My Mr. Rochester (4 page)

On one side of my bed Bessie watched me anxiously. I turned my face away, unwilling to accept her false show of concern after she abandoned me to that monster John Reed.

The gentleman who’d lifted me hovered over me, examining my eyes, and I felt a rush of relief. A stranger in the house, guarantor of safety and civil treatment. Not truly a stranger—I knew who he was—but someone not belonging to Gateshead Righteous, and therefore not Mrs. Reed’s creature.

Or John Reed’s creature either. I had to consider that now.

“Well, do you know who I am?” the man asked.

“Dr. Lloyd,” I said, and he smiled at my correct answer. “But why are you here, sir?”

A dull ache nagged at my right temple, and my wrists and ankles were sore, but I couldn’t imagine Mrs. Reed calling in a doctor. She’d never called one for countless other wounds and scrapes I’d suffered under her guardianship.

“Bessie asked me to see you as long as I was here,” Dr. Lloyd said. “I was called to attend poor Mrs. Reed and her brood.”

I smiled at the way he said
brood
, drawing out the
oooo
sound. My resentment of Bessie eased somewhat.

“Something they ate, I believe.” Dr. Lloyd shook down a thermometer and stuck it in my mouth. “Someone dropped a picture book into the oven fire while the bread was baking. Fumes from the burning ink did no wonders for the loaves, I daresay.”

He winked at me, as if it was a joke only he and I could understand.

“She’s to have liquids only,” he told Bessie. “Broth, tea. A little brandy.”

“Dr. Lloyd!” she said, scandalized, and my eyes grew wide.

“No brandy?” the doctor said jovially. “I suppose not. The tea then, with honey and lemon.”

“Yes, sir.” Bessie smiled. She appreciated his good nature too. She was really quite pretty when the sweet side of her personality held sway.

Dr. Lloyd seemed pleased with the thermometer results. “Well, Jane. I’ll come again tomorrow, how is that?”

“Oh, sir!” I grabbed his arm. “What is to become of me?”

I couldn’t let him go. I wanted—no. I
needed—
to feel this pleasant conviviality for a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes! Even if only to discuss my dreary fate.

He squeezed my hand. “I’ll tell you what’s to become of you, Jane. You are to eat what Bessie gives you and sleep all day and the whole night through. You’ve had a slight concussion, but nothing that won’t be put to rights by this prescription. Tell me you’ll be a wise young lady—”

So glad he didn’t tell me to
be a
good girl.

“—and do as I say.”

“Yes, Dr. Lloyd.”

At that moment the bell rang for the servants’ meal. It was noon then. Bessie anxiously looked at the door then back again. Dr. Lloyd understood her dilemma. If she didn’t eat on time with the others, she would get nothing until late tonight. “Go ahead, Bessie. I’ll talk with my patient a few minutes more and let myself out.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Thank you, Dr. Lloyd.”

“Now Jane,” he said when we were alone. “Has someone hurt you? Are your injuries not from an accidental fall? Tell me what’s truly troubling you.”

Never.

If I told the world John Reed had accosted me in…in that way, I’d be called Liar and Tease (which how could both be true at the same time?). I’d be branded fallen for the rest of my life. John Reed and Mrs. Reed had both already called me Jezebel.

Still, I was sorely in need of sympathy.

“I was knocked down,” I admitted. “But that’s not it.”

“What is it then?”

“I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost.”

He smiled then frowned to cover it. “Ghost. So you’re a child after all, afraid of ghosts.”

“Of Mr. Reed’s ghost. You may not know this, but my uncle died in that room. He was laid out there. No one will go into the Red Room at night if they can help it. It was cruel to shut me up there. I’ll never forget it.”

“Are you afraid now, in daylight?”

“No. But night will come again. And besides, I’m unhappy. Very unhappy, for other things.”

“What other things? Can you tell me some of them?”

I was afraid to go on—for I might never stop. No one had ever asked me what I thought, how I felt. To be sure, I’d given out my thoughts and feelings freely, but none had ever cared about them or wanted them. Oh, how my heart ached!

