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I did not know why I had come to this door when I should have been packing my few belongings and making ready to leave the man I had thought to marry. But there I was, and when I ordered Grace Poole to let me in, she obeyed. Thinking, certainly, that I was still going to soon be her mistress, and that to refuse me was like refusing Mr Rochester.
The room was dark and stuffy in the night, feeling more oppressive than it did in daylight, and I clutched tightly to the small candle Grace had given me. I could only remember the rage and violence of Edward’s wife, a woman strong enough to almost best him… but there were things I had to know, and she was the only one who could help me understand the truth. Mr. Rochester had given me one version of it, but certainly his wife had another, if she could talk at all. She had been as an animal earlier, but I remembered hearing her laugh and mutter to herself, in my early days in the house when I more often walked in the attic. And in all of her madness there had been method. That she had destroyed my veil, rather than tried to kill me, gave me some hope that she might be talked to.
When I came in, she was sitting at a small window, staring outside at the stars. She did not look so scary anymore, sitting still as statue of ebony, and when she was not trying to attack and kill, there was still remnants of a beauty to her that years of unrest had not destroyed yet. It was not so difficult now to see how Edward could have believed himself in love with her.
I quietly took a few steps toward her, and then stopped, unsure what to do or say to catch her attention, unsure I even wanted that attention after all. But I had not come so far to back down now.
“May I talk to you, Mrs Rochester?” I asked gently.
My voice was unexpectedly steady, in sharp contrast with the loud beats of my heart. Mrs Rochester startled, and glared at me, but she did not seem in a mood to be aggressive just yet. She did not answer though, which I took as an encouragement to go on.
“Mr Rochester has told me about the circumstances of your marriage,” I explained, and her mouth tightened at his name. “Considering everything that has happened today, I was wondering if you too could tell me more?”
“Why?”
Her voice was softer than I would have expected, yet hoarse still, as if she had been screaming or crying. I supposed that like me, she had had reasons enough to do both on this tragic day.
“Mr Rochester says that he was forced to marry you,” I answered. “He claims he had reasons to lock you up here, but…” I hesitated. Edward had never been anything but kind to me, in his own queer way, and yet his treatment of his wife couldn’t help but remind me of my aunt Reed somehow. “He says he had reasons, but I am not sure any reasons in the world can excuse imprisoning someone in such loneliness and for so long.”
Something in her face softened almost imperceptibly. She had not expected such a confession, I suppose. Neither had I.
“We were both forced,” she said, turning back to the window. “They told me he was good and rich and of noble birth… They told me I would become a great lady. They told me I had no choice, and what little we talked, he was nice… he said he loved me, and no one had loved me before. I was young, and I wanted to see England…”
“He says you were mad.”
She turned to me again, and laughed that strange, joyless laughter I had so often heard before.
“Of course I am mad,” she replied. “You have seen me. I would kill him if I could, I would kill any man that comes near me. That is madness. Being at balls and talking to people makes me faint and sick. That is madness. My skin is dark and I demanded to be treated like a white lady. That is madness. I tolerated his touch and barely allowed him what was his right as my husband, but I kissed and laid with my favourite maid with pleasure. That is madness. When he hits me, I hit him back. That too is madness. I am quite mad, you see.”
I felt blood rise to my cheeks at the horror of her confession. That she could speak so freely of killing her fellow humans, that she admitted this way her repulsion to her own husband, and her sinful desires… I shivered at the idea of this tall woman kissing another of the fair sex in a repulsive mimicry of love. This, indeed, was madness.
“I took care to be good to him in public,” Bertha continued, her eyes going back again to the window, her voice wavering. “I was good to him. I was as good a wife as I could. I gave him what he had a right to, but I demanded that he let me have a right to what I needed too. I loved her dearly. Her name was Louisa and she was fairer than me, everything I had been told I ought to have looked like… She was kind and sweet and we laughed together. He never laughed with me. He forbade me to laugh, because I was not enough like a lady when I did. I was not what he thought a lady should be like. And then when he dismissed my Louisa and forbade her from ever coming back to our house… then I started hitting him, and he hit back, and I hit again.”
