# Jane Eyre By [Clay_Tsai](https://paragraph.com/@clay_tsai) · 2024-12-06 #novel, #janeeyre --- 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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/penetrating), that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question. I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on [**chilly**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/chilly) afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw [**twilight**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/twilight), with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and [**humbled**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/perfectly) happy. Me, she had [**dispensed**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/sociable) and childlike [**disposition**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/disposition), a more attractive and [**sprightly**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/sprightly) manner- something [**lighter**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/lighter), franker, more natural, as it were- she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for [**contented**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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 small breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon [**possessed**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/possessed) myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: [**gathering**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/gathering) up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having [**drawn**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/drawn)[**15**](https://novel.tingroom.com/jingdian/13/3138.html#_w_15) the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double [**retirement**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/retirement). Folds of [**scarlet**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/scarlet) drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear [**panes**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/panes) of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At [**intervals**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/shrub), with ceaseless rain [**sweeping**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/sweeping) away wildly before a long and [**lamentable**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/solitary) rocks and [**promontories**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/promontories)' by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with [**isles**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/isles) from its southern [**extremity**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/extremity), the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape- 'Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls, Boils round the naked, [**melancholy**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/bleak) shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with 'the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of [**dreary**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/dreary) space,- that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, [**glazed**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/glazed) in [**Alpine**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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 aim 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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/standing) up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat [**stranded**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/stranded) on a [**desolate**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/desolate) coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a [**wreck**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/wreck) just sinking. I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard, with its [**inscribed**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/inscribed) headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent, [**attesting**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/attesting) the hour of eventide. The two ships becalmed on a [**torpid**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/torpid) sea, I believed to be [**marine**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/marine) [**phantoms**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/aloof) on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a [**gallows**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/narrated) on winter evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having brought her ironing-table to the nursery [**hearth**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/Jack).' And I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being dragged [**forth**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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 armchair, 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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/stout) for his age, with a [**dingy**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/dingy) and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a [**spacious**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/spacious) visage, heavy limbs and large [**extremities**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/extremities). He [**gorged**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/gorged) himself [**habitually**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/habitually) at table, which made him [**bilious**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/antipathy) to me. He [**bullied**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/dreading) the blow, I [**mused**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/tottered), and on [**regaining**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/regaining) my [**equilibrium**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/equilibrium) [**retired**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/retired) back a step or two from his chair. 'That is for your [**impudence**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/impudence) in answering mama awhile since,' said he, 'and for your [**sneaking**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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 [**dependant**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/dependant), 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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/poise) the book and stand in act to [**hurl**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/hurl) it, I [**instinctively**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/tyrant), a murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head [**trickle**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/trickle) down my neck, and was sensible of somewhat [**pungent**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/pungent) suffering: these sensations for the time predominated over fear, and I received him in [**frantic**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/frantic) sort. I don't very well know what I did with my hands, but he called me 'Rat! Rat!' and [**bellowed**](http://dict.qsbdc.com/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. --- *Originally published on [Clay_Tsai](https://paragraph.com/@clay_tsai/jane-eyre)*