Chapter 2

The hours I walked in thought, wearing nothing more than a shirt and trousers, wrinkled by their night on a marbled floor. I made my way to the sea, hoping that the salt spray and breeze would bring some of my own cherished home back to me, giving me peace and perspective so that I might find some way of unraveling the tangle of my life. Bertha had been with other men; scores of others. That was one thing. She had teased and coaxed me into the marriage bed, confessing her indiscretions on the point of coitus. I gave all in a moment before I discovered that this woman I now knew in a Biblical sense had known others.

And yet…

Yet those others she had not married. Certainly, they had not the prestige of the Rochester Arms nor the wealth in our plate closet, but still—she had chosen me with whom to spend life. Who was to say that her youthful sin was not now over, as we were wed? She had sat very still, staring out to sea this morning when I accosted her. Perhaps she had been regretting her former life, paying some penance for her impurities. After all, I, too was and am to this day a wretched sinner; who was I to say that her sins had been greater than my own?

Warm water splashed against my feet and legs as I ambled along the surf in this frame of mind. It was well-past midday, the sun was now sinking in the west, and I had taken no food or drink, nor spoken a word to anyone. Was it true, perhaps, that Bertha was repentant? Did her choice to wed me mean the end of her wanderings? Was I so pure of heart that I could rightfully refuse her forgiveness for her choices? It could not be so. Though my heart had been broken that I was not her first, in its youthful resilience it persisted in believing in a blissful end to my trials, to an all-powerful love which conquers all.

I turned deliberately back toward our hotel, planning to offer her full and free the forgiveness I then felt, and to see her with new and clean eyes. She was my wife, I was her husband. The past did not matter. We were made new, one flesh, in the presence of God and a congregation of hundreds. How much must she be grieving my angered abandonment when I stormed from our chamber this morning? Was she even now weeping on the floor, praying that my heart would relent? How much I would show her the love I still harbored within! Entering the hotel and dashing up the steps two and three at one time I planned what I would say. I would fall upon my knees before her forgiving her and begging her forgiveness for my hardness of heart. I would kiss her then, nourish her with food and wine, an take her to my bosom, passionately entrusting her with my body and soul.

I flung the door to our chamber open, heart beating wildly in growing anticipation. Then ceasing to beat. Her eyes were all fire. My hands turned cold. Her face the picture of the most sinful of passions. My legs gave way. Her screams were ecstatic… and not for me. My knees hit marbled flooring. Her legs, entwined tightly with one of those very simpering fops from days before, his animal grunts unaware that any but him and my lady inhabited the room. But she… she watched me. As my heart bled out, as my final hopes were slain, she stared into my eyes, daring me to stop her, to stop them. Words from the night before came to my ears. "Fairfax, I will teach you how women want to be loved." This lesson, so sudden, was what she had meant. Her lovers were not all in her past.

Enraged, I staggered to my feet. In one bound I grasped the man's shoulder, yanking him from her embrace against the far wall of the chamber. "What the devil?!" he shouted, then recognizing my face, he cowered like a woman as I thrashed him across the case, probably breaking his jaw. Bertha, naked and stupid in her discovery, did not even have the decency to cover herself. Laughter issued from her as her lover gathered his clothing and staggered from the room. Calmly now, I walked toward the door, shut it, and turned back toward my wife. I pulled the golden band from my finger and flung it at her. Bertha laughed maniacally, and the blood, once coursing through my veins, drained from my face. I felt faint. She approached me, laughing still, a sick, gurgling sound issuing from her throat. She walked toward the brandy table, still uncovered and shameless and took the bottle from the tray. Removing the glass cork, she drank directly from it, gulping amber liquid until it ran down her face, neck and breasts.

"Are you not thirsty, Fairfax?" She asked. "Come and taste…" She re-corked the bottle and set it on the table, half on the edge so that when her hand released it, the decanter came crashing to the floor. She screamed in laughter, jumping from the shards of crystal, then walking back over them, cutting her feet on them, and crossing the floor with bleeding footprints toward me. "Taste!" she commanded, and I reeled from her. She was mad. This was no mere base behavior—this was insanity. Grasping my arms, she tried in vain to pull me to her, grasping my hair in brandy-soaked fingers, pulling my head toward her heated skin. "Take what you want," she whispered, writhed against me, tugged at my clothing. I shoved her away, retching on the floor. This was no faithful bride innocently alluring her husband in love—this was wonton, disgusting sickness. I turned from her, and she sank to the floor, now wailing as she pulled broken pieces of glass from her feet. Even then, pity took me. I grasped from the bed a loose sheet and placed it over her shoulders. She shrugged it off, crying and wailing and screeching. What was this woman, this thing?

I left the chamber and sought out the maître d', commanding him to fetch a doctor quickly, as well as a magistrate. I would spend no more nights with this insane woman. Our marriage was a farce, ended, ruined. Soon all were sent for and Bertha was taken to hospital, her wounds bandaged. Soon she lay sleeping in a sick bed, all the while the magistrate explained and re-explained that, as she was mad, divorce or annulment would not be granted me.

Days later, weeks later, months gone, a year and more spent, and this reality of my new life took hold. She would be calm one moment, almost to my disbelief as she conversed reasonably with others and with me—I would see that side of her I'd known in our brief days of courtship, and suddenly alone again with her she would rail at me, hit and bite, rip my clothing and hers in her ceaseless lust, speak daring words to other men in my presence, begging them to take her. She drank spirits incessantly, and not those alone—she smoked opiates, and when in their haze she would take bottles of ink and swallow them entirely, cut herself with glass and with razors, groan and laugh and shriek at servants. There was no control—I could not sense when the madness would take her.

I was almost in my own kind of madness, the evening I took a brace of pistols from my dressing closet, planning to use both in my own demise. Even the hell that awaited the suicide could not be as bad as this. That night was the night of my epiphany. Whether it was God or some other vision, dreams of my lost England came again to mind. A messenger had come that day with news that my father and brother had both perished of the fever. Thornfield was now mine. And I now had a plan.