She smiled at the stars, as if the remembrance of such violence felt good to her somehow. My first reaction was one of disgust, and pity for Mr Rochester, forced to deal with that mad and strange creature…
But once more I was reminded of myself as a child. I too had tried to please and be good, demanding so little in return, and when even that little had been denied to me, had I not become enraged too? It was for striking my cousin John that I was put away in the red room that frightful afternoon, and my reasons had seemed no less incomprehensible, my actions no less monstrous to my aunt’s household.
As for her love for her servant, while the extent of it was wrong, I could not blame her for her anger. Who knew what I might have done for the love of Helen or Miss Temple, had they not been taken from by the hand of god and matrimony, but by the anger and jealousy of a man whose authority I had not been free to choose. I did not have Mrs Rochester’s height and strength, but I would certainly have felt the same anger as she had.
This woman was what I might have become, had I been left alone for a decade in that dreadful room.
“I wanted to see England,” Mrs Rochester sighed. “I was promised I would see it, but all I know of it is this room, and the house when I managed to escape. I never even touched snow.”
“Was he never a good husband to you then? Certainly, he must have tried too…”
Edward could not have been so cruel as to never try, of this I was certain. He had odd ways sometimes, and he could be brusque, but I had never seen him be entirely unkind to anyone. Certainly many years had passed since then, and he had been so young at the time of their marriage, but I could not imagine him refusing entirely to give her a chance.
“Maybe he tried,” she sighed in answer, her eyes never leaving the window. “Maybe he tried as much as I did, but we didn’t try for the same thing. And when we both stopped trying he was stronger, he was a man, he was English, and I was a mad dark girl. Maybe he tried. But he stopped trying first.”
She turned to me at last, and smiled.
“He will be like this with you too. If you resist, if you do not like his touch… It is madness to not like the bed of a man. It is madness to resist. It is madness to simply be a woman. You should not marry him. He is kind now, but someday, maybe he will lock you here with me, because you will have become mad.”
She paused, and looked me over.
“I would not mind having you locked here,” she decided, her smile making me shiver. “I have seen you with the child, I have seen your books and paintings… you would be good company. We could be mad together. You would be nicer to talk to than poor Grace. She doesn’t like me much. But then, when you’re mad, I don’t suppose you will like me much either. The mad can’t love, he told me.”
“You certainly did not seem to love your brother,” I agreed, shaken at her accusation. A day before, an hour before, I would have been sure that Edward would never do anything to harm me. I was not so sure anymore.
Mrs Rochester laughed again, that cold and emotionless laughter, but there was something cruel at the corner of her lips this time.
“I wished I could have killed him!” she cried, smirking. “I thought he was going to save me. Every time, I thought he was going to save me. He was my brother, and I would have done anything for him, but he said that this was the best for me. He said if I ever got better, he would see about taking me home. If I was good… if I accepted my husband as my husband, if I tried again to be good to him, to obey him… if I tried to be everything a wife ought to be… He was my brother and he saw what happened to our mother, but he told me to try anyway.” She sighed again, and her smile disappeared. “This is what men will do to you. They will say they love you, they need you, that you are precious to them… and then when they have you, they will care no longer, and your family will abandon you to them. Do you have family, miss governess?”
“None at all.”
“Then at least, they won’t betray you. Oh, you should leave… go away while you still can. You’ll be better, leaving now.”
“I intend to,” I replied, though I did not know why I was sharing my plans with her. “I will not be his mistress. It is wrong in the eye of god, and I cannot fall so low.”
She threw me a curious look then, the sanest perhaps she had given me yet.
“You are leaving?”
“As soon as I go from this room, I intend to pack everything I own and run from him. For my own good, and his.”
