Mr. Rochester

by Sarah Shoemaker

  Oh God, I thought, what have I done? Would Molly and Tiso accommodate themselves to life in England? And what if they simply refused? What if Molly, now that she was no longer a slave, decided to leave? Or insisted the two of them be returned to the only home they had known? Would they not miss Jamaica as much as I had pined for Thornfield? And could I expect Mrs. Greenway—or any other cottage woman—to stay in a household such as this?

  Feeling overwhelmed, I rose and walked to a window and gazed out, but all one could see from Ferndean’s windows were trees, and then I finally left the room. Molly and Tiso were just outside the door, sitting on the floor and playing their game of bones and pebbles. The two of them did not acknowledge me as I walked past, as slaves would not, though, I realized, servants would have done. England was so different from Jamaica in so many ways, and yet it was essential that Molly and Tiso remain with us, for I now saw that I could not manage Bertha without them.

  * * *

  When Mrs. Greenway returned, red-faced from her exertions, she announced, “I have sent a cottage boy. I told him to make sure Mr. Carter understood it was urgent.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Then I added, “Have you had dealings with Mr. Carter?”

  “Oh no, sir. He is for the gentry. The apothecary is good enough for me. But I have heard good things of him.”

  “Mrs. Greenway,” I said, “the white woman—”

  She waited, expectantly.

  I had thought to say, The white woman is my wife. But what came out of my mouth was: “The white woman is the daughter of a friend of my father’s. He has passed on, and I have the care of her. She is English, but she has never been here. Neither she nor the other two know much of our way of life. They are used to different foods, different weather, different customs to some extent, even somewhat different clothing. The two negroes are not used to shoes, for example.”

  She was nodding at all I was saying, though I had no idea if she did so as my employee or if she really understood the half of it.

  “There is a great deal for them to get used to,” I added. “You could be of immense help in that respect.”

  “Yes, sir. And they will understand me when I talk to them? The child never says anything.”

  “Did you not hear me speak to the child, in English?”

  “But—but she seems to have so little facility in it herself.”

  “They speak in patois—a dialect. You will get used to it. They understand what you say. And the child is shy.”

  She took a breath as if to speak, but then did not.

  “As for…the woman,” I said, “she cannot help the fact that she is mad. She can be difficult. But Molly and Tiso are used to her; they will deal with her. If you will just be kind enough to help them learn their way.”

  She straightened: a soldier receiving orders. “Yes, sir.” And then she added, “Are they…are they…?”

  “In Jamaica they were slaves. They know that here they are not. To be honest, I do not know what will happen with them. For that reason”—I leaned closer to her over the table—“it is important to me that they feel at home here. That they find a decent life here.”

  “Are they mother and daughter?” she asked. I nodded. “And where is the father?”

  “In Jamaica, things are different, as I said. There is not always a husband.”

  “Oh.”

  “You will not disdain Molly for that,” I said, rather more sternly than I meant. “They are used to being slaves. It is a harsh word, but it is the truth. They do not understand exactly what their roles are. To them, disobedience has always meant the whip. Therefore, if they are unhappy, or fearful, they may run away.” I gave her a meaningful look. “We would not like it if that were to happen,” I added.

  “Oh no, sir.”

  “Then I think we understand each other.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Rochester.”

  “It may actually be, Mrs. Greenway, that little Tiso could be of help to you in your work.”

  She nodded solemnly, and I left, with that seed in her mind. Tiso was old enough to need occupation and young enough to adjust to new ways. I hoped it would work.

  * * *

  Mr. Carter arrived at Ferndean that afternoon. He was impeccably dressed, with a warm and pleasant way about him that made me feel immediately at ease as we greeted each other. I led him into the library as if it were my own home, though it was almost as unfamiliar to me as it was to him.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you at last,” I said, motioning him to a chair.

  “You have just arrived, I understand,” he said.

  “Three days ago. But as you know from my letter, I have immediate concerns regarding my wife.”

  “Your wife?” he said, and I remembered too late that I had referred only to “a relative.”

  “Yes, indeed. My wife.” I cleared my throat. “She is, unfortunately, the victim of some familial disorder. You may recall that I asked you to look into the Grimsby Retreat.”

  “Yes, and I did. You are not, by any chance, a Quaker, are you? It’s a Quaker institution, designed primarily for members of their own persuasion.”

  “For Quakers only?”

  “Not exclusively, but nearly. I believe that funding is sometimes difficult; perhaps if a person were to offer a generous gift, they might consider…”

  I settled back in my chair. “Tell me about the place.”

  “It has a fine reputation; they exercise what they call the ‘moral treatment’ of their patients, believing that if a mad person is treated as if he were a rational being, whatever spark of rationality remains will be nourished.”

  “And they have cures?”

  “Yes, of course. But you must realize that not everyone is curable. May I see her?”

  If the Grimsby Retreat could offer a cure, I thought, it might be worth taking her there, despite my promises. Surely both Jonas and Bertha herself would have wanted me to follow that path. But first I must deal with the immediate issue.

  “Actually,” I told him, “I have a more pressing need of help with her.” I explained about the laudanum, and that she needed treatment for her addiction to it. And I went on to tell him of her habit of sleeping in the day and roaming at night, her need for secure surroundings, even her rages and her occasional violence. It was not necessary to tell him so much, I am sure, but once I began to unburden myself I could barely stop, and he listened, calmly, quietly, without judgment.

  When I had told him everything, including my intention to keep our marital connection a secret, at least for the time being, I led him upstairs to her room and he saw her lying there, not even slightly restless. He asked me when she had had her last dose. I told him, and he nodded again and opened his valise and measured out something into a bottle and gave me instructions. He would be back every day, he said, to monitor how she was doing, and he urged me to send for him if there was a crisis and warned me never to give more of the medication than he advised. She would, he said, be quit of her addiction in a month or six weeks, if I obeyed his instructions.

  But those six weeks were among the worst I could have imagined.

  Chapter 3

  Mr. Carter was true to his word: he came every day, shortly after noon. Bertha was at first usually asleep, but as the effects of the medication became less and less, she grew more and more agitated, her rages and visions and screaming continuing for hours on end. I could not imagine what Mrs. Greenway down in the kitchen thought; Tiso generally stood in Bertha’s chambers with her back against the door, not quite willing to leave her mother, but staying as far as she could get from the terrifying creature Bertha had become. For her part, Molly followed Bertha around the room, murmuring, singing, caressing, trying all sorts of tricks to distract her, to soothe her to sleep. Sometimes they worked, but more often they did not. The first time Mr. Carter saw Bertha’s outbursts, he suggested to me that I tie her down to keep her from hurting herself or others, but I could not bring myself to do that.

&n
bsp; At Valley View, I had relied on Molly to tend Bertha, and I had gone to her apartment each day for only a short time, but at first at Ferndean I made it my business to be with Bertha as much as possible; it was my fault, after all, that she had become addicted and that she now suffered from withdrawal of the medicine. Only now and then did I ride back over to Thornfield for respite. When she slept, I would slip away to find some peace: I could not have kept my sanity if I had had to stay constantly locked up with her as Molly did. As for Molly, I urged her to give herself a rest, to leave Bertha for a while and go to the kitchen or out into the garden. But she would not leave Bertha’s side, sending Tiso to fetch the meals or a jug of water when Bertha demanded it, or to empty the chamber pot.

  And Mrs. Greenway was true to her word as well. As much as she could, she took Tiso under her care, luring her from Bertha’s bedchamber with sweet treats and promises to teach her how to cook in the English style.

