Edward
I am a murderer. Under French law, at least. In defense of my honor I have killed. I will never hear her again, or hold in my arms the daughter of freedom who taught me to love slavery. She will turn from me and curl her lip in contempt. “Go back to your cold country—go back, go back!” And, like the cry of the bird that flies over the moor and awaits our guns when August comes, her voice sounds in my ears as I walk about the house, preparing myself for an influx of visitors. Your house and your land are all you Englishmen care for, so the voice goes on, the voice that can take on a hundred shades, become the voice of tragic queen and simple comédienne, of femme savante or revolutionary heroine. Your castle, your estates…Go back…
Now I have little to do but wait for death. My life is laid out before me, like the great tessellated marble floor in the Hall of this mansion I never expected to inherit: the banquets, the long spells of solitude, the hunting parties, and the rest. Twice a year I will travel to my more distant farms, then up to Scotland to visit the Duke of This and the Earl of That, listening in long, dark nights to the sound of their wailing bagpipe music against the tumble of brown waterfalls. All my visits will be to foreign places, places foreign to my heart. And on my arm will be a wife more foreign to me than my grande passion, my belle Céline, could ever prove to be.
For I must marry, or I will go mad.
As luck will have it, there will be two arrivals today at Thornfield Hall. One, my intended bride, comes before noon. We shall walk together in the long hazel avenue where the leaves are green and the bleakness of the surrounding countryside concealed. “How I hate the bareness of the place you describe to me!” Céline would cry as we lay together in the white villa by the sea, the mimosa beyond the window a veil of yellow, the bright blossoms dancing with their feathery leaves as if the grim north of my country were no more than a dream. “I will never come and live there with you. Why don’t you sell everything and come permanently to France?”
I forget, in my remembering, the young woman who comes today. I place us together in my imagination on a rugged hill, on the acres Céline rightly accuses me of owning, while the people in my poorly farmed heather country are fortunate if they can find enough to eat. (Yet she doesn’t mind the diamonds and cashmeres I buy her with the rents from this accursed land, or the railway stock from the great steel tracks that will cross the perimeter of the estate. Nor the lands in Trinidad that supply the fortune squandered on the conservatory in Paris before I destroyed it. Like so many others, this is a subject on which I cannot dwell.)
Where was I—if not with Céline Varens, in the abolished kingdom that once was ours? I am more truly there than here, so why did I not sell all, as she insisted? Why am I in this godforsaken place, as she would doubtless find it? Why, when I saw the old woman on the heath like the witches who appeared to Macbeth at Forres, did I take no heed of her warning—that my lands would claim me in the end and the ghost of my bride would bring me great unhappiness? I was young and strong then: I should have gone. But I stayed, triumphant at my father’s and brother’s sudden deaths. I had never anticipated riches, yet I could buy any woman I wanted, and all the luxuries she called for. It was heady stuff for a younger son, and I availed myself of the advantages of my new position. For a milord abroad, as I was to find in Italy with Giacinta and in Germany with Clara, is treated as a little king. He is offered all the treasures of Europe. And if the slave trade in which my late father dealt so profitably has now been ruled unlawful, then the women of Europe are well prepared to make up the deficit. They’d sell their souls—with the exception of Céline, of course, with the exception of Céline—to become mistress of Thornfield Hall. Yet I turned them all down, these willing slaves. I returned here alone, a murderer.
It does not fall to many men to dispose of one wife in order to marry another. “You’d better come upstairs, sir,” said Grace Poole at dawn on the day I heard my new bride would come. And I woke before her hand touched my shoulder, so great had been my dread at the knowledge of my impending nuptials spreading through the house. Grace would never tell her charge, naturally—but Leah and the other servants: who can say? I had envisaged it often: the chapel, the old Dowager Ingram in her pew, the stately bride I could almost mistake, as I turned impatient from my place by the altar, for the tall, dark woman I had first married.
Then the sudden silence, as strong as the wind on bright October days that sweeps the moor and scatters leaves along the valleys, crisp, unready to die. The silence—then the murmur, the shuffle of feet drawn in, the rush of skirts along the aisle. The red dress, my God, the red dress. It runs like flames, its wearer a line of fire that makes straight for the table where the holy sacrament is laid out. How can I stop her, this woman who haunts the place as the old witch once said she would? But there is no time to lose. “Come up, sir,” Grace Poole says. “We must do something before the ladies are here.” And I follow Grace, for she is right. We must do something, and do it now.
What can I say, what can I do in expiation for the sins committed first in my name and then by myself, for the thirty pieces of silver, the thirty thousand pounds with which my poor Antoinette bought me? For the money has bought her only a cage, and like a tropical bird she is frozen to her perch, high above the hum of the household she should by rights have organized and controlled. How can I make reparation to a woman who has lost her mind, who suffers and then forgets, grows violent and then despairs, all in a cloud of oblivion—only on occasion shot through with lucid thought? I cannot love her, nor she me. But she will possess me to the end, if I do not marry and lead a life as other men. The Ingram lands adjoin Thornfield Hall. I’ll march with you, dear Blanche; we’ll grow rich together.