She stood up, and I took a step back before I could stop myself, terrified that she would become violent again. But it was clear from her features, from her posture, that she was perfectly calm. I allowed her to walk toward me, and when she pulled me in her arms, I felt less fear than I might have imagined.
“Do not let him catch you again. If he catches you, he will keep you in a cage. It will be a nicer cage than mine, because he loves you more… but there is more than one type of cages, and all women end up in one. Remember that, don’t let him catch you again. Now, you must go. If you stay longer, you might not escape. Go now.”
I nodded, but she kept me in a tight embrace and I could not leave for a few minutes. At last, she realised that she was keeping me there, and she let go of me, but her eyes were shining with tears. It was strange to see her so, when but a few hours before I had dreaded her so much. She was no longer a beast and a monster in my eyes, but a broken woman who, for all her faults, couldn’t have deserved such treatment at the hand of one who, as her husband, ought to have protected her.
I felt such pity for her, and when I put one hand on the door’s handle, I found I had not the strength to open it.
It had been cruel and wrong of Mr Rochester to treat so a woman for faults that were not always faults… for faults he now treated as qualities in me! Did he not appreciate my freedom of speech, the way I demanded to be treated as an equal? And yet how he had acted with her when she had made the same demands… There had been faults on both sides of their marriage, that much was clear, and they had both suffered from it. But while he had been free to drown his rage in all the worst pleasures of the world, in travels and high company, this unfortunate woman had been shut off from the world, having for only company a woman paid to keep her locked in, and men who denied her any freedom.
It had been cruel and wrong, and if I did nothing, I would be their accomplice.
I turned around, and gathered all my courage.
“Mrs Rochester, escape with me!” I offered. “I can distract Grace Poole, send her away on an errand… she yet believes I intend to be her master’s mistress, she will not dare refuse my orders, and I can help you leave. Will you come?”
“Come where?” She asked, smiling as if I were a silly child suggesting some mad idea.
It certainly was an insane plan. I had no money, I was determined not to take anything with me that had been gifted to the bride I hoped to become. What would we do out there, me without any relations to help me, and her a madwoman who did not seem capable of seeing a man without wanting to kill him? I could not imagine any of this ending well, for either of us.
And yet, for both of us, it was better than any alternative.
“I do not know,” I admitted. “Far away, I expect. As far away as will be possible. I will not be a kept woman, Mrs Rochester, and I cannot imagine you wish to be prisoner of this house any longer. I will be going, even if you do not… but I am offering you a chance, will you take it?”
She gave me a queer look, and I looked away, feeling like a very foolish child all of a sudden. Who was I to assume she wanted her freedom when the price was so high? Certainly, if she had managed to escape the care of Grace Poole before, she might have run away on her own long before.
“I will come.”
“You will?”
“I you can have me out of this room, if you really are offering, then I will come.”
I stared at her in surprise. She looked so calm, her smile almost sane. She was beautiful in that instant, much like the dark beauty she must have been years earlier, when the very sight of her seduced Mr Rochester into a marriage neither of them truly wanted. Her black eyes were bright, and there was almost tenderness in her smile. She reminded me, then, of miss Temple, though I was not sure why. They had nothing in common in their appearance, their only ressemblance lying maybe in the tenderness they had both so quickly inspired me. I had feared and hated this woman earlier, but now I felt compelled to help and protect her, though she was older than me.
“Wait here for me, Mrs Rochester, and…”
“Bertha,” she cut me. “I shall not bear his name any longer. My name is Bertha Mason, and I wish you would call me this, miss… Eyre, is that right?”
I nodded, and promised to never call her again by her married name. Rochester was a name neither of us would ever wish for then.
It was madness to escape so, and I felt certain I would soon regret it. It was the maddest thing I had ever done in my life, and looking back on the past eighteen year, I had already made my share of insane decisions.
But as Miss Mason had said, everything was madness when you were a woman.
So I quickly left the room, and found an excuse to send away Grace Poole on an errand.
It was madness.
But in madness at least, we would be free.