“My disposition is not so bad as you think:
I am passionate, but not vindictive. Many a
time, as a little child, I should have been glad to
love you if you would have let me; and I long earnestly
to be reconciled to you now: kiss me, aunt.”
I approached my cheek to her lips: she would
not touch it. She said I oppressed her by leaning
over the bed, and again demanded water. As I
laid her down — for I raised her and supported
her on my arm while she drank — I covered
her ice-cold and clammy hand with mine: the
feeble fingers shrank from my touch — the
glazing eyes shunned my gaze.
“Love me, then, or hate me, as you will,”
I said at last, “you have my full and free forgiveness:
ask now for God’s, and be at peace.”
Poor, suffering woman! it was too late for her to
make now the effort to change her habitual frame of
mind: living, she had ever hated me —
dying, she must hate me still.
The nurse now entered, and Bessie followed.
I yet lingered half-an-hour longer, hoping to see
some sign of amity: but she gave none.
She was fast relapsing into stupor; nor did her mind
again rally: at twelve o’clock that night
she died. I was not present to close her eyes,
nor were either of her daughters. They came
to tell us the next morning that all was over.
She was by that time laid out. Eliza and I
went to look at her: Georgiana, who had burst
out into loud weeping, said she dared not go.
There was stretched Sarah Reed’s once robust
and active frame, rigid and still: her eye of
flint was covered with its cold lid; her brow and
strong traits wore yet the impress of her inexorable
soul. A strange and solemn object was that corpse
to me. I gazed on it with gloom and pain:
nothing soft, nothing sweet, nothing pitying, or
hopeful, or subduing did it inspire; only a grating
anguish for her woes — not my
loss — and a sombre tearless dismay at the
fearfulness of death in such a form.
Eliza surveyed her parent calmly. After a silence
of some minutes she observed —
“With her constitution she should have lived
to a good old age: her life was shortened by
trouble.” And then a spasm constricted
her mouth for an instant: as it passed away she
turned and left the room, and so did I. Neither of
us had dropt a tear.
Mr. Rochester had given me but one week’s leave
of absence: yet a month elapsed before I quitted
Gateshead. I wished to leave immediately after
the funeral, but Georgiana entreated me to stay till
she could get off to London, whither she was now at
last invited by her uncle, Mr. Gibson, who had come
down to direct his sister’s interment and settle
the family affairs. Georgiana said she dreaded
being left alone with Eliza; from her she got neither
sympathy in her dejection, support in her fears, nor
aid in her preparations; so I bore with her feeble-minded
