Mr. Rochester(26)

“What would you propose?” he asked. “She’s in Harrogate. We are here.”

“I feel I must at least go and see her,” she countered, “see if she is really as Mrs. Brewer reports. And Harrogate is not so very far away.”

“The better part of a day’s travel,” he said. “You are too frail as well to make the journey on your own, and I cannot go with you. I have commitments here. Two days away at the very least; no, it would be impossible for me to make such a trip until after the first of the year. And even so—”

“I could go,” I offered. “I could accompany Mrs. Wilson.”

Mr. Wilson turned to me. “No, that’s impossible,” he said. “We are not…We could not…No, it’s impossible.”

“But—my sister. I cannot just ignore her,” Mrs. Wilson insisted.

“She has Mrs. Brewer,” he said. “And she has a housekeeper, has she not? What more does she need?”

“She needs me!” Mrs. Wilson responded, seeming to rise in stature even though she remained seated in her chair. “And I need to see—I need at least to see—that she is taken care of properly.”

Mr. Wilson sat back in his chair, the rum pudding forgotten, his mind working. “Would you be willing to go with her, Rochester?” he asked at last. “Would you make sure Mrs. Wilson arrives and returns safely? Would you ascertain if her sister is taken care of adequately?”

“Yes, sir, I would be glad to do that,” I replied, my mind calculating. Harrogate was more than a half day’s travel north of Maysbeck and not exactly on the way to Thornfield, which was mostly east, I was thinking, but it could be a start; surely I could work something out. I had a few pounds saved, and hoped they would be enough.

“Well then,” Mr. Wilson said, “you may write to Mrs. Brewer and tell her you are coming at the end of the week. But keep in mind, it is already the middle of November. The weather will not hold and I forbid you to get snowed in there in Harrogate. You may not stay longer than two days.”

“Yes, of course,” she said.

But I thought: Two days! How can I get from Harrogate to Thornfield and back in two days?





Chapter 8



We left Maysbeck on a bright, sunny morning. It had poured rain all the previous day and night, and now everything seemed washed clean—even, almost, the unpainted cottages and shacks of the bottoms. As the coach rumbled past, I gazed at them, hoping to see Alma once more, but I saw only crooked, narrow alleys, children shivering in filthy rags and adults bundled against the mid-November cold and damp, and lank dogs, snuffling amid the detritus. Soon Maysbeck was behind us and we were in the countryside, heading toward Harrogate, and I was imagining myself at Thornfield again, not just being in the place that I had last seen half a lifetime ago, but seeing as well Cook and Knox and all the rest, if they were still there. From Mr. Wilson’s gazetteer, I had surmised that with even the fastest of coaches it would take me a good day just to make the trip back and forth, without any time remaining to spend at Thornfield itself. I could not think of how I could persuade Mrs. Wilson to extend her stay in defiance of Mr. Wilson’s explicit order. And what excuse could I give for being gone so long?

Beside me, Mrs. Wilson was wrapped in her warmest cloak, and I had tucked a blanket around her besides. In less than an hour she was snoring lightly, her head fallen against my shoulder. The coach drove through countryside that looked so familiar that I could almost imagine Thornfield-Hall just over the next rise, with its fires lit and the silver and brass polished. Rowland might be there, hosting a party perhaps—indeed perhaps including Carrot—and an ache came into my gut, and a longing for Thornfield and for Carrot, both.

In Harrogate, at the inn where the coach left us, I hired a carriage to carry our luggage and ourselves to Mrs. Wilson’s sister’s house, which was not so very far away. Her sister’s companion, Mrs. Brewer, greeted us at the door in a flurry of excitement and confusion and, I noted, a kind of relief. She directed the porter upstairs with our bags, and she led us into a small but serviceable parlor, where Mrs. Wilson’s sister was seated close to the fire. At first she stared at us with a kind of detached curiosity, as if she had no idea who we were or why we had come, but on seeing her, Mrs. Wilson exclaimed, “Ella!” and hurried right over to give her a hug. The whole time she was being embraced, the sister gazed over Mrs. Wilson’s shoulder at me, as if she thought she ought to know me. Not knowing what else to do, I smiled at her and nodded, but her face remained blank.