Mr. Rochester

by Sarah Shoemaker

  From time to time, I left a few more gifts for her: a raisin bun, a raspberry tart. Always they disappeared, and though I had no way of knowing who was benefiting from my generosity, I convinced myself it was Alma. After a while, I stopped bringing those tokens and indeed stopped going to the sorting crib at all unless it was absolutely necessary—when in fact it almost never had been necessary. If I happened to come into close proximity to her, I would nod and hurry on, as if a response from her was not only not needed, but neither expected nor even desired. In short, in my clumsy way, I tried to let her think that I had lost all interest. But in fact, it was all I could do to keep myself from stopping to say a word, to hear her voice, to gaze into those blue eyes. Her beauty was all I knew of her, but it would not let me go.

  It happened that one mild, summer Sunday afternoon, I wandered down toward the bottoms, that section of the town where haphazard houses leaned against one another and ragged children played amid the middens, and I saw Alma making her cautious way between the streams of offal that encumbered the path. I watched for a few moments, assuring myself that she was alone, for I had no desire to approach her again in front of an audience. I watched longer, curious as to where she was going and why. My body stirred at the very sight of her, at her careful step, the ripple of her skirt as she walked, and I followed her.

  In a short while she turned off the path, taking a narrower way that led behind the Crown Inn, and beyond, turning northward toward Newnan. We were into the countryside now; the birds chirped in the hedgerows, and in the distance a cow lowed and, curiously, a lamb bleated in response. Suddenly, as if she sensed she was not alone, she turned and started at the sight of me, but she turned back and hurried on her way. But now that I was found out there was no point in silently following her, so I ran a bit to catch up to her. “Good day, Alma,” I said.

  “Good day, sir,” she whispered.

  “Not ‘sir,’” I said, “Edward.” And with my hand I turned her flushed face toward me. “Edward,” I prompted again, insistently.

  “Edward,” she whispered. What I had dreamed of: the sound of my name from her lips, and I could not help but respond. I did not plan it or intentionally do it, but my lips were on hers almost before she had finished my name, my arms around her, pressing her close.

  I felt her body stiffen within my arms, and she pulled back away from me, pushing her hands against my chest. “Sir,” she said, “please, please, sir.”

  Sir? I was not sir; I was Edward. I thought she had understood that. Confused, I watched as she turned and fled, and I was left staring after her.

  That is what happened, for she was a pretty girl and I was a lonely boy with no older brother to give advice—Carrot would have told me, no doubt, but he was gone from my life, and I would not have dared ask Mrs. Wilson how one approaches girls. It is not enough, but this is the only poor excuse I can give; and I suddenly knew that I had been wrong, though it was some time before I understood how wrong, for it is never right for a man to take advantage of a girl whose living depends on him.

  And there would be much worse to come.

  That was the last time I saw Alma. She never came back to the mill, and though I always looked for her whenever I was on the street, and even walked a few times down toward the meager cottages in the bottoms beyond the river, where I assumed she lived, I did not see her. I would have liked to apologize, even as I did not fully understand for what, but I knew in my bones that I had wronged her and I wished for a chance to somehow make it right. After that, I began to notice that the other young people at the mill turned their backs to me and never spoke in my presence if they could at all avoid it.

  Chapter 7

  The next autumn my brother came. I had gone to the bank as usual for a record of the week’s postings, and when I returned there was a young man, a dandy from the look of him, seated beside Mr. Wilson’s desk, and they were engaged in what seemed like a confidential conversation. The room we called the countinghouse was quite small, but it had never seemed a problem, for we were all three working to the same ends and quite often it was convenient to have one another close to hand to answer a query or share a piece of information. Even in that limited space, I could not see the young man’s face, as his back was to the door, but I could tell that his hair was fair, held back with a slim ribbon. I set the postings on the edge of Mr. Wrisley’s desk, not wanting to disturb Mr. Wilson just then. Still, he glanced at me, back at his guest, then at me again, and a kind of wry smile spread over his face. “Rochester, come here a moment,” he said.

