I went to my window, opened it, and looked out. There were the two

wings of the building; there was the garden; there were the skirts

of Lowood; there was the hilly horizon. My eye passed all other

objects to rest on those most remote, the blue peaks; it was those I

longed to surmount; all within their boundary of rock and heath

seemed prison-ground, exile limits. I traced the white road winding

round the base of one mountain, and vanishing in a gorge between

two; how I longed to follow it farther! I recalled the time when I

had travelled that very road in a coach; I remembered descending

that hill at twilight; an age seemed to have elapsed since the day

which brought me first to Lowood, and I had never quitted it since.

My vacations had all been spent at school: Mrs. Reed had never sent

for me to Gateshead; neither she nor any of her family had ever been

to visit me. I had had no communication by letter or message with

the outer world: school-rules, school-duties, school-habits and

notions, and voices, and faces, and phrases, and costumes, and

preferences, and antipathies--such was what I knew of existence.

And now I felt that it was not enough; I tired of the routine of

eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty; for liberty I

gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the

wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler

supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed

swept off into vague space: "Then," I cried, half desperate, "grant

me at least a new servitude!"

Here a bell, ringing the hour of supper, called me downstairs.

I was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections

till bedtime: even then a teacher who occupied the same room with

me kept me from the subject to which I longed to recur, by a

prolonged effusion of small talk. How I wished sleep would silence

her. It seemed as if, could I but go back to the idea which had

last entered my mind as I stood at the window, some inventive

suggestion would rise for my relief.

Miss Gryce snored at last; she was a heavy Welshwoman, and till now

her habitual nasal strains had never been regarded by me in any

other light than as a nuisance; to-night I hailed the first deep

notes with satisfaction; I was debarrassed of interruption; my half-

effaced thought instantly revived.

"A new servitude! There is something in that," I soliloquised

(mentally, be it understood; I did not talk aloud), "I know there

is, because it does not sound too sweet; it is not like such words

as Liberty, Excitement, Enjoyment: delightful sounds truly; but no

more than sounds for me; and so hollow and fleeting that it is mere

waste of time to listen to them. But Servitude! That must be

matter of fact. Any one may serve: I have served here eight years;

now all I want is to serve elsewhere. Can I not get so much of my

own will? Is not the thing feasible? Yes--yes--the end is not so

difficult; if I had only a brain active enough to ferret out the

means of attaining it."




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