Mr. Rochester

by Sarah Shoemaker

  “I have two children,” Mr. Mason said suddenly. “My wife is gone; when I die, my son and daughter will inherit all I own, equally.” He looked closely at me, to make sure I understood. “And I suppose you would want a dowry as well.”

  “I…I had not thought—”

  “I propose thirty thousand pounds,” he said.

  I was dumbfounded. I did not know what to say.

  “Yours. To do with as you choose.”

  “You are very generous,” I said. “But—what of her? Does she want to marry me?”

  “Of course she does. I would not have made this offer if I did not already know that. What kind of father do you think I am?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, it’s just that—”

  “I have only one daughter,” he said. “I want the best for her. I expect you to treat her in the way she deserves and has become accustomed to.”

  “Yes, sir, of course,” I said.

  “We’ll drink on it,” he said, raising his mug.

  * * *

  We were to be married on the twentieth day of October, and in those intervening weeks I could hardly think of anything other than that beautiful creature, clothed as simply as a negress, barefoot, her glorious hair tied carelessly back from her lovely face. I lost myself in happy reverie, to know that she had wanted me as much as I did her. Though we were now betrothed, I had little more occasion to spend time alone with her than I had had before, but that distance and mystery only increased my desire. I pined for her, imagining her with one of her many suitors, jealous of all the months or years they had been in her presence and I had not, jealous of the times they had danced with her, their arms at her waist, jealous of her touch, her whisper, her disarming smiles. I imagined her soon tied to me forever in marriage, her wild, mercurial spirit so unlike those docile, simpering, boring, proper women like Mary MacKinnon. Life with Bertha would always be new, always exciting. I was mad for her; I was wild with longing. I could not wait to have her for my own.

  Her father welcomed me into the family with a smile and a cigar and a toast of rum punch. He seemed to have come to accept me fully as a partner, to see that I did have a head for business, that my education had been all he would have hoped for in a partner as well as a son. So often in marriages such as this was to be, the arrangements are quite drawn out, as the families argue and bargain over every little jot and tittle. But in this case, they were so easily made that I could hardly believe it myself.

  I had imagined that we would live in Spanish Town after the wedding, but when she was told, Bertha wept at the idea. Valley View had always been her home; she could not imagine living anywhere else. I gave in on that, for the house there was large and it was clear that Jonas wanted us there. He had expressed a desire for me to begin keeping an eye on the management of the sugar operations on both his large estate and my much smaller one, in addition to our joint business ventures in Spanish Town. It was not a great distance to Spanish Town, or even to Kingston. The thirty thousand pounds had made it quite possible for me to buy the Sea Nymph, and I already had plans for refurbishing it.

  I saw the whole of it as an astonishingly lucky turn of events. I had been in Jamaica for less than three months, and here I was on the verge of marriage to the most beauteous creature I could imagine, and with a golden future ahead of me. It could not have been better if it had all been planned that way.

  Which, I eventually came to understand, it had been. All of it. From the time I was put to work at Mr. Wilson’s mill to the time I arrived in Jamaica to the time I had first seen Bertha. The only unexpected event was the one chance encounter I had had with her, and at which, if I had been wiser or more experienced or more prescient, I would have known to flee. As it was, I walked right into it, with my eyes open, believing only that I had been granted an incredible future.

  Chapter 6

  Although we were married in the handsome Church of Saint Jago de la Vega in Spanish Town, the wedding was small: I had no relatives in the West Indies, and I did not know how to contact my shipboard friends, Osmon and Stafford. Whitledge had sent a kind note with his apologies. Mr. Arthur Foster, my solicitor—and Mr. Mason’s as well—attended with his wife, who appeared distracted. A few of Mr. Mason’s friends came with their wives, and left as soon afterwards as they could. Of course, Richard Mason was there to stand with me. And in my heart Carrot and Touch were there as well, to praise my choice of bride and applaud how well I had done for myself.

