prompt:
Chapter: He did not leave for Cambridge the next day, as he had said he would.  He
deferred his departure a whole week, and during that time he made me feel
what severe punishment a good yet stern, a conscientious yet implacable
man can inflict on one who has offended him.  Without one overt act of
hostility, one upbraiding word, he contrived to impress me momently with
the conviction that I was put beyond the pale of his favour.

Not that St. John harboured a spirit of unchristian vindictiveness--not
that he would have injured a hair of my head, if it had been fully in his
power to do so.  Both by nature and principle, he was superior to the
mean gratification of vengeance: he had forgiven me for saying I scorned
him and his love, but he had not forgotten the words; and as long as he
and I lived he never would forget them.  I saw by his look, when he
turned to me, that they were always written on the air between me and
him; whenever I spoke, they sounded in my voice to his ear, and their
echo toned every answer he gave me.

He did not abstain from conversing with me: he even called me as usual
each morning to join him at his desk; and I fear the corrupt man within
him had a pleasure unimparted to, and unshared by, the pure Christian, in
evincing with what skill he could, while acting and speaking apparently
just as usual, extract from every deed and every phrase the spirit of
interest and approval which had formerly communicated a certain austere
charm to his language and manner.  To me, he was in reality become no
longer flesh, but marble; his eye was a cold, bright, blue gem; his
tongue a speaking instrument--nothing more.

All this was torture to me--refined, lingering torture.  It kept up a
slow fire of indignation and a trembling trouble of grief, which harassed
and crushed me altogether.  I felt how--if I were his wife, this good
man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon kill me, without drawing
from my veins a single drop of blood, or receiving on his own crystal
conscience the faintest stain of crime.  Especially I felt this when I
made any attempt to propitiate him.  No ruth met my ruth.  _He_
experienced no suffering from estrangement--no yearning after
reconciliation; and though, more than once, my fast falling tears
blistered the page over which we both bent, they produced no more effect
on him than if his heart had been really a matter of stone or metal.  To
his sisters, meantime, he was somewhat kinder than usual: as if afraid
that mere coldness would not sufficiently convince me how completely I
was banished and banned, he added the force of contrast; and this I am
sure he did not by force, but on principle.

The night before he left home, happening to see him walking in the garden
about sunset, and remembering, as I looked at him, that this man,
alienated as he now was, had once saved my life, and that we were near
relations, I was moved to make a last attempt to regain his friendship.  I
went out and approached him as he stood leaning over the little gate; I
spoke to the point at once.

"St. John, I am unhappy because you are still angry with me.  Let us be
friends."

"I hope we are friends," was the unmoved reply; while he still watched
the rising of the moon, which he had been contemplating as I approached.

"No, St. John, we are not friends as we were.  You know that."

"Are we not?  That is wrong.  For my part, I wish you no ill and all
good."

"I believe you, St. John; for I am sure you are incapable of wishing any
one ill; but, as I am your kinswoman, I should desire somewhat more of
affection than that sort of general philanthropy you extend to mere
strangers."

"Of course," he said.  "Your wish is reasonable, and I am far from
regarding you as a stranger."

This, spoken in a cool, tranquil tone, was mortifying and baffling
enough.  Had I attended to the suggestions of pride and ire, I should
immediately have left him; but something worked within me more strongly
than those feelings could.  I deeply venerated my cousin's talent and
principle.  His friendship was of value to me: to lose it tried me
severely.  I would not so soon relinquish the attempt to reconquer it.

"Must we part in this way, St. John?  And when you go to India, will you
leave me so, without a kinder word than you have yet spoken?"

He now turned quite from the moon and faced me.

"When I go to India, Jane, will I leave you!  What! do you not go to
India?"

"You said I could not unless I married you."

"And you will not marry me!  You adhere to that resolution?"

Reader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can put into
the ice of their questions?  How much of the fall of the avalanche is in
their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea in their displeasure?

"No.  St. John, I will not marry you.  I adhere to my resolution."

The avalanche had shaken and slid a little forward, but it did not yet
crash down.

"Once more, why this refusal?" he asked.

"Formerly," I answered, "because you did not love me; now, I reply,
because you almost hate me.  If I were to marry you, you would kill me.
You are killing me now."

His lips and cheeks turned white--quite white.

"_I should kill you_--_I am killing you_?  Your words are such as ought
not to be used: violent, unfeminine, and untrue.  They betray an
unfortunate state of mind: they merit severe reproof: they would seem
inexcusable, but that it is the duty of man to forgive his fellow even
until seventy-and-seven times."

I had finished the business now.  While earnestly wishing to erase from
his mind the trace of my former offence, I had stamped on that tenacious
surface another and far deeper impression, I had burnt it in.

"Now you will indeed hate me," I said.  "It is useless to attempt to
conciliate you: I see I have made an eternal enemy of you."

A fresh wrong did these words inflict: the worse, because they touched on
the truth.  That bloodless lip quivered to a temporary spasm.  I knew the
steely ire I had whetted.  I was heart-wrung.

"You utterly misinterpret my words," I said, at once seizing his hand: "I
have no intention to grieve or pain you--indeed, I have not."

Most bitterly he smiled--most decidedly he withdrew his hand from mine.
"And now you recall your promise, and will not go to India at all, I
presume?" said he, after a considerable pause.

"Yes, I will, as your assistant," I answered.

A very long silence succeeded.  What struggle there was in him between
Nature and Grace in this interval, I cannot tell: only singular gleams
scintillated in his eyes, and strange shadows passed over his face.  He
spoke at last.

"I before proved to you the absurdity of a single woman of your age
proposing to accompany abroad a single man of mine.  I proved it to you
in such terms as, I should have thought, would have prevented your ever
again alluding to the plan.  That you have done so, I regret--for your
sake."

I interrupted him.  Anything like a tangible reproach gave me courage at
once.  "Keep to common sense, St. John: you are verging on nonsense.  You
pretend to be shocked by what I have said.  You are not really shocked:
for, with your superior mind, you cannot be either so dull or so
conceited as to misunderstand my meaning.  I say again, I will be your
curate, if you like, but never your wife."

Again he turned lividly pale; but, as before, controlled his passion
perfectly.  He answered emphatically but calmly--

"A female curate, who is not my wife, would never suit me.  With me,
then, it seems, you cannot go: but if you are sincere in your offer, I
will, while in town, speak to a married missionary, whose wife needs a
coadjutor.  Your own fortune will make you independent of the Society's
aid; and thus you may still be spared the dishonour of breaking your
promise and deserting the band you engaged to join."

Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal promise or
entered into any engagement; and this language was all much too hard and
much too despotic for the occasion.  I replied--

"There is no dishonour, no breach of promise, no desertion in the case.  I
am not under the slightest obligation to go to India, especially with
strangers.  With you I would have ventured much, because I admire,
confide in, and, as a sister, I love you; but I am convinced that, go
when and with whom I would, I should not live long in that climate."

"Ah! you are afraid of yourself," he said, curling his lip.

"I am.  God did not give me my life to throw away; and to do as you wish
me would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committing suicide.
Moreover, before I definitively resolve on quitting England, I will know
for certain whether I cannot be of greater use by remaining in it than by
leaving it."

"What do you mean?"

"It would be fruitless to attempt to explain; but there is a point on
which I have long endured painful doubt, and I can go nowhere till by
some means that doubt is removed."

"I know where your heart turns and to what it clings.  The interest you
cherish is lawless and unconsecrated.  Long since you ought to have
crushed it: now you should blush to allude to it.  You think of Mr.
Rochester?"

It was true.  I confessed it by silence.

"Are you going to seek Mr. Rochester?"

"I must find out what is become of him."

"It remains for me, then," he said, "to remember you in my prayers, and
to entreat God for you, in all earnestness, that you may not indeed
become a castaway.  I had thought I recognised in you one of the chosen.
But God sees not as man sees: _His_ will be done--"

He opened the gate, passed through it, and strayed away down the glen.  He
was soon out of sight.

On re-entering the parlour, I found Diana standing at the window, looking
very thoughtful.  Diana was a great deal taller than I: she put her hand
on my shoulder, and, stooping, examined my face.

"Jane," she said, "you are always agitated and pale now.  I am sure there
is something the matter.  Tell me what business St. John and you have on
hands.  I have watched you this half hour from the window; you must
forgive my being such a spy, but for a long time I have fancied I hardly
know what.  St. John is a strange being--"

She paused--I did not speak: soon she resumed--

"That brother of mine cherishes peculiar views of some sort respecting
you, I am sure: he has long distinguished you by a notice and interest he
never showed to any one else--to what end?  I wish he loved you--does he,
Jane?"

I put her cool hand to my hot forehead; "No, Die, not one whit."

"Then why does he follow you so with his eyes, and get you so frequently
alone with him, and keep you so continually at his side?  Mary and I had
both concluded he wished you to marry him."

"He does--he has asked me to be his wife."

Diana clapped her hands.  "That is just what we hoped and thought!  And
you will marry him, Jane, won't you?  And then he will stay in England."

"Far from that, Diana; his sole idea in proposing to me is to procure a
fitting fellow-labourer in his Indian toils."

"What!  He wishes you to go to India?"

"Yes."

"Madness!" she exclaimed.  "You would not live three months there, I am
certain.  You never shall go: you have not consented, have you, Jane?"

"I have refused to marry him--"

"And have consequently displeased him?" she suggested.

"Deeply: he will never forgive me, I fear: yet I offered to accompany him
as his sister."

"It was frantic folly to do so, Jane.  Think of the task you
undertook--one of incessant fatigue, where fatigue kills even the strong,
and you are weak.  St. John--you know him--would urge you to
impossibilities: with him there would be no permission to rest during the
hot hours; and unfortunately, I have noticed, whatever he exacts, you
force yourself to perform.  I am astonished you found courage to refuse
his hand.  You do not love him then, Jane?"

"Not as a husband."

"Yet he is a handsome fellow."

"And I am so plain, you see, Die.  We should never suit."

"Plain!  You?  Not at all.  You are much too pretty, as well as too good,
to be grilled alive in Calcutta."  And again she earnestly conjured me to
give up all thoughts of going out with her brother.

"I must indeed," I said; "for when just now I repeated the offer of
serving him for a deacon, he expressed himself shocked at my want of
decency.  He seemed to think I had committed an impropriety in proposing
to accompany him unmarried: as if I had not from the first hoped to find
in him a brother, and habitually regarded him as such."

"What makes you say he does not love you, Jane?"

"You should hear himself on the subject.  He has again and again
explained that it is not himself, but his office he wishes to mate.  He
has told me I am formed for labour--not for love: which is true, no
doubt.  But, in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, it follows that
I am not formed for marriage.  Would it not be strange, Die, to be
chained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool?"

"Insupportable--unnatural--out of the question!"

"And then," I continued, "though I have only sisterly affection for him
now, yet, if forced to be his wife, I can imagine the possibility of
conceiving an inevitable, strange, torturing kind of love for him,
because he is so talented; and there is often a certain heroic grandeur
in his look, manner, and conversation.  In that case, my lot would become
unspeakably wretched.  He would not want me to love him; and if I showed
the feeling, he would make me sensible that it was a superfluity,
unrequired by him, unbecoming in me.  I know he would."

"And yet St. John is a good man," said Diana.

"He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings
and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views.  It is
better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way, lest, in
his progress, he should trample them down.  Here he comes!  I will leave
you, Diana."  And I hastened upstairs as I saw him entering the garden.

But I was forced to meet him again at supper.  During that meal he
appeared just as composed as usual.  I had thought he would hardly speak
to me, and I was certain he had given up the pursuit of his matrimonial
scheme: the sequel showed I was mistaken on both points.  He addressed me
precisely in his ordinary manner, or what had, of late, been his ordinary
manner--one scrupulously polite.  No doubt he had invoked the help of the
Holy Spirit to subdue the anger I had roused in him, and now believed he
had forgiven me once more.

For the evening reading before prayers, he selected the twenty-first
chapter of Revelation.  It was at all times pleasant to listen while from
his lips fell the words of the Bible: never did his fine voice sound at
once so sweet and full--never did his manner become so impressive in its
noble simplicity, as when he delivered the oracles of God: and to-night
that voice took a more solemn tone--that manner a more thrilling
meaning--as he sat in the midst of his household circle (the May moon
shining in through the uncurtained window, and rendering almost
unnecessary the light of the candle on the table): as he sat there,
bending over the great old Bible, and described from its page the vision
of the new heaven and the new earth--told how God would come to dwell
with men, how He would wipe away all tears from their eyes, and promised
that there should be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, nor any
more pain, because the former things were passed away.

