The soul begins to expand
Autumn of 1839 hangs heavy over the slate roofs of Lowood Girls School in Vermont. Wary of the storm to come, Karen Page hurries along a gravel track that traces the school’s boundary. There is a tang in the air of cold rain and ozone; of shifting possibilities and frightening potential.
The first few fat drops strike across Karen’s shoulders. She gathers the heavy wool of her dress in one hand and begins to run.
The wind is at her back.
The common room echoes with the sound of her arrival; wood scraping stone, hushed voices now stilled; her own hard breath. In her fist is a letter neatly addressed to Miss Karen Page. Breathless from the cold march back from the post office in Fagan Corners, she pauses to remove gloves, bonnet and scarf. Red rises in her cheeks and ears, calling a stark contrast to icy blonde hair pulled tight and pinned in a neat knot at the base of her neck.
Karen turns the letter over in her hands, tracing the wax seal and thin copperplate that spells out her name and address. It is from Mrs. Nelson of Thornfield House, New York City. The contents of this packet could mean the end of fifteen miserable years and the beginning of something brighter. Overwhelmed by the weight of the moment to come, she sucks in a breath and blushes. Karen slips into a hallway for a moment of privacy.
(Over the years, headmaster Fisk had been fond of reminding his pupils that nothing within the walls of Lowood belonged to them – even their immortal souls. Those were the property of the Lord above, and his judgment would be fierce.)
Fingers shaking, Karen splits the seal on the paper and unfolds it. Mrs. Nelson writes to offer employment as governess to a little girl of good family for a term of one year.
Dear Miss Page,
Many thanks for your response to my posting for a governess. Our young charge is in great need of instruction and her passion for learning far surpasses our own meager knowledge. You will begin your term at the start of the next month. If you are unable to arrange transportation before this time please inform me in advance, as we have already told your pupil of your arrival and she is most eager to begin. By chance do you speak French…
Mrs. Nelson continues that there is a schoolroom in the house, though Karen may choose another location if needed. There is also stipend, far more than Karen could have hoped for anywhere in New England, let alone Vermont.
Tears well in Karen’s eyes and she must clap a hand over her mouth to hold back a sob of joy.
The wages, the student, the schoolroom are all fine things. But what matters most in this correspondence is the postmark. New York is a great distance from Vermont and the sadness that permeates it.
The whisper is soft in her ear.
You have such a passion for living…
It shakes her breath and she shivers in remembering it.
Come now, she thinks, no more tears in this place. God knows they have none for you.
___
Dressed for travel, carpet bag packed tightly, Karen departs with ringing footsteps on the black slate step. The handle of her bag threatens to slip free twice before she knows the way of it. It travels with her to the waiting coach like a favorite pet under her arm, its round brocade belly full of her few possessions: Three books plus gifts of a scarf and gloves all wrapped tightly at the top. A sturdy journal, ink pot, and pen clink softly at the bottom of the bag.
The writing set is a final treasure from a trusted teacher, Miss Dumont, pressed into Karen’s hands before she departed. Though Dumont’s teaching method had been severe, she was the only instructor to allow the girls to read for pleasure and had encouraged Karen’s love of writing.
Karen could remember when adults towered over her, dour and strict with rods gripped in red-knuckled hands. At ten years old, Karen had been too full of anger to bother with fearing her teachers. Unwilling to bend to the force of Headmaster Fisk’s rubric, she found there were worse things than sharp reprimands. The beatings had been painful, but the isolation had been unbearable. Had she known before entering Lowood what was in store, she wondered if she’d have preferred life in the streets and infamy.
___
The headmaster had come to review Karen himself ahead of her admission. He was broad and barrel-chested with pale rolling jowls. Fisk’s presence consumed the light in Aunt Marion’s parlor, though there was little of it to begin with – the woman herself was not unlike a deep cave where love could not be found.
“Are you a good child, little girl?” he asked in a strange, clipped tone.
“Best not to invite discussion, Mr. Fisk,” Aunt Marion sniffed. Her high, curled coiffure shook slightly with each movement. “You will only be rewarded with lies.”
“Oh?” Fisk inclined his head, thin brows raised in pious horror.
Aunt Marion pursed her lips, “She and the boy are the children of my late husband’s sister. Liars both – why, the discomfort they’ve caused…”
“Deceit is a sad fault in a child and sure sign of wickedness.” Fisk’s collar pulled tight against the excess folds of his neck, bulging with his odd intonation. “Tell me, Miss Page, do you know where the wicked go after death?”
“A pit of fire, sir.”
“And would you care to visit that pit and be burned for eternity?”
“No, sir.”
“What must you do to avoid it?”
Young Karen paused; considering; preferring to please her own quick mind over judging the audience.
“I must keep in good health and not die.”
The visit did not improve after that.
From her first day at Lowood, Karen labored over slates and lessons in French, catechism, geography, manners and other virtues required of better-born women than her. She rose each morning in the dark, washed in icy water, and dressed for the day in muslin and rough-spun wool. She remained silent to avoid beatings and received beatings when she could not stay silent in the face of unfair treatment of her fellow students.
Her brother Kevin had admired that in her.
