***
Bertha’s rages and her night terrors came and went, and as I grew to understand that they had nothing to do with me, but with her own inner demons, I tried to ignore them. However, her hallucinations grew more frequent and more devastating. She would talk and scream and cry at beings in the room, one moment cowering from them and the next charging around as if to drive them from her. She ate little and bathed less, and sometimes she seemed unsure of who I was.
There were good days—many of them, in truth—and each time I raised a hope of improvement, but her rages came unannounced, and sometimes only Molly’s voice could calm her; we were deeply in that girl’s debt, all of us. At last, Jonas and I arranged for the plantation carpenter to turn two of the bedrooms into an apartment for Bertha, and that became her private refuge. She rarely left it, and Molly and her daughter waited on her there. Tiso was nearly ten years of age—old enough to be in the fields in the second gang, but Jonas and I agreed her presence in Bertha’s apartment was of more importance. She was a sweet girl, and obedient, and was a great help to Molly.
Bertha was immediately calmer, more content, when she could shelter in her rooms, and she didn’t seem to mind being away from the rest of the household activity. I visited from time to time, and she would beg me to make her with child, but I was far beyond accommodating her in that respect. Jonas rarely went to see her—he could not bear to, I think. Richard came even less often, and I suspected he and his father had had a falling-out, but neither of them would speak of it.
That was what my life became. I buried myself in the business of the plantation and spent considerable time in Spanish Town and Kingston overseeing my shipping business. Being there was balm for me: the silent house, Sukey fixing my favorite meals without my having to ask for them. As for theSea Nymphand theDragon, they were making regularly scheduled packet and passenger trips, and Jonas and I were pleased with the results of our purchases. Even my father, far away in Liverpool, having heard from Jonas of my venture, wrote that he was glad I was taking advantage of the education he had provided. I read the letter with distaste and threw it into the fire.
Once or twice again I rode out to see Whitledge at Arcadia. I did not attend his wedding, giving some poor excuse at the time, but the fact that he never again asked after Bertha—other than a vagueHow is your wife these days?—led me to assume the gossip had somehow reached him. After a handful of outbursts at balls that shocked half the county and confirmed the suspicions of the other half, no mention of a dinner or a ball was ever made to her again. Even so, she would often dress up in her finest clothes, insisting I dress up as well. She imagined herself going to the governor’s ball, but we plied her with sangaree or with something stronger until she became unaware of the passage of time, and when she awoke we told her of the wonderful evening she had had.
Was that cruel? Perhaps it was, but we did not know what else to do. Jonas was with me to the end in this endeavor, but Richard turned against us both, holding me responsible for Bertha’s disintegration, even as we did the best we could to prevent it from worsening. Once he even demanded to be allowed to take Bertha under his own care, insisting she would recover and be the woman she had been before I came upon the scene. I might have succumbed to this last resort, but Jonas knew his son better than I, knew he hadn’t the will or the stomach to deal with his sister, and forbade it. Indeed, as it was, Richard rarely visited her apartment, always promising to do so the next time.
I spoke to him about it once, saying, as gently as I could, that Bertha might well enjoy an occasional visit from her brother. He, in turn, stared at me in surprise and countered that I was the interloper, coming between his sister and her family. I begged to differ, but he grew quite sullen, complaining that I had taken his sister from him and his father as well. I hardly knew what to say to that, but the coolness between us remained.
In the end, Jonas prevailed upon someone he knew who had migrated from Jamaica to Madeira and asked him to offer Richard some sort of position there. I never knew the whole of it, but I would not be surprised if Jonas had included a monetary offer to entice the move. Jonas was like that. He deeply suffered over the taint that his wife’s madness had brought upon his children, and he would have done anything in the world to ease it from their lives. Thank God, I never had to worry over my own children of such a marriage.
Somehow, with Bertha tucked safely away in her apartment and without Richard attacking my motives at every turn, I fell into a more settled, calmer existence. As time passed, I realized how little true satisfaction I received from my business dealings. Yes, the income was rewarding, as were my business decisions in general—I was proud of my investment in the two ships. But I did not enjoy the daily work of it. I could not take satisfaction in besting my competitors as my father did. He reveled in the challenge of the chase, the thrill of the conquest, but I am of a different mind.
