We stopped for a few days in London, where I thought Adèle would feel at home, having lived in a city all her life, but she found it disagreeable—filthy and common—and she was not afraid to say so. Having just come from Paris, I had to admit I felt the same, and therefore as soon as I had completed my business, I hurried her on to Thornfield, accompanied by Sophie, the nurse. I had high hopes that Adèle would find the Hall as warm and inviting as I had as a child, and indeed she did. She ran from room to room when we first arrived, enthralled and impressed by the size of the place and by its furnishings. Adèle was, in so many ways, her mother’s daughter.
As soon as we arrived in England I tried teaching Adèle rudimentary English, for this was to be her language, but she said she found it “difficile et détonné,” and she refused even to try. Nevertheless, I went on speaking to her in English, which she sometimes pretended not to hear or understand, and she carried on her conversations almost totally with Sophie. I felt sorry for the child but also on occasion found her as aggravatingly silly as her mother had sometimes been. The sooner she made the best of her new situation, the better, and I tried to impress this on her as firmly as I could. It is possible that, on occasion, I was too gruff—as yet I had so little experience with children. Fortunately, once Adèle was at Thornfield, Mrs. Fairfax’s unassuming gentleness won first Sophie and then Adèle herself. And it did not hurt that Pilot was always ready for a retrieving game or a belly rub.
Mrs. Fairfax had the good sense to say nothing until we were alone, when she asked after Adèle’s provenance. “She is the daughter of a friend of mine, now recently deceased,” I responded. I reassured the widow that I expected to put Adèle into a school as soon as I found one suitable.
Mrs. Fairfax raised her eyebrows. “Is it indeed wise to send her off to school when she is so recently removed from all she knew, and where she does not even speak the language?”
I was not used to being questioned, and I am afraid I was rather harsh with my response. “It will be good for her, and God knows I cannot imagine having her here all the time.”
“If you will pardon my saying so—”
“I will not, as a matter of fact,” I snapped, and turned on my heel. I had thought, when I took Adèle on as my ward, that it would be merely a legality, a charitable act to keep her out of the clutches of anyone who would make her into a miniature strumpet. Why should she not be sent off to school? That was what my father had done with me, when I was not much older than Adèle was now, and that experience had turned out well enough.
The very next day, I paid a call on Everson for recommendations of a suitable school for Adèle, but he frowned when he heard that she spoke only French, and when I explained that she had been brought up in Paris and had some distinctly Parisian ways, he frowned further and suggested a governess instead.
A governess! What a terrible idea, I thought. Adèle at Thornfield, and Bertha upstairs? I remembered Tiso’s escaping Bertha’s chamber, exploring the attic storerooms—I remembered myself doing the same. Bertha’s chamber only yards away from where Adèle might innocently wander. Absolutely not! But when I visited several schools for young girls in the county, at each one I saw prim and neatly uniformed children, two to a desk, heads bent over their lessons. Much as I wished to see Adèle ensconced in such an ambience, it was plainly impossible to drop her into such a place now. I returned to Thornfield disappointed, and I called Mrs. Fairfax into my library that evening and allowed that it would indeed seem best for her to find a governess as soon as possible.
“I, sir?” she asked.
“Well,” I said, “who else is there?”
“Is that not your responsibility, as her guardian?” she responded.
“You are twice the guardian that I am,” I said, and I walked off. It was true; she had a way with Adèle that I could not fathom. Though Adèle spoke little English still, she chattered incessantly in French to Mrs. Fairfax, who would smile and nod and go about her business.
A week or two later Mrs. Fairfax came to me with a notice from the Herald—a young lady, an experienced teacher, it seemed, looking for a position with a family. Mrs. Fairfax appeared content with the applicant’s qualifications, and thus I considered the matter closed. I would be coming and going and have little contact with any of the women now suddenly filling my Hall.
* * *
By mid-August, half the titled folk and the gentry of England are in Scotland for the grouse hunting, and when that is finished they return for the start of partridge season, then pheasants. And lastly, in November, comes the fox hunting. It is a movable party in which I had sometimes participated, the whole group residing for a time at one manor. That year, I had already missed the grouse, but I was back at Thornfield for the partridges, and decided to join.
Lord and Lady Ingram of Ingram Park were hosting; their eldest daughter, Blanche, seemed a more interesting and complex young woman than many others in the neighborhood. She could shoot with the best of the party and she sat a horse as well as any man. She was beautiful too, and her gregarious nature perfectly masked my own disinterest in the gossip that is so common in those circles. In short, though I resisted seeing it at the time, she complemented the man I had become.
The hunts were grand indeed, and a welcome distraction from the vexations back at Thornfield. I was able to give a good accounting of myself, though Miss Ingram frequently teased me that my mount was lacking in the steel and daring of her own. The horse was not, she insisted, acceptable for a man like me, for he sometimes hesitated at the hedgerows and shied away when other riders veered too close. What kind of man, exactly, did she think I was? I asked, laughing. She replied, with a wink, that she expected me to have charge of my steed.
As we exchanged banter, I noticed that the other young ladies had fallen back in deference to her supposed claim on my affections. I had no intention of taking any of it too seriously, though I did find it amusing that she was a dark-haired Amazon, a veritable Greek statue of womanhood, just as Bertha and Giacinta had been. I told myself I must be destined to form attractions to such sensual women.
The truth was, I wanted neither Miss Ingram nor any other woman in a serious way. I had lost any conviction that I would ever find a true companion, and I was certainly in no position to be courting someone so close to Thornfield. Bertha’s existence made marriage in England impossible; in fact her mere presence at Thornfield made my own happiness equally elusive. Only distance had given me the freedom I needed to keep my own mind still.
Yet, I sometimes wondered, what was there for me anywhere—at Thornfield or abroad? I had long ago grown tired of the life I’d led in Europe, and my life in England had been constricted to such surface pleasures as hunts and parties and meaningless conversations.
But before the hunts had ended, a letter for me arrived, sent over from Thornfield-Hall. It was from Geoffrey Osmon, writing that he was back in England for a while and would like to meet with me in January, if that was agreeable. It was by then a few years since abolition in Jamaica, and from all reports Valley View had weathered it fairly well. Many of the former slaves had stayed on, receiving payment now for their labor, and I assumed Osmon’s presence in England meant he was ready to move on. At any rate, I was pleased at the thought of seeing him again and learning how he was faring. I responded to his address in London, asking if he could meet me at Newmarket, just after the first of the year, for I had a plan in mind.