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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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50 On the evening of the day on which I had seen Miss Scatcherd flog her pupil, Burns, I wandered as usual among the forms and tables and laughing groups without a companion, yet not feeling lonely: when I passed the windows, I now and then lifted a blind, and looked out; it snowed fast, a drift was already forming against the lower panes; putting my ear close to the window, I could distinguish from the gleeful tumult within, the disconsolate moan of the wind outside. Probably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this would have been the hour when I should most keenly have regretted the separation; that wind would then have saddened my heart, this obscure chaos would have disturbed my peace! as it was, I derived from both a strange excitement, and reckless and feverish, I wished the wind to howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and the confusion to rise to clamour. Jumping over forms, and creeping under tables, I made my way to one of the fire-places; there, kneeling by the high wire fender, I found Burns, absorbed, silent, abstracted from all round her by the companionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of the embers. ‘Is it still Rasselas?’ I asked, coming behind her. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and I have just finished it.’ And in five minutes more she shut it up. I was glad of this. ‘Now,’ thought I, ‘I can perhaps get her to talk.’ I sat down by her on the floor. ‘What is your name besides Burns?’ ‘Helen.’ ‘Do you come a long way from here?’ ‘I come from a place farther north, quite on the borders of Scotland.’ ‘Will you ever go back?’ ‘I hope so; but nobody can be sure of the future.’ ‘You must wish to leave Lowood?’ ‘No! why should I? I was sent to Lowood to get an education; and it would be of no use going away until I have attained that object.’ ‘But that teacher, Miss Scatcherd, is so cruel to you?’ ‘Cruel? Not at all! She is severe: she dislikes my faults.’ ‘And if I were in your place I should dislike her; I should resist her. If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should break it under her nose.’ ‘Probably you would do nothing of the sort: but if you did, Mr. Brocklehurst would expel you from the school; that would be a great grief to your relations. It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you; and besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil.’ ‘But then it seems disgraceful to be flogged, and to be sent to stand in the middle of a room full of people; and you are such a great girl: I am far younger than you, and I could not bear |