The succeeding words thrilled me strangely as he spoke them: especially
as I felt, by the slight, indescribable alteration in sound, that in
uttering them, his eye had turned on me.

"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and
he shall be my son.  But," was slowly, distinctly read, "the fearful, the
unbelieving, &c., shall have their part in the lake which burneth with
fire and brimstone, which is the second death."

Henceforward, I knew what fate St. John feared for me.

A calm, subdued triumph, blent with a longing earnestness, marked his
enunciation of the last glorious verses of that chapter.  The reader
believed his name was already written in the Lamb's book of life, and he
yearned after the hour which should admit him to the city to which the
kings of the earth bring their glory and honour; which has no need of sun
or moon to shine in it, because the glory of God lightens it, and the
Lamb is the light thereof.

In the prayer following the chapter, all his energy gathered--all his
stern zeal woke: he was in deep earnest, wrestling with God, and resolved
on a conquest.  He supplicated strength for the weak-hearted; guidance
for wanderers from the fold: a return, even at the eleventh hour, for
those whom the temptations of the world and the flesh were luring from
the narrow path.  He asked, he urged, he claimed the boon of a brand
snatched from the burning.  Earnestness is ever deeply solemn: first, as
I listened to that prayer, I wondered at his; then, when it continued and
rose, I was touched by it, and at last awed.  He felt the greatness and
goodness of his purpose so sincerely: others who heard him plead for it,
could not but feel it too.

The prayer over, we took leave of him: he was to go at a very early hour
in the morning.  Diana and Mary having kissed him, left the room--in
compliance, I think, with a whispered hint from him: I tendered my hand,
and wished him a pleasant journey.

"Thank you, Jane.  As I said, I shall return from Cambridge in a
fortnight: that space, then, is yet left you for reflection.  If I
listened to human pride, I should say no more to you of marriage with me;
but I listen to my duty, and keep steadily in view my first aim--to do
all things to the glory of God.  My Master was long-suffering: so will I
be.  I cannot give you up to perdition as a vessel of wrath:
repent--resolve, while there is yet time.  Remember, we are bid to work
while it is day--warned that 'the night cometh when no man shall work.'
Remember the fate of Dives, who had his good things in this life.  God
give you strength to choose that better part which shall not be taken
from you!"

He laid his hand on my head as he uttered the last words.  He had spoken
earnestly, mildly: his look was not, indeed, that of a lover beholding
his mistress, but it was that of a pastor recalling his wandering
sheep--or better, of a guardian angel watching the soul for which he is
responsible.  All men of talent, whether they be men of feeling or not;
whether they be zealots, or aspirants, or despots--provided only they be
sincere--have their sublime moments, when they subdue and rule.  I felt
veneration for St. John--veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me
at once to the point I had so long shunned.  I was tempted to cease
struggling with him--to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf
of his existence, and there lose my own.  I was almost as hard beset by
him now as I had been once before, in a different way, by another.  I was
a fool both times.  To have yielded then would have been an error of
principle; to have yielded now would have been an error of judgment.  So
I think at this hour, when I look back to the crisis through the quiet
medium of time: I was unconscious of folly at the instant.

I stood motionless under my hierophant's touch.  My refusals were
forgotten--my fears overcome--my wrestlings paralysed.  The
Impossible--_i.e._, my marriage with St. John--was fast becoming the
Possible.  All was changing utterly with a sudden sweep.  Religion
called--Angels beckoned--God commanded--life rolled together like a
scroll--death's gates opening, showed eternity beyond: it seemed, that
for safety and bliss there, all here might be sacrificed in a second.  The
dim room was full of visions.

"Could you decide now?" asked the missionary.  The inquiry was put in
gentle tones: he drew me to him as gently.  Oh, that gentleness! how far
more potent is it than force!  I could resist St. John's wrath: I grew
pliant as a reed under his kindness.  Yet I knew all the time, if I
yielded now, I should not the less be made to repent, some day, of my
former rebellion.  His nature was not changed by one hour of solemn
prayer: it was only elevated.

"I could decide if I were but certain," I answered: "were I but convinced
that it is God's will I should marry you, I could vow to marry you here
and now--come afterwards what would!"

"My prayers are heard!" ejaculated St. John.  He pressed his hand firmer
on my head, as if he claimed me: he surrounded me with his arm, _almost_
as if he loved me (I say _almost_--I knew the difference--for I had felt
what it was to be loved; but, like him, I had now put love out of the
question, and thought only of duty).  I contended with my inward dimness
of vision, before which clouds yet rolled.  I sincerely, deeply,
fervently longed to do what was right; and only that.  "Show me, show me
the path!" I entreated of Heaven.  I was excited more than I had ever
been; and whether what followed was the effect of excitement the reader
shall judge.

All the house was still; for I believe all, except St. John and myself,
were now retired to rest.  The one candle was dying out: the room was
full of moonlight.  My heart beat fast and thick: I heard its throb.
Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it
through, and passed at once to my head and extremities.  The feeling was
not like an electric shock, but it was quite as sharp, as strange, as
startling: it acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had
been but torpor, from which they were now summoned and forced to wake.
They rose expectant: eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered on my
bones.

"What have you heard?  What do you see?" asked St. John.  I saw nothing,
but I heard a voice somewhere cry--

"Jane!  Jane!  Jane!"--nothing more.

"O God! what is it?" I gasped.

I might have said, "Where is it?" for it did not seem in the room--nor in
the house--nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air--nor from
under the earth--nor from overhead.  I had heard it--where, or whence,
for ever impossible to know!  And it was the voice of a human being--a
known, loved, well-remembered voice--that of Edward Fairfax Rochester;
and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.

"I am coming!" I cried.  "Wait for me!  Oh, I will come!"  I flew to the
door and looked into the passage: it was dark.  I ran out into the
garden: it was void.

"Where are you?" I exclaimed.

The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back--"Where are
you?"  I listened.  The wind sighed low in the firs: all was moorland
loneliness and midnight hush.

"Down superstition!" I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the
black yew at the gate.  "This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft:
it is the work of nature.  She was roused, and did--no miracle--but her
best."

I broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have detained me.  It
was _my_ time to assume ascendency.  _My_ powers were in play and in
force.  I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him to leave
me: I must and would be alone.  He obeyed at once.  Where there is energy
to command well enough, obedience never fails.  I mounted to my chamber;
locked myself in; fell on my knees; and prayed in my way--a different way
to St. John's, but effective in its own fashion.  I seemed to penetrate
very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His
feet.  I rose from the thanksgiving--took a resolve--and lay down,
unscared, enlightened--eager but for the daylight.

