My Mr. Rochester Read Online Free Page B

thermometer results. “Well, Jane. I’ll come again tomorrow, how is that?”
    “Oh, sir!” I grabbed his arm. “What is to become of me?”
    I couldn’t let him go. I wanted—no. I needed— to feel this pleasant conviviality for a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes! Even if only to discuss my dreary fate.
    He squeezed my hand. “I’ll tell you what’s to become of you, Jane. You are to eat what Bessie gives you and sleep all day and the whole night through. You’ve had a slight concussion, but nothing that won’t be put to rights by this prescription. Tell me you’ll be a wise young lady—”
    So glad he didn’t tell me to be a good girl.
    “—and do as I say.”
    “Yes, Dr. Lloyd.”
    At that moment the bell rang for the servants’ meal. It was noon then. Bessie anxiously looked at the door then back again. Dr. Lloyd understood her dilemma. If she didn’t eat on time with the others, she would get nothing until late tonight. “Go ahead, Bessie. I’ll talk with my patient a few minutes more and let myself out.”
    “Yes, sir,” she said. “Thank you, Dr. Lloyd.”
    “Now Jane,” he said when we were alone. “Has someone hurt you? Are your injuries not from an accidental fall? Tell me what’s truly troubling you.”
    Never.
    If I told the world John Reed had accosted me in…in that way, I’d be called Liar and Tease (which how could both be true at the same time?). I’d be branded fallen for the rest of my life. John Reed and Mrs. Reed had both already called me Jezebel.
    Still, I was sorely in need of sympathy.
    “I was knocked down,” I admitted. “But that’s not it.”
    “What is it then?”
    “I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost.”
    He smiled then frowned to cover it. “Ghost. So you’re a child after all, afraid of ghosts.”
    “Of Mr. Reed’s ghost. You may not know this, but my uncle died in that room. He was laid out there. No one will go into the Red Room at night if they can help it. It was cruel to shut me up there. I’ll never forget it.”
    “Are you afraid now, in daylight?”
    “No. But night will come again. And besides, I’m unhappy. Very unhappy, for other things.”
    “What other things? Can you tell me some of them?”
    I was afraid to go on—for I might never stop. No one had ever asked me what I thought, how I felt. To be sure, I’d given out my thoughts and feelings freely, but none had ever cared about them or wanted them. Oh, how my heart ached!
    “For one thing, I have no father or mother, no brothers or sisters.”
    “You have a kind aunt and cousins.”
    “But John Reed knocked me down, and my aunt shut me up in the Red Room.” At this point, I withdrew my arms from under the covers and thrust my wrists out together.
    “Hm.” Dr. Lloyd looked at the red marks. Then he looked at my nightgown, and I felt he considered it too thin and my blankets too few. He looked back to the door and at the cold grate in my fireplace. After another minute he said, “Don’t you think Gateshead a very beautiful house?” he said. “Aren’t you grateful to live in such a fine place?”
    “It isn’t my house. Abbot says I have less right to be here than a servant.”
    “Pooh! Are you silly enough to wish to leave then?”
    “If I had anywhere else to go, I’d be glad to. But I’ll never get away until I am a woman. A grown woman.”
    “Have you any relations besides Mrs. Reed?”
    “I think not, sir.”
    “None belonging to your father?”
    “I asked Mrs. Reed once. She said I might have some low relations called Eyre, but she knew nothing of them.”
    “If you did, would you like to go to them?”
    I had to think about that. I’d called the workhouse preferable to Gateshead, but that was theatrics. I didn’t want to be poor. Who does? I’d seen the magazines at church with pictures of heathen cities and calls for missionaries. Poverty was ugly and cruel. Perhaps crueler even than John Reed.
    “No,” I said. “I don’t want