Джейн Эйр / Jane Eyre

Reed might be at that time some six or seven and thirty; she was a woman of robust frame, square-shouldered and strong-limbed, not tall, and, though stout, not obese; she had a somewhat large face, the under jaw being much developed and very solid; her brow was low, her chin large and prominent, mouth and nose sufficiently regular; under her light eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of truth; her skin was dark and opaque, her hair nearly flaxen; her constitution was sound as a bell; illness never came near her; she was an exact, clever manager, her household and tenantry were thoroughly under her control; her children only, at times defied her authority and laughed it to scorn; she dressed well, and had a presence and port calculated to set off handsome attire.

Sitting on a low stool, a few yards from her armchair, I examined her figure, I perused her features. In my hand I held the tract containing the sudden death of the Liar: to which narrative my attention had been pointed as to an appropriate warning.

What had just passed; what Mrs. Reed had said concerning me to Mr. Brocklehurst; the whole tenor of their conversation, was recent, raw, and stinging in my mind; I had felt every word as acutely as I had heard it plainly, and a passion of resentment fomented now within me.

Mrs. Reed looked up from her work; her eye settled on mine, her fingers at the same time suspended their nimble movements.

�Go out of the room; return to the nursery,’ was her mandate. My look or something else must have struck her as offensive, for she spoke with extreme though suppressed irritation.

I got up, I went to the door; I came back again; I walked to the window, across the room, then close up to her.

Speak I must; I had been trodden on severely, and must turn; but how? What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist? I gathered my energies and launched them in this blunt sentence:

�I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except John Reed; and this book about the Liar, you may give to your girl, Georgiana, for it is she who tells lies, and not I.

’

Mrs. Reed’s hands still lay on her work inactive; her eye of ice continued to dwell freezingly on mine.

�What more have you to say?’ she asked, rather in the tone in which a person might address an opponent of adult age than such as is ordinarily used to a child.