I resisted all the way: a new thing for me, and a circumstancewhich greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbotwere disposed to entertain of me. The fact is, I was a triflebeside myself; or rather OUT of myself, as the French would say: Iwas conscious that a moment's mutiny had already rendered me liableto strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I feltresolved, 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 shockingconduct, Miss Eyre, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress'sson! 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 fromit like a spring; their two pair of hands arrested me instantly.

"If you don't sit still, you must be tied down," said Bessie. "MissAbbot, 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 Iwas really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me; then she and MissAbbot stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on myface, as incredulous of my sanity.

"She never did so before," at last said Bessie, turning to theAbigail.

"But it was always in her," was the reply. "I've told Missis oftenmy opinion about the child, and Missis agreed with me. She's anunderhand little thing: I never saw a girl of her age with so muchcover."

Bessie answered not; but ere long, addressing me, she said--"Youought to be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs.Reed: she keeps you: if she were to turn you off, you would haveto go to the poorhouse."

I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: myvery first recollections of existence included hints of the samekind. This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-songin 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 MissesReed and Master Reed, because Missis kindly allows you to be broughtup with them. They will have a great deal of money, and you willhave none: it is your place to be humble, and to try to makeyourself agreeable to them."

"What we tell you is for your good," added Bessie, in no harshvoice, "you should try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, youwould 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 strikeher 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 foranything. Say your prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself;for if you don't repent, something bad might be permitted to comedown 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 saynever, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at GatesheadHall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodationit contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambersin the mansion. A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany,hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernaclein the centre; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawndown, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery;the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was coveredwith a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour with a blushof pink in it; the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs were ofdarkly polished old mahogany. Out of these deep surrounding shadesrose high, and glared white, the piled-up mattresses and pillows ofthe bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane. Scarcely lessprominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of thebed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as Ithought, 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 wasknown to be so seldom entered. The house-maid alone came here onSaturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week's quietdust: and Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to reviewthe contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where werestored divers parchments, her jewel-casket, and a miniature of herdeceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret of thered-room--the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of itsgrandeur.

Mr. Reed had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber hebreathed his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borneby the undertaker's men; and, since that day, a sense of drearyconsecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion.

My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left meriveted, was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bedrose before me; to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe,with subdued, broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels; tomy left were the muffled windows; a great looking-glass between themrepeated the vacant majesty of the bed and room. I was not quitesure whether they had locked the door; and when I dared move, I gotup and went to see. Alas! yes: no jail was ever more secure.Returning, I had to cross before the looking-glass; my fascinatedglance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed. All lookedcolder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality: and thestrange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and armsspecking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where allelse was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it likeone of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie's eveningstories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, andappearing before the eyes of belated travellers. I returned to mystool.

Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hourfor complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of therevolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had tostem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to thedismal present.

All John Reed's violent tyrannies, all his sisters' proudindifference, all his mother's aversion, all the servants'partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in aturbid well. Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, alwaysaccused, for ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was ituseless to try to win any one's favour? Eliza, who was headstrongand selfish, was respected. Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, avery acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universallyindulged. Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed togive delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity forevery fault. John no one thwarted, much less punished; though hetwisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks, setthe dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit,and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory: hecalled his mother "old girl," too; sometimes reviled her for herdark skin, similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her wishes; notunfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still "herown darling." I dared commit no fault: I strove to fulfil everyduty; 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 hadturned against him to avert farther irrational violence, I wasloaded with general opprobrium.

"Unjust!--unjust!" said my reason, forced by the agonising stimulusinto precocious though transitory power: and Resolve, equallywrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape frominsupportable oppression--as running away, or, if that could not beeffected, never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.

What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon! Howall my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yetin what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battlefought! I could not answer the ceaseless inward question--WHY Ithus suffered; now, at the distance of--I will not say how manyyears, I see it clearly.

I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; I hadnothing in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosenvassalage. If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I lovethem. They were not bound to regard with affection a thing thatcould not sympathise with one amongst them; a heterogeneous thing,opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; auseless thing, incapable of serving their interest, or adding totheir pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignationat their treatment, of contempt of their judgment. I know that hadI been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, rompingchild--though equally dependent and friendless--Mrs. Reed would haveendured my presence more complacently; her children would haveentertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling; theservants would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of thenursery.

Daylight began to forsake the red-room; it was past four o'clock,and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. I heardthe rain still beating continuously on the staircase window, and thewind howling in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees cold asa stone, and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of humiliation,self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of mydecaying ire. All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so;what thought had I been but just conceiving of starving myself todeath? That certainly was a crime: and was I fit to die? Or wasthe vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting bourne?In such vault I had been told did Mr. Reed lie buried; and led bythis 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--mymother's brother--that he had taken me when a parentless infant tohis house; and that in his last moments he had required a promise ofMrs. Reed that she would rear and maintain me as one of her ownchildren. 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, andunconnected with her, after her husband's death, by any tie? Itmust have been most irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrungpledge to stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child shecould not love, and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intrudedon 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; andnow, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls--occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimlygleaning 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 theoppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit, harassed by the wrongsof his sister's child, might quit its abode--whether in the churchvault or in the unknown world of the departed--and rise before me inthis chamber. I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest anysign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfortme, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me withstrange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would beterrible if realised: with all my might I endeavoured to stifle it--I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from my eyes, I liftedmy head and tried to look boldly round the dark room; at this momenta light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray from themoon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight wasstill, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceilingand quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that thisstreak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lanterncarried by some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mindwas for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought theswift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from anotherworld. My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled myears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me;I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down; I rushed to thedoor and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came runningalong 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 demandedBessie.

"Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come." I had nowgot 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 haveexcused it, but she only wanted to bring us all here: I know hernaughty tricks."

"What is all this?" demanded another voice peremptorily; and Mrs.Reed came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustlingstormily. "Abbot and Bessie, I believe I gave orders that Jane Eyreshould 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. Iabhor artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show youthat tricks will not answer: you will now stay here an hour longer,and it is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness thatI shall liberate you then."

"O aunt! have pity! Forgive me! I cannot endure it--let me bepunished 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 sincerelylooked on me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, anddangerous duplicity.

Bessie and Abbot having retreated, Mrs. Reed, impatient of my nowfrantic anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked mein, without farther parley. I heard her sweeping away; and soonafter she was gone, I suppose I had a species of fit:unconsciousness closed the scene.