The next morning I rose early to see my father off and to arrange to have my belongings shipped to my father’s town house in Liverpool. I kept out only what I needed to carry me through the next few days, and these items I placed in a small knapsack of the sort soldiers use. It was perhaps an inappropriate choice of luggage, but I was determined to travel by horseback and therefore to carry as little as possible. I did not expect to see anyone I knew or needed to impress; I was traveling only to visit old friends who had seen me in much worse states and had loved me anyway.
The weather was fine: a lovely day in mid-June, and as I urged my hired horse a bit faster, the meadow grasses, daisies and cowslips among them, nodded in the breeze. I had come to love riding, and I came to understand how Carrot could have died in such a way, atop a racehorse at full speed, pushing the both of them to the edge of danger. Young men tend to be fools in that respect.
My ride took the better part of a week, and my first stop was Mapleton, where I found the little church where the Reverend Gholson had been the vicar. He had departed years before, and I had no knowledge of his destination, but it was not he I had come to see. I wandered in the graveyard at the side of the church until I found the grave: William Andrew Gholson—Beloved son of the Reverend Richard and Ann Gholson—“Into God’s hands we commend him”—and I knelt and placed my hands on it, filling my mind with thoughts of that small, gentle boy beneath the ground. We three, I thought, and kneeling there in the grass I wept.
But I had more to do, and I mounted my horse again, riding for two days, reaching the little church at the edge of the park at Lanham-Hall just as the bell was tolling the evensong. I did not have difficulty finding the grave in that small churchyard, and the carving on the stone still seemed fresh: Thomas George Alfred Fitzcharles. I wept for him as well, and for the time we had not spent together, the letters he had sent, urging me to come, and how I had put him off, and the times he had told me that I was like a little brother to him and I had not responded that he was a better brother to me than the one I had. I told him that now, too late, standing over his grave.
I gazed down the long drive, bowered by lime trees, toward the Hall itself, wondering who would live in it now. It looked empty, forsaken—perhaps there was no one at all there, which seemed fitting to me. Who, after all, could ever take Carrot’s place? I turned away and walked back to the grave once more, caressed the stone, and then returned to my mount and hastened off toward Cambridge to return the horse, and to find a coach toward Liverpool and, ultimately, start my journey to Jamaica.
I might have made a detour to ride past Thornfield-Hall one last time, but I could not bring myself to do so. There was no way in the world that I could have managed to face a final farewell to Thornfield-Hall.
Chapter 18
I preceded my father to his town house by only a few hours, but a few hours was enough time for me to settle in and to pace the floor in anticipation. He had said, Take care you are not delayed, and I understood that to mean that he had plans for me before my departure, as indeed he did. First thing the next morning he took me to his tailor and ordered a complete outfitting of clothing suitable to the life of a Jamaican planter. I had thought that after Cambridge I was finished with tutorials, but I could not have been more mistaken. Even before the tailor’s, over breakfast, he started me on the last set of lectures I would ever receive, and they kept on for much of the next week or so, preparing me for the life I was henceforth to lead.
“You are used to our social order here in England,” he said, “the upper classes who wield influence and power—and below them the merchant classes and the other educated people and lastly the working people and the cottage folk, and at the bottom, the poorhouse dwellers. Do you know where you fit in this scheme?”
“Yes, sir, I do,” I said.
He chuckled dismissively. “Do you? Do you really?”
“We are of the merchant class, surely.”
“Surely. Surely? What of Thornfield?”
“But…you are—”
“I am what? And what of Rowland, what is he?”
What of Rowland? “He is…You are…”
“Ah, yes, there it is. Rowland is landed gentry: Thornfield is his. He has no need to work and he chooses not to, which is indeed his choice. For generations the Rochesters have held Thornfield and its lands, but living in a manor house and the life it entails has never suited me. By choice I am also a merchant—in trade, as is said; I am not ashamed, and, indeed, I like the challenge of it. It will suit you as well. The day will come when members of the gentry are only too happy to marry their sons and daughters to members of the merchant class. Times change, boy, and men must change with them.”
I nodded uncertainly. Was he telling me that I was to wind up more fortunate than Rowland?
“You have no experience with slaves yet, of course.”
“No, sir, I haven’t,” I said.
He looked straight at me, his eyes holding mine. “It is different now from what it was when the slave trade was legal. You were but a child when that was ended—so let me clarify: Parliament made illegal the importation of slaves, but the institution of slavery survives, and it is the only way that the economy of the West Indies is able to survive. I suppose you find that difficult to comprehend, but you will see soon enough the truth of what I say.”
He went on to describe more fully the slave system, and I listened carefully, for I thought he was trying to smooth my way. But now I know differently; now I realize it was simply his way of ensuring that I would understand the world just as he did.
“At this point,” he said in conclusion, “you may assume that your purpose will be to act as a plantation manager or even an overseer, as you are surely equipped to do, but that would be lowering yourself. However, many a landowner discovers that he has entrusted too much power to his manager, and as a result that he has been cheated of his due. With your training and experience, you will prevent such a likelihood happening to you, and your neighbors will learn to take advantage of your expertise, which will be to your own benefit.
“That, son, is what you have been educated for. You will move in the highest of society; you will learn quickly the operation of a plantation and thus become an adviser to many. There will be no dearth of opportunity for you. There will be nothing you cannot accomplish, and with a beautiful and charming wife at your side, you will have a life in the West Indies that you have never imagined possible for yourself.”
I hardly knew what to say. He had planned and provided for my entire future, it seemed, and, after wishing my whole life for my father’s care and attention, I felt one part of me wanting to rebel and refuse and make my own way. But another, larger part told me I would be a fool to turn my back on all that he offered.