The Habit of Widowhood

by Robert Barnard

  And as his eyes cleared, so they began to roam: to wander, notice, and choose.

  Let me be clear: I have never admired bloodless men. I counted myself fortunate to have married a man well versed in matters of the heart and in their physical expression. To be with him was both thrilling in itself and educational. I could even, I think, have tolerated occasional episodes with housemaids and suchlike, as the expression of a nature hot and unaccustomed to the restraints of convention.

  But there are limits. An occasional episode is not to be confused with the constant pursuit of amorous experience. And when that constant pursuit resulted in a fading interest in his own wife, then my lamentations were bitter indeed. Now my visits to Ferndean village were marked by encounters with rustic maidens—girls—who curtsied to me with their eyes fixed firmly on the ground. Nay, there were some who, when they thought they were past me, smirked. My position in the county, never secure by reason of my past as an educator of young ladies, became shaky indeed.

  I made my unhappiness clear to Edward.

  “I shall take Fairfax and go and live on one of your other properties,” I said. “That way I shall avoid constant humiliation.”

  “You will do nothing of the sort,” he said in his abrupt way. “That boy is the light of my life.”

  “I was once your light, and your eyes,” I said bitterly.

  “You are still, my sprite,” he said, caressing my hand. “But now there are lesser lights.”

  I snatched my hand away.

  “Then I will go and live somewhere with Fairfax on my own inheritance.”

  “You have no inheritance. You and I made no settlement before marriage. And a woman has no rights to her children.”

  I subsided into impotent rage, for he spoke no more than the legal, immoral truth.

  I was similarly worsted when, some time later, he brought up the subject of young Fairfax’s education.

  “Time we thought of a governess for the lad,” he said one day at dinner.

  “A governess! But I am quite capable of teaching Fairfax.”

  “You think so, my dear? My son needs more than charity-school learning. Besides, you are my wife, with your own duties. It would hardly help your position in the county to remind people of what you once were.”

  “My position in the county has already been undermined by your exercising a droit du seigneur on all the girls for miles around,” I said, hardly bearing to look at him.

  “You talk nonsense, Jane. The droit du seigneur has never existed in this country.”

  He pronounced the phrase in the French manner to underline my inferior education, and perhaps to remind me of his extensive experience among French ladies of the most degraded type.

  “By your exercising a droit du seigneur I mean that you use your wealth and rank to force otherwise virtuous girls to agree to your embraces,” I said. He shrugged.

  “You say you see them in the village. Do they look reluctant or regretful?”

  Once again I was reduced to silence.

  I first saw the advertisement when it appeared in the Leeds Intelligencer and the Bradford Argus. It detailed the need of a substantial family of gentlefolk in Yorkshire for an educator (female) for their “amiable and intelligent only son,” and it specified a time and a place for interviews of the applicants. I had not been consulted about the advertisement, so I said to my high-handed lord: “I insist on being present at the interviews.”

  “Of course, my dear,” he replied, meekly. “Your experience will be invaluable.”

  Five ladies came for the interview. Naturally my preference was for the quietest, most downtrodden of them. My choice, however, for various reasons, was for Mrs. Nelson, an elderly lady of forbidding mien but firm of manner and with strong religious principles. The one I feared most was Miss Grey, whose quiet, demure manner masked the fact that she had a pretty face and an inviting eye.

  “Mrs. Nelson,” I said when they had gone, “is undoubtedly the best candidate. She has far more experience than the rest, and will correct any tendency to willfulness in the boy.”

  “My sentiments entirely,” Edward said, to my surprise. “The good Mrs. Nelson it shall be. With Miss Grey in reserve.”

  I wrote the letter for him to Mrs. Nelson. How he organized it I do not know, but within the week we had had a reply regretfully declining the position, as she had had an offer which she could not refuse from the Yorkshire nobility.

  Edward wrote the letter to Miss Grey himself.

  Miss Grey replied accepting the post, but pleading that she be allowed to delay taking it up until her present charge should be ready to go to public school in September. Edward replied that the delay was no great matter, and we looked forward to welcoming her to Ferndean Manor as soon as was convenient to her.

  The delay at least gave me time to plan. However, no plan could I come up with.

  It must be said that as the weeks wore on and I was still unable to think of a strategy to prevent Miss Grey coming to Ferndean, or to prevent the near-inevitable when she did, my nerves became more than a little frayed. I was shrewish to my husband, which he richly deserved, but I was an irritable, distrait mother to young Fairfax, which he didn’t. Thus matters stood one warm evening in early August when the jangling of a bell announced a visitor. I was in the library, teaching Fairfax his first steps in arithmetic, when I heard John approach my husband in the sitting room.

  “Good Lord!” I heard him say. Then he got up and went to the door that led to the hallway. “Mason! My good man! It’s a tonic to see you!”

  My heart sank. Those last words must surely have been ironic. It was never a tonic to see Mr. Mason, least of all for me. This pathetic, irresolute, unmanly creature was the person who had stepped in to prevent my marriage to Mr. Rochester when first he attempted to make me his, in Hay Church. I should no doubt have been grateful to him, for preventing my becoming a bigamous bride, but truth to tell I felt only aversion for the man.