  We took a honeymoon tour of the island, stopping the longest at the lovely Montego Bay. We spent our days there strolling along the shore and gazing out to sea. It is a wondrous sight, that sea—the deepest turquoise far out, then turning lighter and lighter blue, until near to shore all one sees is sand beneath clear water.

  The torrid heat had abated by then, as had the hurricane danger, and the palm trees swayed in a gentle sea breeze, the sand like sugar beneath our feet. I had not particularly noticed the night skies before, but now I saw that the stars seemed brighter than I had ever seen. I felt, truly, as if I had entered paradise; I could not have been happier or more sanguine about my future. It’s true that Bertha’s moods were somewhat hard to predict—at times the water’s vista entranced her and she ran barefoot on the sand, screaming her delight like a child, but at other times that same vastness unsettled her, and she cowered beside the sea, clinging to me and weeping. I did not mind: I would rejoice in her happiness or hold her in my arms to calm her, whatever she needed. My heart was full of love.

  I found her on the beach one evening after dinner, when I returned from a solitary stroll. She had been with Molly, her body servant, when I left, but when I came upon Bertha later, she was alone, sitting on the sand, a clamshell in her hand, drawing it slowly and forcefully across the inside of her wrist. She was so absorbed that she did not notice my approach. I bent down beside her. “What are you doing?” I asked, for I could not imagine.

  She smiled up at me ingenuously. “It feels so good,” she said.

  “But does it not hurt?” I asked. “Look, you have made scrapes there. Oh, my darling, you’re bleeding.”

  She smiled more broadly. “It feels good,” she repeated, licking the blood from her wrist.

  I placed my hand over hers. “I will give you a golden bracelet for that wrist.”

  She leaned against me. “You will give me gold and jewels and babies,” she murmured.

  “I will give you whatever you want,” I said, and I believed it then. “Bertha,” I said, pointing, diverting her attention, “see that flight of birds against the sunset.”

  “They’re beautiful,” she said.

  “You are beautiful,” I responded. I took her in my arms and she dropped the clamshell; I held her close and we kissed, and then we walked on down the beach.

  I came to learn that, unless she was putting herself on display at a ball, she was uncomfortable in unconfined spaces, and that the presence of people she did not know made her restless and, sometimes, angry. At those times, I could not always calm her, and she would retreat into our rooms with Molly, who had been at her side since childhood and who seemed able to calm her when I failed to do so. They would sit in the semidark, with the shutters drawn, and Molly would sing to her in some African language that I of course did not understand, and perhaps Bertha did not, either, but the repetition of the melody soothed her and in time she was able to rejoin me and smile, both of us pretending that such events were normal.

  Near the end of our journey, when we reached Kingston, I could tell from her restlessness that something was bothering her.

  “Are you anxious to be home?” I asked, thinking she had found the journey more trying than I realized.

  “No…yes,” she responded.

  “Do you want to leave immediately?”

  “Why do you question me?” she shouted. “Is it not enough that I hate Kingston?”

  “Hate? Whatever for?”

  “You are so stupid!” she screamed, bursting into tears.


  A man ought to be able to help his wife, to save her from distress—but I could not think what to do. I sat gingerly beside her on the bed and she fell into my arms. “It is the worst place in the whole world!” she said, weeping, her whole body shaking in despair.

  “Kingston?” I was bewildered.

  “Do you not know? Do you really not know?”

  “Bertha, I—”

  “My mother is here,” she snapped.

  What can she mean? “I thought your mother was dead.”

  “She might as well be.”

  “Bertha…? I don’t understand…your mother?”

  “Fairfax,” she said, her face twisted in anguish. “My mother is mad. Insane. She is shut up in a lunatic asylum. I have not seen her in years, nor Michael, either.”

  “Michael?” I asked.

  “My brother,” she whispered, calmer now but still clinging to me. “My brother Michael, poor thing. He is with her there, the two of them: she a madwoman and he an idiot since birth.” She looked directly at me then. “Do you wonder why I hate this place, why I do not want to be reminded of her?”

