Iresisted all the way which was a new thing for me, and a circumstance which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were disposed to entertain of me.
“For shame! For shame!” cried the lady’s maid, Miss Abbot. “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 red room and had thrust me upon a stool.
There Bessie and Miss Abbot stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as incredulous of my sanity.
“She never did so before,” said Bessie at last.
“But it was always in her,” was the reply. “I’ve told Missis often my opinion about the child, and Missis agrees with me. She’s an underhand little thing.”
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 and if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poorhouse.”
I had nothing to say to these words since they were not new to me. My very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind.
“What we tell you is for your good,” added Bessie, in no harsh voice, “If you become passionate and rude Missis will send you away, I am sure.”
“Come, we will leave her,” said Miss Abbot. “Say your prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself. 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. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany and 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 red cloth and the walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it.
The room was chill because it seldom had a fire. It was silent because it was remote from the nursery, and solemn because it was known to be so seldom entered. The housemaid alone came here on Saturdays to wipe the mirrors. Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, which I could only guess from the events of this afternoon held more portraits similar to that of my dark-eyed lover. Perhaps she too craved the warm touch of a tender hand as I so dearly did, her husband having passed away. In those last words lay 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 and it was in this chamber he breathed his last. Here he lay in state and since that day, a sense of dreary consecration has guarded the room 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. 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 and my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed. All looked colder and darker in that visionary, and the strange little figure there gazing at me with a white face and arms had the effect of a real spirit. I returned to my stool.
My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received, and I touched it gently, wincing. I still could barely believe that John had treated me so. He was quick-tempered and aggressive but I did not know that he was cruel, perhaps jealousy had made him so.
“Unjust!—unjust!” said my reason, for Mrs. Reed had not chided him for his violence. His cruelty was borne in her.
Daylight had begun 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 thoughts wandered to Mr. Reed once more and dwelling on his death, gathered dread. I could not remember him, but I knew that he was my own uncle—my mother’s brother—that he had taken me as a parentless infant to his house, and that in his last moments he had required a promise of Mrs. Reed that she would rear me as one of her own children. A singular notion dawned upon me. I doubted not—never doubted—that if Mr. Reed had been alive, he would have treated me kindly. As I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls—occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaning 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. I thought of Mr. Reed’s spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his sister’s child, which might quit its abode 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.
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. 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 and a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings. Something seemed near me, I was oppressed and suffocated. Endurance broke down and I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer passage, the key turned and Bessie and Abbot entered.
“Take me out! Let me go into the nursery!” was my cry.
“What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something?” 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, 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.
“O aunt! Have pity! Forgive me!” I squealed, beside myself. “I cannot endure it—let me be punished some other way! I shall be killed if—”
“Silence! This violence is all most repulsive!”
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. I heard her sweeping away.
I screamed and unconsciousness took me.