A. N. Dedeaux - An English Education
Page 19
The succeeding week was long. Then one evening, after I had read prayers to the school, Nell brought me a letter. The seal was an initial F. I broke it. The contents were brief. If "J.E." who advertised in the Herald possessed the acquirements mentioned, then a situation can be offered her where there is but one pupil, a little girl, and where the salary is thirty pounds per annum.'
It was signed: Mrs. Fairfax, Thornfield, near Mill-cote, —shire.
My heart leapt and I reread the document many times, till my candle sank. Next day first steps were taken to my new mode of life. Miss Temple then laid the affair before Mr. Brocklehurst who gave me a testimonial and a final thrashing. The former was despatched to Mrs. Fairfax and the latter given me before Miss Temple. This fond farewell was, as ever, excruciatingly painful, a tight twelve "on the bare," taken touching my toes. I am glad to say that such was training by then that I suffered stoically until the last strokes, when he began to cut me about the top of the legs. I have always found this hideously painful and was forced to reward him with some sorry clasping and grimacing after. All the same I was able to put my clothes to rights without too much commotion and look him, pink-cheeked, in the eyes.
"Thank you, sir," I said and dropped him a controlled curtsey.
He flexed his cane with the nearest to a loving smile I had ever seen him give a girl.
"Well, I trust that will make you want to stand up in the coach, Jane." For my box was corded, the card nailed on, I had sought in all my drawers to see no article was left behind; and I was to be fetched from Lowood presently. "I have enjoyed flogging you, and having you flogged, and I hope it has done you good here."
"Oh it has, sir," I said warmly. Then impulsively I began, "I want to thank you—" but choked myself. What was I saying? Suddenly I heard myself, and it was as if Eliza Reed were in that room speaking: "Oh I thank you, sir, for everything you have done for me, and especially for ravishing me and thrashing me. Yours were always the worst whippings, the most thoroughly punishing, and they did rare honor to us." Suddenly I was crying and now it was Helen Burns speaking, Helen who had left a year before for a place in Essex—"But, sir, I never had the soko from you and if you wished, if you were so very kind, I would like to offer my person to it now."
He looked at me long and steadily across his cane. Finally he said, "It will be two dozen, Jane, and there may be some stains on that black traveling dress of yours when you arrive."
"I shall never wash them out, sir."
After another long interval in which he measured me, he said, "Take up your things and lie down before me and grip my ankles. Now—BRING ME THE STRICTEST SOKO THAT WE HAVE!"
Later, sitting tingling in the coach, I knew that a phase of my life was closing, a new one opening tomorrow. Little girl, I thought to myself with a smile, may your bottom be chubby and the twigs in the trees near Millcote whippy, for I mean to give you "a good English education" with plenty of it spent eyeing the carpet from close to, arse in air. How sadly this hope was to be disillusioned I knew not then. But that is another story. . . .
END OF VOLUME ONE