There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.
I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensed from joining the group; saying,“She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner-something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were-she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children.”
“What does Bessie say I have done?”I asked.
“Jane, I don't like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.”
A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement.
Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.
I returned to my book—Bewick's History of British Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of“the solitary rocks and promontories”by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape-
“Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.”
Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with“the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space, —that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold.”Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children's brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking. I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard, with its inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent, attesting the hour of eventide.
The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine phantoms.
The fiend pinning down the thief's pack behind him, I passed over quickly: it was an object of terror.
So was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows.
Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting: as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having brought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed's lace frills, and crimped her nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads;or(as at a later period I discovered)from the pages of Pamela,and Henry,Earl of Moreland.
With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my way. I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon. The breakfast-room door opened.
“Boh! Madam Mope!”cried the voice of John Reed; then he paused: he found the room apparently empty.
“Where the dickens is she!”he continued.“Lizzy! Georgy! (calling to his sisters) Joan is not here: tell mama she is run out into the rain-bad animal!”
“It is well I drew the curtain,”thought I; and I wished fervently he might not discover my hiding-place: nor would John Reed have found it out himself; he was not quick either of vision or conception; but Eliza just put her head in at the door, and said at once-
“She is in the window-seat, to be sure, Jack.”
And I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being dragged forth by the said Jack.
“What do you want?”I asked, with awkward diffidence.
“Say,‘What do you want, Master Reed?’”was the answer.“I want you to come here;”and seating himself in an arm-chair, he intimated by a gesture that I was to approach and stand before him.
John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than I, for I was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities. He gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks. He ought now to have been at school; but his mama had taken him home for a month or two,“on account of his delicate health.”Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from home; but the mother's heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more refined idea that John's sallowness was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining after home.
John had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and an antipathy to me. He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice in the day,but continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near. There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions; the servants did not like to offend their young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the subject: she never saw him strike or heard him abuse me, though he did both now and then in her very presence, more frequently, however, behind her back.
Habitually obedient to John, I came up to his chair: he spent some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could without damaging the roots: I knew he would soon strike, and while dreading the blow, I mused on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would presently deal it. I wonder if he read that notion in my face; for, all at once, without speaking, he struck suddenly and strongly. I tottered, and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a step or two from his chair.
“That is for your impudence in answering mama awhile since,”said he,“and for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains, and for the look you had in your eyes two minutes since, you rat!”
Accustomed to John Reed's abuse, I never had an idea of replying to it; my care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the insult.
“What were you doing behind the curtain?”he asked.
“I was reading.”
“Show the book.”
I returned to the window and fetched it thence.
“You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentlemen's children like us, and eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama's expense. Now, I'll teach you to rummage my bookshelves: for they are mine; all the house belongs to me, or will do in a few years. Go and stand by the door, out of the way of the mirror and the windows.”
I did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when I saw him lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume was flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was sharp: my terror had passed its climax;other feelings succeeded.
“Wicked and cruel boy!”I said.“You are like a murderer-you are like a slave-driver-you are like the Roman emperors!”
I had read Goldsmith's History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of Nero, Caligula, etc. Also I had drawn parallels in silence, which I never thought thus to have declared aloud.
“What! what!”he cried.“Did she say that to me? Did you hear her, Eliza and Georgiana? Won't I tell mama? but first—”
He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had closed with a desperate thing. I really saw in him a tyrant, a murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck, and was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering: these sensations for the time predominated over fear, and I received him in frantic sort. I don't very well know what I did with my hands, but he called me“Rat! Rat!”and bellowed out aloud. Aid was near him: Eliza and Georgiana had run for Mrs. Reed, who was gone upstairs: she now came upon the scene, followed by Bessie and her maid Abbot. We were parted: I heard the words-
“Dear! dear! What a fury to fly at Master John!”
“Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion!”
Then Mrs. Reed subjoined-
“Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there.”Four hands were immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.
