Jane Slayre (5 page)

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and the New Year had been celebrated at Gateshead with the usual festive cheer. Presents had been exchanged, dinners and evening parties given, old friends invited and unexpectedly consumed later in their beds. From every enjoyment I was, of course, excluded. My share of the gaiety consisted in witnessing the nightly attiring of Eliza and Georgiana, for Bessie was needed in the duty, and seeing them descend to the drawing room dressed out in thin muslin frocks and scarlet sashes, with hair elaborately ringleted. And afterwards in listening to the sound of the piano or the harp played below, to the passing to and fro of the butler and the footman, to the jingling of glass and china as refreshments were handed out, to the broken hum of conversation as the drawing-room door opened and closed. When tired of this occupation, I would retire from the stair-head to the silent nursery. There, though somewhat sad, I was not miserable.

To speak truth, I had not the least wish to go into company, for in company I was rarely noticed. I could run down the stairs screaming that the Reeds were vampyres and that blood would be spilled, and no one would pay me any more mind than a mouse stealing a crumb.

Instead I sat with my doll on my knee until the fire got low, glancing round occasionally to make sure that nothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room. I would show my doll the stakes I had cut that morning and how I planned to use them if my cousin vampyres dared to come near. She approved wholeheartedly, love that she was.

When the embers sank to a dull red, I undressed hastily, tugging at knots and strings as I best might, and sought shelter from cold and darkness in my bed. To this bed I always took my doll. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my nightgown, a stake tucked into its dress as I had a stake tucked into the sleeve of mine. When it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it to be happy likewise.

Long did the hours seem while I waited for the shrieks of dying

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company and listened for the sound of Bessie's step on the stairs hours after she was done helping to clean up while the footmen buried corpses with some ceremony on the grounds in unmarked graves. Sometimes Bessie would come up in the interval to seek her thimble or her scissors, or perhaps to bring me something by way of supper--a bun or a cheesecake--then she would sit on the bed while I ate it, and when I had finished, she would tuck the clothes round me, and twice she kissed me and said, "Good night, Miss Jane."

It was the fifteenth of January, about nine o'clock in the morning. Bessie had gone down to breakfast. My cousins were sleeping off their repast, a lighter meal than they'd become accustomed to during the holidays as they had gone back to hunting wildlife with the end of the season's celebrations. I was making my bed, having received strict orders from Bessie to get it arranged before she returned. Having spread the quilt, checked my store of stakes in the pillowcase, and folded my nightdress, I went to the window seat to put in order some picture books and dollhouse furniture scattered there, then stopped and tried to see out the window through the frost. For days, it had been too cold to go out, overcast and grey. I breathed on the window to clear a space, just in case some of the sun's rays poked through the clouds.

From this window, I could usually see the porter's lodge and the carriage road, and just as I had dissolved enough frost from the panes to look out, I saw the gates thrown open and a carriage roll through. Carriages did not often come to Gateshead, so I watched with growing interest. It stopped in front of the house. The doorbell rang loudly.

Bessie came running upstairs into the nursery. "Miss Jane, take off your pinafore. What are you doing there? Have you washed your hands and face this morning?"

I was spared the trouble of answering, for Bessie seemed in too great a hurry to listen to explanations. She hauled me to the wash-stand,

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inflicted a merciless but happily brief scrub on my face and hands with soap, water, and a coarse towel, disciplined my head with a bristly brush, took off my pinafore, and then, hurrying me to the top of the stairs, bid me go down directly, as I was wanted in the drawing room.

I would have asked who wanted me--not Mrs. Reed surely, as she was still abed--but Bessie was already gone and had closed the nursery door upon me. I slowly descended. I stood in the empty hall. Before me was the drawing-room door, and I stopped, curious and a little intimidated.

"Who could want me?" I asked inwardly, as with both hands I turned the stiff door handle, which, for a second or two, resisted my efforts. "Who could it be?"

The handle turned, the door opened, and passing through and curtsying low, I looked up at--a black pillar! Such, at least, appeared to me, at first sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug. The grim face at the top was like a carved mask. Surely not a vampyre, as he was out so early in the day, but I then startled at the sight of Aunt Reed, seated at the fireside behind him. Mrs. Reed interrupting her sleep to venture out about the house in daylight hours? This was an important meeting to be sure.

"This is the little girl respecting whom I applied to you," Mrs. Reed said, gesturing for me to come forward.

I swallowed hard. He turned his head slowly towards where I stood and, having examined me with the two inquisitive-looking black eyes, which twinkled under a pair of bushy brows, said solemnly, and in the deepest bass voice that bounced like thunder off the walls, "Her size is small. What is her age?"

"Ten years," I said, willing to speak for myself instead of waiting for Aunt Reed to speak for me.

"So much?" was the doubtful answer that seemed to echo in the room, and he prolonged his scrutiny for some minutes. Presently he addressed me. "Your name, little girl?"

"Jane Slayre, sir." In uttering these words I looked up. My courage

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waned a little. He seemed to me a giant, but then I was very little.

"Well, Jane Slayre, and are you a good child?"

"I am." I narrowed my eyes at Mrs. Reed to judge her reaction.

She cleared her throat. "Perhaps the less said on that subject the better, Mr. Bokorhurst."

"Sorry indeed to hear it! She and I must have some talk." He settled in the armchair opposite Mrs. Reed's. It groaned under his weight, which was not significant except for his height. He was not stout. "Come here."

I stepped across the rug. He placed me square and straight before him. What a face he had, now that it was almost on a level with mine! What a great nose! And what a mouth! And what large, prominent teeth! Perhaps he was a vampyre who had found a way to tolerate the daylight? Or something worse? One of the demons from Bessie's fairy tales?