One day, in Spanish Town, I turned a corner and ran right into Geoffrey Osmon. We stared at each other, unbelieving, for a moment, and then burst into laughter, our arms around each other. Nothing would do but that we go to a tavern and renew our friendship over drinks. He was in town on business and proudly told me that he had moved up from book-keeper to overseer at an estate, and I was pleased for him. As for me, I revealed as little as possible about my private life, except that I was married but had no children. We spent a pleasant evening together reminiscing, and when we left, we promised to keep in touch, though I doubt that we really intended to.
Also, I joined the militia. One could choose one’s regiment, and I wisely chose the mounted, as had Richard before me. Although we practiced regularly on the parade ground under the watchful eye of the governor, looking right smart as we did so, I learned far more strategy around Mr. Lincoln’s table than I ever did in the militia. I had thought I might make friends in that group, and they were certainly fine fellows, but their interests did not match mine, except for one who had a particular fondness for horticulture. From him I learned the pleasure of gardening, and the orchard at Valley View soon became my real interest and occupation.
That garden had been planted in Jonas’ father’s time but had fallen into disrepair over the years. It boasted the usual tropical banana plants with their cascades of fronds; avocados, whose shiny, bright green leaves never failed to lift my spirits; and citrus trees and ornamental palms and tamarinds, frangipani and mangoes; and it was there I became acquainted with the glorious Jamaican rain tree and its brilliant yellow flowers. As well, there was a magnificent cedro, whose aroma far exceeds that of the common cedar, and there was ginger and orchids of all descriptions, some native and others imported from Africa and Asia. I cherished the time I spent there, pulling up weeds, sitting on the little bench I had placed there, and reading. Sometimes I could even imagine myself in the orchard at Thornfield.
***
That summer Daniels announced he was leaving us. He had accepted an offer to manage a much larger plantation in the north. There was a time when I had pictured Valley View’s two thousand acres, plus my seven hundred, as nearly as large as a plantation could be, but by the time Daniels left, I knew of places twice our size. Jonas and I were sorry to see him go, for he had been a fine manager, and I had learned so much from him.
“The full burden will be upon my shoulders,” I said to Jonas. “I confess I’m rather looking forward to it.”
He turned toward me in surprise. “You do not mean to take Daniels’ place, surely?”
“Why not?” I asked.
“It’s not done,” he responded.
“But I was trained for it, was I not?”
Jonas laughed. “Rochester, your father wanted you to understand how a prosperous operation works, not to run it yourself. The owner never runs it; only the lowliest of plantation owners operate their holdings. No, of course not.”
“Then I am nearly useless here,” I protested.
“So, you thinkIam useless?”
“No, but—”
“You will take my place one day. Surely you know there must always be a master.”
I did not know how to respond to that. Despite that I did not feel myself to be a businessman, I still wanted to be useful.
“Rochester,” he said gently, “most men work all their lives for what you have.”
What I had.A mad wife who looked and acted like a harridan. No one with whom to sit of an evening and read, or sing or play an instrument. No chance for children, unless I were to take a mistress, as Jonas had done, but I could not imagine bringing children into the world who would be destined only to become servants, like Molly, or like Sukey.
And then I thought to hire Osmon to replace Daniels. It was a risk, because Osmon had only been a book-keeper and later an overseer for a short time, and I did not know how well run the plantation where he had worked had been. Still, I desperately wanted for someone my own age to talk with, and I imagined I could spend at least part of my time in overseeing the plantation under the guise of teaching Osmon. As it turned out, we were a good pair. Despite that he had not been to university, he was well-read and had an abiding curiosity about the world. Many were the evenings that we would sit on the veranda, grog at our elbows, and talk, especially about literature. He had a distinctly different view ofRob Royfrom mine, and he appreciated Jane Austen more than I ever had, and we spent a good part of a month reading and talking about a book by an American, James Fenimore Cooper.
I was surprised at this interest of his, and how deeply he understood the works, for he had made no mention of it on board the ship. To him, I probably appeared at first as unthinking as Bertha seemed to me, though I strove to make up for it. He told me his father had been a day laborer, too poor to educate him properly, but Osmon had always found pleasure and relief in reading. He had come to Jamaica as the next best thing to college—a place, he had hoped, where he could continue his education on his own. We both laughed at that, although he did insist he had learned as much in the past four years as he would have done at Oxford.
