Mr. Rochester

by Sarah Shoemaker

  She put her mending aside and rose. “Sir,” she said, her face betraying nothing.

  “May I have a word?”

  “Of course.”

  I sat in the chair facing hers, and she seated herself again. “You knew my mother far better than anyone else I know,” I began.

  She stiffened. “I did not know her well at all, sir.”

  “Still, she was a lady in every meaning of the word, was she not?”

  “Yes, sir, she was.”

  “When she married my father—George Howell Rochester—were there whisperings that she had married beneath herself?” This was treacherous ground, I knew, but it seemed the best. “He had the Rochester name, but he had put himself in trade, which made him a kind of pariah, no? I cannot imagine what must have been said of him in those days.”

  Mrs. Fairfax’s eyes lowered.

  “Did you ever hear gossip of that sort?” I asked.

  “It could have happened,” she allowed.

  “She was your late husband’s second cousin, I understand.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And he never said anything? That she had married beneath herself?”

  “Of course not. Your father was a gentleman, despite…”

  I nodded. “Despite that he was in trade.”

  She cleared her throat, and her eyes wandered away from mine. “I really don’t recall, sir.”

  “I never knew my mother, as you are well aware. So I have only a child’s dream of what his mother might have been, but I assume that she was a fine woman. However”—I cleared my throat—“in all my life, and in the many, many places I have traveled, I have never met a woman as admirable as our Miss Eyre.”

  If I had imagined that I would catch her unprepared, I was mistaken. “If I may say so, sir,” she said, “she is a child—only eighteen.”

  “Many women of good family marry at eighteen.”

  “As I say, sir.”

  I had to smile that she did not dare to point out I was twice Jane’s age. “Yes, she is young,” I agreed. “But she is wise beyond her years; surely you have seen that.”

  She said nothing in response, for she could not deny my words.

  I continued: “Would that I were younger, or she older. But that is not the case. Is that the only reservation you might have? You should know I shall marry her regardless, but I—and Jane, I am sure—would welcome your blessing. So again I ask, is her youth your only reservation?”

  She looked at me straight on. “It will indeed be said, sir, that you are marrying beneath your station. Eyebrows do rise when a man allies himself with his child’s governess.”

  “You do not admire her?”

  “I think she is a fine young woman, sir. But a governess, married to the master of the house, it does…it does not…”

  “It does not bode well for the governess, you are saying. You have concern that I would take advantage—”

  “Oh no, sir! No. It’s just…she is very inexperienced, sir.”

  I would have laughed if I had not felt so put out by the rest of the conversation. “On that count, you will not have to concern yourself,” I said to her, rising. “Miss Eyre is perfectly capable of taking care of herself.” I started toward the door, but I stopped and turned. “At any rate,” I added, “I am determined to marry her. Whether you accept her or not is your affair, I suppose, but in one month, she shall be my wife.”

  After that, Jane and I—and Adèle, who despite my original wishes charmed her way into our carriage—took off for Millcote. I urged Jane to agree to the loveliest of fabrics, but she was a stubborn little thing, and instead chose only a black satin and a pearl-gray silk. The harder I tried to lavish her with gifts, the harder she resisted, saying, “I only want an easy mind, sir; not crushed by crowded obligations. Do you remember what you said of Céline Varens?—of the diamonds, the cashmeres you gave her? I will not be your English Céline Varens. I shall continue to act as Adèle’s governess: by that I shall earn my board and lodging, and thirty pounds a year besides. I’ll furnish my own wardrobe out of that money, and you shall give me nothing but—”

  My God, I thought. Such independence in her! Cannot she simply let me spoil her while I still have the means? “Well,” I asked, “but what?”

  “Your regard: and if I give you mine in return, that debt will be quit.”

  “Well,” I responded, “for cool native impudence, and pure innate pride, you haven’t your equal.” I shall say this for her: certainly, unlike some women, her view of marriage was not dictated by the fanciful romantic vision of a Jane Austen novel.

