“He’s at the Grimsby Retreat. He has the care of the workhorses there. Mr. Holdredge gave him the recommendation.”
“The Grimsby Retreat?”
“I suppose you would have been too young to know of it. It’s a place started by the Quakers, a kind of madhouse, but…designed, as they say, for ‘moral treatment’ of the mad, whatever that should mean. There is a farm there, and gardens which are supposed to help heal sick minds, though heaven knows if it works or not.”
“And you,” I said to Gracie, taking a step closer, still attempting friendliness, “do you work here?”
She stepped back, as if I had raised a hand in threat.
“She has—” Cook began. I caught a quick movement at the corner of my eye, but when I turned, Mrs. Knox stood as still as a stone.
“Perhaps you could find a place for her here,” I barged on.
“I think perhaps not,” Mrs. Knox said. Though her voice was soft, her words were firm.
I insisted on having tea that evening in the kitchen, as I so often had done as a child. Holdredge joined us, and they asked me of my life and seemed impressed that I was a kind of assistant to the owner of a woolen mill. I am afraid I rather inflated my importance at Maysbeck Mill, but it seemed to please them that I could make such a good account of my life. Nothing further was said among us of Rowland. It was, truly, like being home again.
I did not see Gracie again during my brief stay at Thornfield, and I had little occasion to think of her. We had been playmates as children, but we were no longer children.
Mrs. Wilson and I rode back to Maysbeck in silence. She was clearly distraught about her sister, and I hardly knew what to say. At first I asked if she had had a pleasant time, knowing that it could not have been anyone’s idea of pleasant, but that is the sort of thing one asks after a visit and I thought I should do so regardless of the situation. She barely responded, turning her head toward the window and closing her eyes. She didn’t say another word.
Once home, she removed her bonnet and trudged up to her room. Mr. Wilson would soon be back from the mill, so I did not go there. Instead, I went into the parlor and tried to read the newspaper, though my own thoughts ran far from the page. I realized it had not been difficult at all to go to Thornfield, and I was no sooner back than I was thinking of how to go again. But as easy as it had been this time, it seemed still a difficulty beyond comprehension: how would I find the time and how would I find the money?
When Mr. Wilson arrived, he stuck his head into the parlor and saw me and frowned. “You have returned, I see,” he said.
“Just, sir,” I said. “Mrs. Wilson has gone to her room, I believe. The trip was a difficult one for her.” I said no more and he asked nothing, just turned, and with a kind of harrumph he mounted the stairs.
Some time later, I heard the housekeeper climb the stairs to knock and announce tea, but she came down almost immediately and told me in a softer voice than usual that tea was served in the dining room and not to wait for the mister and missus. I did not take the newspaper with me; it is bad manners to read and dine, even if one is alone, and I was barely able to focus my mind anyway.
I did not see Mr. Wilson again that evening, but in the morning, he was, as usual, already at breakfast when I came down. He did not glance up from buttering his toast when I greeted him, but he did ask, “You met Mrs. Wilson’s sister, I understand?”
“Miss Little, yes, sir, I did.”
He spooned a dab of marmalade on a corner of the toast, then, his eyes on me, he asked, “And how did she seem?”
I paused before responding. “Of course I met her only briefly,” I equivocated. And then I added, “Perhaps Mrs. Wilson told you that her sister seemed unable to abide my presence. I did not stay there at her house.”
“She told me.” His eyes had not left my face, and I knew he expected more of me than I had already given. But dare I say that the woman had not seemed of sound mind? That was not something one would blithely say to the person’s relation.
“Perhaps her distress was due to my having the same name as their unfortunate brother,” I suggested. “Perhaps the memory was too much—”
“That was all? There was nothing more?”
I wished I knew what else Mrs. Wilson had told him, but the fact that they had talked in private the whole evening was enough for me to know that she must have unburdened herself to him quite completely. “She seemed…quite fragile of mind,” I ventured. “She did not at first recognize her sister, and when Mrs. Wilson told her who she was and mentioned your name as well, she seemed not to know who you were—who John Wilson was. I am sorry that I could not have observed her further, but she was adamant that I leave. And when I returned, she was not in sight.”