During January, February, and part of March, the deep snows prevented our stirring beyond the garden walls except to go to church. Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold and since we had no boots, the snow got into our shoes and melted there. Our ungloved hands became numbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet and I remember well the distracting irritation I endured from this cause every evening, when my feet inflamed; and the torture of thrusting the swelled, raw, and stiff toes into my shoes in the morning.
The scanty supply of food was also distressing. With the keen appetites of growing children, we had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid. From this deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed hardly on the younger pupils. Whenever the famished great girls had an opportunity, they would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion. Many a time I have shared between two claimants the precious morsel of brown bread distributed at tea-time; and after relinquishing to a third half the contents of my mug of coffee, I have swallowed the remainder with an accompaniment of secret tears, forced from me by the exigency of hunger.
Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season. We had to walk two miles to Brocklebridge Church, where our patron officiated. We set out cold and we arrived at church colder. During the morning service we became almost paralysed. It was too far to return to dinner so we were forced to stay there. At the close of the afternoon service we returned by an exposed and hilly road, where the bitter winter wind blowing over a range of snowy summits to the north almost flayed the skin from our faces.
How we longed for the light and heat of a blazing fire when we got back! But, to the little ones at least, this was denied. Each hearth in the schoolroom was immediately surrounded by a double row of great girls, and behind them the younger children crouched in groups, wrapping their starved arms in their pinafores.
A little solace came at tea-time, in the shape of a double ration of bread—a whole instead of a half slice—with the delicious addition of a thin scrape of butter. It was the hebdomadal treat to which we all looked forward from Sabbath to Sabbath.
I have not yet alluded to the visits of Mr. Brocklehurst; and indeed that gentleman was from home during the greater part of the first month after my arrival. Perhaps he was prolonging his stay with his friend the archdeacon, but his absence was a relief to me. I need not say that I had my own reasons for dreading his coming, but come he did at last.
One afternoon (I had then been three weeks at Lowood), as I was sitting with a slate in my hand, puzzling over a sum in long division, my eyes, raised in abstraction to the window, caught sight of a figure just passing. I recognised almost instinctively that gaunt outline; and when all the school teachers rose en masse, it was not necessary for me to look up in order to ascertain whose entrance they thus greeted. A long stride measured the schoolroom, and presently beside Miss Temple stood the same man who had frowned on me so ominously from the hearthrug of Gateshead.
I had my own reasons for being dismayed at this apparition. Too well I remembered the perfidious hints given by Mrs. Reed about my disposition and the promise pledged by Mr. Brocklehurst to apprise Miss Temple and the teachers of my vicious nature. All along I had been dreading the fulfilment of this promise, I had been looking out daily for him whose information respecting my past life and conversation was to brand me as a bad child for ever. Now there he was.
He stood at Miss Temple’s side and he was speaking low in her ear. I did not doubt he was making disclosures of my villainy, and I watched her eye with painful anxiety, expecting every moment to see its dark orb turn on me a glance of repugnance and contempt. I listened too; and as I happened to be seated quite at the top of the room, I caught most of what he said. Its import relieved me from immediate apprehension.
“The laundress tells me some of the girls have two clean tuckers in the week. It is too much; the rules limit them to one.”
“I think I can explain that circumstance, sir,” said Miss Temple. “Agnes and Catherine Johnstone were invited to take tea with some friends at Lowton last Thursday, and I gave them leave to put on clean tuckers for the occasion.”
“Well, for once it may pass, I suppose. And there is another thing which surprised me; I find, in settling accounts with the housekeeper, that a lunch consisting of bread and cheese has twice been served out to the girls during the past fortnight. How is this? I looked over the regulations and I find no such meal as lunch mentioned. Who introduced this innovation? And by what authority?”
“I must be responsible for the circumstance, sir,” replied Miss Temple. “The breakfast was so ill prepared that the pupils could not possibly eat it and I dared not allow them to remain fasting till dinner-time.”
“Madam, allow me an instant. You are aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of a meal, they should eat it nonetheless.”
Mr. Brocklehurst again paused, perhaps overcome by his feelings. Miss Temple had looked down when he first began to speak to her; but she now gazed straight before her, her face set.
Meantime, Mr. Brocklehurst, standing on the hearth with his hands behind his back, surveyed the whole school. Suddenly his eye gave a blink, as if it had met something that either dazzled or shocked its pupil. Turning, he said in more rapid accents than he had hitherto used, “Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what—what is that girl with curled hair? Red hair, ma’am, curled—curled all over?” And extending his cane he pointed to the awful object, his hand shaking as he did so.
“It is Julia Severn,” replied Miss Temple, very quietly.
“Julia Severn, ma’am! And why has she, or any other, curled hair? Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of this house, does she conform to the world so openly—here in an evangelical, charitable establishment—as to wear her hair one mass of curls?”
“Julia’s hair curls naturally,” returned Miss Temple, still more quietly.
“Naturally! Yes, but we are not to conform to nature. I wish these girls to be the children of Grace, and why that abundance? I have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged closely, modestly, plainly. Miss Temple, that girl’s hair must be cut off entirely. I will send a barber to-morrow, and I see others who have far too much of the excrescence—that tall girl, tell her to turn round. Tell all the first form to rise up and direct their faces to the wall.”