那天，散步是不可能了。其实，早晨我们一直在落尽树叶的灌木林中漫步了一个小时；但是，从午饭时起（没有客人来访时，里德太太吃饭早），凛冽的冬风就刮了起来，随之而来的是昏暗的阴云和彻骨的苦雨，所以现在不可能再到户外活动了。
我对此感到高兴。我从不喜欢长时间散步，尤其是在寒冷的下午。我觉得，阴冷的黄昏回家十分可怕，手指和脚趾被冻僵不说，还要受到保姆贝茜斥责，挺让人伤心的，加上自己觉得体质不如里德家的伊莱扎、约翰和乔治亚娜，也自惭形秽。
刚才说到的伊莱扎、约翰和乔治亚娜此刻都在客厅里，簇拥在他们妈妈的身边：她斜倚在炉边的沙发上，宝贝们围在她的四周（此时没有争吵也没有哭叫），看上去幸福美满。而我呢，她恩准我不用跟他们在一起，并说很遗憾，不得不让我在远处待着。不过，要是她没有听到贝茜说，并能亲眼发现，我在尽心尽力、认认真真地养成一种比较友善天真的性情，培养更为迷人轻快的举止——可以说是更轻松、更率直、更自然——她当真不让我享受那些只打算送给满足快乐的小孩子的特权。
“贝茜说我做过什么？”我问。
“简，我不喜欢挑剔或发问的人，况且，小孩子这样跟大人顶嘴真讨厌。找个地方坐下，不会和颜悦色说话，就保持沉默。”
早餐室邻接客厅，我溜了进去。那儿有一个书架。我小心翼翼地挑选带有插图的，很快就给自己找了一本书。我爬上窗台，蜷缩双脚，像土耳其人那样盘腿而坐，然后把波纹毛呢红窗帘拉得几乎合在一起，就像被放在加倍隐蔽的神龛上一样。
猩红色窗幔的皱褶挡住了我右侧的视线；左侧是光亮的玻璃窗，这使我既免受十一月阴沉天气的影响，又不跟外界隔开。在翻动书页时，我不时地端详那个冬日下午的景色。只见远处是一片白蒙蒙的云雾，近处是一块湿漉漉的草地和被暴风雨摧残的灌木丛，同时一阵持久悲怆的强风将连绵不断的大雨狂扫而过。
我又看起了书——那是比威克的《英国鸟类史》：一般来说，我对其中的文字几乎不喜欢；不过，有几页导言，尽管我是孩子，我也不能当成空页翻过。这些导言写到了海鸟的栖息地，写到了只有海鸟栖居的“那些孤立的岩石与海岬”，写到了从最南端的林德斯内斯角或岬角到北部海岬，布满了小岛的挪威海岸——
那儿北冰洋掀起的滚滚巨涡，
在极地最远端的凄荒小岛周围咆哮
大西洋的汹涌波涛
涌入了澎湃的赫布里底群岛。
还有的我也不能不看就翻过去，那就是书里提到的拉普兰、西伯利亚、斯匹次卑尔根群岛、新地岛、冰岛和格陵兰荒凉的海岸、“北极区广阔的地带，以及那些沉闷的荒凉地区——那个雪霜的储存库，世纪连绵的寒冬积聚的坚冰，像阿尔卑斯山的层层高地一样光滑明亮，包围着地极，把与日俱增的极度严寒集中在一处。”我对这些惨白的地域有自己的看法，模模糊糊，朦朦胧胧，就像孩子们似是而非的念头浮现在脑海里一样，但留下的印象却异常深刻。导言中的这几页文字跟后面的小插图连在一起，使独立在巨浪滚滚的大海中的岩石、搁浅在荒凉海岸上的破船和透过云带俯视着沉船的惨白冷月产生了意义。我说不清是什么情绪弥漫在孤寂的教堂墓地，题有碑文的墓碑、大门、两棵树、低低的地平线、破败的围墙，以及一轮初升的新月，都表明是黄昏时分。
两艘轮船停泊在沉睡的海面上，我以为它们是海上幽灵。
魔鬼从后面按住了小偷的背包，样子非常可怕，我很快翻了过去。
同样可怕的是那个头上长角的黑色怪物，独坐在岩石上面，远眺着一群人围着绞架。
每幅画都讲了一个故事，尽管我理解力欠缺，情感还不完善，它们往往显得神秘莫测，但永远都趣味盎然，就像冬天的夜晚贝茜碰巧心情不错时讲述的故事一样有趣。这时，贝茜会把熨衣架搬到保育室的壁炉边，让我们围坐在四周。她一边熨里德太太的蕾丝褶边，把睡帽边沿烫出褶裥，一边让我们迫不及待地倾听她讲的一段段爱情和冒险故事，这些故事都取自古老的童话和其他的民歌，或者（我后来发现）取自《帕梅拉》和《莫兰伯爵亨利》。
比威克的书放在我的膝盖上，我很快乐，至少是自得其乐。我只是担心有人打扰，但打扰来得太快了。早餐室的门打开了。
“嘘！忧郁小姐！”约翰·里德的声音喊道，随后，他暂停下来，发现房间里显然没人。
“她到底在哪儿！”他继续说道，“丽齐！乔琪！（喊着他的姐妹）琼不在这儿。告诉妈妈，她跑到了外面的雨地里——坏家伙！”