  I did as I was told, but I did not pay attention to the young man until Mr. Wilson said, “I think you know my visitor.”

  The face seemed like something I had once seen in an almost-forgotten dream. I stared, the features coming together in a way that should have been familiar.

  “Well, Toad,” the young man said, grinning, “aren’t you going to greet me as a brother should?”

  I should have known in the first instant: the hair, oiled and curled, and the bold blue eyes, the insolent mouth, but it was as if my mind wanted to deny the reality.

  “Rowland,” was all I could think to say.

  Rowland was still seated—of course he would be. It would have been a gesture of respect for him to have stood at the introduction. He was looking me up and down, and I felt quite out of fashion, with my plain brown coat and trousers, compared to his tight, cream-colored pantaloons and shirt of cream silk with cravat, and his moss-green cropped jacket and darker green waistcoat.

  He said nothing, and I felt compelled to say, “I thought you were in Jamaica with Father. When did you return?” The only answer he gave was a slight shrug. It had not yet occurred to me that it was nearly eight years since the two of them had gone to the West Indies, and they both could have been there and back a dozen times since then.

  It was Mr. Wilson who rescued me. “Your father sent him,” he said. “He wanted a report of your progress, and I was just telling your brother that you are doing fine, that you make a good account of yourself, that except for a still slight timidity, you are growing into a quite competent businessperson.”

  It was the most complimentary statement I had ever heard from Mr. Wilson in the two and a half years that I had been at Maysbeck Mill. It was true I worked hard, but he mostly just nodded, as if anything I did was only what he had expected of me. I knew I was not the best he could have asked for, but I had already become aware that countinghouse work was not what I wanted. It was too routine—old man’s work, I thought—though I had no idea what else I would have preferred.

  “Well,” Mr. Wilson said, rising. “I should imagine you young fellows have much to talk about, a great deal of catching up with each other’s lives. The Crown is just down the road there, and a fine place it is for a roast or a stew. Why don’t the two of you spend a bit of time together?” Then he turned to Rowland. “I think we’re finished here. I shall write out a report for your father and send it off to your lodgings. The Royal Oak, is it not, in the High Street?”

  “Yes, it is,” Rowland said. “I shall be looking forward to it.” He rose and reached for his hat, but before he placed it on his head he tipped it in the direction of Mr. Wilson, and walked out the door, which I had already opened. I did not take from the rack the cap I usually wore, it seeming suddenly too childish, or, worse, too much like those the workmen in the mill wore. With my bare head and my ordinary clothes, I felt myself to be Rowland’s inferior in every possible way.

  We had scarcely started down the road when I turned to him. “It is not necessary, you know, for the two of us to dine together. We can certainly go our separate ways.” (I was proud to have thought to use the more formal dine rather than my more common eat, though at the same time I hated that I had done it only to impress him.)

  Rowland laughed. “Of course we must! Why not? We shall put it on Wilson’s tab—I’m sure he has one. He would be disappointed if we did not do so, I should think.”

 
I shrugged at that. I could not imagine what Rowland and I could talk about for the full course of a meal. It might seem that I, who had fallen in love with Jamaica since that first day at Black Hill, would be overflowing with questions about the island. But I somehow did not want Rowland to suspect my infatuation, for I knew he would have enjoyed nothing more than dispelling my fantasies.

  He ordered a roast with all the trimmings, and I would have liked the same, but to show my independence I ordered a venison stew, which turned out to be surprisingly good.

  After his initial attack on the roast, Rowland lifted his eyes to mine. There was an expression in them I couldn’t read, and I steeled myself for what was to come. But even so, I couldn’t have been more surprised. “I believe I have a friend with whom you are acquainted,” he said casually.

  I was unable to imagine whom I might know that Rowland would as well.

  “Thomas Fitzcharles,” he said, but I shook my head. The name meant nothing to me. He frowned. “You were not at Mr. Lincoln’s establishment? A ginger-headed fellow?” He shoveled another forkful of potatoes and meat and gravy into his mouth.

