Jane Eyre - Pennsylvania State University

Charlotte Brontë
ing the interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully, and her. Meantime, I got on as well as I could with Georgiana and
always loses—poor boy! He is beset by sharpers: John is sunk Eliza. They were very cold, indeed, at first. Eliza would sit
and degraded—his look is frightful—I feel ashamed for him half the day sewing, reading, or writing, and scarcely utter a
when I see him.”
word either to me or her sister. Georgiana would chatter non-
She was getting much excited. “I think I had better leave her sense to her canary bird by the hour, and take no notice of
now,” said I to Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed. me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for occupa-
“Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often talks in this way totion or amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with
wards night—in the morning she is calmer.”
me, and they served me for both.
I rose. “Stop!” exclaimed Mrs. Reed, “there is another thing Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I
I wished to say. He threatens me—he continually threatens used to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and
me with his own death, or mine: and I dream sometimes that busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene
I see him laid out with a great wound in his throat, or with a that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shift-
swollen and blackened face. I am come to a strange pass: I ing kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse of sea between
have heavy troubles. What is to be done? How is the money two rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk; a
to be had?”
group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad’s head, crowned
Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught: with lotus-flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-
she succeeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more sparrow’s nest, under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom
composed, and sank into a dozing state. I then left her.
One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it
More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversa- was to be, I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil,
tion with her. She continued either delirious or lethargic; and gave it a broad point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on
the doctor forbade everything which could painfully excite the paper a broad and prominent forehead and a square lower
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