Mr. Rochester(22)

After a time, I was given other jobs as well, even taking over some of the tally work from Mr. Wrisley. I was no end of proud of myself, and I kept the tally books as neatly and as perfectly calculated as anyone could wish. But that kind of work meant less time spent on the floor of the mill, and I had by then noticed one particular girl. I had not even seen a girl when I was at Black Hill, and, earlier, as a young boy at Thornfield I had occasionally played with Gracie, the older sister of one of the stableboys, but this was different. This girl was my own age or thereabouts, with wheat-colored hair, strands of which sometimes escaped from the mobcap she always wore, and the lightest blue eyes I had ever seen before or since. She worked in the sorting crib, her quick hands adept at classing the bales as they were brought into the mill, and, as well, she combed the raw wool with heated combs into the sliver with which the spinning process began. I don’t know what attracted me to her, except that she seemed different from the others. None of the boys would have anything to do with me, Mr. Wrisley was twenty years older than I, and Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, while kind, were even older. I yearned for a companion.

Weeks went by as I tried to catch her eye, further weeks while I imagined all sorts of ways in which I might meet up with her “by accident” away from the mill, and as time passed, I became more and more focused on her, on the thought of talking with her, on the thought, to tell the truth, of just being with her. And then Mrs. Wilson, unwittingly, showed me the way. We had eaten raisin tea cakes one evening, and I had had more than my share. In the morning Mrs. Wilson sidled up to me, put an arm around my waist, and smiled at me the way she sometimes did, thinking perhaps of her dead brother, Eddie. She slipped a hand into my jacket pocket. “A special treat,” she whispered.

But when I arrived at the countinghouse and put my hand into my pocket, I found she had secreted not one but two tea cakes there, and immediately I began to imagine how I might present my gift to Alma—for that was the girl’s name—and I pictured her soft lips spreading into a smile.

It was afternoon before I could make an excuse to go to the sorting crib, where in my fantasies she always was waiting for me. But when I found her, she had her hands deep into a bale of wool. Two or three wool brokers were standing around aimlessly, waiting for the tally, which they could exchange at the countinghouse for credit.

“Good afternoon, Alma,” I said. It was the first time I had spoken directly to her.

She paused and glanced up, confused and seemingly dismayed.

Nevertheless, I grinned, just as I had imagined I would do. “Good afternoon,” I said again.

“Good afternoon, sir,” she whispered.

“Not ‘sir,’” I said. “Edward.”

She stared down at her hands, saying nothing more. I was suddenly aware that the men were watching us.

“You could call me Edward,” I said softly, hoping they didn’t hear.

Still she said nothing, nor did she look up, but she did turn an unnerving shade of red.

“I have something,” I murmured, pulling out the cloth-wrapped packet. “Would you like a tea cake?”

“No, sir,” she whispered, her face still turned away. “No, thank you.”

“I have two. I can’t eat them both.” I pulled open the packet so that she could see, but she didn’t look.

“I will have one and you may take the other.” I made a big show of withdrawing one tea cake and taking a bite, but it was all lost on her because she still wasn’t watching.

“Well then,” I said, uncertain of my next move. My daydreams had not anticipated this lack of response. Or for an audience of men, for that matter, who stared stone-faced at me. In my imagination, Alma would by now have succumbed to my blandishments, but now I hardly knew what to do. “Well then,” I said again, “I will just leave it here for when it suits you to eat it.” And I beat a retreat, uncertain what else I could have done or said, but quite sure that this time, at least, there was nothing else left for me. When next I came to the sorting crib, the tea cake was gone and the cloth neatly folded where I was sure to see it.

From time to time, I left a few more gifts for her: a raisin bun, a raspberry tart. Always they disappeared, and though I had no way of knowing who was benefiting from my generosity, I convinced myself it was Alma. After a while, I stopped bringing those tokens and indeed stopped going to the sorting crib at all unless it was absolutely necessary—when in fact it almost never had been necessary. If I happened to come into close proximity to her, I would nod and hurry on, as if a response from her was not only not needed, but neither expected nor even desired. In short, in my clumsy way, I tried to let her think that I had lost all interest. But in fact, it was all I could do to keep myself from stopping to say a word, to hear her voice, to gaze into those blue eyes. Her beauty was all I knew of her, but it would not let me go.