Mrs Rochester

by Hilary Bailey

  As I have said, I cannot hear that woman, Bertha Mason, given the title of Mrs. Rochester, without a shudder. It wounds me like a blow.

  ‘Bertha Mason, you mean,’ I said.

  ‘No, Mrs. Rochester is who I mean,’ she told me.

  ‘I am Mrs. Rochester.’

  ‘You say that proudly,’ she observed. ‘Perhaps that is understandable in view of your beginnings. Yes – I see you are proud of your title, Mrs. Rochester of Thornfield. We shall see how proud you are when you have heard what I have to say.’

  Stung by her insolence, I replied, ‘I do not know what you mean. I know only that, though you are able to frighten a poor old man, you cannot frighten me.’

  ‘I am glad you are so brave. I think you had better sit down and listen to me.’

  Angered by her daring to speak to me so in my own drawing-room, I contemplated telling her forthwith I had no desire to hear what she had to relate, that she must leave. But Grace Poole, who had been standing quietly near the door, raised her voice, saying, ‘You would do well to listen, Mrs. Rochester. There is much you do not understand.’

  I hesitated. Madame Roland was arrogant, Grace Poole, my housekeeper, had spoken to me as an equal – moreover, as a servant she had no place in this interview. Yet I was surrounded by mysteries Edward was not here to explain and, wisely or unwisely, I heeded her and decided to hear more from Madame Roland.

  ‘Leave the room Mrs. Poole,’ I ordered and this she did. Then I turned to Madame Roland. ‘I will hear you,’ I told her, ‘if you will speak civilly and explain your actions.’

  ‘You do well’ she said, with a cynical air. ‘After all, where is your husband now? Vanished, at the first sign of trouble.’

  ‘If this is the tone you propose to adopt, Madame Roland,’ said I, ‘you will have to leave.’

  ‘Do not be so proud – and listen to me,’ she demanded. ‘Now then, know first what evidently your husband has not chosen to tell you. I am Bertha Mason’s sister.’

  I gazed at her, unable to believe what I heard. This could not be true. I had heard of no sister to Bertha Mason, only a brother. But as I searched my memory for recollections of the madwoman, I saw that there was resemblance between that raving, dishevelled creature and the woman who stood before me. There was the same massy black hair, though Bertha’s had been matted and tangled and Madame Roland’s was smooth. There were the great black eyes, though Madame Roland’s burned with a fire at least reasonable, where Bertha’s had rolled, fearsomely, in her insanity. There was the same dark complexion, the same strength of body – though Madame Roland’s strength was contained, while Bertha’s had been uncontrolled, expressed in desperate writhings and violent assaults on others. Nevertheless, comparing the two women’s appearance, what Madame Roland said might be true.

  ‘You had better sit down,’ she advised me, without sympathy. ‘You are expecting a child; I hear you have been ill. We shall both sit, and you will hear me out.’

  And I obeyed her.

  ‘You will know, at least,’ she said, ‘that when your husband arrived in the West Indies, where my family lived, he was a penniless younger son and his marriage to my sister made him, through her dowry, prosperous. It was only later, when his older brother died, that he became Rochester of Thornfield.’ The expression of contempt as she said these words was chilling. She continued, ‘What I imagine you will not know is that before the marriage your husband agreed that Bertha’s dowry was to be repaid to her family at her death, if she died childless. Had she had children, of course, her dowry would have gone to them. That is not an unusual provision. Bertha is dead, but the money has not been repaid.’

  ‘You have come to claim money?’ I said.

  ‘That is part of it,’ she told me. ‘You must know that when that unfortunate marriage took place and the dowry was paid, the Masons were a prosperous family with rich plantations in Jamaica. But soon after, with the abolition of slavery, the plantation owners, my family among them, found themselves much reduced, in some cases ruined. My parents are aged and still in the West Indies. They are in want of money. My brother, whom you saw when Rochester attempted that travesty of a marriage to you, is in Jamaica with them. He has written to your husband, more than once, explaining the family’s need for the return of the dowry, but Rochester has not condescended to reply. My brother is unwell and cannot travel, so it fell to me, since I live no further than Paris, to approach your husband. He has told me he cannot and will not repay the dowry.’

