Luciia

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Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte
CHAPTER I
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in
the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there
was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so
sombre, and a rain so penetrating, thatfurther out-door exercise was now out of the
question.
I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to
me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart
saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my
physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
The said Eliza, John, andGeorgiana were now clustered round their mama in the
drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about
her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had
dispensed from joining the group; saying, "She regretted to be under the necessity of
keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discoverby her
own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable
and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner-- something lighter,
franker, more natural, as it were--she really must exclude me from privileges intended
only for contented, happy, little children."
"What does Bessie say I have done?" I asked.
"Jane, I don't like cavillers orquestioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding
in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can
speak pleasantly, remain silent."
A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It
contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should
be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gatheringup my feet, I
sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I
was shrined in double retirement.
Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear
panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At
intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winterafternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and
storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and
lamentable blast.
I returned to my book--Bewick's History of British Birds: the
letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet
there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could
not passquite as a blank. They were those which treat of the
haunts of sea-fowl; of "the solitary rocks and promontories" by them
only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its
southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape "Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge

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Pours in among the stormy Hebrides."

Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia,
Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with "the vast sweep of the Arctic
Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space,--that reservoir of frost and snow, where
firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters,glazed in Alpine heights
above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold."
Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the halfcomprehended notions that float dim through children's brains, but strangely impressive.
The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding
vignettes, and gave significance...