Disclaimer: Must I always begin by apologizing to Charlotte Bronte? Might as well make it a habit. These are her characters from her novel. She started it; she really did!
Universe: Jane Eyre.
A Picture of Passion
It was half past three and the sun was shining, which was really a wonderful change from the weather Yorkshire had been facing lately. Jane Eyre and her three cousins John, Eliza and Georgiana had been cooped up in the Gateshead Manor—a very dire situation for all adults involved. As rain pounded against the large picture windows, Eliza and Georgiana had snapped incessantly at each other and Jane, and John had refused to commit himself to his schoolwork, opting instead to string Georgiana's dollies from her bedposts. ("A historical reenactment of King Louie's hanging!" he declared when Bessie, the nursemaid, accused him of being "utterly morbid." His mother smiled at his "intelligent application" of learning.) Jane Eyre felt herself becoming more and more prone to a mental breakdown as the days of rain continued along with Georgiana's cries, Eliza's nit-picking, and John's tyrannies.
So, at last! The rain had disappeared on that kind afternoon, just around noon. The raindrops slowed to a minimum and then concluded, and at once, the cousins stopped bickering and looked up from their luncheon. Eliza and Georgiana had squealed repeatedly and run outside, where the sun had appeared smiling from behind the clouds. Bessie said a silent prayer to God.
Jane pretended to be uninterested while John hurriedly finished dining—he was never one to miss a meal. After John left, Jane waited a good deal before following, as to prove a point that she was neither as excitable nor as stupid as her cousins, who were amused so very easily by the weather. Ah, but she was happy as soon as she felt the cool Yorkshire air, the quiet, rippling breeze of the moors and the lovely beaming sunshine overhead. The moor was the one thing that could cure all ailments—the snobbery of the Reed girls, the brutality of John (at least for a few moments), and the acidity of Jane's nature.
Smiling to herself, Jane selected her usual spot behind an enormous oak, lay down her coat for a seat, and began to sketch the scene around her: the fluttering grasses, the trees, the loving feeling that the sun had bestowed upon this usually dreadful yard.
'If only all days could be like this one,' the nine year old Jane thought to herself wistfully. 'Then Gateshead would be none too bad! It is the shortage of company, I do believe, that presently makes it so nice. I only wish other days could be so grand—that everyone would always leave me alone, here with my drawing book and my dreams, my novels, my Nero and Caligula, and myself.'
An interjection must be made at this moment: If one would like to be left alone, one must not think such a thought to one's self, because, like Jane, if you so much as think of what you want to happen, it will never happen.
And so at that very moment, Jane felt her back being prodded by an object that seemed, given the poking nature, stick-like.
"Stand and deliver," remarked a boy's deep voice. "What jewels are you keeping? Hand them over!"
Eyre sighed, and set her book down, ready to argue, tensing up at once. "John," she said dully," would you be so kind as to stop?" It was a ridiculous thing to ask of her cousin, who delighted in the torturing of her at all times, and was hardly one to listen when she protested. She was hardly surprised when he kept up the game, poking her deeper with the branch.
"I said stand and deliver!"
"I must say, John, you are getting much more creative," Jane muttered, for usually his attacks were not in-character. "Can you get that thing off of me?"
Behind her, the boy made a grunt of disapproval. "It's a gun," he said, annoyed," a seven-inch hand rifle, to be precise. And you should be scared." The last statement was made with a sort of shrug, as though all his other victims had been much more cooperative than her. Nonetheless, John stopped prodding her and instead swung around the tree to his knees, dropping the stick to the grass. "What are you doing?" he asked, wrinkling his nose as though she were the perpetrator of some harmful sin.
"Drawing," Jane snapped, gathering her book and scooting away a few inches from the hulking John, who was staring at her in interest.
"I'm not an imbecile," he retorted deeply. "What are you drawing?"
"There, if you want a correct answer, then ask the correct question!" Jane declared, and for this was pummeled once in the ear. "Foul boy," she snarled, but John was grinning pleasantly.
He snatched the book from her in one motion and she glared furiously but did not protest, rubbing her ear with one palm. He flipped through the pages, studying each of them shortly.
"Don't tear it." Jane watched him with a dark expression.
John looked momentarily inspired, but then proclaimed: "I won't!" at Jane's ferocious look. He whacked her on the shoulder with the book lightly and then tossed it into her lap.
She grasped it protectively. "Don't touch what's mine," she warned, and then turned her attention to her left side, where Eliza and Georgiana were running past, screaming delightedly.
"You never said you could draw," John said, almost defensively, as though she usually informed him of every talent she had.
"So?" Jane was tired of him. She hoped to God he would go away. 'Stupid, prying boy. Nothing but a demon! Now he'll bother me all afternoon—I'm exhausted with him! His time would be better spent upstairs with his arithmetic instead of in the yard, growing more foolish by the minute.'
