My Mr. Rochester 1(11)
“No, sir.”
“What will you do to avoid it?”
I deliberated a moment and looked at him square on. I could see they all awaited my answer—Mrs. Reed because she knew it would condemn me, Dr. Lloyd because he hoped it would redeem me.
I squared my shoulders. “I must keep in good health, sir, and not die.”
Dr. Lloyd barked a short laugh and tried to make it sound like a cough.
“Shocking!” Mrs. Reed glared at Dr. Lloyd. “You see, bishop? Deceitful, wicked girl.”
“I am not deceitful, Mrs. Reed. If I were deceitful, I’d say I loved you and that you were the sweetest aunt in the world. I declare I do not love you. I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed. I am glad you are no relation of mine. I will never come to see you when I am grown up. If any one asks me how I liked you or how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.”
“How will you keep in good health, Jane Eyre?” The bishop’s eyes seemed to jitter in their sockets. It sent a chill through me. “Children younger than you die daily. Why, I buried a mother and her infant only yesterday. That newborn’s pure soul is now in heaven. I fear the same cannot be said of you were you called.”
He said nothing of the mother’s soul. I cast my eyes down and sighed, wishing myself far, far away. In Hamlet 1-3-78—or Millcote. I smiled inwardly upon remembering my touchstone.
“I hope that sigh is from the heart, and that you repent of ever having insulted your excellent benefactor.”
In my mind, I ran to him and kicked his shins and cried out against a world that called Mrs. Reed my benefactor.
In reality, I stood still and said nothing.
“Do you say your prayers night and morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you read your Bible?”
“Sometimes.”
“With pleasure? Are you fond of it?”
“I like Revelations. The book of Daniel. Genesis and Samuel. The story of Jael in Judges. Some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job and Jonah.”
I meant to impress upon him that I did indeed read my Bible. I added Jael in there as a provocation, but he didn’t react.
“And the psalms? Of course you like them.”
“No, sir.”
“Shocking!”
I had never been so shocking. It was becoming my career.
“I have a little son who knows six psalms by heart,” Brocklehurst said. “If you asked him if he’d prefer a cookie to eat or a new psalm to learn, he’d choose the psalm.”
“Psalms are uninteresting,” I said.
“You do have a wicked heart. You must pray to God to change it.”
I opened my mouth with an excellent rejoinder, but it was lost to fate.
“Sit down, Jane Eyre,” Mrs. Reed said.
I obeyed.
“She should be brought up to something suiting her prospects,” the lady said. “Make her useful and keep her humble. My eldest daughter thinks Jane Eyre will do for a teacher. If you agree, I have no objection. Vacations she will spend, with your permission, at Lowood.”
Dr. Lloyd knitted his eyebrows together and ran his hand through his hair as if some dreadful bargain had hatched before his eyes, a train wreck he couldn’t prevent. I wanted to go to him, throw my arms around his shoulders, and kiss him for standing in the stead of the father I had lost. Dr. Lloyd had looked out for me and secured for me a chance I never dreamed I would get.
For I didn’t care that Bishop Brocklehurst was a bad man. Yes, I could see it even then. At that moment I was in raptures. I was to escape Gateshead forever.
Lowood could not possibly be worse than Gateshead Righteous Household.
« Chapter 5 »
Goodbye To Gateshead
Early one morning soon after Bishop Brocklehurst discovered the wickedness in my heart, I danced over Gateshead’s threshold and out to the courtyard. Last night’s clouds were gone. Fresh snow covered the ground and gates, and the light of the carriage lamps gave all a mystical glow.
My clothes were new, a calf-length gray wool dress, black velvet cloak, and flat-soled black leather boots laced up to my knees. Kid gloves lined with soft microfiber matched the sky-blue mohair slouch hat and scarf Bessie had given me not twenty minutes earlier when she shook me awake.
Make sure she’s well-outfitted for the journey, a credit to Gateshead, Mrs. Reed had ordered. Never mind that nothing in my trunk was new or particularly fine.
With a surge of optimism I threw out my arms and spun in a circle. “Goodbye to Gateshead!”
“Hush girl.” Bessie bit her lower lip to hide her smile.
The Reeds had barely spoken to me since the Night of the Red Room, and they didn’t leave their warm beds now to send me off. Bessie and the carriage driver were the only witnesses to my escape, but the stars in the black sky winked and blinked at me, and I thought the low-hanging crescent moon looked on approvingly.