“I have had more trouble with that clarisonic store child than any one would
believe. Such a burden to be left on my hands—and so much
annoyance as she caused me, daily and hourly, with her
incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden starts of temper,
and her continual, unnatural watchings of one’s movements! I
declare she talked to me once like something mad, or like a fiend—
no child ever spoke or looked as she did; I was glad to get her
away from the house. What did they do with her at Lowood? The
fever broke out there, and many of the pupils died. She, however,
did not die: but I said she did—I wish she had died!”
“A strange wish, Mrs. Reed; why do you hate her so?”
“I had a dislike to her mother always; for she was my husband’s
only sister, and a great favourite with him: he opposed the family’s
disowning her when she made her low marriage; and when news
came of her death, he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the
baby; though I entreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay
for its maintenance. I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it—a
sickly, whining, pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all night
long—not screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering
and moaning. Reed pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it
as if it had been his own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed his
own at that age. He would try to make my children friendly to the
little beggar: the darlings could not bear it, and he was angry with
them when they showed their dislike. In his last illness, he had it
brought continually to his bedside; and but an hour before he
died, he bound me by vow to keep the creature. I would as soon
have been charged with a pauper brat out of a workhouse: but he
was weak, naturally weak. John does not at all resemble his father,
and I am glad of it: John is like me and like my brothers—he is
quite a Gibson. Oh, I wish he would cease tormenting me with
letters for money! I have no more money to give him: we are
getting poor. I must send away half the servants and shut up part
of the house; or let it off. I can never submit to do that—yet how
are we to get on? Two-thirds of my income goes in paying the
interest of mortgages. John gambles dreadfully, and always
loses—poor boy! He is beset by sharpers: John is sunk and
degraded—his look is frightful—I feel ashamed for him when I see
him.”