There was no possibility oftaking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leaflessshrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there wasno 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 thequestion.
I was glad of it: I neverliked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was thecoming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heartsaddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousnessof my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
The said Eliza, John, andGeorgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclinedon a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the timeneither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensedfrom joining the group; saying, “She regretted to be under the necessity ofkeeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and coulddiscover by her own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest toacquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive andsprightly manner—something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were—shereally must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy,little children.”
“What does Bessie say I havedone?” I asked.
“Jane, I don’t like cavillersor questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child takingup her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speakpleasantly, remain silent.”
A breakfast-room adjoined thedrawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessedmyself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. Imounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat crosslegged, like aTurk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined indouble retirement.
Folds of scarlet drapery shutin 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 winterafternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wetlawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before along and lamentable blast. I returned to my book—Bewick’s History of BritishBirds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; andyet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could notpass 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 coastof Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, orNaze, to the North Cape—
“Wherethe Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
Boilsround the naked, melancholy isles
Offarthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
Poursin among the stormy Hebrides.”
Nor could I pass unnoticed thesuggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla,Iceland, Greenland, with “the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlornregions of dreary space, —that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fieldsof ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heightsabove heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours ofextreme 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’sbrains, but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pagesconnected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance tothe rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boatstranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing throughbars of cloud at a wreck just sinking.