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.
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