After the typhus epidemic at Lowood drew public attention, an inquiry exposed the school's bad site, the children's wretched food and brackish water, and their poor clothing. Wealthy benefactors fund a more convenient building in a better situation; a committee takes over the funds; Mr. Brocklehurst is kept on as treasurer but is now answerable to inspectors of more enlarged and sympathising minds. The school becomes a genuinely useful institution. Jane stays eight years total: six as pupil, two as teacher.
Through all of that, Miss Temple has been mother, governess, and companion to her. Miss Temple then marries the Rev. Mr. Nasmyth and is taken away to a distant county. Jane spends the half-holiday alone in her room and works out, by evening, that the serene atmosphere she had been breathing was Miss Temple's, not hers; the old restlessness has come back. She goes to the window, looks past the garden to the blue peaks, and prays. First for liberty; when that prayer is scattered on the wind, for change and stimulus; finally, half desperate, for a request small enough to act on: 'grant me at least a new servitude!' The supper bell calls her downstairs.
That night she lies awake while her roommate Miss Gryce snores, then talks herself through the practicalities: any one may serve, she has served at Lowood eight years, she only wants to serve somewhere else. Before sleep the plan arrives whole: advertise in the county Herald as J.E., post the letter at Lowton, collect any reply from the same post office. She writes the advertisement at dawn, walks two miles through rain to post it, and a week later returns to find one letter waiting. It is from a Mrs. Fairfax of Thornfield, near Millcote, offering thirty pounds a year for one pupil, a girl under ten. Lowood pays her fifteen.
Jane asks the new superintendent to broker references through Mr. Brocklehurst. He writes to Mrs. Reed as her legal guardian; Mrs. Reed answers that Jane may do as she pleases and that she has long since relinquished all interference in her affairs. After what feels to Jane like a tedious delay, references are issued, Mrs. Fairfax accepts, and a fortnight is fixed. Jane packs the same trunk she came from Gateshead in eight years before, cords it, nails on the card, and tries to rest the night before the coach.
A servant tells her a person is asking for her downstairs. It is Bessie, now Mrs. Leaven, married five years to the coachman Robert, with a boy of three and a baby she has christened Jane. They sit by the fire and Bessie reports on the Reeds: Georgiana went up to London, was admired by a young lord, planned to elope, was found out and stopped by Eliza, and the sisters now lead a cat and dog life; John was plucked at college and is too dissipated for the law; Mrs. Reed is uneasy in her mind over his spending. Bessie tests Jane on piano, painting, and French and pronounces her quite a lady. Then she mentions something Mrs. Reed never passed on: seven years ago a Mr. Eyre, almost certainly Jane's father's brother, called at Gateshead asking for her on his way by ship to an island where they make wine (Madeira), and Mrs. Reed turned him away and called him afterwards a sneaking tradesman. The next morning they part at the door of the Brocklehurst Arms in Lowton: Bessie sets off for Gateshead; Jane mounts the coach for Millcote.
Coming Up in Chapter 11
A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play; and when I draw up the curtain this time, reader, you must fancy you see a room in the George Inn at Millcote, with such large figured papering on the walls as inn rooms have; such a carpet, such furniture, such ornaments on the mante.
