第8页
them. They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that
could not sympathise with one amongst them; a heterogeneous thing,
opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a
useless thing, incapable of serving their interest, or adding to their
pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation at
their treatment, of contempt of their judgment. I know that had I been
a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child-
though equally dependent and friendless- Mrs. Reed would have
endured my presence more complacently; her children would have
entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling; the
servants would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of the
nursery.
Daylight began to forsake the red-room; it was past four o'clock,
and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight. I heard the
rain still beating continuously on the staircase window, and the
wind howling in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees cold as a
stone, and then my courage sank. My habitual mood of humiliation,
self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying
ire. All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so; what thought
had I been but just conceiving of starving myself to death? That
certainly was a crime: and was I fit to die? Or was the vault under
the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting bourne? In such vault I
had been told did Mr. Reed lie buried; and led by this thought to
recall his idea, I dwelt on it with gathering dread. I could not
remember him; but I knew that he was my own uncle- my mother's
brother- that he had taken me when a parentless infant to his house;
and that in his last moments he had required a promise of Mrs. Reed
that she would rear and maintain me as one of her own children. Mrs.
Reed probably considered she had kept this promise; and so she had,
I dare say, as well as her nature would permit her; but how could
she really like an interloper not of her race, and unconnected with
her, after her husband's death, by any tie? It must have been most
irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the
stead of a parent to a strange child she could not love, and to see an
uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her own family group.
A singular notion dawned upon me. I doubted not- never doubted-
that if Mr. Reed had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and
now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls-
occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly
gleaming mirror- I began to recall what I had heard of dead men,
troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes,
revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the
oppressed; and I thought Mr. Reed's spirit, harassed by the wrongs
of his sister's child, might quit its abode- whether in the church
vault or in the unknown world of the departed- and rise before me in