Miss Temple passed her handkerchief over her lips, as if to smooth away the involuntary smile that curled them and she gave the order.
Leaning a little back on my bench, I could see the looks and grimaces with which the class commented on this manoeuvre. It was a pity Mr. Brocklehurst could not see them too for he would perhaps have felt that, whatever he might do with the outside of the cup and platter, the inside was further beyond his interference than he imagined.
He scrutinised the reverse of these living medals some five minutes, then pronounced sentence. These words fell like the knell of doom, “All those top-knots must be cut off.”
Miss Temple seemed to remonstrate.
“Madam,” he pursued, “I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not of this world. My mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh and to teach them to clothe themselves with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel.”
I smarted slightly at the mention of “lusts of the flesh” wondering what unearthly punishment Mr. Brocklehurst should condemn me to, should he know of my previous doings. Thankfully he was none the wiser and continued thus, “Each of the young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which vanity itself might have woven. These, I repeat, must be cut off. Think of the time wasted, of—”
Mr. Brocklehurst was here interrupted when three ladies now entered the room. They ought to have come a little sooner to have heard his lecture on dress, for they were splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs. The two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and seventeen) had grey beaver hats shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled. The elder lady was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl trimmed with ermine and she wore a false front of French curls.
These ladies were deferentially received by Miss Temple as Mrs. and the Misses Brocklehurst, and conducted to seats of honour at the top of the room. It seems they had come in the carriage with their reverend relative, and had been conducting a rummaging scrutiny of the room upstairs, while he transacted business with the housekeeper, questioned the laundress, and lectured the superintendent. They now proceeded to address divers remarks and reproofs to Miss Smith, who was charged with the care of the linen and the inspection of the dormitories, but I had no time to listen to what they said; other matters called off and enchanted my attention.
Hitherto, while gathering up the discourse of Mr. Brocklehurst and Miss Temple, I had at the same time made precautions to secure my personal safety by ensuring I eluded observation. I had sat well back on the form, and while seeming to be busy with my sum, had held my slate in such a manner as to conceal my face. I might have escaped notice, had not my treacherous slate somehow happened to slip from my hand, and falling with an obtrusive crash, directly drawn every eye upon me. I knew it was all over now, and, as I stooped to pick up the two fragments of slate, I rallied my forces for the worst. It came.
“A careless girl!” said Mr. Brocklehurst, and immediately after, “It is the new pupil, I perceive.” And before I could draw breath, “I must not forget I have a word to say respecting her.” Then aloud, “Let the child who broke her slate come forward!”
Of my own accord I could not have stirred. I was paralysed. But the two great girls who sat on each side of me, set me on my legs and pushed me towards the dread judge. Then Miss Temple gently assisted me to his very feet, and I caught her whispered counsel, “Don’t be afraid, Jane, I saw it was an accident and you shall not be punished.”
The kind whisper went to my heart like a dagger.
“Another minute, and she will despise me for a hypocrite,” thought I. An impulse of fury against Reed, Brocklehurst, and Co. bounded in my pulses at the conviction. I was no Helen Burns. I could not withstand any beating.
“Fetch that stool,” said Mr. Brocklehurst, pointing to a very high one from which a monitor had just risen. It was brought.
“Place the girl upon it.”
And I was placed there, by whom I don’t know. I was in no condition to note particulars; I was only aware that they had hoisted me up to the height of Mr. Brocklehurst’s nose and that he was within a yard of me.
“Ladies,” said he, turning to his family, “Miss Temple, teachers, and children, you all see this girl?”
Of course they did; for I felt their eyes directed like burning-glasses against my scorched skin.
“This is a sad and a melancholy occasion. It becomes my duty to warn you that this girl is not a member of the true flock, but evidently an interloper and an alien. You must be on your guard against her. You must shun her example and if necessary, avoid her company. Exclude her from your sports and shut her out from your converse. Teachers, you must watch her and keep your eyes on her movements, weigh well her words, scrutinise her actions, punish her body to save her soul. This girl is a liar!”
Now came a pause of ten minutes, during which I, by this time in perfect possession of my wits, observed all the female Brocklehursts produce their pocket-handkerchiefs and apply them to their optics, while the elderly lady swayed herself to and fro, and the two younger ones whispered, “How shocking!” Mr. Brocklehurst resumed. “This I learned from her benefactress. From the pious and charitable lady who adopted her in her orphan state, reared her as her own daughter, and whose kindness and generosity the unhappy girl repaid by an ingratitude so bad, so dreadful, that at last her excellent patroness was obliged to separate her from her own young ones.”
With this sublime conclusion, Mr. Brocklehurst adjusted the top button of his surtout, muttered something to his family, bowed to Miss Temple and then all the great people sailed in state from the room. Turning at the door, my judge said, “Let her stand half-an-hour longer on that stool, and let no one speak to her during the remainder of the day.”
There was I, then, mounted aloft. I, who had said I could not bear the shame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the room, was now exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy. What my sensations were no language can describe; but just as they all rose, stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me. In passing, she lifted her eyes.
What a strange light inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me! How the new feeling bore me up!
Helen Burns asked some slight question about her work of Miss Smith, was chidden for the triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place and smiled at me as she again went by. What a smile! It lit up her marked lineaments, her thin face and her sunken grey eyes like a reflection from the aspect of an angel.