There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery [shrubbery〈n.〉灌木叢] an hour in the morning; but since dinner [dinner〈n.〉正餐。英國人一般在午間用正餐。然而在18、19世紀，人們以推遲正餐時間為時尚以標榜社會地位。所以裏德太太在有客人時用正餐的時間晚，沒客人時用餐時間早。] (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre [sombre〈adj.〉昏暗陰沉的], and a rain so penetrating [penetrating〈adj.〉貫穿的], that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.
I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensed from joining the group; saying, “She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner – something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were – she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children.”
“What does Bessie say I have done?” I asked.
“Jane, I don’t like cavilers [caviler〈n.〉吹毛求疵的人] or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.”
A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement.
Folds of scarlet drapery [drapery〈n.〉帷幔] shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.
I returned to my book – Bewick’s [Bewick 〈n.〉托馬斯?比維克（1753–1828），英國畫家、木刻家，以書籍插圖而聞名。他的《英國禽鳥史》於1797年出版。] History of British Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of “the solitary rocks and promontories” by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness [Lindeness〈n.〉林訥斯內斯角，又名納斯（Naze），挪威南部一個海角。], or Naze, to the North Cape –
“Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides [Hebrides〈n.〉赫布裏底群島，位於英國大不列顛島西北的大西洋上。].”
Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland [Lapland〈n.〉拉普蘭。芬蘭北極圈以北的地方稱Lapland，號稱“聖誕老人的故鄉”。], Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla [Nova Zembla〈n.〉新地島，又名Novaya Zemlga，在巴倫支海和喀拉海之間。], Iceland, Greenland, with “the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space, – that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine [Alpine〈adj.〉阿爾卑斯山的] heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigors of extreme cold.” Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children’s brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking.