John’s death and the manner of it came too suddenly: it brought on a stroke. “Missis had been out of health herself for some time: she had got very stout, but was not strong with it and the loss of money and fear of poverty were quite breaking her down. How he died, God knows!-they say he killed himself.” Missis refused: her means have long been much reduced by his extravagance so he went back again, and the next news was that he was dead. He came down to Gateshead about three weeks ago and wanted missis to give up all to him. His head was not strong: the knaves he lived amongst fooled him beyond anything I ever heard.
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He got into debt and into jail: his mother helped him out twice, but as soon as he was free he returned to his old companions and habits. “Doing well! He could not do worse: he ruined his health and his estate amongst the worst men and the worst women. “I heard from Bessie he was not doing well.” “Why, you see, Miss Eyre, it is not a common mishap: his life has been very wild: these last three years he gave himself up to strange ways, and his death was shocking.” John died yesterday was a week, at his chambers in London.” He too looked down at the crape round his hat and replied. “I hope no one is dead,” I said, glancing at his black dress. “I am sorry I can’t give you better news of them, Miss: they are very badly at present-in great trouble.” “And are the family well at the house, Robert?” “Yes, Miss: my wife is very hearty, thank you she brought me another little one about two months since-we have three now-and both mother and child are thriving.” And how is Bessie? You are married to Bessie?” “Oh, Robert! how do you do? I remember you very well: you used to give me a ride sometimes on Miss Georgiana’s bay pony. Reed when you were at Gateshead, eight or nine years since, and I live there still.” “I daresay you hardly remember me, Miss,” he said, rising as I entered “but my name is Leaven: I lived coachman with Mrs. On repairing thither, I found a man waiting for me, having the appearance of a gentleman’s servant: he was dressed in deep mourning, and the hat he held in his hand was surrounded with a crape band. It was from companionship with this baby-phantom I had been roused on that moonlight night when I heard the cry and it was on the afternoon of the day following I was summoned downstairs by a message that some one wanted me in Mrs. I did not like this iteration of one idea-this strange recurrence of one image, and I grew nervous as bedtime approached and the hour of the vision drew near. It was a wailing child this night, and a laughing one the next: now it nestled close to me, and now it ran from me but whatever mood the apparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed not for seven successive nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber. Of late I had often recalled this saying and this incident for during the past week scarcely a night had gone over my couch that had not brought with it a dream of an infant, which I sometimes hushed in my arms, sometimes dandled on my knee, sometimes watched playing with daisies on a lawn, or again, dabbling its hands in running water. The next day Bessie was sent for home to the deathbed of her little sister. The saying might have worn out of my memory, had not a circumstance immediately followed which served indelibly to fix it there. When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Bessie Leaven say to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about a little child and that to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either to one’s self or one’s kin. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man.
Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had strange ones of my own. Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies and so are signs and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key.