"No sight so sad as that of a naughty child," he began, "especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?"

"They go to hell" was my ready answer. "With the unrepentant slain vampyres."

He laughed as if he found this fantastical. It reassured me a bit. I didn't dare glance at Mrs. Reed. "And what is hell? Can you tell me that?"

"A pit full of fire."

"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there forever?"

"No, sir. Especially not with the vampyres." Mrs. Reed would catch my meaning, that my life hadn't been so far removed from hell as it was.

"What must you do to avoid it?"

I deliberated a moment. "I must keep in good health, not die. And most especially avoid sacrificing my soul for the false promise of eternal life."

"Children younger than you die daily. I buried a little child of

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five years old only a day or two since--a good little child, whose soul is now in heaven. It is to be feared the same could not be said of you were you to be called hence."

Not being in a condition to remove his doubt with Mrs. Reed standing by ready to discredit me, I only cast my eyes down on the two large feet planted on the rug and sighed, wishing myself far enough away.

"I hope that sigh is from the heart, and that you repent of ever having been the occasion of discomfort to your excellent benefactress. Do you say your prayers night and morning?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you read your Bible?"

"Sometimes."

"With pleasure? Are you fond of it?"

"I like Revelation, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel, and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job and Jonah."

"And the Psalms? I hope you like them?"

"No, sir."

"No? Oh, shocking! I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six psalms by heart, and when you ask him which he would rather have, a gingerbread nut to eat or a verse of a psalm to learn, he says, 'Oh! The verse of a psalm! Angels sing psalms,' says he. 'I wish to be a little angel here below.' He then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant piety."

"Psalms are not interesting," I said. Most especially not for a meager two nuts.

"That proves you have a wicked heart and you must pray to God to change it, to give you a new and clean one, to take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

I was about to ask how that change of heart was to be performed. Did he act as God's intermediary? Did
he
mean to perform an operation to change my heart? I was, after all, a girl of ten and prone to flights of imagination. I could picture him reaching in and pulling

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my heart out, still beating. But Mrs. Reed interposed, telling me to sit down. Perhaps I had said enough.

"Mr. Bokorhurst, I believe I intimated in the letter which I wrote to you three weeks ago that this little girl has not quite the character and disposition I could wish. Should you admit her into Lowood school, I should be glad if the superintendent and teachers were requested to keep a strict eye on her, and, above all, to guard against her worst fault, a tendency towards deceit. I mention this in your hearing, Jane, that you may not attempt to impose on Mr. Bokorhurst."

Her words were perhaps intended as a warning to keep me quiet, but she did not scare me. The problem was that Mr. Bokorhurst would take her word over mine, and she was right that I should not attempt to expose her, for now. She had already made me out to be a bad child and a liar, and I would have a struggle to overcome the reputation she painted for me even as I started fresh in a school.

"Deceit is, indeed, a sad fault in a child," said Mr. Bokorhurst. "It is akin to falsehood, and all liars will have their portion in the lake burning with fire and brimstone. She shall be watched, Mrs. Reed. I will speak to Miss Temple and the teachers."

"I should wish her to be brought up in a manner suiting her prospects," continued my benefactress. "To be made useful, to be kept humble. As for the vacations, she will, with your permission, spend them always at Lowood."

"Your decisions are perfectly judicious, madam," returned Mr. Bokorhurst. "Humility is a Christian grace, and one peculiarly appropriate to the pupils of Lowood. Only the other day I had a pleasing proof of my success. My second daughter, Augusta, went with her mama to visit the school, and on her return she exclaimed, 'Oh, dear papa, how quiet and plain all the girls at Lowood look, with their hair combed behind their ears, and their long pinafores, and those little pockets outside their frocks--they are almost like poor people's children! And,' said she, 'they looked at my dress and Mama's as if they had never seen a silk gown before.' "

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"This is the state of things I quite approve," returned Mrs. Reed. "Had I sought all England over, I could scarcely have found a system more exactly fitting a child like Jane Slayre. Consistency, my dear Mr. Bokorhurst. I advocate consistency in all things."

"Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties, and it has been observed in every arrangement connected with the establishment of Lowood."

"I will send her, then, as soon as possible, Mr. Bokorhurst. I assure you, I feel anxious to be relieved of a responsibility that was becoming too irksome."

"No doubt, no doubt, madam; and now I wish you good morning. I shall return to Bokorhurst Hall in the course of a week or two. I shall send Miss Temple notice that she is to expect a new girl so that there will be no difficulty about receiving her. And how is Miss Abbot getting on?"

"Abbot continues to serve me well. No cross words, never any trouble, and she has saved me much in the cost of food."

"You're careful, then, that she never gets a taste of meat?"

"Oh, no. Never. She does fall asleep rather too frequently, and there's the problem with her fingers occasionally breaking off in my hair arrangements, but otherwise I am most pleased with her. Thank you for recommending her."

"Very pleased to do so. We're preparing new girls for entering service should you ever want for more. Some of our past errors have been corrected with improved technique. We've learnt to harvest them sooner. It cuts down on the difficulties you mention. If you should like to trade Abbot for--"

"Trade Abbot? No, sir, I wouldn't hear of it. We're all quite comfortable with Abbot now. I thank you again. Good-bye, Mr. Bokorhurst. Remember me to Mrs. and Miss Bokorhurst, and to Augusta and Theodore, and Master Broughton Bokorhurst."

So Mr. Bokorhurst was to credit, or blame, for Abbot's presence? It made me a tad nervous about what sort of school he ran. What