“For one thing, I have no father or mother, no brothers or sisters.”

“You have a kind aunt and cousins.”

“But John Reed knocked me down, and my aunt shut me up in the Red Room.” At this point, I withdrew my arms from under the covers and thrust my wrists out together.

“Hm.” Dr. Lloyd looked at the red marks. Then he looked at my nightgown, and I felt he considered it too thin and my blankets too few. He looked back to the door and at the cold grate in my fireplace. After another minute he said, “Don’t you think Gateshead a very beautiful house?” he said. “Aren’t you grateful to live in such a fine place?”

“It isn’t my house. Abbot says I have less right to be here than a servant.”

“Pooh! Are you silly enough to wish to leave then?”

“If I had anywhere else to go, I’d be glad to. But I’ll never get away until I am a woman. A grown woman.”

“Have you any relations besides Mrs. Reed?”

“I think not, sir.”

“None belonging to your father?”

“I asked Mrs. Reed once. She said I might have some low relations called Eyre, but she knew nothing of them.”

“If you did, would you like to go to them?”

I had to think about that. I’d called the workhouse preferable to Gateshead, but that was theatrics. I didn’t want to be poor. Who does? I’d seen the magazines at church with pictures of heathen cities and calls for missionaries. Poverty was ugly and cruel. Perhaps crueler even than John Reed.

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to belong to poor people.”

“Not even if they were kind to you?”

I shook my head. “Mrs. Reed says if they exist they’re beggars or criminals. That would be worse than…” I began to see. My only hope was to live on as I was until I did reach adulthood. Marriage would offer no escape—no one would want to marry me—but there were other ways.

As if he read my mind Dr. Lloyd said, “Would you like to go to school?” Like lighting a candle in the midst of my dark thoughts.

“That was Georgiana’s idea!” I told him. “She wrote only yesterday that I should become a teacher.” I had cast the idea aside. No. I hadn’t even picked it up, thinking it impossible.

“Perhaps Miss Georgiana’s Harvard education is good for something after all.” Dr. Lloyd collected his bag, and at the door he said, “Now let go of fanciful thoughts of ghosts and red rooms and imagined unkindness. Rest, Jane. Doctor’s orders. I’ll come see you tomorrow.”

The next day at noon I was up and dressed and deposited on Mrs. Reed’s sofa in the morning room with a microfiber blanket around my legs and a cashmere shawl around my shoulders. Though I was alone, a good fire burned on the grate. There was tea with toast and raspberry jam, for when Dr. Lloyd had come in the morning to see the Reeds he left orders I was to have tea with toast and jam, and I was not to be allowed to take a chill.

I was somewhat bewildered by the treatment. At times I thought I might be dreaming, like the little princess.

I had never forgotten it. On Georgiana’s thirteenth birthday, Mrs. Reed had the Movie Man in for the party. He set up a screen in the garden and showed a movie about a little princess who’d lost her father. She was poor and hungry, but her dreams were so powerful that one night she dreamed of good food and a warm shawl and slippers, and when she woke up the next morning they were there!

Mrs. Reed did not enjoy the movie. (No surprise there; the horrid Miss Minchin in the story was rather like her.) The Movie Man never came again.

But I loved the story—not for dreams of food and clothes. It was unthinkable then that I could ever be without those things. I loved the story for the affection the little princess’s father had for her and because she found happiness in the end.

Until yesterday that was my great hope, the thing I lived on, what I expected from a just world: happiness in the end.

A tear rolled down my cheek, and the raspberry jam turned sour in my mouth. Happiness in the end no longer existed in my world. A great sob poured out of me, just as the door to the morning room opened.

“What’s all this?” Dr. Lloyd entered behind Bessie. He put his doctor bag on the table, shrugged his shoulders helplessly, and winked at her. “I’m losing my self-confidence as a doctor.”

“Oh, Dr. Lloyd!” I was more tragic than necessary, for I was embarrassed at being caught feeling sorry for myself. “I’ll never be happy again!”

“Tosh. You’ll be happy again today. Within the hour, I’ll wager.”