  As we were approaching Thornfield, I asked her to dine with me that evening, for she had not yet done so in all the past months. But she declined, for, as she insisted, she had come to Thornfield a governess and she was determined to remain so until the day of our wedding.

  I gazed at her, sitting primly beside me, her hands folded in her lap. She is a puzzle, I thought; she is a puzzle to be unwrapped one piece at a time until she is completely revealed. Well, then, so be it, I said to myself. I will have the rest of my life to discover my Jane. Difficult, contradictory, maddening as she might be, she was my whole world, almost my hope of heaven.

  But if she could be difficult, so could I; and as soon as I had a chance, I ordered the finest wedding veil to be had to grace Jane’s head.

  Chapter 21

  I had not seen Gerald for some time after our fight, and I can’t say it disappointed me, for I didn’t care if I never saw him again. In less than four weeks now I would have my annulment, and Gerald would press his case to have the courts declare him Thornfield’s legal heir. And Jane and I? Jane and I would find ourselves in an entirely different life. We would be without Thornfield, but we would have each other, and I believed it would be bliss. Perhaps I would buy her a school while I had the means, for I knew she had always wanted her own school. It would not be one like Mr. Lincoln’s, but it would be a place where young ladies would be educated to be independent. In the meantime, my time at Thornfield was bittersweet. At least, I realized, it was not necessary now to move Bertha, for with Gerald taking over at Thornfield, she could remain in the only place she had known for years.

  Shortly before the wedding, I went to Millcote for a meeting with Everson on some other business, but while I was there Everson brought up the question of the inheritance, urging me to protect myself. He did not understand that I could upend Gerald’s case if I chose but had chosen to keep silent and let it go forward, and by the time I left his chambers, he could barely find the words to say farewell to me.

  I left Everson’s office in a sour mood, and as I walked through the town I heard insistent footsteps behind me. Turning, I saw it was Gerald. It was an effort to give him a civil greeting.

  “I want to see my mother,” he announced.

  “Oh no. You have done that once. You can see her all you want when Thornfield is yours.”

  “I insist!” he demanded. “I insist! She is my mother!” He was shouting now, and passersby were turning to watch.

  Bertha had been relatively quiet since her previous attack on him. And she was his mother. Still, I refused, not feeling inclined to humor him for the absurd, ungentlemanly scene he was making.

  Gerald’s face grew dark and, angry beyond words, he spewed out a torrent of invective at me, and I again saw that familiar dark fury in his eyes. In a moment, I understood too clearly: He is going to become like her, I thought. He will become her. I feared he might try fisticuffs, right there on the street, but he did not. Instead, he continued to yell at me: “She is not my mother! What have you done with my mother?”

  “She is your mother if your mother was Bertha Antoinetta Mason,” I said as calmly as I could manage. “I have had her in my care for fifteen years.”

  “Then you are a madman yourself! No one in his right mind keeps an animal like that in his home.”

  “It was her wish. And her father’s. I made promises.”

  “
Then you are a fool. When you leave, you may take her with you, you who are so ready to make promises. You take care of her, or I will put her where she belongs.”

  I stared at him in horror. I, whose life had been ruined for the sake of my family reputation, for the sake of my brother—I had given years to this woman, whose own son, at first so anxious to see her, was now just as anxious to throw her away. A son who, as I was seeing before my very eyes, would no doubt grow to be as mad as she was. I turned and walked swiftly away from him, and he chased me and struck me from behind. I was tempted to respond in kind, but I ignored his provocations and left the scene. He did not follow.

  I stewed over that for a night and a day, barely able to contain myself, even in Jane’s presence. She noticed my mood but I told her it was nothing, just a troublesome cottager on my land. But it was not nothing; it was a madman set to take control of Thornfield, and I could not bear it. I knew that when Jane discovered the truth—for at some point she would—she would hate that I had done such a thing. It was six and two threes: whatever I did would be wrong. But I knew what Jane would want me to do.