  After those initial weeks, when it became clear that the laudanum addiction had run its course, it was also clear that Bertha had further regressed. She rarely slept now, neither in the day nor at night, and she roamed her bedchamber with a fury, grumbling and murmuring to herself, telling herself incoherent tales, laughing wildly. Once, left alone for just a moment, she pounded her bare hands against the mullioned windows until one shattered, and she cut herself quite severely. When Molly returned, Bertha was in the process of licking up her own blood as it ran down her arms.

  In desperation, Carter and I rode to the Grimsby Retreat to speak with Mr. Mitchell, who was in charge there. I had regained my hopes for the place as time had passed, realizing more and more each day how futile and mistaken had been my plan to house Bertha permanently at Ferndean. As we rode through the grounds, I began to feel optimistic. Grimsby was a grand estate, with handsome spired buildings and walkways across the gardens and green lawns. It was nothing at all like the gloomy asylum in Kingston.

  Inside, as we were led to Mr. Mitchell’s office, I noted the tall windows, the bright rooms, the lack of unpleasant odors. Bertha could be cared for here as well as anywhere, I told myself. It was not at all what Jonas was thinking of when he exacted that promise from me, and my spirits rose at that thought.

  Mr. Mitchell was a compact man whose dark curls surrounded a round face, making him look younger than his years. He sat in his office and listened patiently as Carter and I explained Bertha’s situation, and when we had finished, he just nodded his head as if confirming something. I looked uneasily at Carter, but he was staring out of a window.

  At last Mitchell spoke. “She seems like a difficult case. A mother in an institution always portends badly.”

  “She has not always been so,” I said. “Six years ago, when I first met her—”

  “She is how old?”

  “Thirty-two years.”

  He nodded. “They often have twenty or twenty-five years of normalcy, these ones with a familial connection.”

  “But I understand your institution—”

  “The Grimsby Retreat, as you may or may not have been told, has always been designed for people who have an upbringing in the Society of Friends.”

  “But you do make exceptions,” Mr. Carter countered.

  Mr. Mitchell looked down at his desktop. One hand went to a silver letter opener on his desk, and he turned it over, and then over again. “We do, yes,” he said finally, nodding again, his eyes fastened on the letter opener in his hand. “But only when we perceive that the prospective patient would benefit by being here. From the way you describe your wife’s circumstance, in all honesty, I do not see that as a possibility.”

  “Mr. Rochester is prepared to pay—” Carter began.

  “Yes, I understand that,” Mitchell replied, looking at Carter, not at me, as if I were not even in the room. He rose from his chair. “But I do not see that this is a possibility for his wife.” He strode toward the door, to usher us out.

  “Why not?” I demanded, remaining seated.

  He sighed. “The Grimsby Retreat is an institution that intends a cure for each of our patients. It is not a holding pen for incurables.”

  Incurable. The word struck me like a blow. “What in God’s name is there, then?” I cried, suddenly seeing only an abyss for my future.

  “There are other institutions. I can recommend—”

  “Man, for God’s sake, have pity!”

  His tone did not change in the slightest, despite that I was nearly on my knees. “I am very sorry, but I have the welfare of our patients to consider. You are wealthy enough: hire caretakers for her.” He opened the door. The interview was over.

  Carter and I rode back in silence for a time, and then he said, “Mitchell makes a point. There are other institutions.”

  “Not like that,” I ventured, and he nodded agreement.

  Promise you will never abandon my daughter, Jonas had said, and I knew what he had meant. I saw in my mind’s eye Bertha’s mother in her cell, raging endlessly.

  * * *

  As I was caught up in my private dilemma at Ferndean, word had spread throughout the county that the younger Mr. Rochester was newly arrived from Jamaica. Notes appeared from neighbors expressing their dismay at the untimely deaths of my brother and father, inviting me to tea or other social outings. Clearly, all were eager to meet Thornfield’s mysterious and apparently eligible new heir.

