第15页
《简·爱(英文版)》章节:第15页,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
cottage doors of the village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough
to purchase liberty at the price of caste.
'But are your relatives so very poor? Are they working people?'
'I cannot tell; Aunt Reed says if I have any, they must be a
beggarly set: I should not like to go a-begging.'
'Would you like to go to school?'
Again I reflected: I scarcely knew what school was: Bessie
sometimes spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks,
wore backboards, and were expected to be exceedingly genteel and
precise: John Reed hated his school, and abused his master; but John
Reed's tastes were no rule for mine, and if Bessie's accounts of
school-discipline (gathered from the young ladies of a family where
she had lived before coming to Gateshead) were somewhat appalling, her
details of certain accomplishments attained by these same young ladies
were, I thought, equally attractive. She boasted of beautiful
paintings of landscapes and flowers by them executed; of songs they
could sing and pieces they could play, of purses they could net, of
French books they could translate; till my spirit was moved to
emulation as I listened. Besides, school would be a complete change:
it implied a long journey, an entire separation from Gateshead, an
entrance into a new life.
'I should indeed like to go to school,' was the audible
conclusion of my musings.
'Well, well! who knows what may happen?' said Mr. Lloyd, as he
got up. 'The child ought to have change of air and scene,' he added,
speaking to himself; 'nerves not in a good state.'
Bessie now returned; at the same moment the carriage was heard
rolling up the gravel-walk.
'Is that your mistress, nurse?' asked Mr. Lloyd. 'I should like
to speak to her before I go.'
Bessie invited him to walk into the breakfast-room, and led the way
out. In the interview which followed between him and Mrs. Reed, I
presume, from after-occurrences, that the apothecary ventured to
recommend my being sent to school; and the recommendation was no doubt
readily enough adopted; for as Abbot said, in discussing the subject
with Bessie when both sat sewing in the nursery one night, after I was
in bed, and, as they thought, asleep, 'Missis was, she dared say, glad
enough to get rid of such a tiresome, ill-conditioned child, who
always looked as if she were watching everybody, and scheming plots
underhand.' Abbot, I think, gave me credit for being a sort of
infantine Guy Fawkes.
On that same occasion I learned, for the first time, from Miss
Abbot's communications to Bessie, that my father had been a poor
clergyman; that my mother had married him against the wishes of her
friends, who considered the match beneath her; that my grandfather
Reed was so irritated at her disobedience, he cut her off without a
shilling; that after my mother and father had been married a year, the
latter caught the typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a