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Jane Eyre- CHAPTER II

放大字体缩小字体发布日期:2005-03-09

      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 housemaid 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.

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