CHAPTER II 18
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