  She gazed scornfully about her. ‘I’m afraid you must accept the fact that this grand rebuilding, all your paint and papers and furniture, have been paid for by money brought to him by my poor sister. You look at me with the contempt of a creditor facing an importunate debtor but let me tell you, it is you who owe the debt. But that is the least of it. I am here to discover the truth about my sister’s death. You will not find this strange. You are not a bad woman, I feel. You will understand that I loved my sister.’ She paused. ‘Have you never asked yourself what really occurred on the night of the fire at Thornfield?’

  ‘I know what occurred,’ I said faintly, for in my mind’s eye I saw, yet again, that last desperate scene, as, the servants rescued, my husband tried to save Bertha from the roof, whither she had fled.

  ‘No, Mrs. Rochester,’ Madame Roland said emphatically, ‘no one knows what occurred that night, no one but Edward Rochester. He and Bertha were the only people left in the house. It is to discover what really took place that night that I have come here, talked to Mrs. Poole, and questioned the old man. You see, there are aspects of Bertha’s death which were confusing at the time. The only account we, her family, had of the events came from Edward himself, written under dictation when he was still blinded and gravely injured. We believed him, of course – how not?

  ‘And then other reports began to reach us. Rochester was wed, and to the very lady he had tried to marry fraudulently while my sister was alive! – Rochester’s health was recovered – Rochester was father of a healthy boy – and, finally, Rochester was rebuilding Thornfield! And all that remained to us, Bertha’s family, were unanswered questions, and an unrepaid dowry. What do you think we felt, Mrs. Rochester? Do you think we come too soon, after ten years, demanding the truth? You know now who I am and why I am here. Do you not wonder – are you not curious – why your husband has chosen to tell you none of this?’

  ‘You talk of truth,’ said I. ‘It is not truth you come for. You come to get vengeance.’

  ‘What you call vengeance, some would call justice,’ she returned angrily. ‘Do you think it pleases me to come here, to talk to the man who drove my sister mad, brought her here to this cold and hostile place and incarcerated her in an attic – and then, for aught I know, killed her?’

  I stood up. ‘Mrs. Roland – you are vile! You must leave.’

  But she ran on, unstoppable. ‘What an opportune death,’ she cried, ‘that of a mad and wealthy wife, when all the time he wanted to marry his bastard’s governess, had indeed tried to do so though the wife was still living. Oh,’ she said, ‘he has charm, Rochester, he is fascinating, attractive – but a villain nevertheless. What of his child, Adèle still unacknowledged?’ She came up close to me. ‘What, in the end, of you, my dear, if he decides he wants you no longer. Look – look – at the man you married.’

  I was sick, dizzy, blackness before my eyes. I must have found a chair; I think I heard the door close. Moments later, when I looked up, Madame Roland had gone and Mrs. Poole was at my side.

  ‘Madam,’ she said, ‘shall I help you to your room?’ But I could not bear the thought of her touch and said, ‘No. I will go alone,’ and managed to do so.

  I lay for hours like one struck down, my mind fogged, my limbs seeming too heavy to move. I understood that for my own sake I should be thinking about what Madame Roland had told me, but my body and indeed my mind resisted, perhaps knowing that for the sake of my coming child I should do nothing. Alas, I thought, for the wo
man who must meet such emergencies when she is with child.

  Before I knew it, darkness had come. Though still scarcely in control of mind or body, I rose and went into Edward’s dressing-room through the connecting door and then into his bedroom. The lamp I carried illuminated a spartan room, where all was proper, yet there was little of decoration or comfortable touches. I had not imagined, when planning the house, that Edward would use this room for so long. There was his empty bed, the cover stretched tautly over it, there were the pillows, undented where his dear head should have been. I put the lamp on the floor and sat down upon that empty bed, mourning his absence.

  I felt helpless. Perhaps I should not have listened to Madame Roland’s fearful allegations while Edward was away. But then, I had no idea of what would be their nature until she spoke. And, with Edward gone, how could I refute them? I could not understand why he had told me nothing of all this. Plainly he had recognised Madame Roland in church, either from her past or from the resemblance to the sister he had married. Madame Roland dwelt in the neighbourhood. She had written to him; she had come to the house – and still he had told me nothing.

