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,
that further outdoor 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, and Georgiana 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 discover by 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 or questioners;
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 small 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: gathering up 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 winter afternoon. 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 pass quite 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 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 half-comprehended notions that float aim through children's brains, but
strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the
succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and
spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing
through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking. I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite
solitary churchyard, with its inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low horizon,
girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent, attesting the hour of eventide. The two
ships becalmed on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine phantoms. The fiend pinning down the
thief's pack behind him, I passed over quickly: it was an object of terror. So was the black
horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows. Each
picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings,
yet ever profoundly interesting: as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on
winter evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having brought her
ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs.
Reed's lace frills, and crimped her nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of
love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads; or (as at a later period I
discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of Moreland. With Bewick on my knee, I was
then happy: happy at least in my way. I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon.
The breakfast-room door opened.
'Boh! Madam Mope!' cried the voice of John Reed; then he paused: he found the room apparently empty.
'Where the dickens is she!' he continued. 'Lizzy! Georgy! (calling to his sisters) Joan is not
here: tell mama she is run out into the rain- bad animal!'
'It is well I drew the curtain,' thought I; and I wished fervently he might not discover my
hiding-place: nor would John Reed have found it out himself; he was not quick either of vision
or conception; but Eliza just put her head in at the door, and said at once-
'She is in the window-seat, to be sure, Jack.'
And I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being dragged forth by the said Jack.
'What do you want?' I asked, with awkward diffidence.
'Say, "What do you want, Master Reed?"' was the answer. 'I want you to come here;' and seating
himself in an armchair, he intimated by a gesture that I was to approach and stand before him.
John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than I, for I was but ten: large
and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage,
heavy limbs and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious,
and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks. He ought now to have been at school; but his
mama had taken him home for a month or two, 'on account of his delicate health.' Mr. Miles, the
master, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from
home; but the mother's heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more
refined idea that John's sallowness was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining after
home.
John had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and an antipathy to me. He bullied and
punished me; not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually:
every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near.
There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal
whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions; the servants did not like to offend their
young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the subject: she
never saw him strike or heard him abuse me, though he did both now and then in her very presence,
more frequently, however, behind her back.