“幸好我拉上了窗帘，”我暗想，热切希望他不会发现我的藏身处；约翰·里德自己不会发现，他眼睛不尖，头脑也不灵；但是，伊莱扎刚把头伸进门里，就立刻说道——
“她自然是在窗台上，杰克。”
我马上走出来，因为一想到会被杰克拽出来，我就浑身颤抖。
“你想要什么？”我尴尬难堪缺乏自信地问道。
“要说‘你想要什么，里德少爷？'”这就是回答。“我要你过来这儿。”说着，他坐在一把扶手椅上，打了个手势，示意我走近，站在他的面前。
约翰·里德是一个十四岁的男生，比我大四岁，因为我才十岁。论年龄，他高大结实，但皮肤暗黑，病恹恹的；面容宽阔，五官粗犷，四肢笨重，手脚宽大。他习惯狼吞虎咽，这使他脾气暴躁，目光暗淡模糊，脸颊松弛。他现在本该在学校里，他的妈妈却把他领回家住了一两个月，“因为他身体虚弱”。老师迈尔斯先生断言，要是家里少送些蛋糕和糖果，他就会过得很好；但是，母亲的心却讨厌这样苛刻的看法，倒倾向于一种更礼貌的想法，就是约翰因为过于用功，也许还因为想家，所以才肤色灰黄。
约翰对他的母亲和姐妹们没有多少感情，对我也极其反感。他欺侮我，惩罚我，不是一星期两三次，也不是一天一两次，而是持续不断：我每一根神经都怕他，他走近时，我身子骨里的每一小块肌肉都会收缩。有时我会被他吓得六神无主，因为无论是他的威胁还是惩罚，我都投诉无门。仆人们不愿意站在我这边得罪他们的少爷，里德太太对这件事则装聋作哑：她的儿子打我骂我，她从来都熟视无睹、充耳不闻，尽管他不时地当着她的面这样做，而在她的背后更是频繁。
我对约翰顺从惯了，就走到他的椅边。他用了大约三分钟，在不损坏舌根的情况下，尽可能冲我伸出舌头。我知道他会很快动手，我一边害怕挨打，一边若有所思地望着这个马上要动手者的可恶丑态。我不知道他是不是看出了我的心思，因为他二话没说，突然狠狠地打了我一拳。我踉跄了一下，从他的椅边倒退了一两步，才站稳了脚跟。
“谁让你刚才无礼回答妈妈，”他说，“谁让你偷偷躲在窗帘后面，谁让你两分钟前眼里露出那种样子，你这耗子！”
我习惯了约翰·里德的辱骂，从来不想去回应；我关心的是怎样去忍受辱骂之后肯定跟来的殴打。
“你刚才在窗帘后面干什么？”他问。
“我在看书。”
“把书拿出来。”
我回到窗边，从那儿取出那本书。
“你无权拿我们的书；妈妈说，你是一个靠别人生活的人；你没钱；你的父亲什么也没有给你留下；你应该去要饭，不应该跟像我们这样体面人家的孩子一起住在这儿，跟我们吃一样的饭，穿我们的妈妈掏钱买的衣服。现在，你竟敢翻找我的书架，我要教训你，因为这些书都是我的；整个房子都是我的，要么过几年就是我的了。去，站在门边，别挡着镜子和窗户。”
我这样做了，起先不知道他是什么意图；但是，当看到他举起那本书，悬在那儿，站起来要向我用力扔过来时，我惊叫了一声，本能地跳开，但跳得不够快，书被猛地扔过来，砸中了我，我摔倒了，头撞在门上，磕破了一道口，伤口在流血，钻心的疼。我的恐惧已经超过了极限，其他的种种情绪随之而来。
“你这残忍的坏小子！”我说，“你就像杀人犯——你就像是奴隶监工——你就像罗马皇帝！”
我曾经读过戈德史密斯的《罗马史》，并对尼禄、卡利古拉等人形成了自己的看法。同时，我默默地作过类比，但从来没有想到会这样大声说出来。
“什么！什么！”他吼道，“她竟敢对我这样说话？伊莱扎、乔治亚娜，你们听到她的话了吧？我能不告诉妈妈吗？但首先——”
他一头扑向我。我感到他抓住了我的头发和肩膀，他已经跟一个孤注一掷的人肉搏起来。我看他真是暴君、杀人犯。我感觉有一两滴血从头上顺着脖子流下来。这些感觉一时间压倒了恐惧，我拼命抵挡他。我不大清楚自己的双手都干了什么，但他一边叫我“耗子！耗子！”一边大声吼叫。帮手就在他的身边，伊莱扎和乔治亚娜跑去叫已经上楼的里德太太，她现在赶到了现场，后面跟着贝茜和女仆阿博特。我们被拉了开来。我听她们说道——
“哎呀！哎呀！发这么大火，竟敢对约翰少爷发这么大的火！”
“谁见过发这么大火的！”
随后，里德太太补充道——
“把她带去红屋，把她锁在里面。”马上就有四只手抓住我，把我拖上了楼。