  Carrot? I stared at him, openmouthed.

  Rowland laughed. “You do remember. He called you ‘Jam,’ insisted on it, despite that I told him your proper name. It seems rather a childish name: Jam. It reeks of the nursery. Still”—he gazed directly at me then—“perhaps it’s a fitting name for you after all. Jam.”

  I ignored the taunt for a more important question. “But how do you know him?”

  He shrugged. “We met at some hunting party or another. Or perhaps it was a race. Something in the neighborhood, you know.”

  “What neighborhood?”

  “Why, Thornfield, of course.”

  “You were at Thornfield?”

  “Of course I was—I am. Where else would I be?”

  “I thought you were in Jamaica.”

  He laughed. “Oh my lord, you don’t think I would want to be in Jamaica any longer than I had to be. The place is a cesspool, people dying around you all the time, the slaves revolting, the Maroons making the interior impossible. One is lucky to get away from there with one’s life.”

  My mouth hung open; I could not think what to say. I suppose it registered somewhere in my mind that Jamaica might not be all I had dreamed it was, but a more vital thought crowded that out: Thornfield had been occupied all this time—or much of it—while I was at Black Hill and at the mill. I would have tried going home for a visit if I had known.

  “Did…did he ask about me—Thomas Fitzcharles?” I asked. The name seemed odd on my lips and in my ears. Surely this was not Carrot.

  “Oh, once, I think. Where you were, that kind of thing.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  He smirked. “I said I didn’t know.”

  But surely you must have, I thought.

  “Oh, come, Jam—yes, indeed, I like it; it suits you, Jam. But come now, you surely do not think that the nephew of the Prince Regent of England is really interested in what became of a clerk in a countinghouse in Maysbeck, do you?”

  There was nothing I could say in response. He was talking about a grandson of King George III—even if illegitimate—and I was talking about Carrot, who was more a brother to me than Rowland had ever been. Never in his life would Rowland understand that.

  The rest of the meal was drudgery. The venison turned dry in my mouth, the beer stale and overwatered, the raucous sounds around us irritating. I was glad for it to end. We parted in the roadway outside, he going toward the High Street, I heading back to the mill. He did not encourage me to come to Thornfield, nor did I expect him to. We might as well have been strangers.

  * * *

  But I couldn’t get Thornfield out of my mind. In the first months and years at Black Hill I had missed it terribly, but eventually the pain had healed over, as almost any wound does. But like a scar remains, thoughts and visions of Thornfield would surface in my mind: the magnificent clock, the grand staircase; the aroma of Cook’s kitchen, the stable smell of horses and hay and leather; the fields and woods and moors beyond the house. Now all that flooded back upon me and I longed for it as an abandoned child longs for his parent.

  And yet, how would I get there? I had only Sundays to myself—to myself, I say, though of course I was expected to spend mornings and evenings of that day with the Wilsons at services. As well, I had no money, save the two pounds Mr. Wilson gave me each month, which was enough to pay for an occasional pint of beer or meat pie, or to have my boots mended or to save toward the purchase of a new pair of trousers, but not enough to include the cost of a coach to Thornfield and back. Until Rowland’s visit, it had not occurred to me to ask what kind of arrangement had been made between Mr. Wilson and my father. Now I wondered about it, and attempting to be sly, I tried asking questions, but Mr. Wilson was reticent in his own way, only telling me not to worry, that he had sent a good report to my father, that all would be well, and that he was sure my father had plans for me when I was ready.

  My father. Was he back at Thornfield too? Or had he remained in Jamaica—or was he somewhere else entirely? I had no idea, nor did I know what he would say if I somehow managed to get myself to Thornfield. I knew full well what Rowland would say, but I didn’t care.

  And then, one evening a week or so later, an astonishing thing happened. “Mr. Wilson,” Mrs. Wilson said over rum pudding, “I received the strangest letter today; I hardly know what to think of it.”

  “What manner of letter?” Mr. Wilson asked, not even glancing up from his dish.