  “But what brings you here?” I heard my husband ask, after the bustle of welcome.

  “I was in the county, wandering about at will, and the nearness of Ferndean made me irresistibly anxious to see”—he paused; I waited—“my old friend and brother-in-law Edward Fairfax Rochester.”

  I had no doubt what in fact he had come to see. It was time that he saw it—saw me. I went to the sitting room with young Fairfax.

  “Mr. Mason. I am pleased to make your acquaintance again. This is Mr. Rochester’s son and heir. Time for bed now, Fairfax. I shall be up in a minute or two. Now, you will stay to supper, Mr. Mason?”

  “He will stay the night, and as many nights as he can,” said my lord.

  He engaged to stay that night only, and I hoped that was all I should be subjected to. He was the same unhealthy, unsatisfactory man he had been when I first saw him. His desire to see me as lady of the house, rather than the family’s obscure governess, did not advance him in my good opinion. Over dinner he attempted compliments, beginning with young Fairfax.

  “A fine boy, that I could see. A manly boy.”

  “I am endeavoring to make him into a man of principle,” I said quietly.

  “And you, Mrs. Rochester—you clearly do a wonderful job in filling poor Bertha’s place.”

  “There was no place that your sister filled,” I said tartly.

  “Oh, but she was a lovely creature, when I saw her first,” said Mr. Rochester, stretching in his chair. Once I would have known that he was regarding me out of the corner of his eye, having only said such a thing to produce a reaction in me. Now I no longer knew whether he was sincere or not. Thus does marriage increase our uncertainty about our spouses.

  They turned then to talk of the fall in the price of coffee and sugar, and when I said that the price of these commodities from the provision merchants was still as high as ever they looked at me pityingly and Edward explained that there was no immediate connection between the two prices. Then he turned back to Mr. Mason and continued to d
iscuss male topics into which female interventions would be unwelcome. It was clear that he found Mason a more valued guest than he ever had in the past. Formerly he had felt mostly aggravation with the man, or at best a bored tolerance of him. Perhaps it was the lack of male company of his own class at Ferndean that had led to the change. Indeed, apart from John (who with Mary was still our only servant, in spite of all my representations), he for the most part had no male company of any kind at all. Men of the village he took care to avoid.

  It was, for me, a most disagreeable meal. When it ended I pleaded a headache, leaving them to their port, and later their brandy and cigars. I went to my room, and without assuming any night attire I lay on the bed, wept a little, slept a little, and thought.

  It was toward midnight when I woke up from a doze, feeling my faculties as keen and alive as they had ever been. It was talking and laughter from downstairs that had woken me, and I realized that the window must be open. It became a craving in me to know what they were talking, what they were laughing, about. I snatched a housecoat, crept down the stairs, and slipped through a side door out into the cool, scented air of the night garden.

  It was the sitting-room window that was open, though the heavy curtains were closed. I could see nothing, but I could hear. To hear was more than enough. I heard Edward’s manly, treacherous voice.

  “I meant what I said, and more. Bertha was a creature to arouse the passions of more lethargic souls than I. She was a fire in the loins, and I had to have her. No doubt your family wanted to ensnare me, but I was desperate to be ensnared.”

  “Her mental state—her potential mental state—was quite unknown to us.”

  “Hrrrmph! Perhaps. In any case I doubt if a doctor had sat me down and described the likely course of events it would have made a pennyworth of difference.”

  “And you have forgiven my intervention at Hay Church?”

  “My dear fellow, knowing what you did, it was the only thing you could do. And you merely postponed the ev—the day.”

  “Thank you, my dear Edward. I merely did my duty, knowing what I did.”

  “Or thinking you knew what you did.”

  There was a moment’s silence.

  “Er . . . thinking I knew what I did?”

  “Exactly,” came my husband’s slow, ironic voice. “It could not be explained at the time, of course.”

  “What could not be explained at the time?”

  “Did it not occur to any of you in Jamaica that a hotblooded young man, escaped from parental tyranny, might have got into other scrapes of a similar kind to the one you were preparing to entrap him into?”

  “I don’t understand, Edward—”

  But I did! Or was beginning to!

  “It could not be explained at the time of the interrupted marriage service, because it would hardly have altered the situation, but there had been a sweet little French grisette by the name of Amélie Labette, with whom my eighteen-year-old self went through a Catholic ceremony of undoubted legality.”

  “But you mean—”

  “To the best of my knowledge she was still alive, still displaying to general admiration her many charms, when I married Bertha.”

  “And when you tried to marry your present charming partner?”

  “I had no evidence she was dead. Hence my silence.”

  “But since then you have heard of her demise?”

  The reply was a hearty—hearty—laugh.

  “Mason, you are priceless! A good deed in a naughty world. Come to bed, man—I’ll lead you up.”

  My heart pounding as though it would burst from my breast I fled down the garden. My throbbing temples pounded the message: “Unjust!” I had been trapped after all by Edward Rochester into a marriage that for all he knew was illegal. I was, as I had been so determined never to be, his concubine, his . . . I could not say the word, even to myself, but I was no better than his women in the village and the farms around.