The daylight came.  I rose at dawn.  I busied myself for an hour or two
with arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and wardrobe, in the
order wherein I should wish to leave them during a brief absence.
Meantime, I heard St. John quit his room.  He stopped at my door: I
feared he would knock--no, but a slip of paper was passed under the door.
I took it up.  It bore these words--

"You left me too suddenly last night.  Had you stayed but a little
longer, you would have laid your hand on the Christian's cross and the
angel's crown.  I shall expect your clear decision when I return this day
fortnight.  Meantime, watch and pray that you enter not into temptation:
the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh, I see, is weak.  I shall
pray for you hourly.--Yours, ST. JOHN."

"My spirit," I answered mentally, "is willing to do what is right; and my
flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven, when
once that will is distinctly known to me.  At any rate, it shall be
strong enough to search--inquire--to grope an outlet from this cloud of
doubt, and find the open day of certainty."

It was the first of June; yet the morning was overcast and chilly: rain
beat fast on my casement.  I heard the front-door open, and St. John pass
out.  Looking through the window, I saw him traverse the garden.  He took
the way over the misty moors in the direction of Whitcross--there he
would meet the coach.

"In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin," thought
I: "I too have a coach to meet at Whitcross.  I too have some to see and
ask after in England, before I depart for ever."

It wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time.  I filled the interval in
walking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which had
given my plans their present bent.  I recalled that inward sensation I
had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable
strangeness.  I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence
it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in _me_--not in the external
world.  I asked was it a mere nervous impression--a delusion?  I could
not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration.  The wondrous
shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the foundations
of Paul and Silas's prison; it had opened the doors of the soul's cell
and loosed its bands--it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it
sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my
startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which
neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success of
one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous
body.

"Ere many days," I said, as I terminated my musings, "I will know
something of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me.  Letters
have proved of no avail--personal inquiry shall replace them."

At breakfast I announced to Diana and Mary that I was going a journey,
and should be absent at least four days.

"Alone, Jane?" they asked.

"Yes; it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had for some
time been uneasy."

They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they had
believed me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed, I had often
said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, they abstained from
comment, except that Diana asked me if I was sure I was well enough to
travel.  I looked very pale, she observed.  I replied, that nothing ailed
me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped soon to alleviate.

It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled with no
inquiries--no surmises.  Having once explained to them that I could not
now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely acquiesced in the
silence with which I pursued them, according to me the privilege of free
action I should under similar circumstances have accorded them.

I left Moor House at three o'clock p.m., and soon after four I stood at
the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival of the coach
which was to take me to distant Thornfield.  Amidst the silence of those
solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it approach from a great
distance.  It was the same vehicle whence, a year ago, I had alighted one
summer evening on this very spot--how desolate, and hopeless, and
objectless!  It stopped as I beckoned.  I entered--not now obliged to
part with my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation.  Once more
on the road to Thornfield, I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.

It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours.  I had set out from Whitcross
on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding Thursday morning the
coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn, situated in the midst
of scenery whose green hedges and large fields and low pastoral hills
(how mild of feature and verdant of hue compared with the stern North-
Midland moors of Morton!) met my eye like the lineaments of a once
familiar face.  Yes, I knew the character of this landscape: I was sure
we were near my bourne.

"How far is Thornfield Hall from here?" I asked of the ostler.

"Just two miles, ma'am, across the fields."

"My journey is closed," I thought to myself.  I got out of the coach,
gave a box I had into the ostler's charge, to be kept till I called for
it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going: the brightening
day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I read in gilt letters, "The
Rochester Arms."  My heart leapt up: I was already on my master's very
lands.  It fell again: the thought struck it:--

"Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you
know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you hasten,
who besides him is there?  His lunatic wife: and you have nothing to do
with him: you dare not speak to him or seek his presence.  You have lost
your labour--you had better go no farther," urged the monitor.  "Ask
information of the people at the inn; they can give you all you seek:
they can solve your doubts at once.  Go up to that man, and inquire if
Mr. Rochester be at home."

The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to act on
it.  I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair.  To prolong
doubt was to prolong hope.  I might yet once more see the Hall under the
ray of her star.  There was the stile before me--the very fields through
which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted with a revengeful fury
tracking and scourging me, on the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I
well knew what course I had resolved to take, I was in the midst of them.
How fast I walked!  How I ran sometimes!  How I looked forward to catch
the first view of the well-known woods!  With what feelings I welcomed
single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill between
them!

At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing broke
the morning stillness.  Strange delight inspired me: on I hastened.
Another field crossed--a lane threaded--and there were the courtyard
walls--the back offices: the house itself, the rookery still hid.  "My
first view of it shall be in front," I determined, "where its bold
battlements will strike the eye nobly at once, and where I can single out
my master's very window: perhaps he will be standing at it--he rises
early: perhaps he is now walking in the orchard, or on the pavement in
front.  Could I but see him!--but a moment!  Surely, in that case, I
should not be so mad as to run to him?  I cannot tell--I am not certain.
And if I did--what then?  God bless him!  What then?  Who would be hurt
by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me?  I rave: perhaps
at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the Pyrenees, or on the
tideless sea of the south."

I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard--turned its angle:
there was a gate just there, opening into the meadow, between two stone
pillars crowned by stone balls.  From behind one pillar I could peep
round quietly at the full front of the mansion.  I advanced my head with
precaution, desirous to ascertain if any bedroom window-blinds were yet
drawn up: battlements, windows, long front--all from this sheltered
station were at my command.

The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this survey.  I
wonder what they thought.  They must have considered I was very careful
and timid at first, and that gradually I grew very bold and reckless.  A
peep, and then a long stare; and then a departure from my niche and a
straying out into the meadow; and a sudden stop full in front of the
great mansion, and a protracted, hardy gaze towards it.  "What
affectation of diffidence was this at first?" they might have demanded;
"what stupid regardlessness now?"

Hear an illustration, reader.

A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a
glimpse of her fair face without waking her.  He steals softly over the
grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses--fancying she has stirred: he
withdraws: not for worlds would he be seen.  All is still: he again
advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features: he
lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty--warm,
and blooming, and lovely, in rest.  How hurried was their first glance!
But how they fix!  How he starts!  How he suddenly and vehemently clasps
in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since, touch with his
finger!  How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden, and gazes on it
wildly!  He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he no longer fears
to waken by any sound he can utter--by any movement he can make.  He
thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone dead.

