Jane Eyre | Page 7

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 gleaning
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 this chamber. I wiped my tears and hushed my
sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural
voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face,
bending over me with strange pity. This idea, consolatory in theory, I
felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I endeavoured to

stifle it -- I endeavoured to be firm. Shaking my hair from my eyes, I
lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room; at this
moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray from
the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind? No; moonlight was
still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and
quivered over my head. I can now conjecture readily that this streak of
light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by some one
across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken
as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a
herald of some coming vision from another world. My heart beat thick,
my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing
of wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated:
endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in
desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer passage; the key
turned, Bessie and Abbot entered.
"Miss Eyre, are you ill?" said Bessie.
"What a dreadful noise! it went quite through me!" exclaimed Abbot.
"Take me out! Let me go into the nursery!" was my cry.
"What for? Are you hurt? Have you seen something?" again demanded
Bessie.
"Oh! I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come." I had now got
hold of Bessie's hand, and she did not snatch it from me.
"She has screamed out on purpose," declared Abbot, in some disgust.
"And what a scream! If she had been in great pain one would have
excused it, but