  * * *

  The next day I told her I would be gone for some time, perhaps overnight, but not to worry, and I rode back to Millcote and told Everson of my business. He sat at his desk in silence until I almost thought he had not understood, until he said to me, “They are examining the letters tomorrow morning, I believe.”

  With that, I rose, but Everson stayed me. “I will accompany you, but we must let Ramsdell and Gerald Rochester know, for they have a legal right to be there.” After that, I could not wait, and I was off, trailing Everson, and I am sure Ramsdell and Gerald as well, behind me.

  I slept poorly at an inn that night, and in the morning the magistrates were angry when I barged into their session, demanding a hearing, pulling out my proof while the chief magistrate pounded his gavel. I emptied onto their tables the letters I had found in the desk in the library: a total of nineteen of them. I straightened each one so they could see it well, the judges sitting in dour and mystified silence all this time. “Look at the letters you hold in your hands, and look at these that come from my father’s desk. A guinea for the man who sees the difference first.” Two of the three almost smiled, and they set to their task.

  Everson stepped in just at that moment and stood in amazement, not knowing whether to upbraid me or praise me. The judges took longer than my patience lasted, and so I gave them a hint: “Notice the dates.” As these letters made clear, my father, for whatever reason, was in the habit of including only the day and the month—in all of the letters I had provided, but not the two that Gerald had presented as evidence. “What say you?” I asked, pulling out a guinea coin.

  “Forgery,” said one judge.

  “He took the genuine letters and added a date,” admitted another.

  “Indeed,” I said.

  “Indeed, he did,” Everson said. “But when—”

  “Never mind,” I silenced him. “The annulment cannot stand.”

  “It cannot indeed,” said Everson. “We withdraw our petition.”

  I walked out of there in a flurry of emotion, encountering Gerald and Ramsdell on the street.

  “It’s over,” I said. “It was clever, Gerald, but it didn’t work. Perhaps you didn’t know, but the letters were regarding me, not my brother. Whoever falsified the letters perhaps did not know that I was the Rochester son who married your mother.”

  Ramsdell, confused, began to stammer a response, but I saw that fury rise again in Gerald—his eyes darken, his hands clench—and I mounted Mesrour and rode away before Gerald could strike out. I knew the law would hold Gerald for at least a short time for presenting forgeries to the court. Jane and I would be married and gone by the time he was free to bother anyone again.

  * * *

  It was late when I left, and I did not need to put my heels to Mesrour, for he knew we were bound for home, and he galloped those many miles as if I were a highwayman escaping arrest. I knew full well what I was doing, but I didn’t care. Man’s laws can be manipulated to dishonest ends. God’s laws can be used in ways I was sure God had not intended. I would marry Jane; Everson would find a place where I could move Bertha, where she would be safe, and no one would know. I could have it done while Jane and I were on our honeymoon.

  It warmed my heart more than I can admit when I spied the first lights of Thornfield-Hall in the distance—home at last, and marriage tomorrow and Bertha to be removed. It was as if every care in the world had suddenly vanished as we sped homeward in rain and driving wind.

  Then the moon, which had been passing in and out of rain clouds all evening, revealed to me a figure standing in the lane outside the gates of Thornfield, and I knew immediately it was Jane. Jane? Out so late at night? What could have happened? God, not Bertha, I thought. Please, not Bertha!

  As I came closer, she ran to meet me, and I stretched out my hand to her and pulled her up to join me in the saddle. Holding her close, I asked if anything was wrong that she should come to meet me at such an hour, but she insisted it was nothing.

  I did not believe her, for I felt a strong foreboding beyond the emotion that had that day occurred, but Jane would say nothing more until after I dined. As nighttime drew on, I tried to cheer her with a reminder that she had promised to sit up with me the night before my wedding, but she smiled only a wan smile.

  I managed to coax her into telling me what had disturbed her. She’d had nightmarish visions of a destroyed Thornfield-Hall, and of a child, clinging to her for dear life. I tried to reassure her that all was well, certain that she could not know anything of my fevered idea, abandoned less than a day earlier, to move us out of Thornfield.