I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened
ruin.

No need to cower behind a gate-post, indeed!--to peep up at chamber
lattices, fearing life was astir behind them!  No need to listen for
doors opening--to fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel-walk!  The
lawn, the grounds were trodden and waste: the portal yawned void.  The
front was, as I had once seen it in a dream, but a well-like wall, very
high and very fragile-looking, perforated with paneless windows: no roof,
no battlements, no chimneys--all had crashed in.

And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of a lonesome
wild.  No wonder that letters addressed to people here had never received
an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault in a church aisle.  The
grim blackness of the stones told by what fate the Hall had fallen--by
conflagration: but how kindled?  What story belonged to this disaster?
What loss, besides mortar and marble and wood-work had followed upon it?
Had life been wrecked as well as property?  If so, whose?  Dreadful
question: there was no one here to answer it--not even dumb sign, mute
token.

In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated
interior, I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late
occurrence.  Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through that void arch,
winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements; for, amidst the
drenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation: grass and
weed grew here and there between the stones and fallen rafters.  And oh!
where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck?  In what land?  Under
what auspices?  My eye involuntarily wandered to the grey church tower
near the gates, and I asked, "Is he with Damer de Rochester, sharing the
shelter of his narrow marble house?"

Some answer must be had to these questions.  I could find it nowhere but
at the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned.  The host himself brought
my breakfast into the parlour.  I requested him to shut the door and sit
down: I had some questions to ask him.  But when he complied, I scarcely
knew how to begin; such horror had I of the possible answers.  And yet
the spectacle of desolation I had just left prepared me in a measure for
a tale of misery.  The host was a respectable-looking, middle-aged man.

"You know Thornfield Hall, of course?" I managed to say at last.

"Yes, ma'am; I lived there once."

"Did you?"  Not in my time, I thought: you are a stranger to me.

"I was the late Mr. Rochester's butler," he added.

The late!  I seem to have received, with full force, the blow I had been
trying to evade.

"The late!" I gasped.  "Is he dead?"

"I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Edward's father," he explained.  I
breathed again: my blood resumed its flow.  Fully assured by these words
that Mr. Edward--_my_ Mr. Rochester (God bless him, wherever he was!)--was
at least alive: was, in short, "the present gentleman."  Gladdening
words!  It seemed I could hear all that was to come--whatever the
disclosures might be--with comparative tranquillity.  Since he was not in
the grave, I could bear, I thought, to learn that he was at the
Antipodes.

"Is Mr. Rochester living at Thornfield Hall now?" I asked, knowing, of
course, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring the
direct question as to where he really was.

"No, ma'am--oh, no!  No one is living there.  I suppose you are a
stranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happened last
autumn,--Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about
harvest-time.  A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity of valuable
property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture could be saved.  The fire
broke out at dead of night, and before the engines arrived from Millcote,
the building was one mass of flame.  It was a terrible spectacle: I
witnessed it myself."

"At dead of night!" I muttered.  Yes, that was ever the hour of fatality
at Thornfield.  "Was it known how it originated?" I demanded.

"They guessed, ma'am: they guessed.  Indeed, I should say it was
ascertained beyond a doubt.  You are not perhaps aware," he continued,
edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking low, "that there
was a lady--a--a lunatic, kept in the house?"

"I have heard something of it."

"She was kept in very close confinement, ma'am: people even for some
years was not absolutely certain of her existence.  No one saw her: they
only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall; and who or what
she was it was difficult to conjecture.  They said Mr. Edward had brought
her from abroad, and some believed she had been his mistress.  But a
queer thing happened a year since--a very queer thing."

I feared now to hear my own story.  I endeavoured to recall him to the
main fact.

"And this lady?"

"This lady, ma'am," he answered, "turned out to be Mr. Rochester's wife!
The discovery was brought about in the strangest way.  There was a young
lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Rochester fell in--"

"But the fire," I suggested.

"I'm coming to that, ma'am--that Mr. Edward fell in love with.  The
servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was: he was
after her continually.  They used to watch him--servants will, you know,
ma'am--and he set store on her past everything: for all, nobody but him
thought her so very handsome.  She was a little small thing, they say,
almost like a child.  I never saw her myself; but I've heard Leah, the
house-maid, tell of her.  Leah liked her well enough.  Mr. Rochester was
about forty, and this governess not twenty; and you see, when gentlemen
of his age fall in love with girls, they are often like as if they were
bewitched.  Well, he would marry her."

"You shall tell me this part of the story another time," I said; "but now
I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about the fire.  Was
it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Rochester, had any hand in it?"

"You've hit it, ma'am: it's quite certain that it was her, and nobody but
her, that set it going.  She had a woman to take care of her called Mrs.
Poole--an able woman in her line, and very trustworthy, but for one
fault--a fault common to a deal of them nurses and matrons--she _kept a
private bottle of gin by her_, and now and then took a drop over-much.  It
is excusable, for she had a hard life of it: but still it was dangerous;
for when Mrs. Poole was fast asleep after the gin and water, the mad
lady, who was as cunning as a witch, would take the keys out of her
pocket, let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the house,
doing any wild mischief that came into her head.  They say she had nearly
burnt her husband in his bed once: but I don't know about that.  However,
on this night, she set fire first to the hangings of the room next her
own, and then she got down to a lower storey, and made her way to the
chamber that had been the governess's--(she was like as if she knew
somehow how matters had gone on, and had a spite at her)--and she kindled
the bed there; but there was nobody sleeping in it, fortunately.  The
governess had run away two months before; and for all Mr. Rochester
sought her as if she had been the most precious thing he had in the
world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew savage--quite
savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but he got
dangerous after he lost her.  He would be alone, too.  He sent Mrs.
Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but he did
it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and she
deserved it--she was a very good woman.  Miss Adele, a ward he had, was
put to school.  He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry, and shut
himself up like a hermit at the Hall."

"What! did he not leave England?"

"Leave England?  Bless you, no!  He would not cross the door-stones of
the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost about the
grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses--which it is my
opinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he was
before that midge of a governess crossed him, you never saw, ma'am.  He
was not a man given to wine, or cards, or racing, as some are, and he was
not so very handsome; but he had a courage and a will of his own, if ever
man had.  I knew him from a boy, you see: and for my part, I have often
wished that Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she came to
Thornfield Hall."

"Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?"

"Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was burning
above and below, and got the servants out of their beds and helped them
down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell.  And
then they called out to him that she was on the roof, where she was
standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and shouting out till
they could hear her a mile off: I saw her and heard her with my own eyes.
She was a big woman, and had long black hair: we could see it streaming
against the flames as she stood.  I witnessed, and several more
witnessed, Mr. Rochester ascend through the sky-light on to the roof; we
heard him call 'Bertha!'  We saw him approach her; and then, ma'am, she
yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the
pavement."

{The next minute she lay smashed on the pavement: p413.jpg}

"Dead?"

"Dead!  Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were
scattered."

"Good God!"

"You may well say so, ma'am: it was frightful!"

He shuddered.

"And afterwards?" I urged.

"Well, ma'am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground: there are
only some bits of walls standing now."

"Were any other lives lost?"

"No--perhaps it would have been better if there had."

"What do you mean?"

"Poor Mr. Edward!" he ejaculated, "I little thought ever to have seen it!
Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his first marriage
secret, and wanting to take another wife while he had one living: but I
pity him, for my part."

"You said he was alive?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better be dead."

"Why?  How?"  My blood was again running cold.  "Where is he?" I
demanded.  "Is he in England?"

"Ay--ay--he's in England; he can't get out of England, I fancy--he's a
fixture now."

What agony was this!  And the man seemed resolved to protract it.

"He is stone-blind," he said at last.  "Yes, he is stone-blind, is Mr.
Edward."

I had dreaded worse.  I had dreaded he was mad.  I summoned strength to
ask what had caused this calamity.

"It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a way,
ma'am: he wouldn't leave the house till every one else was out before
him.  As he came down the great staircase at last, after Mrs. Rochester
had flung herself from the battlements, there was a great crash--all
fell.  He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, but sadly hurt: a
beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him partly; but one eye was
knocked out, and one hand so crushed that Mr. Carter, the surgeon, had to
amputate it directly.  The other eye inflamed: he lost the sight of that
also.  He is now helpless, indeed--blind and a cripple."

"Where is he?  Where does he now live?"

"At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles off:
quite a desolate spot."

"Who is with him?"

"Old John and his wife: he would have none else.  He is quite broken
down, they say."

"Have you any sort of conveyance?"

"We have a chaise, ma'am, a very handsome chaise."

"Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive me to
Ferndean before dark this day, I'll pay both you and him twice the hire
you usually demand."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: St. John continues to be cold to Jane, and still makes hints concerning his proposal of marriage. She explains that she could not enter into a loveless marriage. This would kill her spirit. St. John tries to manipulate Jane - almost blackmailing her into agreeing to his proposal. Diana advises Jane not to go to India under any circumstances, as a life of servitude in that country would bring her to an early death. St. John has many good attributes, but he is misguided. No one can deny that he is devoted to his flock and his fellow man. He is also an inspired reader from the Bible, and at evening prayers he reads from the Book of Revelation, Chapter 21, "He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son. But, the fearful and unbelieving '' shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." Jane had a sudden 'revelation' of what life would be like for her in India with St. John, and it appalled her. Jane was alone with St. John when she was startled, and St. John asked her what she had heard. She responded by saying, "I heard a voice somewhere cry, Jane, Jane, Jane. It did not seem in the room, nor in the house, nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air, nor from under the earth, '' it was the voice of Edward Fairfax Rochester." Jane ran out into the garden. She told St. John that she must go on a personal errand before she can decide what to do with her future. The next day, Jane left for Thornfield only to find it a blackened ruin. Now she knows why her letters went unanswered. The Innkeeper who worked as old Mr. Rochester's butler relates the story of how Thornfield was destroyed. Young Rochester's mad wife, Bertha, had set fire to her room and Jane's room. Rochester managed to evacuate the house and then went back inside to try and rescue Bertha, who was on the roof. She fell to her death. He lost an eye and his left hand had to be amputated. The other eye became inflamed, and he is totally blind. He now lives at Ferndean with two old servants. Jane engages a carriage, and hopes to be there before dark.


prompt:
Chapter: There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.  We had been
wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but
since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold
winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so
penetrating, that further out-door 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 of Bessie,
the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to
Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.

The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama
in the drawing-room: 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 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 and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly
manner--something lighter, franker, 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 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 adjoined 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: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having
drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double
retirement.

Folds of scarlet drapery 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 November day.  At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my
book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon.  Afar, it offered a
pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat
shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and
lamentable blast.

I returned to my book--Bewick's History of British Birds: the letterpress
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; 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.
There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired,
because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his
inflictions; 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 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,
and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a step or two from his
chair.

"That is for your impudence 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.

"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 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 the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively
started aside with a cry of alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume
was flung, it hit 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--you are like the Roman emperors!"

I had read Goldsmith's History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of
Nero, Caligula, etc.  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 of somewhat pungent 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.  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--

"Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there."  Four hands were
immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Chapter one introduces Jane, the narrator of the story, her aunt Mrs. Reed, and her cousins, Eliza, John and Georgiana Reed. Ten-year old Jane lives at the Reed's Gateshead Hall. It becomes obvious that Jane's place in the household is not a comfortable one, and Mrs. Reed does not think highly of her. Jane tries to remain unnoticed in the drawing room reading on a rainy day, but John Reed, the fourteen-year-old son of Mrs. Reed, soon finds her. Jane lives in terror of John, as he bullies and punishes her without end. John becomes angry that Jane is reading one of their books, and says that she is a dependent there, has no money, and should not "live with gentlemen's children like. John throws the book at Jane, causing her to fall and cut her head against the door. Jane then fights against him, and when Mrs. Reed enters the room she sends Jane to be locked in the red-room


prompt:
Chapter: 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 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's-maid.  "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 pair of hands arrested me instantly.

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

"Mind you don't," said Bessie; and when she had ascertained that I was
really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me; then she and Miss Abbot
stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as
incredulous of my sanity.

"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 poorhouse."

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 become 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 brought up with
them.  They will have a great 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 am sure."

"Besides," said Miss Abbot, "God will punish 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 anything.  Say
your prayers, 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 red-room was a square 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 centre;
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 were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe,
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 mattresses 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 bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and
looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.

