I turned to leave, but he stopped me at the door. “Surely you have thought this through. If he had proof of marriage between his father and your wife, he inherits all that had been your brother’s.”
“I know that full well,” I said. Everson said nothing in response to that. It occurred to me that he might be surprised that I would be willing to trade Thornfield to secure the hand of Blanche Ingram; he seemed on the verge of advising me against such a colossal mistake. I could not help but smile to myself, a little, as I took my leave.
Three days later the four of us met in Everson’s office, Gerald looking nervous and I feeling nervous. This meeting would seal my fate one way or the other; it was only with determination that I could hold my thoughts together.
Gerald’s solicitor was a large man with rumpled clothing and a full shock of black hair, appearing more like a cottager than a solicitor, but Everson had warned me that he had a sharp mind. The two of them—Gerald and Mr. Ramsdell—arrived exactly on the dot of ten, and Everson got right to the point: “I understand you have letters proving Rowland Rochester’s marriage to Bertha Antoinetta Mason,” he said.
“We do,” Mr. Ramsdell replied.
“Let us see them.”
Ramsdell withdrew from a portfolio two letters, carefully unfolded them, and placed them on Everson’s desk. I could not restrain myself from moving closer that I might see them as well.
The first, dated 18 June 1809, read:
My dear Jonas,
I am pleased to write to you that of course I maintain my intention to conclude the arrangements I made with you for the benefit of both our families, especially your daughter, Bertha Antoinetta. My son is already on his way to Jamaica and will soon arrive, and by God’s will this business will be finished shortly.
I trust that all is well with you and your family.
Yours faithfully,
George Howell Rochester, Esq.
And the second, dated 12 February 1810:
My dear Jonas,
I have now received a letter from my son, reporting that the wedding has taken place, and the two of them have made a home for themselves at Valley View. I cannot tell you of the pleasure I feel that this marriage has been achieved as we hoped and planned, and I feel now that I have upheld my end of the arrangement.
Yours faithfully,
George Howell Rochester
They were short letters—shorter than I would have expected—but clearly the two of them indicated a marriage between my father’s son (and by the dates, it could only have been Rowland) and Jonas Mason’s only daughter.
I turned to Everson, and he was already staring at me. “What do you think?” he asked. “Might they be genuine?”
I pulled out three letters that I possessed in my father’s own hand and laid them down beside the others. There was no doubt of it: the same kind of vellum my father always used, and the handwriting an exact match.
“It seems so,” I said, hardly able to believe it. Why had no one objected to my marriage at the time, if Bertha and Rowland were already wed? Why would Jonas and my father have both blessed it—indeed, encouraged it?
“So you consider this proof?” Gerald asked.
“That’s for the court to decide,” Everson responded, “but…”
“But?” I asked.
“One never knows,” he said.
I felt suddenly cold, unable to fully comprehend what had just passed. Everson nodded and began refolding the letters, and Ramsdell reached for them, but suddenly I stopped them both. “Wait,” I said. “Let me see them once more.”
The letters were laid out again on Everson’s desk and I examined them more carefully. Suddenly, I, who had been a copier of letters in my childhood, realized two things simultaneously: one, that these letters of Gerald’s were falsified. My father’s letters never included the full date, and the dates here were in a subtly different pen, a different hand. Gerald, or someone looking out for his interests, must have added the dates to make these letters a clearer proof.
But my attention was drawn even more strikingly to the second realization: the promises referred to between my father and Jonas. If the dates had been falsified—and I now was convinced that they had been—then there could be only one meaning to the words: there had been an agreement between Jonas and my father, a long-term arrangement that played out only when I arrived in Jamaica, one that culminated in my blind marriage to the young woman with whom my brother had, earlier, fathered a bastard child.
My arrival in Jamaica had apparently been planned as an arrangement to clean up my brother’s indiscretion, my own life a payment into the account of my brother’s irresponsibility. God, my whole life…?