Already, as I climb to the third story of the house where I saw early on in our honeymoon that the poor Creole would have no choice but to spend her days, I am forced once again to recognize the reality of my life—Grace Poole will see to it! There can be neither passion nor light for you, her solemn tread says, as she mounts the last, twisting step; take your dreams of the Frenchwoman and burn them. You need to marry and produce an heir.
It is too late now for me to return to that state of innocence—ignorance, Céline would say—in which I dwelled when my father and brother lived and I had little to look forward to but church or army, refuge or barracks for a younger son. I was reared by beating and neglect; my mother, who died before I grew, was temperamentally incapable of love. My elder brother, Rowland, secure in his inheritance, bullied me pitilessly. I passed my days on the moor, shooting and hunting. “You were reared to kill,” Céline said as we sat one day in the garden of the house I built for her, the house where the scents from the mountains of the Alpes-Maritimes lingered until late among the flowers she grew there. “The birds and beasts you slaughtered were born to die a violent death, and you were from birth their executioner.” And Céline, seeing me roll my eyes in astonishment at her strange ideas, laughed and rose from the table where we sat over peaches and wine. “One day,” she said, “you will understand. When you come to this country to live, and meet those who see the truth and continue the fight for liberty and justice.” But these words meant nothing to me then; and now that I understand them, it is too late. I am a murderer and never can return to France. I have no choice but to reflect, as I follow the grim figure of Grace Poole ever upward, that the heiress I betrayed enjoys a brilliant revenge. For even Céline could not have heard the secret of my West Indian marriage. And if she had discovered it, what would she have thought of me then? It is a secret I must carry to the grave—and now the only question is, as I know too well, whether the grave will prove to be Antoinette’s or mine.
I cannot give details of my visits to my wife. As ever before, the sheer inhumanity of her treatment appalls me. But money handed over to Grace Poole finds its way to drink and a threatening scowl if I complain. Grace holds my future, as well as my insufferable present, in her hands. No hint of the presence of Bertha, as once I called my wife, can become known. Mrs. F, my housekeeper, is obliging enough to tell visitors a ghost haunts Thornfield Hall; and so indeed it does.
I said I would not describe a visit to my wife, and the reason is simple, though I cannot dare to breathe it, for fear that the contrary of what I found on the third story of my accursed inheritance yet proves the case.
I opened the steel door, the door to which only I possess a key, as Grace stood back, her foul body stink almost overcoming me in the low-ceilinged, narrow passage of the attic. I smelled gin, and the sourness that comes from a diet of cabbage, bread, and little else. It is long since I insisted my Antoinette should eat well, as once we had together, on that island in the Windwards where the breeze blows soft, laden with spices and hibiscus, a feast to stomach, ear, and eye. But Grace disobeys me—she knows she can—and I have suspicions that my poor mad wife goes hungry if she refuses the same dreary diet as her wardress. She is thin enough, God knows. And it was the sight of her I had come to dread more than any other part of my ordeal of a life here at Thornfield Hall. Thin, spectral—she is indeed the ghost of our first days of love. Her floating mind, so desperately seeking for a stable meaning in the world, is the opposite exactly of Céline’s—for Céline, whose perfect balance could be savored as she rode bareback or danced across the wire stretched high above the ring, has reason and clarity as her guides, and this starveling, stumbling creature has none. Oh, if I could only have met Céline Varens when I was still young and unmarried! All the plans made by my gold-hungry father would have come to nothing. I would have lived out under the stars, traveling with the little provincial circus Céline loved to work with through the summer months. I would have swept and carried for her, poor as a stable lad.
This is not to the point—nor, as I suspect when the wild longings for my brave actress seize me, would they be believed by such as Grace Poole, who stares suspiciously at me as I walk past her antechamber and into the room with beams as low and dark as the Thornfield forest in which Antoinette always refused to walk. Here I’m as greedy, as determined to take the best for myself as my own father was, in the eyes of the servants, I’ve no doubt; why else, otherwise, would I wed Blanche Ingram, as everyone knows I mean to do? She is majestic certainly, but there are prettier and pleasanter about. I must be after her dowry, and the estate that marches with mine—and to Grace (and to my cousin, Mrs. Fairfax, though we never speak of what she must surely be aware of) I must seem a powerfully avaricious man, to take money from two brides in a row. So much for your dream of living as a stable lad, I can feel Grace Poole thinking, as if the drunken, illiterate woman could read my mind.
