There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering in the shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner, the cold winter wind had brought clouds and a rain, and further out-door exercise was now out of the question.
I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons. Mrs. Reed’s children – Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her looked perfectly happy. She excluded me from the group and told me to be seated somewhere; and until I could speak pleasantly, remain silent.
I slipped in the breakfast-room. It contained a bookcase: I soon chose a volume with pictures. I got into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red curtain, I felt safe.
I returned to my book – Bewick[1]’s History of British Birds.
Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding, yet deeply interesting: as interesting as the tales Bessie, the nurse, sometimes told on winter evenings, when she was in good humour; and when, having brought her ironing-table to the nursery, she allowed us to sit about it and listen to passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads.
With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy. I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon. The breakfast-room door opened.
“Madam Mope[2]!” cried the voice of John Reed; then he paused: he found the room apparently empty.
“Where the dickens is she[3]!” he continued. “Lizzy! Georgy! (calling to his sisters) Joan[4] is not here: tell mama she is run out into the rain – bad animal[5]!”
“It is well I drew the curtain,” thought I; and I wished he might not discover my hiding-place; 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 feared my being dragged forth by Jack.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Say, ’What do you want, Master Reed?’” was the answer. “I want you to come here;” and seating himself in an arm-chair, he made 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 ten: large and stout for his age, with thick lineaments in his face. 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, believed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes sent him from 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. The servants couldn’t take my part against him for they did not like to offend their young master. Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the subject[6]: she never saw him strike or heard him abuse me, though he did both in her very presence, more frequently, however, behind her back.
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. I knew he would soon strike, and fearing the blow, I thought how disgusting and ugly he looked. Then all at once, without speaking, he struck suddenly and strongly. I almost lost balance and made a step or two back from his chair.
“That is for your impudence in answering mama,” said he, “and for your hiding behind curtains, and for the look you had in your eyes two minutes ago, you rat!
“What were you doing behind the curtain?” he asked then.
“I was reading.”
“Show the book.”
I returned to the window and got it there.
“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 use 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.”
But before I did, he lifted the book and flung it. The volume hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was sharp.
“Wicked and cruel boy!” I said. “You are like a murderer – you are like a slave-driver!”
“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 at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder. I really saw in him a tyrant, a murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck. I don’t very well know what I did with my hands, but he called me “Rat! Rat!” and bellowed out aloud. Eliza and Georgiana had run for Mrs. Reed, who was 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!”
