CHAPTER I

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless (without leaves) shrubbery (a planting of garden bushes) an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed (Jane's aunt by marriage, mistress of Gateshead), when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre (dark and grave), and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question.

I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings (chidings: cross words of blame) of Bessie (Bessie, the nursemaid at Gateshead, kind to Jane), the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority (a lower state) to Eliza (Eliza Reed, Jane's cold cousin), John, and Georgiana (Georgiana Reed, Jane's vain pretty cousin) Reed (the Reeds of Gateshead: Jane's aunt and her children John, Eliza, and Georgiana).

The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room (the sitting room for guests): she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensed (to do without) 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 more sociable (fond of company) and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly (lively) manner—something lighter, franker (more frank), more natural, as it were—she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children.”

“What does Bessie say I have done?” I asked.

“Jane, I don’t like cavillers (cavillers: petty fault-finders) or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.”

A breakfast-room (the room for breakfast) adjoined (to lie next to) the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat (a seat built under a window): gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged (with legs folded), like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen (a heavy wool cloth) curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement.

Folds of scarlet drapery (hanging cloth) shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear (dreary) November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect (aspect: look; appearance — the old sense here) of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat (beaten by storm) shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable (sorrowful) blast.

I returned to my book—Bewick (Bewick's History of British Birds, Jane's picture book)’s History of British Birds (Bewick's illustrated book Jane reads): the letterpress (printed text) thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl (sea birds); of “the solitary rocks and promontories (a bold headland thrust out into the sea)” by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity (the farthest end; the last resort), the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape—

“Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls (to spin fast), Boils round the naked, melancholy isles Of farthest (farther) 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 (hopeless and sad) regions of dreary (gloomy and dull) 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 (to gather to a centre) the multiplied rigours of extreme cold.” Of these death-white (white as death) realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended (half understood) notions that float dim through children’s brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes (vignettes: small pictures), and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow (a great swelling wave) and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate (empty and lifeless) coast; to the cold and ghastly (horrible; deathly pale) 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 (bound around the waist) by a broken wall, and its newly-risen (just risen) crescent, attesting the hour of eventide (evening).

The two ships becalmed (becalmed: stopped for lack of wind) on a torpid (sluggish; dull) sea, I believed to be marine phantoms.

The fiend (a devil) 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 (apart; at a distance) 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 (a table for ironing) to the nursery hearth (the floor of the fireplace; the fireside), she allowed us to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed’s lace frills (edged with lace folds), and crimped (crimped: pressed into small folds) her nightcap (a cap worn in bed) borders, fed our eager attention with passages (passage: a sea-journey — the old sense here) 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 (Richardson's novel 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 (Jane's bullying cousin); 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 (warmly and earnestly) he might not discover my hiding-place (a place to hide in): 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 (to shake finely) at the idea of being dragged forth by the said Jack.

“What do you want?” I asked, with awkward diffidence (shy lack of confidence).

“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 (unhealthy) skin; thick lineaments (lineaments: the lines of the face) in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually (by settled habit) at table, which made him bilious (sick with bile; irritable), and gave him a dim and bleared (dim and watery) eye and flabby (soft and sagging) 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 (sweetmeats: sweets) 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 (yellowish paleness) was owing to over-application (too much study) and, perhaps, to pining after home.

John had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and an antipathy (deep dislike) 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 (a small tasty piece) of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near. There were moments when I was bewildered (to confuse utterly) by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions (something laid on as a burden); the servants did not like to offend their young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the subject: she 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.

Habitually obedient (doing as told) to John, I came up to his chair: he spent some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could without damaging the roots: I 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. I wonder if he read that notion in my face; for, all at once, without speaking, he struck suddenly and strongly. I tottered (to walk unsteadily), and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a step or two from his chair.

“That is for your impudence (bold rudeness) in answering mama awhile since,” said he, “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; my care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the insult.

“What were you doing behind the curtain?” he asked.

“I was reading.”

“Show the book.”

I returned to the window and fetched it thence (from there).

“You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought 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. Now, I’ll teach you to rummage (to search by turning things over) my bookshelves: for they are mine; all the house belongs to me, or will do in a few years. Go and stand by the door, out of the way of the mirror and the windows.”

I did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when I saw him lift and poise (balanced calm bearing) the book and stand in act to hurl (to fling with force) it, I instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume was flung, it hit (hit: captured exactly — the old sense here) me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was sharp: my terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded.

“Wicked and cruel boy!” I said. “You are like a murderer—you are like a slave-driver (a driver of slaves)—you are like the Roman emperors!”

I had read Goldsmith’s History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of Nero, Caligula, &c. Also I had drawn parallels in silence, which I never thought thus to have declared aloud.

“What! what!” he cried. “Did she say that to me? Did you hear her, Eliza and Georgiana? Won’t I tell mama? but first—”

He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had closed with a desperate thing. I really saw in him a tyrant, a murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck, and was sensible (sensible: aware — the old sense here) of somewhat pungent (sharp and biting to the nose) suffering: these sensations for the time predominated over fear, and I received him in frantic sort. I don’t very well know what I did with my hands, but he called me “Rat! Rat!” and bellowed out aloud. Aid was near him: Eliza and Georgiana had run for Mrs. Reed, who was gone upstairs: she now came upon the scene, followed by Bessie and her maid Abbot (Miss Abbot, Mrs Reed's lady's-maid). We were parted: I heard the words—

“Dear! dear! What a fury to fly at Master John!”

“Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion!”

Then Mrs. Reed subjoined (to add at the end)—

“Take her away to the red-room (red-room: the grand cold bedroom where Mr Reed died), and lock her in there.” Four hands were immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.