  I held her close, and she wept. I had thought her mother dead, but this, was this not worse? “I should not have brought you here. I’m sorry,” I said.

  She shook her head quickly, as if to rid herself of the memory of her mother. I could not imagine it, and yet—would not the presence of a living mother, even if her mind is gone, be better than no mother at all? I had no idea, but, If I had a mother alive, I thought.

  But Bertha’s hand was on my private parts, and I had already learned that sometimes the best way to bring my bride out of a sulk was in the act of intercourse, which she entered into with a wild abandon that I took at the time for passion. We spoke no more of her mother.

  A modern man is pleased if his wife enjoys the act of love, and in those early days I cherished Bertha with a grateful heart, thanking God that he had given me a wife who was as lusty as she was beautiful. When we had finished, I gazed at her lying beside me on the sheets, and I said, “We will make beautiful children together.”

  Unaccountably, she began to weep silently, and I could think of nothing to do except to hold her close until she fell into sleep. But later that night, I woke to her weeping again. She mourns for her mother, I thought. “It’s all right,” I whispered. “I am here; I will take care of you.”

  “The baby,” she muttered between sobs. “I cannot find the baby.”

  “Hush,” I whispered. “You’ve had a bad dream. It will be all right in the morning. Go back to sleep.” I thought I felt her body soften, though the weeping went on and on, until, finally, she wore herself into exhaustion.

  The next morning I woke first, and I lay beside her in bed, gazing at her—at her face relaxed in sleep: dark eyelashes against satiny skin; full, red lips that almost seemed to move as if she spoke in her dreams; masses of lustrous black hair. When she does have a child, I thought, it will be as beautiful as she. The thought roused me, and as if she sensed it, she murmured in her sleep and reached for me. I kissed her, and she pulled me into her with a passion. When our ardor had spent itself at last and we rose from the bed, I vowed not to mention the dream she’d had in the night, for there was no reason, I thought, to ruin the last day of our honeymoon.

  * * *

  We might have stayed longer in Kingston; I might have taken Bertha down to the docks to see the Sea Nymph. She might have been excited to see that sleek ship that was soon to be mine, but I could not insist she stay where she was so ill at ease. In Spanish Town I had legal papers to sign regarding the ship’s purchase, so we moved into my town house for a few days. I was surprised that she seemed familiar with the place, but there was no reason she might not have visited before, as a child accompanying her father on business. And of course she knew Sukey, whom she greeted wildly with kisses and embraces and enthusiastic chatter about all we had seen and done—more of what we had done than I considered decent, in fact. But marriage was new to her, I told myself, and I supposed she could not refrain from spilling out whatever came into her mind. And of course I knew enough to understand that, much as we might not prefer it, servants are always privy to whatever happens in a household.

  Sukey served us grog in the parlor while Molly and Alexander carried our things upstairs to our bedroom—what had been my father’s room, and then mine, and now was ours in this house. When I rose to leave to go to my office, I asked, “Will you be all right here alone?” for I knew she hated being by herself.

  She laughed. “Alone? Alone? But I am here with my sisters.”

  Her comment took me aback, but what could I say in response to that? She had, indeed, grown up with Sukey and Molly, and so I left them alone together.

  I was gone for perhaps three hours, and when I returned evening was descending. I was eager for a home-cooked meal after all those days of eating in taverns and inns, and I smelled the distinct aroma of Sukey’s pepper pot as soon as I opened the door. I heard laughter coming from an upstairs room, so, delighted, I climbed the stairs, imagining myself in five or ten years, hearing children’s laughter filling the house as women’s laughter filled it now.

  I came into the bedroom to see the three of them sitting in a circle on the bed. The curtains were all drawn, but in the gloom I could make out Bertha in her undergarments and the other two in their simple dresses, all three of them barefoot, their heads together, staring at something on the bed. Sukey saw me first and caught her breath. Bertha glanced up. Molly scooped up whatever they had been looking at and kept her eyes focused on the bed.