This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because
remote from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was known to be
so seldom entered.  The house-maid 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
jewel-casket, 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 the
undertaker's men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had
guarded it from frequent 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 looking-glass between them repeated the vacant 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
jail was ever more secure.  Returning, I had to cross before the looking-
glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed.
All 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: I thought it like one of
the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie's evening stories
represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing
before the eyes of belated travellers.  I returned to my stool.

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

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, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned?  Why
could I never please?  Why was it useless to try to win any one's favour?
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 curls,
seemed 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 fulfil 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 farther irrational violence, I was loaded with
general opprobrium.

"Unjust!--unjust!" said my reason, forced by the agonising 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 in what
darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought!  I could
not answer the ceaseless inward question--_why_ I thus suffered; now, at
the distance of--I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.

I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; I had nothing
in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen vassalage.  If
they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them.  They were not
bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathise with one
amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in
capacity, in propensities; a useless thing, incapable of serving their
interest, or adding to their pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the
germs of indignation at their treatment, of contempt of their judgment.  I
know 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 scapegoat of the nursery.

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 staircase window, and the wind howling
in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then
my courage sank.  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
conceiving 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, I 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 her own family group.

A singular notion dawned upon me.  I doubted not--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 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; and I thought Mr. Reed'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.  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 realised: with all my might I
endeavoured to stifle it--I endeavoured 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 from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind?  No; moonlight
was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling
and quivered over my head.  I can now conjecture readily that this streak
of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by some
one across the lawn: but 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.  My heart beat thick, my
head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of
wings; 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 passage; 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.

"Take me out!  Let me go into the nursery!" was my cry.

"What for?  Are you hurt?  Have you seen 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 naughty tricks."

"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-room till I came to her myself."

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

"Let her go," was the only answer.  "Loose Bessie's hand, child: you
cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured.  I abhor
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."

"O aunt! have pity!  Forgive me!  I cannot endure it--let me be punished
some other way!  I shall be killed if--"

"Silence!  This violence is all most repulsive:" and so, no doubt, she
felt it.  I was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked on
me as a compound of virulent passions, 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
farther parley.  I heard her sweeping away; and soon after she was gone,
I suppose I had a species of fit: unconsciousness closed the scene.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: "I resisted all the way: a new thing for me. Jane states as Bessie, the nurse, tries to take her away. She tells Jane that she should not act so, as she is in debt to Mrs. Reed and is not equal to the Misses or Mr. Reed. When Bessie leaves her alone, Jane wonders why it is that she is always thought to be bad no matter how she tries to please, and why John is not punished for hitting her. Jane thinks that Mr. Reed, her uncle who had died nine years before, would not treat her so. The red-room where Jane is locked is the room where Mr. Reed had died, and on thinking of this, Jane believes she sees something in the room with her and rushes to shake the locked door. Bessie soon comes running, but Mrs. Reed pushes Jane back into the room and locks the door. Jane falls unconscious


prompt:
Chapter: The next thing I remember is, waking up with a feeling as if I had had a
frightful nightmare, and seeing before me a terrible red glare, crossed
with thick black bars.  I heard voices, too, speaking with a hollow
sound, and as if muffled by a rush of wind or water: agitation,
uncertainty, and an all-predominating sense of terror confused my
faculties.  Ere long, I became aware that some one was handling me;
lifting me up and supporting me in a sitting posture, and that more
tenderly than I had ever been raised or upheld before.  I rested my head
against a pillow or an arm, and felt easy.

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 burnt on the table; Bessie stood at the bed-
foot with 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 Bessie (though her presence was far less obnoxious to me
than that of Abbot, for instance, would have been), I scrutinised 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 some further directions,
and intimates that he 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 sank: inexpressible sadness weighed it down.

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

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 anything?"

"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 anything in the night."

Wonderful civility this!  It emboldened me to ask a question.

"Bessie, what is the matter with me?  Am I ill?"

"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 anything.  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 churchyard just over his grave," etc., etc.

At last both slept: the fire and the candle went out.  For me, the
watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; 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.

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 worse
ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which
kept drawing from me silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one salt 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
the carriage with their mama.  Abbot, too, was sewing in another room,
and Bessie, as she moved hither and thither, putting away toys and
arranging drawers, addressed to me every now and then a word of unwonted
kindness.  This state of things should have been to me a paradise of
peace, accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless
fagging; 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 rosebuds, 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 circlet of delicate pastry upon it.  Vain
favour! coming, like most other favours 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 wall-nooks, 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 marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now,
never failed to find--all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt
goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful 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."

I had often heard the song before, and always with lively delight; for
Bessie had a sweet voice,--at least, I thought so.  But now, though her
voice was still sweet, I found in its melody an indescribable sadness.
Sometimes, preoccupied with her work, she sang the refrain very low, very
lingeringly; "A long time ago" came out like the saddest cadence of a
funeral hymn.  She passed into another ballad, 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 grey 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 mercy, protection is showing,
      Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child.

   Ev'n 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.

   There is a thought that for strength should avail me,
      Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled;
   Heaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me;
      God is a friend to the poor orphan child."

"Come, Miss Jane, don't cry," said Bessie as she finished.  She might as
well have said to the fire, "don't burn!" but how could she divine the
morbid suffering to which I was a prey?  In the course of the morning Mr.
Lloyd came again.

"What, already up!" said he, as he entered the nursery.  "Well, nurse,
how is she?"

Bessie answered that I was doing very well.

"Then she ought to look more cheerful.  Come here, Miss Jane: your name
is Jane, is it not?"

"Yes, sir, Jane Eyre."

"Well, you have been crying, Miss Jane Eyre; can you tell me what about?
Have you any pain?"

"No, sir."

"Oh!  I daresay she is crying because she could not go out with Missis in
the carriage," interposed Bessie.

"Surely not! why, she is too old for such pettishness."

I thought so too; and my self-esteem being wounded by the false charge, I
answered promptly, "I never cried for such a thing in my life: I hate
going out in the carriage.  I cry because I am miserable."

"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 and grey;
not very bright, but I dare say I should think them shrewd now: he had a
hard-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.

"Fall! why, that is like a baby again!  Can't she manage to walk at her
age?  She must be eight or nine years old."

"I was knocked down," was the blunt explanation, jerked out of me by
another pang of mortified pride; "but that did not make me ill," I added;
while Mr. Lloyd helped himself to a pinch of snuff.

As he was returning the box to his waistcoat pocket, a loud bell rang for
the servants' dinner; he knew what it was.  "That's for you, nurse," said
he; "you can go down; I'll give Miss Jane a lecture till you come back."