Now he was teasing me, and that was the cruelest thing of all.

“The Reeds aren’t here, if you’ve come to see them.” I pouted, but he would not let go of his smile. “They’re all gone for a ride in the carriage to take in the fresh air.”

“Not all. John and Eliza are upstairs in their rooms, still recovering,” Dr. Lloyd said. “Mrs. Reed and I had an agreeable discussion this morning. About you, as it happens. She’s gone out, but she told me she’ll return sometime after noon.” He pointedly looked at the clock on the mantel which was about to strike the hour.

My heart leapt to my throat.

Bessie understood. “Would you like to move to this chair by the fire, Miss Jane?”

“That’s precisely what I would like.” Dr. Lloyd had worked magic on Mrs. Reed, but not miracles. I had no intention of occupying her sofa when she returned.

I’d barely made it to my new station when the clock struck twelve and the lady swept into the morning room with a severe-looking man dressed all in black but for an overly large white cravat.
Choker,
I thought.

“Good day again, Mrs. Reed.” Dr. Lloyd’s smile vanished as he nodded to her companion. “Brocklehurst.”

“Lloyd.” The man took the chair beside the sofa.

I didn’t know the face, but I knew the tall man’s name. Bishop Brocklehurst, whose opinion Mrs. Reed doted upon so much. I’d always imagined him god-like, fair-haired and blue-eyed, stern but kind, driving a theoretical chariot of fiery justice.

This man was dark and rough-looking, larger physically and smaller psychically than the champion of my imagination. He had long thin brown hair that covered his shoulders like a wispy shawl.

“Jane Eyre, stand up,” Mrs. Reed said.

I did as she commanded. She examined me with a look of resignation and defeat, while Bishop Brocklehurst seemed to look right through me. The imp of self-pride grabbed hold of me. I waited them both out.

The bishop spoke first.

“Dr. Lloyd has told Mrs. Reed you wish to go to school,” he said.

“Oh!” I glanced at Dr. Lloyd. I wanted to show my gratitude, but he was staring at his feet.

“Perhaps Providence looks kindly on the wish,” the bishop continued. “Mrs. Reed and I had a prior engagement in New Bellefleur this morning to discuss John Reed’s educational plans. I’m not averse to considering her niece’s welfare at the same time.”

I expected Mrs. Reed to wince at the reference to our relationship, but she glowed as if he’d called her Lady Bountiful.

Bessie made a quick, silent curtsey and slipped out of the room. I think Dr. Lloyd would have joined her if he had been anywhere close to the door.

“How old are you, Jane Eyre?” Bishop Brocklehurst said.

“Thirteen, sir.”

“That much?” He stared me over, head to toe and back up again, lingering over my emerging breasts. “Hm.” My face burned as I remembered John Reed’s groping in the Red Room.

“And are you a good girl, Jane Eyre?” Bishop Brocklehurst said.

“Most assuredly not,” Mrs. Reed answered for me.

“You evil woman!” I cried involuntarily. “What would my uncle say to you if he were alive?”

I say I cried out involuntary because my tongue took over without my brain’s permission. I should have been submissive in front of this potential savior, a man who could ensure I was sent to school. But self-pride is a power. When constantly knocked about and disallowed all expression, though it may sleep awhile, it grows stronger. My pride had awakened. I wondered if it would ever sleep again.

“What did you say?” Mrs. Reed turned white, not with anger but with shock. She gazed at me as if she really wondered if a fiend possessed me.

The dam of self-control burst within. It was all or nothing.

“My Uncle Reed is in heaven and can see all you do and think,” I said. “And so can my father and mother. They know how cruelly you treat me, how you shut me up in the Red Room, and how you wish me dead.”

“Then you are
not
a good girl.” Bishop Brocklehurst affected a doleful manner, but I do believe he delighted in finding me bad rather than good. “Do you know where the wicked go after death?”

“They go to hell,” I said readily.

“And what is hell? Tell me that.”

“A pit full of fire.”

“And should you like to fall into that pit and burn there forever?”

“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.”