Chapter 1 #2
In the storage rooms on the third floor (a place forbidden to me, which made it all the more attractive), I found treasures: cast-off fishing tackle and butterfly nets, but I never caught any fish, perhaps because I had no one to teach me.
I did catch butterflies, but I could never bear to stick a pin through the tiny quivering bodies, so I set them free.
There were all sorts of other treasures to be discovered in those rooms as well: trunks of clothing from another era, toys I had never seen or played with, vases gathering dust, furniture blanketed with canvas coverings, and various other items whose use or purpose was a mystery to me—and since I was not supposed to be there in the first place, I could not ask about them.
I scoured those rooms, searching for the long-lost painting of my mother, but I never found it.
On three sides, beyond the house and its gardens, were fields of wheat and barley, and on the fourth side was the hawthorn wood that gave the Hall its name and that fueled the many fireplaces and the kitchen stoves.
In the springtime the wood bloomed with a haze of bluebells and the delicate white starbursts of wild garlic; in the summer it provided cool respite; in the autumn I practiced creeping through fallen leaves as silently as a fox; and in the winter bare branches clawed their way toward the sky.
And beyond the wood and the fields, as far as the eye could see, were the moors: tall grasses bending in the wind; heather seeming scrubby and useless in the springtime but blossoming to brilliant pinkish purple in late summer; lowering skies warning of weather on its way; hawks circling high above; rabbits darting between tussocks; and random outcrops of silent stones.
The nannies and governesses never lasted, for various reasons.
The place was remote, with little social life, my father being gone so much of the time and seeming to care little for society when he was home.
Rowland could be curt and dismissive of those he considered beneath his station, and I suppose I seemed untamed and unmanageable much of the time.
All in all, there was little to recommend it to anyone who might be hunting for work, although the household servants were remarkably steady.
We were insular at Thornfield-Hall, and I imagine I thought life would go on like that forever. But on my eighth birthday, everything changed.
We did not generally celebrate birthdays, but Cook always made a special sweet just for me, smiling as she laid it before me.
Her smiles were rare, but when they appeared they were a sight to behold: dimples deep enough to lose a farthing in, and not one but two wide gaps between her front teeth, one up and one below.
Once I thought I heard someone call her Susan, but for the most part we called her “Cook.” She was extraordinary in her skills, making feasts at short notice and with whatever she had in her larder at the moment.
My father nearly always ate by himself, and he wanted only plain food to fill his stomach, the quicker the better; but by the time Rowland was twelve, he was demanding the most exotic items he could think of, probably only to see if he could confound Cook and give reason for a scolding.
She always nodded at his outlandish requests and smoothed her apron and set to work, and he rarely found excuse to complain.
Which does not mean he never did so.
Rowland, when he was home, ate mostly in the dining room, in full dress with a white neckcloth, sitting alone when Father was not in residence, reading the trade news from London or abroad, or examining his butterfly collection.
I envied that collection—such astonishing beauties—but I could never understand how anyone could bear to kill those defenseless creatures.
As for myself, once I was released from dining in the nursery, I usually ate in the kitchen, if for no other reason than that there I was less likely to offend my brother, and therefore less likely to receive a box on the head or a rap on the knuckles.
Rowland had had a tutor since he was eight or ten, and I looked forward to the day when I could have a proper scholar to be teaching me as well.
Rowland’s tutor was, no doubt, the second or third or fourth son of someone not wealthy enough or too old-fashioned to provide well for all his offspring, or perhaps he was the son of a penniless vicar.
I was na?ve at that age, but I’d overheard enough gossip among the servants to know that if there was any fortune to be had in a family, it was vastly advantageous to be the eldest son.
I had not yet thought what that might mean for me, as I was too enthralled with ideas of knights and pirates to be having practical notions about my own future.
I imagine that Mr. Richards, the tutor, was actually a decent teacher, but Rowland, who was anxious only to get on with life, was at best an indifferent student.
Except in maths. Rowland loved calculations of all sorts.
The income needed per month to reach three thousand pounds in two years.
The odds at a horse race. The likelihood of being able to buy some tumbledown building in any given town or city and hire laborers to fix it up—if only to dab on a bit of whitewash to hide the worst of the damage—and then sell it at enough of a profit to make the whole thing worth the trouble.
Or the market advantage of planting rye instead of oats, or raising cattle versus sheep.
One of the earliest arguments I ever heard him have with our father must have been when I was about four and Rowland would have been twelve, and Rowland was trying to talk Father into inclosing more of his land to increase his crop yields, sending the less-industrious tenant farmers packing and turning over their fields to more assiduous ones.
“You can charge higher rents,” I remember him saying, “and the crop yields will be better. It is not our responsibility to provide a living to incompetents.”
Father just laughed and gave Rowland an affectionate cuff on the shoulder. He never followed through on any of Rowland’s ideas, but even I could see his pride that this first son of his showed such interest in economic betterment.
I had always imagined that when I was old enough for the tutor, I would become as wise in the ways of the world as Rowland, and Father would laugh and cuff me on the shoulder too, and we three would dream up more and more inventive ways to make Father’s wealth greater and greater.