  Where, I wondered sadly, had his old confidence in me gone? Where now was that reliance on my judgement of which he so often spoke? He had extolled me for my help to him not just as wife, but as companion, friend, partner, though of course the lesser one, in his affairs. And now, at this time of great difficulty, he was silent. Of Madame Roland’s charges I thought little; her claim in the matter of the dowry was dubious; her suspicions about her sister’s death absurd. It was chiefly Edward’s silence that troubled me. And now he was gone, gone away without explanation. In my robe and nightgown I clutched my arms about me and rocked to and fro in anguish, my hair tumbled about my shoulders.

  Meanwhile a wind had come up. It struck the windows; the lamp flickered. Glancing sideways, in the dim light, I saw in a small mirror set on the far wall the very figure of a madwoman. At this I stood up quickly and reproached myself bitterly for giving way in this manner. What use could I be to my husband in his affliction, I asked myself? What use to myself? I must be calm, retire, rest, if I could not sleep, and plan for the future, decide what action, if any, I might take to assist Edward.

  I took up the lamp and left the room. As I passed through Edward’s dressing-room, I paused. The air smelt faintly of the soap he used. There was his wardrobe; there his boot-jacks; there the walnut table with ewer and basin, the tortoise-shell-backed hair brushes, with his initials set in silver. He always kept a pistol in one of two shallow drawers of this table in case of burglars entering the house. Had he, I wondered, taken it with him on his journey, indicating that he was going to a place where there might be something to fear? Such a thought would not have entered my head only a few months earlier. That it did so now was the measure of my anxiety. And so I opened the drawer.

  The pistol, to my relief, still lay there, but beside it was another object, small and gleaming in the light of my upheld lamp. It was a miniature, framed in finely engraved gold, portraying a woman, young and very beautiful. Her fair hair was piled softly on her head in such a way that curls framed her delicately made face. Her eyes, brilliant and hazel in colour, were set beneath beautifully arched brows. She was smiling, a cool smile, knowing and gay, with a kind of worldliness in it.

  I had no need to ask who this woman was. I knew the face, knew it well. It was almost identical to the face of Adèle, but this was not she. This woman’s hair was artfully arranged in a way which spoke of sophistication, tendrils clustered beside the long white neck, which bore a costly necklace of pearls. She was not a girl; she was a woman. It could only have been a portrait of Céline Varens, Adèle’s mother.

  I had never seen this picture before. It had not been in this drawer while we had been at Ferndean. I took it up and shone the lamp I held on to it. Light fell on that beautiful face, and I wondered, in anguish, what this could mean and, alas, in my jealous heart I imagined my husband in the long watches of the night, perforce lonely, brooding over the portrait of his former mistress. It could not be, it could not, I told myself, but it was no use – the worm of jealously grew ever greater in my unhappy breast.

  I had received little comfort in my early life and, being motherless, no love. I think those who have been so deprived can never have true confidence in the love of others, never believe that, one day, love given may not be taken away. It is an affliction to be borne, and borne privately, a want of faith in others which must be struggled with – but now, in the darkness of that night, I was wounded at my weakest point.

  My heart filled with pain and despair. She was beautiful, Céline, so beautiful. She had betrayed and mocked Edward, and when she abandoned her eight-year-old daughter it was he who had rescued the child from destitution – he had brought her to England and provided for her ever since. All this I knew full well. But Céline had been beautiful, a love of his younger years, taken up, admittedly, when he had been forced to recognise he was permanently tied to a madwoman but – nevertheless, Céline had been the early love, the love of a whole man, young in a beautiful city. It would not be strange if now he brooded over that dead love. Did he perhaps think of her beauty and compare her with me, small and undistinguished as I was?

  My limbs were leaden, the child within me seemed, at that moment – may heaven forgive me – like a burden I carried unwillingly and could not put down. I laid the portrait back in the drawer and returned to my room, Céline’s face ever before my eyes. My resolution, to calm myself and try to think steadily about the situation in which Edward and I found ourselves, was quite gone. I passed the night in great agony of mind.

