My Mr. Rochester 1(33)

“Exactly! I thought I’d be praised for good management. Mr. Rochester ordered everyone hired back and their relatives too if they needed work. He said Thornfield must be kept spotless and ready. That he might descend upon us at any moment with a party of Anointed Elders and their ladies and retinue of politicians and vicars and bishops, and wouldn’t we be ashamed if all wasn’t as it should be.”

I smiled and said nothing but held to my first opinion. Mr. Rochester was an extravagant master. And an eccentric one if he took his duty to provide good employment so seriously.

“But do you know? He’s never once done as he threatened.” She looked at me with wonder. We live quite alone at Thornfield. It’s a world unto itself.”

Indeed it felt different than any place I’d lived. Thornfield Hall seemed a living thing with its own personality, kept in a state of suspended animation.

“Is Mr. Rochester an Anointed Elder then?” I said.

“No, he isn’t married. The Righteous designation came when his grandfather built Thornfield just after the Great Secession. Mr. Rochester’s older brother inherited, but that poor man and his wife died in a measles outbreak.”

“Horrible disease,” I muttered. “Were you here then?”

“Not yet. My husband was living then, but the measles took him too. Our Mr. Rochester heard of my loss not long after he inherited and asked me to come run Thornfield for him. It will be ten years next spring, and I believe he still grieves for his brother and sister-in-law. You’ll understand how relieved I was to read in your qualifications that you’ve been vaccinated. Mr. Rochester insists on it for everyone on the estate. No, Mr. Rochester may appear peculiar, but allowances must be made for his sorrows. He’s a good master, for all that we so rarely see him.”

We’d reached the wing where she and I had our rooms. My door was the first we came to on the left. “I’m here,” Mrs. Fairfax said at a second door on the left. We started back, and she pointed out the only door across the corridor, an equal distance between her room and mine. “Mr. Rochester sleeps here when he’s at Thornfield.”

We’d passed my room again and were near the end of the corridor when Mrs. Fairfax looked at me sideways. She hesitated, and with an impish smile pushed against the wood-panels on Mr. Rochester’s side of the wall.

A door popped open. Mrs. Fairfax opened it further, a twinkle in her eye. For an instant I saw the playful child she once must have been. “I’ll show you my favorite view.”

I followed her into the dark small space and up a narrow stairway.

“Mrs. Fairfax, this is wonderful!” I stood at the parapet at the edge of the roof. I could see Millcote in the distance to the east, the gryphon gates at the end of the drive, and the road that led away from Thornfield up the hill to the west.

Mrs. Fairfax said, “I always think if there were a ghost at Thornfield Hall, this would be its haunt.”

“Then you have no ghost,” I said. “How sad is that?” My words recalled Georgiana’s. You might encounter no man at Thornfield—how sad would that be?

“None that I know of.” Mrs. Fairfax chuckled.

“Is that Thornfield’s church?” Near the top of the hill, the hour tolled from the white-washed belfry of a small church.

“It is. Mr. Wood gives very nice, very short sermons.”

I was going to like Mrs. Fairfax.

A servant must have closed the secret door at the bottom of the stairs, for coming down again there was no light. We descended the stairway carefully with only the feel of the wall for a guide. A few treads down, I caught my breath. The woman’s wail from my dream sounded from somewhere in the house.

The sound of Mrs. Fairfax’s footsteps continued unaltered, as if she’d heard nothing. When she opened the door to the corridor, the cry changed to loud and coarse laughter. The light of day streamed in, and I easily found my way down to her.

“Didn’t you hear that?” I asked.

“What is it?” she said. “What did you hear?”

“Someone crying. Or laughing, I think.” Now I felt foolish, and I was grateful Mrs. Fairfax didn’t ridicule me.

“Oh, I’m a little hard of hearing, my dear,” she said. “I suppose it’s a blessing in this old house. I’m sure it makes plenty of noises. You heard one of the servants,” she answered. “Most likely Grace Poole.”

“You didn’t hear her at all?”

“No, but I’m sure you did. She’s a special hire, another of Mr. Rochester’s projects.”

I felt sure she wanted to add like Adele but thought better of it.