Джейн Эйр / Jane Eyre

Miss Temple told Helen Burns to be seated in a low armchair on one side of the hearth, and herself taking another, she called me to her side.

�Is it all over?’ she asked, looking down at my face. �Have you cried your grief away?’

�I am afraid I never shall do that.’

�Why?’

�Because I have been wrongly accused; and you, ma’am, and everybody else, will now think me wicked.’

�We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child. Continue to act as a good girl, and you will satisfy us.

’

�Shall I, Miss Temple?’

�You will,’ said she, passing her arm round me. �And now tell me who is the lady whom Mr. Brocklehurst called your benefactress?’

�Mrs. Reed, my uncle’s wife. My uncle is dead, and he left me to her care.’

�Did she not, then, adopt you of her own accord?’

�No, ma’am; she was sorry to have to do it; but my uncle, as I have often heard the servants say, got her to promise before he died that she would always keep me.

’

�Well now, Jane, you know, or at least I will tell you, that when a criminal is accused, he is always allowed to speak in his own defence. You have been charged with falsehood; defend yourself to me as well as you can. Say whatever your memory suggests is true; but add nothing and exaggerate nothing.’

I resolved, in the depth of my heart, that I would be most moderate – most correct; and, having reflected a few minutes in order to arrange coherently what I had to say, I told her all the story of my sad childhood.

Exhausted by emotion, my language was more subdued than it generally was when it developed that sad theme; and mindful of Helen’s warnings against the indulgence of resentment, I infused into the narrative far less of gall and wormwood than ordinary. Thus restrained and simplified, it sounded more credible. I felt as I went on that Miss Temple fully believed me.

In the course of the tale I had mentioned Mr. Lloyd as having come to see me after the fit; for I never forgot the, to me, frightful episode of the red-room; in detailing which, my excitement was sure, in some degree, to break bounds; for nothing could soften in my recollection the spasm of agony which clutched my heart when Mrs.

Reed spurned my wild supplication for pardon, and locked me a second time in the dark and haunted chamber.

I had finished. Miss Temple regarded me a few minutes in silence; she then said:

�I know something of Mr.