第174页
《简·爱(英文版)》章节:第174页,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
at the house. She generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the
afternoon, and wakes up about six or seven. Will you rest yourself
here an hour, Miss, and then I will go up with you?'
Robert here entered, and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the
cradle and went to welcome him: afterwards she insisted on my taking
off my bonnet and having some tea; for she said I looked pale and
tired. I was glad to accept her hospitality; and I submitted to be
relieved of my travelling garb just as passively as I used to let
her undress me when a child.
Old times crowded fast back on me as I watched her bustling
about- setting out the tea-tray with her best china, cutting bread and
butter, toasting a tea-cake, and, between whiles, giving little Robert
or Jane an occasional tap or push, just as she used to give me in
former days. Bessie had retained her quick temper as well as her light
foot and good looks.
Tea ready, I was going to approach the table; but she desired me to
sit still, quite in her old peremptory tones. I must be served at
the fireside, she said; and she placed before me a little round
stand with my cup and a plate of toast, absolutely as she used to
accommodate me with some privately purloined dainty on a nursery
chair: and I smiled and obeyed her as in bygone days.
She wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall, and what sort
of a person the mistress was; and when I told her there was only a
master, whether he was a nice gentleman, and if I liked him. I told
her he was rather an ugly man, but quite a gentleman; and that he
treated me kindly, and I was content. Then I went on to describe to
her the gay company that had lately been staying at the house; and
to these details Bessie listened with interest: they were precisely of
the kind she relished.
In such conversation an hour was soon gone: Bessie restored to me
my bonnet, etc., and, accompanied by her, I quitted the lodge for
the hall. It was also accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine years
ago, walked down the path I was now ascending. On a dark, misty, raw
morning in January, I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and
embittered heart- a sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation- to
seek the chilly harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so far away and
unexplored. The same hostile roof now again rose before me: my
prospects were doubtful yet; and I had yet an aching heart. I still
felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth; but I experienced
firmer trust in myself and my own powers, and less withering dread
of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs, too, was now quite
healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished.
'You shall go into the breakfast-room first,' said Bessie, as she
preceded me through the hall; 'the young ladies will be there.'
In another moment I was within that apartment. There was every
article of furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was first