With this sublime conclusion, Mr. Brocklehurst adjusted the top
button of his surtout, muttered something to his family, who rose,
bowed to Miss Temple, and then all the great people sailed in state
from the room. Turning at the door, my judge said "Let her stand half-an-hour longer on that stool, and let no one
speak to her during the remainder of the day."
There was I, then, mounted aloft; I, who had said I could not bear
the shame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the room,
was now exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy. What my
sensations were no language can describe; but just as they all rose,
stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and
passed me: in passing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange light
inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent
through me! How the new feeling bore me up! It was as if a martyr,
a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the
transit. I mastered the rising hysteria, lifted up my head, and
took a firm stand on the stool. Helen Burns asked some slight
question about her work of Miss Smith, was chidden for the
triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place, and smiled at me
as she again went by. What a smile! I remember it now, and I know
that it was the effluence of fine intellect, of true courage; it lit
up her marked lineaments, her thin face, her sunken grey eye, like a
reflection from the aspect of an angel. Yet at that moment Helen
Burns wore on her arm "the untidy badge;" scarcely an hour ago I had
heard her condemned by Miss Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and water
on the morrow because she had blotted an exercise in copying it out.
Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the
disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only
see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of
the orb.