It’s the quiet ones who you have to watch out for. That was quite a good line. She’d have to work it into something later.
Miss Temple and Miss Scatcherd were both reasonable suspects, but Charlotte believed that the murderer was somebody that no one else would ever think to consider. Another teacher, who had until recently been a student at Lowood herself. Charlotte’s best friend.
Jane Eyre.
Charlotte climbed down into the dell and spotted Jane near the brook. Painting, as usual.
Talking to herself, as usual.
“It’s not that I don’t like Lowood. It’s that I’ve hardly been anywhere else,” she was saying to the empty air as she made a series of quick, short strokes onto her canvas. “But it’s a school. It’s not real life, is it? And there are no . . . boys.”
Jane was a peculiar girl. Which is part of why Charlotte and Jane got along so well.
Jane let out a sigh. “It is true that things are so much better here, now that Mr. Brocklehurst is dead.”
A thrill shivered down Charlotte’s spine. Never mind that this was (as we have previously reported) what every girl at Lowood had been saying regarding Brocklehurst’s untimely death. There was just something so satisfied about the tone in Jane’s voice when she said it. It seemed practically a confession.
It had been no secret that Jane had detested Mr. Brocklehurst. There’d been a particular incident the week that Jane had first come to the school, when Mr. Brocklehurst had forced her to stand on a stool in front of her entire class, called her a liar—worse than a heathen, he’d said—and ordered the other girls to avoid Jane’s company. (Mr. Brocklehurst had really been the worst.) And Charlotte remembered another time, after Mr. Brocklehurst had refused their request for more blankets, when the girls were waking up with chilblains (we looked this up, and a chilblain is a red, itchy, painful swelling on the fingers and toes, caused by exposure to cold—gosh, wasn’t Mr. Brocklehurst the worst?), when Jane had quietly muttered, “Something should be done about him.”
And now something had decisively been done about Mr. Brocklehurst. Coincidence? Charlotte thought not.
Jane looked up from her painting and smiled. “Oh, hello, Charlotte. Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“It is.” Charlotte smiled back. Yes, she suspected that Jane had murdered Mr. Brocklehurst, but Jane was still her best friend. She and Jane Eyre were kindred spirits. They were both poor as church mice: Jane a penniless orphan, Charlotte a parson’s daughter. They were both plain—they even somewhat resembled each other—both exceedingly thin (at a time when the standard of beauty called for ladies to have a pleasant roundness to them), with similarly sallow complexions, and unremarkable brown hair and eyes. They were the most obscure type of person—the kind people’s gazes would pass over without notice. This was also partially on account of the fact that they were both little—that is, short of stature, diminutive, petite, Charlotte preferred.
Still, there was beauty inside of them, if anyone cared to look. Charlotte had always known Jane to be a kind, thoughtful sort of person. Even when she was committing murder, she was thinking of others.
“What’s the subject today?” Charlotte stepped up beside Jane’s easel and lifted her spectacles to her eyes to examine Jane’s unfinished painting. It was a perfect facsimile of the view from where they were standing—the dell dappled with sunshine, the leafy boughs of the trees, the swaying grass—except that in the foreground of Jane’s painting, just across the brook, there was a golden-haired girl wearing a white dress. This figure had been featured in many of Jane’s paintings.
“That’s quite good,” Charlotte commented. “And you’ve captured a sort of intelligence in her expression.”
“She thinks she’s intelligent, anyway.” Jane smirked.
Charlotte lowered her glasses. “I thought you said she wasn’t anyone in particular.”
“Oh, she’s not,” Jane said quickly. “You know how it is. When I paint people they sometimes come to life in my mind.”
Charlotte nodded. “The person who possesses the creative gift owns something of which she is not always master—something that at times strangely wills and works for itself.”
Jane didn’t reply. Charlotte lifted her glasses to look at her. Jane was staring off at nothing. Again.
“You’re not leaving Lowood, are you?” Charlotte asked. “Are you going to be a governess?” (That was really the only viable career choice for girls at Lowood: teaching. You could become a village schoolmistress, or an instructor at some institution like Lowood, which is what Jane had done, or a governess in some wealthy household. Being a governess was really the best any of them could hope for.)
Jane glanced at her feet. “Oh, no, nothing like that. I was just . . . imagining another life.”
“I imagine leaving Lowood all the time,” Charlotte said. “I’d leave tomorrow if the opportunity presented itself.”
But now Jane was shaking her head. “I don’t wish to leave Lowood. That’s why I stayed on, after I graduated. I can’t leave.”
“Why ever not?”
“This place is my home, and my . . . friends are here.”
Charlotte was beyond flattered. She’d had no idea that Jane had stayed at Lowood simply because she hadn’t wished the two of them to be separated. Charlotte was, as far as she could tell, Jane’s only friend, thanks to Mr. Brocklehurst. (Charlotte had never given a fig to what Mr. Brocklehurst had dictated concerning Jane.) Friendship was indeed the most valuable of possessions, especially for a girl like Jane, who lacked any family to speak of. (Charlotte was the middle child of six—which she counted as both a blessing and a curse.)
“Well, I think you should go, if you can,” Charlotte said gallantly. “I would miss you, of course, but you’re a painter. Who knows what beautiful things there are to behold outside of this dreary location? New landscapes. New people.” She smiled mischievously. “And . . . boys.”
Jane’s cheeks colored. “Boys,” she murmured to herself. “Yes.”
Both girls were quiet, imagining the boys of the world. Then they sighed a very yearning type of sigh.
This preoccupation with boys might seem a little silly to you, dear reader, but remember that this is England in 1834 (think before Charles Dickens, after Jane Austen). Women at this time were taught that the best thing that could ever possibly happen to a girl was to be married. To a wealthy man, preferably. And it was really good luck if you could snag someone attractive, or with some kind of amusing talent, or who owned a nice dog. But all that truly mattered was landing a man—really, any man would do. Charlotte and Jane had few prospects in this department (see the above description of them being poor, plain, obscure, and little), but they could still imagine themselves swept off their feet by handsome strangers who would look past their poverty and their plainness and see something worthy of love.
It was Jane who broke the spell first. She turned back to her painting. “So. What marvelous story will you write today?”
Charlotte shook the idea of boys out of her brain and took a seat on the fallen log she always perched on. “Today . . . a murder mystery.”