[Desire Charlotte Lamb Epub 20
Jamar Lizarraga
The Press and the Public are but vague personifications for me, and I mustthank them in vague terms; but my Publishers are definite: so are certaingenerous critics who have encouraged me as only large-hearted and high-mindedmen know how to encourage a struggling stranger; to them, i.e., to myPublishers and the select Reviewers, I say cordially, Gentlemen, I thank youfrom my heart.
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attackthe first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of thePharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.
Ahab did not like Micaiah, because he never prophesied good concerning him, butevil; probably he liked the sycophant son of Chenaanah better; yet might Ahabhave escaped a bloody death, had he but stopped his ears to flattery, andopened them to faithful counsel.
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 hadbrought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that furtheroutdoor 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 andtoes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled bythe consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and GeorgianaReed.
A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained abookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should beone 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 curtainnearly close, I was shrined in double retirement.
Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left werethe clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drearNovember day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studiedthe aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist andcloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rainsweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.
I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard, with itsinscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low horizon, girdled by abroken wall, and its newly-risen crescent, attesting the hour of eventide.
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 ortwice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared him, and everymorsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near. There were moments when Iwas bewildered by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whateveragainst either his menaces or his inflictions; the servants did not like tooffend their young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs. Reed wasblind 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.
Habitually obedient to John, I came up to his chair: he spent some threeminutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could without damagingthe roots: I knew he would soon strike, and while dreading the blow, I mused onthe disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would presently deal it. I wonderif he read that notion in my face; for, all at once, without speaking, hestruck suddenly and strongly. I tottered, and on regaining my equilibriumretired back a step or two from his chair.
I did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when I saw him liftand poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively started asidewith a cry of alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume was flung, it hit me,and I fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, thepain was sharp: my terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded.
The red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say never,indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered itnecessary to turn to account all the accommodation it contained: yet it was oneof the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. A bed supported onmassive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood outlike a tabernacle in the centre; the two large windows, with their blindsalways drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery;the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimsoncloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; thewardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany.Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled-upmattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane.Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of thebed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like apale throne.
Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour forcomplete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave wasstill bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a rapid rush ofretrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present.
My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received: no one hadreproved John for wantonly striking me; and because I had turned against him toavert farther irrational violence, I was loaded with general opprobrium.
Bessie and Abbot having retreated, Mrs. Reed, impatient of my now franticanguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked me in, withoutfarther parley. I heard her sweeping away; and soon after she was gone, Isuppose I had a species of fit: unconsciousness closed the scene.
The next thing I remember is, waking up with a feeling as if I had had afrightful nightmare, and seeing before me a terrible red glare, crossed withthick black bars. I heard voices, too, speaking with a hollow sound, and as ifmuffled by a rush of wind or water: agitation, uncertainty, and anall-predominating sense of terror confused my faculties. Ere long, I becameaware that some one was handling me; lifting me up and supporting me in asitting posture, and that more tenderly than I had ever been raised or upheldbefore. I rested my head against a pillow or an arm, and felt easy.
In five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved: I knew quite wellthat I was in my own bed, and that the red glare was the nursery fire. It wasnight: a candle burnt on the table; Bessie stood at the bed-foot with a basinin her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near my pillow, leaning over me.
I felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection andsecurity, when I knew that there was a stranger in the room, an individual notbelonging to Gateshead, and not related to Mrs. Reed. Turning from Bessie(though her presence was far less obnoxious to me than that of Abbot, forinstance, would have been), I scrutinised the face of the gentleman: I knewhim; it was Mr. Lloyd, an apothecary, sometimes called in by Mrs. Reed when theservants were ailing: for herself and the children she employed a physician.
Sarah came back with her; they both went to bed; they were whispering togetherfor half-an-hour before they fell asleep. I caught scraps of theirconversation, from which I was able only too distinctly to infer the mainsubject discussed.
At last both slept: the fire and the candle went out. For me, the watches ofthat long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; ear, eye, and mind were alikestrained by dread: such dread as children only can feel.
No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room;it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the reverberation to this day.Yes, Mrs. Reed, to you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering, but Iought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did: while rending myheart-strings, you thought you were only uprooting my bad propensities.
Next day, by noon, I was up and dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl by thenursery hearth. I felt physically weak and broken down: but my worse ailmentwas an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which kept drawing fromme silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one salt drop from my cheek than anotherfollowed. Yet, I thought, I ought to have been happy, for none of the Reedswere there, they were all gone out in the carriage with their mama. Abbot, too,was sewing in another room, and Bessie, as she moved hither and thither,putting away toys and arranging drawers, addressed to me every now and then aword of unwonted kindness. This state of things should have been to me aparadise of peace, accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand andthankless fagging; but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such a state thatno calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably.
How much I wished to reply fully to this question! How difficult it was toframe any answer! Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings;and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how toexpress the result of the process in words. Fearful, however, of losing thisfirst and only opportunity of relieving my grief by imparting it, I, after adisturbed pause, contrived to frame a meagre, though, as far as it went, trueresponse.
I reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to children:they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectable poverty; theythink of the word only as connected with ragged clothes, scanty food, firelessgrates, rude manners, and debasing vices: poverty for me was synonymous withdegradation.
I shook my head: I could not see how poor people had the means of being kind;and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their manners, to be uneducated,to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes nursing their children orwashing their clothes at the cottage doors of the village of Gateshead: no, Iwas not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste.
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