Mr. Rochester(15)

“It does no good to cry,” Carrot said.

“Maybe he’s lonely,” I whispered.

“Everybody gets lonely, Jam,” Carrot retorted. Then he repeated himself in a louder voice, “Everybody gets lonely. You have to play the cards you were dealt.”

The shaking of the mattress stopped and in the silence I could hear the boy’s breathing. “Does he beat us?” he asked softly after a few moments.

“Mr. Lincoln?” I asked, astonished.

“Of course not,” Carrot said. “What kind of place do you think this is?”

“The last place vey did. Mr. Bertrand and his wife boaf.”

I felt the room pressing in on me.

“For what?” Carrot asked.

“For anyfing. For not having clean cloves, but it’s hard to get vem clean in such icy water and wifout soap. For eating more van our share. For asking to go to the privy in the middle of a lesson. For shivering in the cold; for not knowing an answer to a question.”

“He doesn’t beat us,” I assured him. “No matter what, he doesn’t.”

Carrot laughed. “He sits in his chair from the moment he gets out of bed in the morning until the moment he goes back at night. He hasn’t the energy to beat anyone.”

“He’s not that kind of man,” I said.

“Well, ven, what kind is he?” the boy asked.

There was a silence while Carrot and I considered that. “He knows what boys like,” Carrot said after a while.

“He knows most of what boys like,” I amended.

The boy turned over onto his back, and I could imagine him staring at the ceiling.

“You’ll be all right,” I said.

But he was not. He was the most fearful person I had ever met—or have since. Mr. Lincoln called him “Mouse,” and perhaps it was not the kindest name, but it was not the worst he could have chosen. Despite our assurances, Mouse was terrified of doing something wrong, of being punished, of being sent away. But in the end, he went on his own, barely three months after he had come.





For a while after Touch left, he wrote us occasional letters, Mr. Lincoln reading them briskly after North had brought the mail. I would have liked to see them for myself, but Mr. Lincoln considered them his own property and kept them in his room. I responded every time nevertheless, asking each time for a return letter to be sent in my own name, but perhaps Touch never really understood how different life at Black Hill was without him. He was busy in his own world of family and his new tutor, who came to the vicarage and taught both boys, and then stayed on later to lecture Touch in Greek. Greek? I had asked once, and Mr. Lincoln gave me a scowl and muttered that a vicar needed to know the language so that he could read the Bible as God had written it. But I never knew whether he was angry because he hadn’t the skill to teach Greek well enough to suit Touch’s father or if it was because he did not think Touch suited to be a vicar.

In the months and years after Touch’s departure, boys came and went, usually three or four of us with Mr. Lincoln at any one time, always someone new trying to learn the languages I now spoke nearly fluently, or trying to understand the orders of battle or to compute the range of a cannon, but there was never anyone new with whom I felt as close as I had with Touch. Nor was there anyone who seemed more like an older brother—in all kinds of ways—than Carrot. And there was also never anyone, other than I, who never went home for any holiday.





Chapter 5



Carrot left the year I turned twelve. He was fifteen then, and he departed in high glee at the prospect of coming under his father’s care at last. I could not imagine how life at Black Hill would be without him. I had never gotten over the loss of Touch, and now, with Carrot gone as well, I felt I was really on my own.

By that time, I had spent a third of my life at Black Hill, and much more time with Mr. Lincoln than I had ever spent with any member of my own family. I was thoroughly used to his ways. He could be stern, but occasionally one could catch a knowing glance or a proud, subtle smile when one had done an especially good job.

Perhaps because I had lost both Touch and Carrot, it was in that year that I became more interested in modern, everyday life, as opposed to historic battles and heroes and explorations. Sometimes I managed to get my hands on a newspaper of Mr. Lincoln’s before he removed it to the forbidden territory of his own room. He did not encourage us to read newspapers; it was as if there was no reason for us to study a subject that did not appear in a book. Nevertheless, he answered my questions the few times I put one to him, more generously if he could illustrate his response with a map. Most often, as he had done on my very first day, he would send me to his library to discover the information for myself. But I was intensely curious to know what real life was like for real people in our modern times, for I was beginning to understand that I had never actually experienced such a thing.