At the time I thought the move to Thornfield was a masterful stroke, and Carter did as well. I was sorry to have to let Mrs. Greenway go, although in truth I think she felt relieved, but she did admit that she would miss Tiso.
Tiso was thirteen, old enough to want to spread her wings, to explore, but I could not give her the run of Thornfield-Hall as she had had at Ferndean, for that would raise too many questions. Occasionally she slipped out of Bertha’s chambers, and more than once I found her rooting in the storage rooms, as I had done as a child. I could not be harsh with her for that, but nevertheless I had to order her back. She always went, reluctantly, and I thought, This will not last. A child of that age will not stay cooped up forever.
And she did not. Once, and again, and then again, she slipped out at dusk when her mother and Bertha were still sleeping. I caught her at it myself when I was returning one evening, and I marched her right back to the apartment, where Molly, just awakened, gave her a look of fire. I knew what she was thinking, but I did not stay to hear her say it.
Despite the scoldings, the child could not be contained, and a week later she slipped out again. I knew nothing about that latest excursion until I next visited Bertha’s chamber, and there was Tiso, sitting on the floor, her legs stretched out in front of her while Molly applied a poultice of tea and leaves to Tiso’s foot. Bertha was sitting in a corner, shaking her head and muttering to herself.
“What happened?” I asked.
“She out again,” Molly said angrily. “She step on something.”
I bent and touched Tiso’s foot, and she gasped and jerked it from my hand, but not quickly enough that I did not feel the heat of the inflammation. I took her foot more firmly, and this time she did not try to draw it away. It was a puncture wound. A rake? A nail, perhaps?
I sent for Carter, who examined her foot and ordered hot soapy water to wash it well, and he made another poultice. He took me aside, but by then I knew as well as he, from the burning heat of her foot and the swelling creeping up her leg, that she was in trouble. Molly knew too, and she refused to leave Tiso’s side. I begged Carter to do anything more that was possible, but he just shook his head, powerless to prevent the inevitable. I stayed most of the time in Bertha’s apartment, keeping watch over her, so that Molly could tend Tiso. I urged Molly to move the poor child to a proper bedchamber, but she would hear nothing of it. I did what I could for the two of them, but the sallowness of that feverish little face was an accusation I could hardly stand. I was barely man enough to confront it.
Tiso lasted weeks, unable to eat, and in time convulsions set in—it was a horrid way to die, and there was nothing Carter or Molly or I could do to ease her suffering. She grew delirious at the end, with Molly hovering over her, and even Bertha paced the floor and moaned in sympathy.
When it was all over and the little girl had breathed her last, Molly remained still, holding Tiso, the tears running down her face. I could barely bring myself to look at her: I had brought such misery upon her, and upon little Tiso, by moving us all to England, and now I could not think of a way to make things right.
That evening, Molly came to me and announced, “I go back to Jamaica.”
“What will you do there?” I asked.
She stared at me then in silence, with a steady gaze unlike any I had ever seen from a negro in Jamaica.
“I will give you money,” I said, “and your papers. You will not be a slave, at least.”
She nodded. She did not thank me. Why should she?
Chapter 4
I asked of Molly only that she remain until I could find a replacement to care for Bertha. I had no idea how I would go about doing such a thing, but it was necessary, for I did not see how I, by myself, could manage daily care for that madwoman for the rest of my life. Molly seemed skeptical when I offered the deal, recognizing, I am sure, that it would be nearly impossible to find someone to replace her. But she said nothing.
Both of us knew full well that I could not find anyone in a month or two months or probably even a year. But I had not reckoned on Mrs. Greenway. She had become, in the wider neighborhood, somewhat of a recognized authority on Mr. Rochester and the women he had brought back from Jamaica. Kindly, she kept my secrets, though she did enjoy her elevated position.
One day, she came to see me at my visiting hours. Almost immediately on my arrival at Thornfield I had revived my father’s practice of meeting on Wednesday afternoons with Ames and my gamekeeper and any cottagers who wished an audience. Few cottagers came, and those who did seemed to have mostly manufactured issues, created to make an appraisal of the new master of Thornfield and weigh him against the previous Mr. Rochesters. Sometimes I wondered how I stacked up against those two: my imperious brother and my demanding father.
When it was her turn, Mrs. Greenway settled herself into the chair in my study, wearing her best bonnet and newly blackened shoes, and after a few pleasantries she informed me that she had had a visitor. Did I remember a girl from my childhood named Grace?
“Yes, I do,” I responded. “She was some kind of scullery maid here at Thornfield, I think, in those days. And her little brother, Jem, helped in the stables—he was my age and we sometimes played together when he was not busy.”
“I have known Grace much of her life, poor thing,” she said. “She has not had an easy time, though in all truth, I must say, life is not easy for many folk. But Grace worse than Jem, I imagine, because she was a girl. Her mother was dead and her father a hard man. She ran off to marry just to get shut of him, I think. But the man she took turned out worse than nothing. He beat her; even when she was with child he beat her most awful. When her son was born, Grace took the infant and left. This was a long time ago.”
I had an idea where all this was going, but there was really not work enough at Thornfield for more than the staff I already employed.
