thank you, Bessie."

"Then I think I shall go to bed, for it is past twelve o'clock; but you may call me if you want any thing in the night."

Wonderful civility this! It emboldened me | circlet of delicate pastry upon it. Vain favor. .o ask a question.

Bessie, what is the matter with me?

fill?"

Am

You fell sick, I suppose, in the red-room with crying; you'll be better soon, no doubt." Bessie went into the housemaid's apartment which was near. I heard her say:

"Sarah, come and sleep with me in the nursery; I daren't for my life be alone with that poor child to-night; she might die: it's such a strange thing she should have that fit; I wonder if she saw any thing. Missis was rather too hard."

Sarah came back with her; they both went to bed; they were whispering together for half an hour before they fell asleep. I caught scraps of their conversation, from which I was able only too distinctly to infer the main subject discussed.

“Something passed her, all dressed in white, and vanished". "A great black dog behind him "-"Three loud raps on the chamber door"—"A light in the church-yard just over his grave"-&c., &c.

At last both slept: the fire and the candle went out. For me, the watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; ear, eye, and mind were alike strained by dread: such dread as children only can feel.

No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room: it only gave my nerves a shock, of which I feel the reverberation to this day. Yes, Mrs. Reed, to you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering. But I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did: while rending-my heart-strings, you thought you were only uprooting my bad propensities.

coming, like most other favors, long deferred and often wished for, too late! I could not eat the tart; and the plumage of the bird, the tints of the flowers, seemed strangely faded: I put both plate and tart away. Bessie asked if I would have a book: the word book acted as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver's Travels from the library. This book I had again and again perused with delight; I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves, having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wallnooks, I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth that they were all gone out of England to some savage country, where the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant: whereas Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth's surface, I doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep. and birds of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other. Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand-when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvelous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to findall was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fear ful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions. I closed the book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table, beside the untasted tart.

Bessie had now finished dusting and tidying the room, and, having washed her hands, she opened a certain little drawer, full of splendid shreds of silk and satin, and began making a new bonnet for Georgiana's doll. Meantime she sang: her song was

"In the days when we went gipsying,

A long time ago."

Next day, by noon, I was up and dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl by the nursery hearth. I felt physically weak and broken down; but my worst ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one sait drop from my cheek than another followed. Yet, I thought, I ought to have been happy, for none of the Reeds were there; they were all gone out in I had often heard the song before, and athe carriage with their mamma: Abbot, too, was ways with lively delight; for Bessie had a But now, sewing in another room, and Bessie, as she sweet voice-at least, I thought so. moved hither and thither, putting away toys though her voice was still sweet, I found in its and arranging drawers, addressed to me every melody an indescribable sadness. Sometimes, now and then a word of unwonted kindness. preoccupied with her work, she sang the reThis state of things should have been to me a frain very low, very lingeringly; "A long time paradise of peace, accustomed as I was to a ago" came out like the saddest cadence of a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless fag-funeral hymn. She passed into another ballad, ging; but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such a state that no calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably.

Bessie had been down into the kitchen, and she brought up with her a tart on a certain brightly-painted china plate, whose bird of paradise, nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rose-buds, had been wont to stir in me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration; and which plate I had often petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand in order to examine it more closely, but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a privilege. This precious vessel was now placed on my knee, and I was cordially invited to eat the

this time a really doleful one :

"My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary
Long is the way, and the mountains are wild;
Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary
Over the path of the poor orphan child.
"Why did they send me so far and so lonely,

Up where the moors spread and gray rocks are piled
Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only
Watch o'er the steps of a poor orphan child.
"Yet distant and soft the night-breeze is blowing,
Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild;
God, in His inercy, protection is showing,

Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child
"Even should I fall o'er the broken bridge passing,
Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled,
Still will my Father, with promise and blessing,
Take to His bosom the poor orphan child

Oh, fie, miss!" said Bessie. The good apothecary appeared a little puzzled. I was standing before him; he fixed his eyes on me very steadily: his eyes were small "If I had any where else to go, I should be and gray; not very bright, but I dare say I glad to leave it; but I can never get away from should think them shrewd now: he had a hard-Gateshead till I am a woman." featured yet good-natured looking face. Having considered me at leisure, he said"What made you ill yesterday ?" "She had a fall," said Bessie, again putting in her word.