  At first I sent my sincerest regrets to all invitations that came my way. Instead, to fill my days and bring myself some comfort, I replaced the piano in Thornfield-Hall, which had never been played in my memory, and I took great pleasure in playing it when I could get away from Ferndean. I found in the attic a few faded music books, marked, I imagined, in my mother’s hand, and I took them downstairs with tears filling my eyes at the thought of the songs she might once have played.

  But life at Ferndean, and even at Thornfield, had become so barren, so taken up with my concerns for Bertha, that I knew that unless I was willing to go mad myself, I could not continue forever as I was. And so, once, and then again, I began to accept the social invitations, and I found myself enjoying the respite they provided, the forgetfulness they permitted. I astonished myself when I eventually began to flirt with some of the young women who were present. It was not honest and it was not right, but it was such a relief to be in the company of people with whom I could have an actual conversation.

  Sometimes those conversations turned coyly to the Jamaican women who lived at Ferndean, and I knew that the neighborhood gossips had been at work, and I nodded and described Bertha once more as the daughter of a friend of my father’s, a woman left orphaned and alone whom I had brought back from the West Indies, since she no longer had family there. It was all true, of course, except for my omitting the fact that I had married her. On several occasions a woman or two would venture the possibility of calling on my guest, as they referred to her, but I told them she was very ill, and possibly contagious from some rare tropical affliction, and they soon left off the notion of socializing with her.

  Though Bertha was in truth not contagious, caring for her remained a struggle. Molly and Tiso tried to keep close watch, but even so, a few times she escaped, fumbling her way through the unfamiliar house. On one occasion she even threatened Mrs. Greenway with a poker from the hearth and was only prevented from doing real harm by little Tiso. Twice she managed to get all the way outside before she could be brought back. The fear of fire was always upon us, for if Bertha mindlessly dropped a candle or knocked out an ember from the fire and set the house ablaze, everyone could be burned alive in bed. Secretly, I worried as well about more deliberate destruction, for in her madness Bertha was insensible to the consequences of her acts.

  Two or three more times she put her fists or an elbow through windows, cutting herself so badly once that we had to send for Mr. Carter in the middle of the night. On that occasion he spoke to me dolefully after bandaging her arm. “This cannot go on, Rochester. She will not improve. Ever. You do unders
tand that? And she is a danger to herself and to others. You must find another place for her.”

  “I cannot.” They would not take her at the Grimsby, and I could not allow myself to think of sending her anywhere else, where the practices were bound to be less humane.

  “Have you thought of divorce?” Carter asked me once.

  I had, I confess. But Parliament allowed divorce only if the man had two witnesses to his wife’s adultery, and—while Bertha had surely been no angel at those Jamaican balls—I had no such witnesses to bring forth. So I simply said, “I promised I would not abandon her.” And what kind of man would I be if I did not keep my vows?

  “Rochester. Think. What kind of life have you here?”

  How many times had I asked myself that same question? Mr. Wilson’s words about his wife’s sister had echoed back to me in my periods of despair. Even the fiercest of beasts—wolves and bears—take care of their own.

  But Carter was right: Ferndean did not suit for Bertha. It was too large, with too many furnishings and windows too accessible, and it would be damp in the winter with so little sun. She needed a smaller space, someplace more confined, someplace with windows that allowed in light and air but that she could not reach and break, someplace where she could be safely kept, but not abandoned.

  Then it came to me.

  * * *

  Yes, oh God, for better or worse I moved her there, to the largest storage room on the third floor of Thornfield-Hall itself, where the windows were too high to see out of—or reach—where the entrance could be made secure, and where I would be within immediate reach if she were to take sick or something disastrous should happen. Within a handful of weeks I had it rebuilt into an apartment with a sitting room and a bedchamber, walled off from the rest of the third floor and with a separate staircase at the opposite end of the hall from the one the servants used. It was perfect, I thought. The door to the staircase was hidden by a drapery hanging from floor to ceiling, which to the casual observer would appear to be some sort of wall tapestry.