What of Rowland?“He is…You are…”
“Ah, yes, there it is. Rowland is landed gentry: Thornfield is his. He has no need to work and he chooses not to, which is indeed his choice. For generations the Rochesters have held Thornfield and its lands, but living in a manor house and the life it entails has never suited me. By choice I am also a merchant—in trade, as is said; I am not ashamed, and, indeed, I like the challenge of it. It will suit you as well. The day will come when members of the gentry are only too happy to marry their sons and daughters to members of the merchant class. Times change, boy, and men must change with them.”
I nodded uncertainly. Was he telling me that I was to wind up more fortunate than Rowland?
“You have no experience with slaves yet, of course.”
“No, sir, I haven’t,” I said.
He looked straight at me, his eyes holding mine. “It is different now from what it was when the slave trade was legal. You were but a child when that was ended—so let me clarify: Parliament made illegal theimportationof slaves, but the institution of slavery survives, and it is the only way that the economy of the West Indies is able to survive. I suppose you find that difficult to comprehend, but you will see soon enough the truth of what I say.”
He went on to describe more fully the slave system, and I listened carefully, for I thought he was trying to smooth my way. But now I know differently; now I realize it was simply his way of ensuring that I would understand the world just as he did.
“At this point,” he said in conclusion, “you may assume that your purpose will be to act as a plantation manager or even an overseer, as you are surely equipped to do, but that would be lowering yourself. However, many a landowner discovers that he has entrusted too much power to his manager, and as a result that he has been cheated of his due. With your training and experience, you will prevent such a likelihood happening to you, and your neighbors will learn to take advantage of your expertise, which will be to your own benefit.
“That, son, is what you have been educated for. You will move in the highest of society; you will learn quickly the operation of a plantation and thus become an adviser to many. There will be no dearth of opportunity for you. There will be nothing you cannot accomplish, and with a beautiful and charming wife at your side, you will have a life in the West Indies that you have never imagined possible for yourself.”
I hardly knew what to say. He had planned and provided for my entire future, it seemed, and, after wishing my whole life for my father’s care and attention, I felt one part of me wanting to rebel and refuse and make my own way. But another, larger part told me I would be a fool to turn my back on all that he offered.
Iwasa fool. That day I smiled at my father and thanked him and promised I would make the most of the opportunity that had been laid out for me. I regret now to say how much I gushed my gratitude and how I praised him for all he had done for me. I would like to think that, knowing what he did, he was embarrassed at my effusiveness. Embarrassed and ashamed.
But most likely not. Most likely he smiled to himself to think how well he had arranged things. But I wonder, even today,didhe know? Could he have, even in his darkest self, known what might come of it? Or was he simply pleased to have this younger son—the one who looked so much like him—out of the way, taken care of? And the older son delivered to safety.
I still struggle to think of it, and I cannot say that it is possible now to harbor good thoughts of him. But then I remind myself that if I had turned my back on my father’s plans, my journey would have been entirely different, and while I might have found a satisfactory sort of life much sooner, I would never have found Jane.
Book Two
Chapter 1
The ship—theBadger Guinea, a barquentine—sailed more or less on time, rather a rarity as maritime schedules go. With my father, I had gotten used to wandering down to the docks and seeing the ships moored with their myriads of lines fastened to the stone walls of the quay, green with sea growth. TheBadger Guinea’s masts stretched mightily toward the sky, her sails furled on her yards, her crew either busily loading or else off somewhere getting drunk. My father and I had stepped aboard a few times since it had come into port, and he strode about at will, as was his right as the ship’s owner. He called the captain by his last name in private, but within hearing of the crew used “Captain.” In return, the captain called him “sir.”
The vessel had a large hold for cargo but few cabins, and there were only a dozen or so passengers. Despite my father’s ownership, he had not instructed that I be given any special treatment, for which I was grateful; I did not care much to be the center of attention, and I was sure I would be most comfortable as it was. I shared a cabin with two other young men—Daniel Stafford and Geoffrey Osmon—who were both about my age, warm and outgoing fellows, all of us traveling to Jamaica for the first time. I fell in easily with them. Osmon was bearing letters of introduction, which I already knew would be a great advantage to him. Stafford did not have such a benefit, but he was pleasant and intelligent and would be quick to make friends. He talked of becoming a book-keeper on some plantation, which made me wonder if he knew what that entailed. Remembering my father’s description of a book-keeper’s work, I urged him to think of finding something in the city instead. Because I was fortunate enough to come with connections and my path already set, I naïvely imagined myself by far the luckiest of the three of us, for my father had provided me with my own trading company, with three sailing ships, a sugar plantation, and, as well, the education to make the best of all that. I was determined to take advantage of my opportunities, to show that I was ready to take on whatever came my way. In my musings everything seemed golden. I never once doubted that my father had planned it all with my own best interests in mind.
