Mr. Mitchell was a compact man whose dark curls surrounded a round face, making him look younger than his years. He sat in his office and listened patiently as Carter and I explained Bertha’s situation, and when we had finished, he just nodded his head as if confirming something. I looked uneasily at Carter, but he was staring out of a window.
At last Mitchell spoke. “She seems like a difficult case. A mother in an institution always portends badly.”
“She has not always been so,” I said. “Six years ago, when I first met her—”
“She is how old?”
“Thirty-two years.”
He nodded. “They often have twenty or twenty-five years of normalcy, these ones with a familial connection.”
“But I understand your institution—”
“The Grimsby Retreat, as you may or may not have been told, has always been designed for people who have an upbringing in the Society of Friends.”
“But you do make exceptions,” Mr. Carter countered.
Mr. Mitchell looked down at his desktop. One hand went to a silver letter opener on his desk, and he turned it over, and then over again. “We do, yes,” he said finally, nodding again, his eyes fastened on the letter opener in his hand. “But only when we perceive that the prospective patient would benefit by being here. From the way you describe your wife’s circumstance, in all honesty, I do not see that as a possibility.”
“Mr. Rochester is prepared to pay—” Carter began.
“Yes, I understand that,” Mitchell replied, looking at Carter, not at me, as if I were not even in the room. He rose from his chair. “But I do not see that this is a possibility for his wife.” He strode toward the door, to usher us out.
“Why not?” I demanded, remaining seated.
He sighed. “The Grimsby Retreat is an institution that intends a cure for each of our patients. It is not a holding pen for incurables.”
Incurable. The word struck me like a blow. “What in God’s name is there, then?” I cried, suddenly seeing only an abyss for my future.
“There are other institutions. I can recommend—”
“Man, for God’s sake, have pity!”
His tone did not change in the slightest, despite that I was nearly on my knees. “I am very sorry, but I have the welfare of our patients to consider. You are wealthy enough: hire caretakers for her.” He opened the door. The interview was over.
Carter and I rode back in silence for a time, and then he said, “Mitchell makes a point. There are other institutions.”
“Not like that,” I ventured, and he nodded agreement.
Promise you will never abandon my daughter,Jonas had said, and I knew what he had meant.I saw in my mind’s eye Bertha’s mother in her cell, raging endlessly.
***
As I was caught up in my private dilemma at Ferndean, word had spread throughout the county that the younger Mr. Rochester was newly arrived from Jamaica. Notes appeared from neighbors expressing their dismay at the untimely deaths of my brother and father, inviting me to tea or other social outings. Clearly, all were eager to meet Thornfield’s mysterious and apparently eligible new heir.
At first I sent my sincerest regrets to all invitations that came my way. Instead, to fill my days and bring myself some comfort, I replaced the piano in Thornfield-Hall, which had never been played in my memory, and I took great pleasure in playing it when I could get away from Ferndean. I found in the attic a few faded music books, marked, I imagined, in my mother’s hand, and I took them downstairs with tears filling my eyes at the thought of the songs she might once have played.
But life at Ferndean, and even at Thornfield, had become so barren, so taken up with my concerns for Bertha, that I knew that unless I was willing to go mad myself, I could not continue forever as I was. And so, once, and then again, I began to accept the social invitations, and I found myself enjoying the respite they provided, the forgetfulness they permitted. I astonished myself when I eventually began to flirt with some of the young women who were present. It was not honest and it was not right, but it was such a relief to be in the company of people with whom I could have an actual conversation.
Sometimes those conversations turned coyly to the Jamaican women who lived at Ferndean, and I knew that the neighborhood gossips had been at work, and I nodded and described Bertha once more as the daughter of a friend of my father’s, a woman left orphaned and alone whom I had brought back from the West Indies, since she no longer had family there. It was all true, of course, except for my omitting the fact that I had married her. On several occasions a woman or two would venture the possibility of calling on my guest, as they referred to her, but I told them she was very ill, and possibly contagious from some rare tropical affliction, and they soon left off the notion of socializing with her.
Though Bertha was in truth not contagious, caring for her remained a struggle. Molly and Tiso tried to keep close watch, but even so, a few times she escaped, fumbling her way through the unfamiliar house. On one occasion she even threatened Mrs. Greenway with a poker from the hearth and was only prevented from doing real harm by little Tiso. Twice she managed to get all the way outside before she could be brought back. The fear of fire was always upon us, for if Bertha mindlessly dropped a candle or knocked out an ember from the fire and set the house ablaze, everyone could be burned alive in bed. Secretly, I worried as well about more deliberate destruction, for in her madness Bertha was insensible to the consequences of her acts.
Two or three more times she put her fists or an elbow through windows, cutting herself so badly once that we had to send for Mr. Carter in the middle of the night. On that occasion he spoke to me dolefully after bandaging her arm. “This cannot go on, Rochester. She will not improve. Ever. You do understand that? And she is a danger to herself and to others. You must find another place for her.”
“I cannot.” They would not take her at the Grimsby, and I could not allow myself to think of sending her anywhere else, where the practices were bound to be less humane.
“Have you thought of divorce?” Carter asked me once.