  “My husband has returned!” Bertha exclaimed, stretching her arms out to me. The other two scampered off the bed and out of the room.

  I came closer. “What were you doing?” I asked.

  She turned around and stared at the bed, as if she had already forgotten. “Oh, just a silly game the Africans play. Come here, my love. Come and kiss me.”

  She seemed so ephemeral—her mind here and there at random—but I was still so enamored with her, and I assumed she with me, and so hopeful for our future, that I pushed any hesitation out of my mind. Instead, I sat down beside her and she cupped my face in her hands and smiled into it and kissed my mouth. I wrapped my arms around her and she pulled me down onto the bed on top of her, kissing my face and licking my ear. The heat of her rose into me and I was on top of her and she on top of me and if we could have consumed each other we would have.

  When we had finished, lying in each other’s arms, she sighed, contentedly, I thought. “Fairfax, tell me: whatever happened to the portrait of your mother?”

  I was startled into dumbness for a moment. “What portrait?” I managed to ask.

  “The one that used to hang here in this house.”

  “Of my mother?” My God, I thought. It could not be. “How do you know it was she?”

  She laughed. “You donkey. She looked just like your brother. Like Rowland. You look like your father and he looks like her, with her fair hair and her blue eyes.”

  “You saw it?”

  She laughed into my neck. “She was beautiful, wasn’t she?” And then, in her way of flitting from one thing to another, she asked, “When can we return home?”

  Chapter 7

  The portrait had been here, in Spanish Town, I thought. But it was not there anymore, at least not in the house. Where could it be? In his offices? Had he taken it back to England with him? My mind would not let go of it, and when next I was in Spanish Town I asked Sukey if she knew what had happened to the portrait of my mother that had been in the house. She frowned, shaking her head, appearing genuinely confused. I described it to her, but she still had no recollection of it. Then I asked if she remembered my brother, Rowland.

  “He tall?” she asked. “Pretty boy?”

  I had to laugh at that. So she did remember him, but not well. She had been only a child herself, she said, living at Valley View.

  “How long have you been staying at m
y father’s house?” I asked.

  “Eight years, nine.” She seemed uncomfortable with my questions, but it was clear she could be of no help in finding the portrait. And, after searching my father’s office, I put it out of my mind.

  * * *

  We returned to Valley View, and though I still thought both of us would sometimes reside there and sometimes in Spanish Town when I needed to attend to business, it became clear that Bertha had no intention of doing so. Even at Valley View, I began to notice that Bertha’s temperament was changing and that she spent much of her time wandering barefoot through the house, as if searching for some lost item, or else closeted with Molly and one or two others, still playing their mysterious games with feathers and knucklebones and straw dolls and other odd items. Her father paid her little attention, preferring my company from the start. I worried some over what Bertha would think of her father’s apparent preference for me, but she seemed not to notice it. She rarely ate meals with me and her father, but she did continue to occupy my bed each night and surround me with her caresses, and I was content, enveloped by the scent of her.

  Ball invitations for the two of us began to arrive almost immediately on our return. I was thrilled, imagining myself proudly entering a hall, Bertha on my arm, the envious glances of other men, my face wreathed in smiles. I imagined us dancing the night away—reels and contra dances and even waltzes—until we were dizzy with exhaustion.

  “When shall we leave?” I asked her the first time. “It will take us most of an hour to get there, I should think.”

  “We?” she replied. “Don’t be stupid; wives never go with husbands. The men always come first; surely even you must have noticed that.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Oh, Fairfax, really. It is not done. And I would certainly not do it, even if it were. You go, whenever you like, as you have always done. And I will arrive when it suits me.”

  “But”—I saw the expression on her face but blundered on, nevertheless—“but we will dance together, surely.”