“Grace is shy with people,” she went on, “always has been, and she is worse now. But she is no fool. I gave her tea when she came and we talked for a time—I talked mostly, for visiting over tea is more my way than hers. But in the end she asked the question she must have been pondering. ‘Is it true that Mr. Rochester has a madwoman in his care?’ she asked me. Now, sir, as you know, I have been as discreet as ever you could wish for, and I must have sat for a moment with my mouth open, so astonished I was, and not knowing how to reply. ‘What makes you ask such a question?’ I finally said.
“‘I saw him at the Grimsby Retreat,’ she said. ‘He did not seem to me to appear as a benefactor, but instead as someone asking for help. I have often seen them come, the families of the mad.’”
I could imagine Mrs. Greenway leaning forward in her chair at that.
“I asked her what she was doing at the Grimsby,” she went on, “and she told me she worked there, had done for years, as does her brother and her son. And she said she knew you from childhood and she had recognized you, as you look so much like your father. I didn’t know what to say, for I knew you required secrecy in this matter, but I did tell her that she must speak to you herself. I don’t know if she has come to you. She is an odd one and you might not take her seriously, but I think you should, as she might be able to help you.”
“She has not come to me,” I said.
“Yes.” Mrs. Greenway nodded. “I feared that would be the case.”
“Have you a way to encourage her to come?”
“I don’t see her as a matter of course. It’s only that she came to me, and I thought…I suppose I could…”
“Never mind,” I said. “I shall handle the matter. But I am grateful that you came to me. Tell me: you have seen the states that Bertha experiences. In your opinion, could Grace…manage her?”
Mrs. Greenway straightened, tucking back her chin. “Grace is sturdy; she has had to be. She has had her share of ill treatment. She is far stronger than she might appear. And she is not stupid.”
“Thank you for telling me these things,” I said.
She ro
se, understanding the dismissal, but she had one more thing on her mind. “I wonder what you have heard of our Tiso.”
Our Tiso. My heart seized at the thought of that child. “I’m sorry, I should have informed you,” I said, for Mrs. Greenway had thrown herself into mothering that little girl. “Tiso—you remember how she never wore shoes—she stepped on something and cut her foot, and it became infected”—Mrs. Greenway gasped at the word—“and she died.”
Mrs. Greenway’s eyes filled, and she pulled out a handkerchief. “Poor little thing,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
She rose wearily, and as she left, she turned to me. “The last name is Poole,” she said. “Grace Poole.”
The very next day I rode to the Grimsby Retreat, and when I was told that Mr. Mitchell was not available, I announced that I would wait until he was, and I sat down in his office. It was more than an hour before he appeared, and when he did he had the abrupt demeanor of a man who had seen a supplicant too many times already.
“I come not to beg you to change your mind, but to ask you some questions regarding one of your staff here,” I said to him.
He sat down at his desk.
“Grace Poole, by name,” I added.
He frowned at first. Then he said, “Yes, she is a keeper here.”
“What can you tell me of her?”
He pulled a record book from the shelf behind him and paged through it until he found what he was searching for, then nodded in confirmation. “She has no marks against her. Are you thinking of hiring her?”
“Would you recommend her?”
He paused for a moment, and then he said, “I would not not recommend her.”
I waited.
He leaned forward over his desk. “It is not an easy task to find good persons for a place like this. The most compassionate sometimes do not fully understand the requirements of their positions, and the hardest cannot seem to…to—”
“And where would Grace Poole fall?”
He shook his head. “She is a bit of a mystery. She is pale, and one might assume she is weak, but in fact she is very strong—I have seen evidence of that. She is not a Quaker, and so we cannot give her greater duties, for she does not understand our philosophy here. For you, that should not be a problem. I honestly do not think, from what you have said, that there is hope for better for your wife than what she is now, and in fact most likely her condition will only deteriorate. If you require a keeper, someone who will make sure she is safe and secure, Grace could manage it, I am sure.”
“Could you spare her?” I asked.
“Spare?” He chuckled. “People come and go here, especially those in the lower ranks. If she is looking for a position with you, she is surely already on her way out.”
I rose. “I assume you will not take offense, then, if I approach her.”
“She has not already approached you?”
“An intermediary only.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “That would be Grace. I wish you well with her.”
“Thank you,” I said, taking up my hat.
“It is a Christian thing you do.”
I turned in surprise.
“Many is the man who would rid himself of such a woman as you have described to me, and think the better of himself for it.”
“Good day, sir,” I said. I could not wait to leave. I could not pretend to be such a man as he seemed to think me; I had come precariously close to abandoning Bertha, despite my promises, and I would have done so if he would have taken her in.
A few days later I interviewed Grace, who, true to her nature, said little, but what little she said comforted me that Bertha would be in capable hands. I brought her with me to visit Bertha, who on this occasion, and sadly not for the first time, appeared not to recognize me. Indeed, the sight of me seemed to enrage her—and as she moved to attack me I discovered firsthand that Grace Poole was indeed competent to deal with her. I arranged for Grace to move into the apartment immediately, so Molly could train her in Bertha’s care.