There was only one other young male passenger, Walter Whitledge, a Creole who made such a point of his recent graduation from Oxford—in an accent that dripped with pretension—that we did our best to avoid him, though on a ship of that size it is well-nigh impossible to evade any particular person. A ship is a world in miniature, sufficient unto itself: if one is to eat, one eats what is provided; if one is to be entertained, one must make one’s own diversion; if one is to have society, one is confined to those on board. Indeed, all the passengers developed at least a nodding acquaintance with one another, but Stafford, Osmon, and I noted with childish glee that we were not the only ones on board who studiously ignored Whitledge.
There is not much to say for a sea voyage: the days are quite the same, except for the weather. I was fascinated by the billow and clatter of the sails, by the creaks and groans of the ship as wood slid against wood, expanding and contracting and turning and wrenching, and by the assured manner of the captain and the skill and daring of the crew. From Liverpool we sailed southward along the west coast of France and Portugal and then of Africa, until we picked up the trade winds before turning westward. I reminded myself that this was the same route that Christopher Columbus had taken, and I could not imagine the uncertainty faced by the men in those three small ships; the admiration I felt for their courage was immense. Of course, I had no idea of the very different sort of maelstrom I myself was sailing into.
Two days after we turned westward, we experienced dead calm—no wind at all, the sea as smooth as a fishpond. And then, later, as we approached the western Atlantic we were caught up, as I had feared, in hurricane weather. I had told my bedmates at Black Hill of the devastation that hurricanes can wreak, but it is quite another thing to actually find oneself in the midst of such a storm. For three days winds tossed us about mightily and the sea poured over the rails, but the ship and its crew bent to their task of getting us safely through, and they succeeded admirably. Beyond that, the trip was mostly uneventful, which is just about the best that can be said for a sailing expedition from the North Atlantic to the Caribbean.
Although I enjoyed the company of Stafford and Osmon, I often preferred being on my own. It was a pleasure to spend time alone, with no pressing responsibilities, and at those times I could not help but imagine what lay in store for me in Jamaica. Once more I took upRob Roy, imagining Carrot voicing the words in my ear, reading it this time for Touch, who would have loved it, but who had died before it was even written. I was in the depths of such reading when I heard unusual sounds coming from the deck: a quick pounding of footsteps, rumblings of voices, and loud shouts followed by banging and thudding. Curious, I put my book aside and ventured to the deck, but by the time I arrived, a strained silence prevailed. It felt as if the whole world were holding its breath, as, indeed, the whole world of theBadger Guineawas. I moved closer to the crowd that had gathered—mostly sailors, but a few passengers as well, including Osmon—and I could see then Mr. Rowe, the first mate, whip in hand, glowering over one of the sailors. Bent over a stanchion, his back bare, the sailor awaited his punishment, but Mr. Rowe was speaking. I could not hear the words—the rush of the wind blew them away—but as his mouth moved I saw some of the sailors nodding in agreement, while one or two others glared behind Mr. Rowe’s back. I could not restrain myself from creeping closer, my eyes wide, my heart thudding, for I knew what I was about to see.
Mr. Rowe raised his arm, and with it the whip—a cat-o’-nine-tails, I realized—and brought it down smartly on the man’s back. The man made not a whimper that I could hear, and the cat came down again and again. By the second or third stripe I could see blood, and by then the sailor was making a kind of groaning noise. I clenched my teeth as I watched, sensing that it would be unmanly to turn away. It was the first time I ever saw someone whipping a human being as if he were an animal, but of course it would not be the last.
When it was over, Osmon and I stood together at the starboard rail, staring wordlessly into the ocean depths. “I suppose we shall have to get used to sights like that,” he said after a time.
“I can’t imagine it,” I responded.
“I had expected it with slaves,” he mused, “but among whites—”
I thought of Rufus Shap and wondered if a good beating would have made a difference. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Landes had made it clear that the working classes were quite different from us, but I still could not imagine being the one to administer the whip, and I hoped that I would not be called upon to do so.
Later, in our cabin, we three tried to fathom what kind of infraction on board a ship required a whipping. “Theft, I imagine,” Stafford said, “or insubordination. I suppose it happens.”
“Mutiny,” Osmon suggested.
The conversation moved on, but the scene haunted me for some time. I thought of poor Mouse, who was so afraid of being beaten by Mr. Lincoln at Black Hill. He had seemed a pitiful figure to me at the time, but this whipping made me understand that a spirit might be crushed in just such a manner.
But there was a great deal of beauty in the trip as well. On the forty-first morning, the rising sun shed a golden light upon the islands of Montserrat and Nevis, and between them the monstrous rock named Redonda, covered with seabirds. And the flying fish! Whole formations of them, slim and silvery, flinging themselves from the turquoise sea and just as quickly disappearing again under the waves. And dolphins, bounding in and out of the water, followed alongside the ship like a joyful honor guard.