  But she could not be deterred. “On waking,” she said, “a gleam dazzled my eyes: I thought—oh, it is daylight! But I was mistaken: it was only candlelight, Sophie, I supposed, had come in. There was a light on the dressing table, and the door of the closet, where, before going to bed, I had hung my wedding dress and veil, stood open: I heard a rustling there. I asked, ‘Sophie, what are you doing?’

  “No one answered,” she went on, “but a form emerged from the closet: it took the light, held it aloft and surveyed the garments pendent from the portmanteau. ‘Sophie! Sophie!’ I again cried: and still it was silent. I had risen up in bed, I bent forward: first, surprise, then bewilderment, came over me; and then my blood crept cold through my veins. Mr. Rochester, this was not Sophie.”

  My own blood chilled at her words.

  “It was not Leah,” Jane said, “and it was not Mrs. Fairfax—no, I was sure of it, and am still—it was not even that strange woman, Grace Poole.” It was not, she said, anyone she had ever seen; even in the half darkness she had been certain of that.

  “It must have been one of them,” I said, for I could say nothing else. Perhaps the force of my words could convince her.

  But in the next moment she described, in slow and fearful words, the savage image of Bertha herself. I dared not breathe as she described how her midnight visitor took up Jane’s bridal veil and placed it on her own head to gaze in the mirror, and in a spasm of violence tore the veil from her head, ripped the lace in two, and threw it to the floor and tramped on it. I imagined Bertha somehow understanding in her own confused way my intentions toward Jane. And, oh God, there was more! When Bertha had finished with the veil, she approached Jane herself with the candle and looked into her eye, and still staring closely at Jane, extinguished the candle and remained there until Jane fainted from terror.

  I swallowed deeply and forced calm onto my face. “Who was with you when you revived?” I asked.

  No one was there, she said, and as it had become broad daylight, she rose and did her usual ablutions, and while she felt weak, she was not ill, and then she asked who or what that could have been. It was a nightmare, I told her, surely just a creature of an overstimulated brain, and I was relieved that such a vision could be explained away. But she insisted that her
nerves were not in fault, that the thing had been real.

  I reminded her gently that none of her other dreams had come true, and half succeeded in convincing her, I thought, that it was a matter of nerves. But then she rejoined: in the light of broad day, she had seen her fine new wedding veil, lying on the carpet, torn in half.

  I clung to her, wishing I could erase the event from her mind, erase it from time altogether. Now it was clear: it was not just I who was in danger from the madwoman—Jane herself was at risk. How could I protect her now? Would this terror never end?

  Struggling to control my voice, I offered an explanation: It was—it must have been—Grace Poole, I said. She’d seen how oddly the servant had acted in the past. In her half sleep, Jane had imagined Grace as a monster. I comforted her in as cheery a voice as I could muster, making it up as I went, desperate to hide the truth for one more day. After the wedding, when we were on our honeymoon, Bertha could be moved away somewhere—anywhere. Grace Poole’s good name deserved better than this, but there was little to be done for it now, knowing my clear-sighted, rational Jane would wonder why Grace was allowed to remain at Thornfield-Hall. I hinted that Grace’s tenure at Thornfield represented a burden and debt I had taken on and must repay, but that when we were married a year and a day I would tell her the whole of it. I would have liked to tell her immediately, to hear her lift my burden with the blessing of her trust and love, to have her tell me that I was not wrong in the clear eyes of God and morality to think I deserved a better life than the one I had been dealt. But I dared not tell her now, while I could still lose her.

  Jane, bless her, seemed content with what I had to say. I urged her to sleep with Adèle in the nursery and to lock the door. If I could just get her safely to morning, to our exchange of vows, we would be off to London for our honeymoon and a happy life together.

  She did as I suggested, and as soon as she was settled, I climbed to the third floor and let myself into the chamber. All was quiet there, Bertha pacing in silence in her room, and Grace sitting up in the outer room, relishing the one mug of porter I allowed her each night. “She was out again last night,” I said quietly.