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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com Digital Library-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte


289

strangers who arrive at a place where they have no friends, and
who want employment, sometimes apply to the clergyman for
introduction and aid. It is the clergyman’s function to help-at least
with advice-those who wished to help themselves. I seemed to
have something like a right to seek counsel here. Renewing then
my courage, and gathering my feeble remains of strength, I pushed
on. I reached the house, and knocked at the kitchen-door. An old
woman opened: I asked was this the parsonage? ‘Yes.’ ‘Was the
clergyman in?’ ‘No.’

‘Would he be in soon?’ ‘No, he was gone from home.’ ‘To a
distance?’ ‘Not so far-happen three mile. He had been called away
by the sudden death of his father: he was at Marsh End now, and
would very likely stay there a fortnight longer.’ ‘Was there any
lady of the house?’ ‘Nay, there was naught but her, and she was
housekeeper’; and of her, reader, I could not bear to ask the relief
for want of which I was sinking; I could not yet beg; and again I
crawled away.

Once more I took off my handkerchief-once more I thought of the
cakes of bread in the little shop. Oh, for but a crust! for but one
mouthful to allay the pang of famine! Instinctively I turned my face
again to the village; I found the shop again, and I went in; and
though others were there besides the woman I ventured the
request-‘Would she give me a roll for this handkerchief?’ She
looked at me with evident suspicion: ‘Nay, she never sold stuff i’
that way.’ Almost desperate, I asked for half a cake; she again
refused. ‘How could she tell where I had got the handkerchief?’
she said.

‘Would she take my gloves?’
‘No! what could she do with them?’ Reader, it is not pleasant to
dwell on these details. Some say there is enjoyment in looking back
to painful experience past; but at this day I can scarcely bear to
review the times to which I allude: the moral degradation, blent
with the physical suffering, form too distressing a recollection ever
to be willingly dwelt on. I blamed none of those who repulsed me.
I felt it was what was to be expected, and what could not be
helped: an ordinary beggar is frequently an object of suspicion; a
well-dressed beggar inevitably so. To be sure, what I begged was
employment; but whose business was it to provide me with
employment? Not, certainly, that of persons who saw me then for
the first time, and who knew nothing about my character. And as
to the woman who would not take my handkerchief in exchange
for her bread, why, she was right, if the offer appeared to her
sinister or the exchange unprofitable. Let me condense now. I am
sick of the subject.
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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com Digital Library-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte



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