CHAPTER II 17 and from noon to night .
My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received : no one had reproved John for wantonly striking me ; and because I had turned against him to avert farther irrational violence , I was loaded with general opprobrium .
" Unjust ! -- unjust !" said my reason , forced by the agonising stimulus into precocious though transitory power : and Resolve , equally wrought up , instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression -- as running away , or , if that could not be effected , never eating or drinking more , and letting myself die .
What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon ! How all my brain was in tumult , and all my heart in insurrection ! Yet in what darkness , what dense ignorance , was the mental battle fought ! I could not answer the ceaseless inward question -- WHY I thus suffered ; now , at the distance of -- I will not say how many years , I see it clearly .
I was a discord in Gateshead Hall : I was like nobody there ; I had nothing in harmony with Mrs . Reed or her children , or her chosen vassalage . If they did not love me , in fact , as little did I love 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