  No!—my conscience argued, angrily aroused: I was in every way better. I had been misused, deceived. It was Edward who was the misuser, the deceiver. It was Edward who was the criminal, the bigamist. He had taken my girlhood from me, robbed me of all innocence, and he had done it lightly, cynically, jeering internally at my scruples, my principles, my religious faith.

  I walked slowly back to the house. It was Edward who had destroyed my life, Edward who had played the Lovelace, Edward who had broken me on the wheel.

  I looked through the window. The curtain blew in the breeze, and I saw that sitting at the table in the darkened room, in one of the high-backed chairs, was a man’s figure. I slipped back in through the side door and went to the sitting room. An odor wafted to me: it was the smell of one of Edward’s cigars. It was sitting on the tray on the table, still dully smoldering. I felt my anger rising. He had laughingly told his friend I was no more than a bigamous houri, and now he was contentedly chuckling over the joke with a brandy and a cigar. I fingered the girdle of my wrap, then took it off and wound one end round my wrist.

  Reader, I strangled him. I crept in silence across the room, stood behind the chair in the darkness, then with sudden strength brought the cord down around his throat and pulled it tight, tight, tight, exulting in my power, despising his feeble struggles, my brain proclaiming myself revenged for the terrible wrong he had done me. When all struggle ceased I ran to my room, locked the door, and threw myself on my bed weeping, until at last I subsided into an exhausted sleep. What would happen now would happen.

  My slumbers were drugged, yet haunted by doubts and a nameless dread. In the morning heavy footsteps, cries, unaccustomed sounds about the house forced themselves on me but did not wake me. The sun was well up when I was aroused by a peremptory banging on the door. I cringed beneath the bedclothes, reluctant more than fearful. The knocking was resumed, and then:

  “Jane! Open this door, if you would not have it broken down!”

  It was the voice of my husband. The doubts and dreads of the night had been confirmed—doubts born, I am sure, from the lack of resistance of the man in the sitting room. My Edward would always have resisted.

  I got up and took the key from the door to my chamber, Edward of course had his own key. He unlocked the door, came in, and stood in front of it, arms folded over his massive chest, almost covering the doorway.

  “So. My wife is a murderess, is she? And what had you against poor Mason? Not the old affair at Hay Church, surely?”

  “I did not like Mason,” I murmured. “But I meant him no harm. It was—”

  “Exactly. It was me. A charming intention!”

  I turned on him, with the remnants of my old fire.

  “You married me, not knowing—without even bothering to try to find out—whether our marriage was a legal one or not.”

  “So: you listen outside windows, do you?”

  “You can accuse me of a petty thing like that? You, a disgrace to manhood? You deserved to die. I will go to the gallows gladly.”

  “You deserve to, certainly. Poor Mason, disturbed by what he had heard, goes down for a cigar—and I fear for a narcotic which is much used on his island. In his enfeebled state you strangle him, without bothering to ascertain that it is not your legal mate who is your victim as you intended. Certainly the noose would be a fit punishment.”

  “I shall go to my execution proclaiming my wrongs.”

  “All you would proclaim is your damnable inefficiency. In fact I do not care to have the name of Rochester dragged through the county courts and into the Newgate Calendar. It is hardly a spotless name, but it deserves better than that. Mr. Mason is already buried.”

  “Buried?”

  “In Dixon’s field. It was easy work. John and Mary are loyal as dogs, and I praise God I engaged no new servants, as you desired.”

  “But when inquiries are made?”

  “I believe there will be none. He was in the county incognito, told no one he was coming here.”

  “Then what about me? May Fai
rfax and I go as I asked you to one of your other properties and . . . ?”

  “The devil take you, woman! Haven’t I told you no? Where is your sense of justice? There must be punishment, if there is to be true penitence. The attic room is ready for you.”

  “The attic room?”

  “We have no true attics, but the old chamber at the end of the Elizabethan wing will suit admirably. I was, when a wild, stubborn boy, often locked in there. I found it roomy enough. The four walls of that chamber will be the confines of your existence from now on. I have sent for a keeper, but for now I must simply lock you away. It is imperative that my son know nothing of the crimes of his mother.”

  He stood aside. I saw John and Mary on the landing, with no love in their faces, only condemnation and bewilderment. I stood up and went before them to my new prison.

  • • •

  I am very quiet here. Sometimes I read. Mr. Rochester does not shower me with books of devotion and contemplation (for hypocrisy is not one of his many faults), so I have the works of Sir Walter, novels by the author of Pride and Prejudice (not greatly to my liking), and other works of a lighter kind. But for much of the time I sit quietly. I think and I listen.

  Sometimes I hear the voice of my dear little boy calling to his dog in the grounds. Sometimes I hear him and her, the hated Miss Grey, in intervals of his schooling. Once, at night, when Grace was asleep, I heard the voices and laughter of my Edward and her, from the sitting room. Then the blood rushed to my head and I sat there for minute after minute, enduring its pounding, wondering if I was becoming in reality mad.