There remained only to have papers drawn up for Molly’s freedom, and I secured her passage on the first ship back to Jamaica.
By the time Molly was ready to leave, Grace Poole had a firm enough grip over life in the third-floor apartment that I had no longer reason to fear for Bertha’s safety, nor that of Thornfield-Hall itself. The rest of the servants had known little about Molly’s duties and less about the woman she tended. No doubt they were curious, but there was a kind of respect for the place—and perhaps for me—that precluded their gossiping beyond the walls of Thornfield-Hall. As for the rest of the neighborhood, I let it be known that the women from Jamaica were returning to their home there, and I hoped that that rumor would put to rest any further inquiry about my unusual guests.
It appeared to work, for the most part. It was now partridge-hunting season, and the surrounding estates were alive with hunting parties and teas. Though I tried never to appear too eligible, I made a point of accepting and reciprocating just enough invitations as was proper, for I knew I could not avoid society forever. And, beyond that, I craved the normalcy that came from a world away from Bertha.
At Thornfield, as the time drew near for Molly to depart, I sensed a kind of regret in her. I wondered how she would fare on her own back on her island. She had been Bertha’s body servant from childhood, but she would return a free woman—yet freedom does not guarantee a living. When the time came for her to leave, I pressed two hundred pounds into Molly’s hand and wished her well and thanked her for her devotion to her “missus.” I could not trust myself to say more.
She stood silently before me for a long time, and I perceived she was struggling inwardly, and I waited.
“Sir, I think you do not know—of the baby,” she said, gazing past my shoulder.
“What baby?” I wondered suddenly if Molly had been mistreated by someone at Thornfield, if she were fleeing England in shame. “Yours?”
She frowned, and she must at first have thought I meant Tiso. “No, no. If missus, if she cry for her baby, her little boy, tell her he is fine—sleeping.”
I was dumbfounded. “Bertha had a baby? She was…she was married before?”
“Not marry. She a child. Tiso age.”
“What happened to the baby?” I asked, my heart pounding in my ears.
“He gone.”
“Where? Where did he go?”
“People came. They took him.”
I stared at her, my mouth dry. “Who was the father?”
Still looking beyond me, she shrugged, as if there was no more to tell.
* * *
As the days passed after Molly’s departure, I tried to establish for myself a routine of riding out in the morning, overseeing my fields and cattle, enjoying the peace of my holdings, without worry for Bertha. I was no longer concerned for her immediate safety, but I could not rid my mind of Molly’s parting news: Bertha had a child, a son. And he would be grown now, nearing twenty years of age, if he were still living. Ought I to try to find him? I wondered. Did he know who his mother was—what she was? Would he want to know? The thought of his birth, and loss, tormented me. If only I had known sooner. She had spoken of lost babies, but I thought it was only one of her delusions. The anguish she must have felt—a child herself, weeping for her lost baby. Surely this was part of what had driven her to madness; I could not help but wonder if a reunion with the child might once have stopped her decline.
I began sitting with her again, as often as I could, hoping to speak with her about the boy and offer some sort of comfort. But she was already too far gone. Sometimes in her garbled rants, I still heard that word—baby—but her tirades had become so nonsensical that I could never be sure. Perhaps I only imagined it.
I wrote to Richard—to the last address I had for him in Madeira—asking about Bertha’s child, but a reply never came, only the letter itself, returned to me. And I wrote to Mr. Arthur Foster, my solicitor in
Spanish Town, who still kept an eye on business related to Valley View, and though he responded promptly, he, as well, knew nothing. It was what I had half suspected, for in a case like that, would they not have done it all clandestinely, given the infant to someone who was leaving the island, for—for where? Madeira? Saint Thomas? England? The Americas? Or could he have remained in Jamaica somehow, hidden safely away from the family? What if the child had died? It was a mystery I had no idea how to unravel.
As I hit wall after wall in my attempts to trace the baby, I grew increasingly frustrated and tried to put it out of my mind. To what end, after all, was I searching now for this motherless boy, to reveal to him the monster his lost mother had become? Why torment myself this way?
Yet, often I couldn’t sleep, and I paced the floor, roaming around the rooms. Above me, my wife roamed as well, watched over by Grace Poole, trapped inside her head and trapping me there with her, neither of us free. Thornfield-Hall had been my dream since I had left it as a child, but in these months it had transformed into a kind of nightmare. And a prison, for the both of us. I began to realize that there was nothing for me at Thornfield, none of the joy or peace it had once promised, as long as Bertha—poor Bertha—weighed on my soul.
That thought, and the future it promised, pressed upon me those dark nights until I felt that it would pull me under. Have I not a right to a life? I asked myself. Have I not as much a right as the next man? Time and again I had tried to do the moral thing, had I not? And how had that worked out for me? No, I told myself, this stops here. I was done with it, done with Bertha, or as much as I could be. I would start over, and find love on my own terms.
The next morning, I sent for Ames and gave him instructions, and I sent letters of explanation to Everson and Carter, and then I packed a bag and took a coach toward Southampton, leaving Thornfield in my wake.
Chapter 5
Mr. Rochester Page 28
