Jane Slayre

by Sherri Browning Erwin

  "Very likely, but it is blank and cool--'farewell.' "

  The dinner bell rang, and suddenly away he bolted, without another word. Indeed, perhaps farewell suited him more than he imagined. I saw him no more during the day and was off before he had risen in the morning.

  CHAPTER 25

  IT WAS FIVE IN the afternoon when I reached the lodge at Gates-head on the first of May. I stepped in to see Bessie before heading

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  up to the hall. It wasn't quite dark yet, so the Reeds were likely abed.

  The lodge had never looked better. It was bright, cheerful, and clean. The ornamental windows were hung with little white curtains, and the grate shone with the fire burning comfortably. Bessie sat on the hearth, nursing her last born, and Robert and his sister played quietly in a corner.

  "Bless you! I knew you would come!" exclaimed Mrs. Leaven as I entered.

  "Yes, Bessie. Don't get up." I approached and kissed her. "how is Mrs. Reed?"

  "Badly, but more sensible and collected than she was. She spoke of you last night and wishing you would come, but they won't be up for hours yet. Will you rest yourself here a bit, miss, and then I will go up with you?"

  Robert entered, and Bessie laid her sleeping child in the cradle and went to welcome him. She made us tea and wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield hall, and what sort of a person the mistress was. When I told her there was only a master, she asked whether he was a nice gentleman, and if I liked him. I told her that he treated me kindly, and I was content. Then I described to her the gay company that had lately been staying at the house. These details Bessie relished as they never entertained properly at Gateshead without later dining on the guests, and even that not for years now.

  In such conversation, the hours passed. Bessie restored to me my pelisse and bonnet, and I accompanied her to Gateshead Hall, as nine years earlier I had accompanied her from the hall to my departing coach. I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth, but I experienced firmer trust in my own powers. The gaping wound of my wrongs, too, was now quite healed, and the flame of resentment extinguished.

  "You shall go into the drawing 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. Every article of

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  furniture looked just as it did on the morning I was first introduced to Mr. Bokorhurst. I was not surprised to find the house unchanged, but it was a bit of a shock to meet the Reed sisters still as I remembered them, though quite different as well.

  Eliza, Miss Reed, had been much taller than I when I was a child, but now we stood closer to the same height, as I had almost caught up to her size. But she was thin and sallow, and her face pinched and severe. As it ever was, I supposed, but I hadn't been used to vampyre features in some time. Something ascetic was in Eliza's look, which was augmented by the extreme plainness of a straight-skirted, black, stuff dress, a starched linen collar, and her hair combed away from the temples. She looked so much the part of a nun that I almost expected to find her holding a string of rosary beads.

  The other was as certainly Georgiana, but not the slim and fairy-like girl of thirteen. Her face still had the puffy, precious quality of a child's, but it was overrouged and somewhat garish, like a child playing at being an adult. She was a full-blown, plump damsel, still pretty underneath the powder and rouge, with blue eyes that sparkled darkly and blond ringlets framing her face. She could pass for an older girl, but still a girl. One might guess she was her sister's age, fifteen, which explained how she had managed to come out in London and entice a lad to request her hand in marriage. Until the poor thing got himself and his family eaten, of course. Such a tragedy. For all her mother's dwindling fortunes, Georgiana kept herself clothed in the latest styles. I wondered if it wasn't only John Reed responsible for the family's imminent downfall.

  In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother--and only one. The thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent's onyx eyes. The blooming and luxuriant younger girl had Mrs. Reed's contour of jaw and chin--perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable hardness to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous. Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me, and both addressed me by the name of "Miss Slayre."

  Eliza's greeting was delivered in a short, abrupt voice, without

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  a smile, and with a quick return to her task of staring at the fire. Georgiana chattered on, starting with a friendly "How d'ye do?" and adding several commonplaces about my journey, the weather, and so on, uttered in rather a drawling tone that reminded me of Lord Ingram's style of speaking, and accompanied by sundry side glances that measured me from head to foot, now traversing the folds of my drab merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain trimming of my cottage bonnet.

  A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power over me it once possessed. As I sat between my cousins, I was surprised to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semisarcastic attentions of the other. Eliza did not mortify, nor Georgiana ruffle, me. I had much more to occupy my thoughts. In the last few months, I'd experienced feelings more potent than any that could be raised in this house, pains and pleasures so much more acute and exquisite than any it was in their power to inflict. Had John Reed been alive and present, I doubted even he would raise me to alarm.

  "How is Mrs. Reed?" I asked soon, looking calmly at Georgiana, who thought fit to bridle at the direct address, as if it were an unexpected liberty.

  "Mrs. Reed? Ah! Mama, you mean. She is extremely poorly. I doubt if you can see her tonight."

  "If you would just step upstairs and tell her I am come, I should be much obliged to you."