John leaned against the tree, obviously with no intent of ever moving. "You're good, Madame Mope," was what he said casually, gazing down at Jane with a face that was almost reminiscent of admiration.
"I'm what?" Jane asked cautiously, as though she had misheard him and he'd really just said something incredibly disgusting.
"I said you're good!" John said hotly. "You're good-- talented!" He looked extremely irritated, and shook his head, looking away from her.
Jane slowly turned around. "'Talented'?" she repeated. "I don't believe you."
He faced her. "I mean it," he told her. "I didn't know you could draw. You're much better than Georgiana, and Mama frames hers."
"This is probably the first polite thing you've ever uttered to me," Jane said in awe.
"Probably," John answered with a snort.
"What makes you so difficult then?"
John shifted his weight uncomfortably. "God, I don't know! You and your imperious questions, Jane! You and your attitude, and your negative comments! You make me difficult, you're Madame Mope, what more do you need in a response!?" He looked greatly angered for some reason, and Jane, in her nine short years, had no idea why.
'I never provoke him! He provokes me!' she thought in wonder, surveying his menacing appearance. 'How could he ever blame me! Lord, he is stupid!'
"You do not need to be mad at me for it," Jane declared, and left the subject alone, for she did not want to upset him, especially when he was in the best humor she'd seen in ages, and he was not even hurting anything.
"I'm not mad," he shrugged, and then he cocked his eyebrow, which worried Jane tremendously because it was the look he got whenever he was being devious. "But, just to ensure my happiness," he began, and Jane rolled her eyes," you could do me the favor of drawing my portrait."
Jane made a face.
"That, Madame Mope," he said with a sneer," is a command."
'Devilish thing,' she thought, 'how spoiled, how conniving!' Alas, she opened her sketchbook to a clean page and poised her charcoal. "You have to be still!" she told him solemnly. "And you mustn't make a bad face."
"I won't," he affirmed, looking bored with her rules. He stretched his legs and poised against the tree, his face upon her, and for once, he looked almost placid.
"Good," she remarked, and began to draw his form, the great shoulders, the expanse of his frame.
She was not a clean artist, she was gritty, and she moved the charcoal across the paper in a blunt, stabbing motion, as to capture the rugged, teenaged indignation that made John Reed her enemy and her cousin, she detailed everything she hated worst about him, from the dimple in his right cheek that his mother made such a fuss over to the fact that he was wearing through yet another waistcoat, due to his ravenous appetite. She was a realist, and she showed where his curls fell over his forehead, over his dark eyes and his sallow, uneven skin. The dark circles under his eyes were put in, to show how long he'd been bedridden last week—Aunt Reed had said he had caught a cold from the rain, but Jane knew better, he had eaten too much and had been sick for what seemed like forever, moaning and carrying on—and his lips were curved upward defiantly, not the way other people smiled. Jane hadn't thought at the time that perhaps she was being unkind, but that was the way of her art, and always would be.
She captured the essence of man, whether he approved or not.
Yet, there was something that made Jane's heart pang for perhaps just a moment. He was being so quiet just now, so obedient and watchful, and there was something that could be good about him. She was a harsh critic, for John was a teenage boy, plagued by the poor hygiene and ill temperament of others his age, and really, his eyes were clear and his intentions seemed un-Hellish presently. And there was a sort of sadness Jane could not explain in his appearance, either, but she depicted it subconsciously in those dark eyes.
It had taken a good fifteen minutes, and John was very impatient and was becoming cross, for he liked activities which gave him instant gratification, and this was certainly not one of them.
"Finished?" John demanded, and instead of waiting, he took the book from her once more and studied it, leaving her small hands dangling in mid-air, charcoal still poised.
His brow furrowed, he examined her drawing which was, ultimately, her opinion of him. Jane could see by his expression that he was confused.
"Do you like it?" she wondered aloud, and chastised herself for asking the brute's opinion.
"I—" he struggled with his words, which she again took to be a sign of being stupid. "I didn't know I looked like this," he said strangely, his eyebrows raised and his lips pursed. "I look—" he stared at the portrait. "Is this how I am to you?"
Jane felt odd. 'What a strange thing to ask!' "It's how you are, if that's what you mean," she answered simply.
"I'm unhappy," he said at last. "I look unhappy."
"Don't be ridiculous, John," she said, unaware of her affect on him. "It's a stupid sketch; you looked rather serious, that was all. Can I have it back?"
John tossed it at her again, this time more harshly. He looked thoughtful for a moment and then, unaffected. "I suppose you weren't as talented as you seemed, Jane Eyre," speaking her name as though it were some sort of disease.
He pulled a strand of her hair roughly and stood up, grabbing the stick as he did. "If you bother me again, I will have to kill you," he said simply, and whapped her once across the middle.
Jane gathered her coat and her sketchbook and glared at him, walking back toward the manor. John smiled in a sinister way, and took to smashing flowers for the rest of the afternoon.