The table where my wife’s keeper sits day and night is as it always is, that is, quite bare except for a bottle of porter and a glass. There is no other furniture, for Antoinette has in the past attempted to overthrow the press, where her old fine clothes, her red dress among them, hung; and Grace with my consent had this removed, along with the garments and their memories. There is one chair only, where Grace sits at the table, sleeping when she must, with her head on her hands. It takes me several seconds to recognize—in this mean, raftered room where straw is the sole floor covering and the view, as the attic windows are small and high, is of the narrow room behind, containing a single trundle bed—that the chair has been overturned and the bed (though I thought at first I must be mistaken, as there is no natural light to speak of in this cell) is without an occupant. I stare as stupidly at Grace Poole as she stares at me. It is impossible—yet it is what we have both most feared at Thornfield Hall. Antoinette—Bertha—my wife, has escaped, has disappeared into the house and is at large. Blanche Ingram, her mother, and her friends appear within the hour. And yet, as this foolish, evil-smelling woman and I both know, this was bound one day to occur, for all the pains we take to keep the door locked and the room padded to subdue the sound. The poor, demented creature dreamed only of escape. I cannot record my feelings on this here.
I descend the main staircase into the great hall with a heavy heart. (Grace, on coming to the first-floor landing, where are the master bedroom and the suites that will be Blanche and Lady Ingram’s, has taken the back stairs, down to the servants’ quarters. She fears for her job. I pay her double to keep quiet; now I shall have to triple her pay.) What would Céline do now? I ask myself; how would her philosophy have advised her in circumstances as unutterable as mine? “All men are born equal,” said she as we lay in the quaint little house in Montparnasse I bought and furnished for her with such care—she telling all that she paid rent to a Monsieur Graff: she was ever the independent woman, Céline, and she liked to have her bread buttered on both sides. “Women have rights just as men do.” And I think, what rights are these, then? Are not my chains, for all my lands and wealth, more oppressive than any poor man’s? And I reach the Hall fuming at Céline, as I so often did when we were lovers. She would have insisted, very probably, that poor mad Bertha had the right to roam over my house as she would, disturbing the servants and the guests.
But Céline is not with me now, and she never will be again. Damn her, that even now my precious time is taken up in dreaming of a lost past, when a past more pernicious, more imminently damaging to my interests, walks murderously here. Curse the woman who preached freedom and brought me only servitude. For the last time—as I see Leah, guided by Grace Poole, scamper with a frightened face from the stone stairs to the lower floor into a corner of the Hall (what has Grace told her? forced finally to admit there is a lunatic about?)—for the last time I make the great effort of will to expunge La Varens forever from my mind. She is dead to me—dead, dead.
Then as I see Grace and Leah in fact go to the wide door, the door that stands between Thornfield Hall and the outside world, and a loud banging sounds against the studded nails and planks of old oak, I consign Céline forever to a well-merited oblivion. For this must be the Ingram party, come early, due to Blanche’s eagerness to see the man she knows will propose before the week is out. Her mother, decked in pearls and diamonds, will shamelessly forecast the splendid gifts I shall promise to my bride. And they will bring with them a retinue—of young men as brainless as Céline (here I repeat, I will not think of her) assumes the rich, sporting Englishmen to be. “A rosbif, like you, Edouard!” her teasing voice sings in my ears. Her greatest contempt would be reserved for the young women, friends of my intended wife, and for their acceptance of their narrow lives. All these parasites will now descend on me, demanding hospitality, in one case devotion, even love. Céline, your spirit walks this house as my wife, my true wife. I cannot live without you. Go back, you said—but I will leave Thornfield Hall and come secretly to France, to live alone with memories of you, if these are all I am permitted to call my own. Let them arrest me and throw me into jail, may they send me to the guillotine for my crime. But I know, as Blanche Ingram approaches the heart of Thornfield Hall—my soul, the citadel of my youth, my future, and my past—that I cannot marry her and live an honest life.
The great door into the Hall swings open. John the footman appears, and Leah shrinks away into the shadows once more, while Grace, still seeking her quarry, I suppose, has vanished in the direction of the upper stories. Ah, I find myself thinking in the new, wild freedom my acceptance of the truth has at last brought to me, let the wretched specter of Antoinette appear now, just as the great families of Yorkshire come here for their hunting and cards and theatrical shows. Let them see the Creole from the islands where their fathers, like mine, traded in human cargo and paid with the evil profits for their snuffboxes, lace handkerchiefs, and the rest. Antoinette may be white—but she bears the marks of the slavery I imposed on her, and of my own cruel repudiation of her, too. Lords and ladies, do you wish to see your Blanche reduced to this?
The wide door, when it opens fully at last, does not reveal the neighboring gentry. A child stands on the threshold, dazed. She looks around her, then sees me and runs into my arms.
At first, I confess, I saw Céline there, a tiny woman, shrunk by magic to a fairy’s size. The face—the smiling, dimpled face—the beauty, all miniature; and I thought I saw her fly to me, as she did in the circus in those far-off summer months. “This is a big house, monsieur,” the child-woman cries out, as the household crowds around to stare at the apparition. And, as if to confirm my first fanciful idea, the little creature then asks if she would be allowed to fly, in a salle as grande as this. “I have the wings, Papa. Do you like to see?”