  Georgiana almost started, and she opened her blue eyes wild and wide.

  "I know she had a particular wish to see me," I added, "and I would not defer attending to her desire longer than is absolutely necessary."

  "Mama dislikes being disturbed in an evening," remarked Eliza.

  I soon rose, quietly took off my bonnet and gloves, uninvited, and said I would just step out to Bessie--who was, I dared say, in the kitchen--and ask her to ascertain whether Mrs. Reed was disposed

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  to receive me tonight. I went and, having found Bessie and dispatched her on my errand, took further measures.

  As a child, I might more easily have been put off. I might even have left after such a reception. But I had grown. I was no child, unlike the Reed sisters, who remained trapped in such a state. I had not come a hundred miles, had not left Mr. Rochester, just to be told I would not be seen. I imagined that Eliza and Georgiana actually had little control over household affairs, even with their mother in such a sorry condition. I took the liberty of addressing the housekeeper, asking her to show me a room, and telling her I would be a visitor here for a week or two. While my trunk was conveyed to my chamber, I met Bessie on the landing.

  "Missus is awake," she said. "She's a little muddled today. Some days are better than others. But I have told her you are here. Come and let us see if she will know you."

  I did not need to be guided to the well-known room, to which I had so often been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days. I hastened before Bessie, softly opened the door, and saw to it that a light burned low in the room, for it was dark. The great four-poster bed with amber hangings was as of old. There the toilet table, the armchair, and the footstool, at which I had a hundred times been sentenced to kneel, to ask pardon for offences by me uncommitted. I approached the casket, opened the curtains, and leaned over the high-piled pillows.

  Well did I remember Mrs. Reed's face, and I eagerly sought the familiar image. It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for sufferings she'd caused others, and a strong yearning
to forget and forgive all injuries. I did not expect, nor did I desire, to be reconciled and clasp hands in amity.

  The well-known face was there, stern, relentless as ever. There was that peculiar dark eye that nothing could melt, and the some-what

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  raised, imperious, despotic eyebrow. I stooped down and clasped her hand, which lay outside the sheet on the edge of the elaborate satin-lined coffin she slept in, open during the night, closed during the day to keep out any errant rays of sunshine.

  She looked at me. "Is this Jane Slayre?"

  "Yes, Aunt Reed. How are you, Aunt?"

  I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again. I thought it no sin to forget and break that vow now. Mrs. Reed took her hand away, and turning her face rather from me, she remarked that the night was warm.

  I brought a chair to the coffin head. I sat down and leaned over the pillow. "You sent for me, and I am here; and it is my intention to stay until I see how you get on."

  "Oh, of course! You have seen my daughters? My lovely girls!"

  "Yes."

  "Well, you may tell them I wish you to stay until I can talk some things over with you I have on my mind. Tonight it is too late, and I have a difficulty in recalling them. But there was something I wished to say--let me see ..."

  The wandering look and changed utterance told what wreck had taken place in her once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly, she drew the bedclothes around her. My elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt outside the coffin's edge, fixed it down. She was at once irritated.

  "Sit up! Don't annoy me with holding the clothes fast. Are you Jane Slayre?"

  "I am Jane Slayre."

  "I have had more trouble with that child than anyone would believe. Such a burden to be left on my hands--and so much annoyance as she caused me, daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural watching of one's movements! I was glad to get her away from the house. What did they do with her at Lowood? The fever

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  broke out there, and many of the pupils died. She, however, did not die, but I said she did--I wish she had died!"

  "A strange wish, Mrs. Reed. She was out of your way by then. Why should it bother you whether she lived or died? Why do you hate her so?"

  "I had a dislike to her mother always. She was my husband's only sister, and a great favourite with him. He opposed the family's disowning her when she made her low marriage. He wept like a simpleton on news of her death. He would have the baby, though I entreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its maintenance. And when he went to gather the infant? Oh! He was attacked! A dreadful thing."

  "The attack?"

  "Yes, but he came back to me. Not the same, but he came back. And to think, I was so happy when I heard that we could live forever!"

  "Forever is a very long time, Aunt. Perhaps too long."

  "You learn such things the hard way. He changed me to what he was so we could live together always, and we planned to change the children when they came of age as well. And then, a new tragedy. My husband could not go on. He hated what he'd become."

  "But you didn't hate it, Mrs. Reed? You preferred it."

  "At first, and for so many years. It was a mistake to change the children, but John begged so. Oh, my poor boy! How he wanted to be like me. He warned me that if I failed to change him in time, he might die before he could have the chance. I didn't want him to die. I wanted him to live forever, my golden boy!"

  "He was too indulged, Mrs. Reed. He wanted a firmer hand."

  "Hmph." She smiled without mirth. "You might not judge. You didn't live for months on end with that Slayre baby, forever crying! I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it--a sickly, whining, pining thing! Mr. Reed pitied it, and he used to coo over it as if it had been his own. More, indeed, than he ever noticed his own at that age.