  “From Ella—”

  “Ella, your sister?”

  “Well, really not from Ella herself, but from Mrs. Brewer.” She caught the frown on her husband’s face. “Mrs. Brewer, her companion. And she seems quite concerned about Ella. She says my sister has been more and more confused with ordinary things, and now she seems to be talking about Mother as if Mother were still alive, even talking about taking Mother to London, or to Bath, for the season.”

  At this, Mr. Wilson looked up. “You must have read the letter wrong. It’s Ella who’s wanting to go to Bath and she’s set Mrs. Brewer to writing to you as if she expects me to pay for it.” He started back in on his pudding.

  “I did not misread it!” Mrs. Wilson exclaimed with uncharacteristic passion. “Not at all!” And she pulled the folded letter from her pocket and handed it to him.

  He read the letter over quickly, and again more slowly. “This is not good,” he said. I imagine he had quite forgotten I was there.

  “I hardly know how to respond,” Mrs. Wilson said.

  “Perhaps it would be best not to,” he replied.

  “I cannot just ignore it. She’s my sister! My only living relative!”

  “What would you propose?” he asked. “She’s in Harrogate. We are here.”

  “I feel I must at least go and see her,” she countered, “see if she is really as Mrs. Brewer reports. And Harrogate is not so very far away.”

  “The better part of a day’s travel,” he said. “You are too frail as well to make the journey on your own, and I cannot go with you. I have commitments here. Two days away at the very least; no, it would be impossible for me to make such a trip until after the first of the year. And even so—”

  “I could go,” I offered. “I could accompany Mrs. Wilson.”

  Mr. Wilson turned to me. “No, that’s impossible,” he said. “We are not…We could not…No, it’s impossible.”

  “But—my sister. I cannot just ignore her,” Mrs. Wilson insisted.

  “She has Mrs. Brewer,” he said. “And she has a housekeeper, has she not? What more does she need?”

  “She needs me!” Mrs. Wilson responded, seeming to rise in stature even though she remained seated in her chair. “And I need to see—I need at least to see—that she is taken care of properly.”

  Mr. Wilson sat back in his chair, the rum pudding forgotten, his mind working. “Would you be willing to go w
ith her, Rochester?” he asked at last. “Would you make sure Mrs. Wilson arrives and returns safely? Would you ascertain if her sister is taken care of adequately?”

  “Yes, sir, I would be glad to do that,” I replied, my mind calculating. Harrogate was more than a half day’s travel north of Maysbeck and not exactly on the way to Thornfield, which was mostly east, I was thinking, but it could be a start; surely I could work something out. I had a few pounds saved, and hoped they would be enough.

  “Well then,” Mr. Wilson said, “you may write to Mrs. Brewer and tell her you are coming at the end of the week. But keep in mind, it is already the middle of November. The weather will not hold and I forbid you to get snowed in there in Harrogate. You may not stay longer than two days.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said.

  But I thought: Two days! How can I get from Harrogate to Thornfield and back in two days?

  Chapter 8

  We left Maysbeck on a bright, sunny morning. It had poured rain all the previous day and night, and now everything seemed washed clean—even, almost, the unpainted cottages and shacks of the bottoms. As the coach rumbled past, I gazed at them, hoping to see Alma once more, but I saw only crooked, narrow alleys, children shivering in filthy rags and adults bundled against the mid-November cold and damp, and lank dogs, snuffling amid the detritus. Soon Maysbeck was behind us and we were in the countryside, heading toward Harrogate, and I was imagining myself at Thornfield again, not just being in the place that I had last seen half a lifetime ago, but seeing as well Cook and Knox and all the rest, if they were still there. From Mr. Wilson’s gazetteer, I had surmised that with even the fastest of coaches it would take me a good day just to make the trip back and forth, without any time remaining to spend at Thornfield itself. I could not think of how I could persuade Mrs. Wilson to extend her stay in defiance of Mr. Wilson’s explicit order. And what excuse could I give for being gone so long?