  Chapter XV

  I lay sleepless till dawn, with the wind banging on the window-panes and howling around the house like a soul in pain. Then at dawn I rose, determined of only one thing, to bring Edward back to my side, for I could not, in my frailty, endure any more time alone, in ignorance of facts which only he could supply and suffering tortures of doubt concerning his love for me. Madame Roland’s cruel contempt, the discovery of the miniature of Céline Varens in the drawer in his dressing-room, everything conspired to damage my confidence and faith in myself – even, heaven help me, in him.

  My love for Edward and his for me had transformed my very existence. The threat of any withdrawal or diminution of that love filled me with a fear greater than that of loss of life itself. I knew that without Edward’s love and support I would be plunged into torment, utterly bereaved. It was an incontrovertible fact that I could not sustain life without him. I could no longer endure this agony alone.

  I wrote to his partner, Mr. Jessop, in Manchester, enclosing a message to be passed urgently to him. In it I said, The lady from Old House, Madame Roland, has been to me with many calumnies about you. I am anxious and unwell. Please, my dearest, come to me soon.’

  That day I had appointed to go to Mr. Weatherfield at Ferndean to see my boy, and though I felt unwell and the weather was poor, I must go, for Jonathan expected me. I had begun to collect together the little gifts I was to take with me when Dolly, the maid, came to me with the information that I could not set out at once for one of the carriage horses had cast a shoe. To shorten the delay, Jeremy had harnessed up the other horse and taken the carriage down to the village smithy. Once the second horse was shod, he would speedily harness it and come back to the house for me.

  ‘If the carriage is in Hay,’ said I, ‘I will go down and meet it, and we will start the journey from there.’ For in spite of the weather I felt stifled and nervous in the house. I had the impression that the great mansion was bearing down on me and that I was unable to sustain its weight.

  ‘Oh no, madam,’ Dolly called out in alarm, ‘don’t do that. Do not go to the village alone.’ Then her hand went to her mouth, as if she wished she had not spoken so.

  She was a good girl, from Lower Hay, lacking the dullness and lack of hope which seemed to me characteristic of that place. ‘Why do you say that?’ I ask
ed her.

  ‘I shouldn’t have,’ she said in confusion. Yet, once again she burst out, ‘No, Mrs. Rochester, madam – you must not go to the village. It would be dangerous for you.’

  ‘Dangerous? What can you mean?’

  The poor girl was confused and blushing. She twisted her hands. ‘Those folk – the folk of Hay – are very ignorant,’ she mumbled. ‘Madam, they fear Mr. Rochester — and you too, for you are married to him. They are saying things – such things. Madam, the mood is very ugly in Hay. I ask pardon for speaking thus.’

  And then in came Mrs. Poole for her morning orders and, overhearing these last words, gazed at Dolly sternly, then at me. She asked, ‘What are you saying, Dolly?’

  The girl’s confusion grew deeper. ‘Mrs. Poole I…I…’

  ‘Oh, be off with you,’ said Mrs Poole impatiently. ‘I will talk to you later.’ And Dolly went. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Rochester, if the silly girl has been troubling you,’ said Mrs. Poole stiffly. ‘I’m doing my best to train her, but the local people are unused to good service. I will be stern with her.’

  ‘Mrs. Poole,’ I said, ‘she tells me there is hostility to Mr. Rochester in Hay, and I believe you may have something to do with it, you and Madame Roland, with your gossip and tales and your persecution of Arthur Crooke. Let me tell you this. I do not intend to be kept out of Hay by these stupidities. Nor do I intend to forget your part in all this. There will be consequences, let me assure you. Meantime, please have the goodness to fetch my cloak. I am going down to Hay.’

  ‘Madam—’ she said.

  ‘Get my cloak,’ I told her.

  She bowed her head so that I could not read her expression. ‘Very good, madam,’ she said in a low voice, and went she off to do as I had bidden.

  I took up my packages and left the house. The wind was tearing at the trees; the last remaining leaves whirled through the air. On the road to Hay, I felt forced along by the wind pushing at my back. So, thought I, the malevolence and evil talk of those two bad women has stirred up the village against Edward. This explained, of course, why, as I had walked through the day before, all doors had been slammed against me.