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  He would try to make my children friendly to the little beggar. The darlings could not bear it, and he was angry with them when they showed their dislike. In his last days, he had it brought continually to his bedside. But an hour before he died, he bound me by vow to keep the creature."

  "I'm sure you did the best you could," I allowed her by way of forgiveness. It didn't hurt me any to comfort her now.

  "John does not at all resemble his father, and I am glad of it. John is like me and like my brothers--he is quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish he would cease tormenting me with letters for money. I have no more money to give him. We are getting poor. I must send away half the servants and shut up part of the house or let it off. I can never submit to do that--yet how are we to get on? Two-thirds of my income goes in paying the interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully and always loses--poor boy! He drinks the blood of common rabble! John is sunk and degraded--his look is frightful--I feel ashamed for him when I see him." She burst into noisy tears.

  Bessie persuaded her to take a sedative draught. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed and sank into a doze. I then left her.

  More than ten days elapsed before I had any further conversation with her. She continued either delirious or lethargic. She took but little nourishment from what Eliza would provide.

  I was surprised to learn that Eliza abhorred hunting or killing of any sort. She recognised its necessity to keep her alive, but allowed herself only meager portions. She trapped small forest animals in cages, as Jimmy the footman had showed her, then she killed them as humanely as possible and drained the blood out into cups. Georgiana, of course, hunted alone, and she had perhaps acquired her mother's skill at it. She was well fed, by the look of her, and she preferred not to share.

  Eliza would sit half the night sewing, reading, or writing and scarcely utter a word either to me or to her sister. Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary by the hour and take no notice of

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  me. But I had brought my drawing materials, and they served me for both occupation and amusement.

  One night, for I had taken to following their schedule while I visited, I fell to sketching a face. What sort of a face it was to be, I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and prominent forehead and a square jaw. I smiled at it when I finished, and I felt a little less lonely even having him on paper to observe.

  "Is that a portrait of someone you know?" asked Eliza, who had approached me unnoticed.

  I responded that it was merely a study and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Georgiana also advanced to look. They both seemed surprised at my skill. I offered to sketch their portraits, and each, in turn, sat for a pencil outline. This put Georgiana at once into good humour. She proposed a walk on the grounds. I agreed, as walking at night was no longer such a challenge to me.

  Before we had been out two hours, we were deep in a confidential conversation. She had favoured me with a description of the brilliant winter she had spent in London two seasons ago--of the admiration she had there excited--the attention she had received. I even got hints of the titled conquest she had made, before she took off after a deer and I went back to the house alone.

  In the night, these hints were enlarged on. She liked to speak of her romantic conquests, which were more numerous than I'd imagined considering she had such a child's face. Strangely, she never once brought up her mother's illness, or her brother's death, or the gloomy state of the family prospects. Her mind seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety, and aspirations after dissipations to come. She passed about five minutes each day in her mother's sickroom, and no more.

  Eliza still spoke little. Three times a night she studied a little book, which I found, on inspection, was a Common Prayer Book. She had found others of her kind, those who lived as she did, with

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  an abhorrence of killing and a preference to feed their cravings as humanely as possible. I marvelled that she had found two such others in her own nei
ghbourhood. Mostly, she seemed to want no company and little conversation. I believed she was happy in her way.

  She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative than usual, that John's conduct, and the threatened ruin of the family, had profoundly afflicted her. Her own fortune she had taken care to secure, and she planned to use it to devote to a vampyre church in Italy, a place where those of her kind could go to seek forgiveness and learn new ways to live and deal with their affliction while still being answerable to God. I wished her well with her endeavour.

  On a wet and windy night, Georgiana had fallen asleep on the sofa over the perusal of a novel. Eliza was gone to attend a saint's-day service with her church group, for in matters of religion she was a rigid formalist. I went upstairs to see how the woman fared who lay there almost unheeded. The very servants paid her but an intermittent attention. The hired nurse, being little looked after and entirely too human, would slip out of the room whenever she could. Abbot, I'd learned, had fallen down the stairs when carrying laundry, hit her head, knocked it loose, and was no more, a stunning loss for Aunt Reed. Bessie was faithful, the dear, but she had her own family to mind and could only occasionally come to the hall.

  I found the sickroom unwatched, as I had expected. The patient lay still and seemingly lethargic. The fire was dying in the grate. I renewed the fuel, rearranged the bedclothes, gazed awhile on her who could not now gaze on me, and then I moved to the window.

  "Who is that?" I knew Mrs. Reed had not spoken for nights. Was she reviving? I went up to her.

  "It is I, Aunt Reed."

  "Who--I? You are quite a stranger to me--where is Bessie?"

  "She is at the lodge, Aunt."

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