Bessie would rather have stayed, but she was obliged to go, because
punctuality at meals was rigidly enforced at Gateshead Hall.

"The fall did not make you ill; what did, then?" pursued Mr. Lloyd when
Bessie was gone.

"I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost till after dark."

I saw Mr. Lloyd smile and frown at the same time.

"Ghost!  What, you are a baby after all!  You are afraid of ghosts?"

"Of Mr. Reed's ghost I am: he died in that room, and was laid out there.
Neither Bessie nor any one else will go into it at night, if they can
help it; and it was cruel to shut me up alone without a candle,--so cruel
that I think I shall never forget it."

"Nonsense!  And is it that makes you so miserable?  Are you afraid now in
daylight?"

"No: but night will come again before long: and besides,--I am
unhappy,--very unhappy, for other things."

"What other things?  Can you tell me some of them?"

How much I wished to reply fully to this question!  How difficult it was
to frame any answer!  Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their
feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know
not how to express the result of the process in words.  Fearful, however,
of losing this first and only opportunity of relieving my grief by
imparting it, I, after a disturbed pause, contrived to frame a meagre,
though, as far as it went, true response.

"For one thing, I have no father or mother, brothers or sisters."

"You have a kind aunt and cousins."

Again I paused; then bunglingly enounced--

"But John Reed knocked me down, and my aunt shut me up in the red-room."

Mr. Lloyd a second time produced his snuff-box.

"Don't you think Gateshead Hall a very beautiful house?" asked he.  "Are
you not very thankful to have such a fine place to live at?"

"It is not my house, sir; and Abbot says I have less right to be here
than a servant."

"Pooh! you can't be silly enough to wish to leave such a splendid place?"

"If I had anywhere else to go, I should be glad to leave it; but I can
never get away from Gateshead till I am a woman."

"Perhaps you may--who knows?  Have you any relations besides Mrs. Reed?"

"I think not, sir."

"None belonging to your father?"

"I don't know.  I asked Aunt Reed once, and she said possibly I might
have some poor, low relations called Eyre, but she knew nothing about
them."

"If you had such, would you like to go to them?"

I reflected.  Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to
children: they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectable
poverty; they think of the word only as connected with ragged clothes,
scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and debasing vices: poverty
for me was synonymous with degradation.

"No; I should not like to belong to poor people," was my reply.

"Not even if they were kind to you?"

I shook my head: I could not see how poor people had the means of being
kind; and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their manners, to be
uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes nursing
their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of the
village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at
the price of caste.

"But are your relatives so very poor?  Are they working people?"

"I cannot tell; Aunt Reed says if I have any, they must be a beggarly
set: I should not like to go a begging."

"Would you like to go to school?"

Again I reflected: I scarcely knew what school was: Bessie sometimes
spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks, wore
backboards, and were expected to be exceedingly genteel and precise: John
Reed hated his school, and abused his master; but John Reed's tastes were
no rule for mine, and if Bessie's accounts of school-discipline (gathered
from the young ladies of a family where she had lived before coming to
Gateshead) were somewhat appalling, her details of certain
accomplishments attained by these same young ladies were, I thought,
equally attractive.  She boasted of beautiful paintings of landscapes and
flowers by them executed; of songs they could sing and pieces they could
play, of purses they could net, of French books they could translate;
till my spirit was moved to emulation as I listened.  Besides, school
would be a complete change: it implied a long journey, an entire
separation from Gateshead, an entrance into a new life.

"I should indeed like to go to school," was the audible conclusion of my
musings.

"Well, well! who knows what may happen?" said Mr. Lloyd, as he got up.
"The child ought to have change of air and scene," he added, speaking to
himself; "nerves not in a good state."

Bessie now returned; at the same moment the carriage was heard rolling up
the gravel-walk.

"Is that your mistress, nurse?" asked Mr. Lloyd.  "I should like to speak
to her before I go."

Bessie invited him to walk into the breakfast-room, and led the way out.
In the interview which followed between him and Mrs. Reed, I presume,
from after-occurrences, that the apothecary ventured to recommend my
being sent to school; and the recommendation was no doubt readily enough
adopted; for as Abbot said, in discussing the subject with Bessie when
both sat sewing in the nursery one night, after I was in bed, and, as
they thought, asleep, "Missis was, she dared say, glad enough to get rid
of such a tiresome, ill-conditioned child, who always looked as if she
were watching everybody, and scheming plots underhand."  Abbot, I think,
gave me credit for being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes.

On that same occasion I learned, for the first time, from Miss Abbot's
communications to Bessie, that my father had been a poor clergyman; that
my mother had married him against the wishes of her friends, who
considered the match beneath her; that my grandfather Reed was so
irritated at her disobedience, he cut her off without a shilling; that
after my mother and father had been married a year, the latter caught the
typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing town
where his curacy was situated, and where that disease was then prevalent:
that my mother took the infection from him, and both died within a month
of each other.

Bessie, when she heard this narrative, sighed and said, "Poor Miss Jane
is to be pitied, too, Abbot."

"Yes," responded Abbot; "if she were a nice, pretty child, one might
compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a
little toad as that."

"Not a great deal, to be sure," agreed Bessie: "at any rate, a beauty
like Miss Georgiana would be more moving in the same condition."

"Yes, I doat on Miss Georgiana!" cried the fervent Abbot.  "Little
darling!--with her long curls and her blue eyes, and such a sweet colour
as she has; just as if she were painted!--Bessie, I could fancy a Welsh
rabbit for supper."

"So could I--with a roast onion.  Come, we'll go down."  They went.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The next thing Jane remembers is waking up in her own bed. Mr. Lloyd, the apothecary, comes to see her, and the next day she is up and about, though her nerves are still shaken. Bessie is especially nice to Jane, but Jane feels as if she cannot eat or read. Bessie sings to her, and Jane gets sad over her state and cries. When Mr. Lloyd comes again and asks why she has been crying, she states that she is miserable because she has no father or mother and that Gateshead is not her house. He asks if she has any other relations, and she answers that Mrs. Reed said that she might, but that they must be beggars. When asked, she admits that she would not like to belong to poor people. When asked if she would like to go to school, Jane says yes. While listening to Bessie talk when she thinks Jane is asleep, Jane learns that her father was a poor clergyman, and that her mother's grandfather disowned her when she married him. They both died of typhus fever