Kevin: too weak to make a journey like the one Karen made to Lowood. Too sickly to even leave his bed under the eaves in Burlington. Kevin: only a year older than her, but smaller than Karen and thinner besides. Bessie the scullery maid had done her best to keep him comfortable, but when Aunt Marion arranged to send one Page away it was clear there would be no plans made for the second, diminishing child.
Aunt Marion had loathed the idea of his sickness spreading to her family and had announced the cool air of the upper rooms would be best for his clotted lungs. It was akin to declaring his death before his shroud could be stitched.
The night before departing for Lowood, Karen climbed from her small garret to the servant’s hall where her brother lay in a sagging rope bed. Since learning she would be sent away, Kevin had faded as a cut flower in a lightless room. When Karen crept to his bedside on her final night, he clasped an icy hand over her wrist and made a small tutting sound.
“Karen, you are freezing. Come here.”
She had slid into the bed beside him, gathering his hands in hers and whispering plans of escape. He raised her hands to his lips and kissed his little sister’s knuckles with esteem.
“You’ll do nothing like that.”
“But I- “
“No,” his whisper was severe, “You stand a better chance of making a life of your own if you find a way to survive. You have such a passion for living, Karen. You must get away.”
“What about you? I’ll come back for you. We’ll leave together and, and…” it was late and Karen had no energy left to plot. Kevin tilted his forehead to hers and made a quiet shushing.
“No more of this. I feel as if I could sleep. Will you stay, sister? I’ll miss you near me…”
__
“Take care to copy down a few tales of your own.” Miss Dumont says softly, so not to draw the attention of the other staff. Karen nods, covering the older woman’s hand with her own –the first and only touch she has dared offer anyone in over a decade.
Emerging into the gravel courtyard becomes a rebirth. The sun feels brighter despite the heavy October sky, and the sounds of the yard around her are sharp as crystal.
__
The southern road is pitted and rocky. It makes the coach pitch and sway so violently Karen must brace herself or be heaved onto other passengers on the bench. She will travel nearly a week along the lakes and into the rolling hills of New York State. At the southern-most tip of the island of Manhattan awaits Thornfield House and a new life.
Rain seems to follow the road, and they must halt twice due to treacherous mud. The bloom of adventure quickly withers and, on her fourth day of travel, Karen finds herself searching the roadside trees for sprites, bears or highwaymen. When they stop on the final evening she opens Miss Dumont’s journal and begins to write something to fit her mood.
The storm gathered like a rage over the city. Dark clouds stretched across the fields and burrowed deep into the horizon. There would be rain and floods. There would be destruction.
The thief pulled his hat over his eyes and urged his horse on to the road. The knives in his belt and the gun at his knee were all the protection he would need for what was to come.
On the following afternoon, the coach at last rumbles through Riverdale and passes into the final chain of hills. At a lone crossroad, the wheels grind to a halt and the driver raps on the roof of the cab.
“Miss, this will be your change for Manhattan.”
Karen is handed down from the coach and steps out into the chill afternoon. The land opens onto endless forests that rise and roll along small hills. Everywhere blazes the fires of autumn – riots of red and gold in the trees, mirror-bright gullies of rainwater, and dark bands of earth stripe the empty fields.
The driver hauls down her trunk and tugs the brim of his wool hat with a terse “Good luck” as a farewell. The equipage rattles off into the growing fading afternoon, dips below the far hill and is lost from view.
Karen is alone in the quietest place she has known in her life. Wind pushes over the hill and buffets her shoulders, the sound in her ear like a demon breathing. She wraps herself tightly in her heavy traveling cloak and sits on the lid of her trunk, opening her journal again.
The thief stood tall in the icy midnight mud, his pistol still smoking from discharge. Sprawled on the filthy tar before him lay a dead man twice his size and musculature, a pair of vicious swords crossed across his bloodied chest. Drawing a hand across his own throat, the thief could feel terrible pain where the giant’s hands had wrapped his neck in a vise-like grip just moments before.
“You shall snuff out no more lives.” The thief croaked, then slid the pistol into its cradle at his hip.
Somewhere out of view a hawk calls, crows answer, and the distant jingle of a coach rises. Karen straightens and puts a steadying hand on the trunk. She shakes her head to forget the tale and its danger. The coach pulls into view, its lamps swinging hoops of dim light against the ground. The man on the box at the top pulls his team to a halt and steps down to greet Karen.
The dank chill of Lowood’s dormitory rises around her. She can smell the cold ash of a long-dead fire, unwashed bodies and the humid mold of rotten wood. Coughs and sighs echo from sleepers in their cots, marked by an occasional cry or exclamation. A hand, icy as death, closes around her wrist and a thin voice she knows well speaks into the blackness.
“You have such a passion for living…”
The coach lurches down into the city. They cross the river, an travel down through Harlem into the Upper East Side. There are lights and people everywhere moving through the muddy streets as if it were day. Karen sees open doors of saloons between darkened shop fronts; matchstick sellers and lamp men; coaches and men mounted on horses that paw and huff clouds of steam in the late-night cold. Sam does not stop but cannot go faster.
It is eleven in the evening by the time they make their way through Greenwich and midnight when the coach halts in front of a high-stooped stone house in St. John’s parish park. The large, looming estate is punctuated by windows that glow beacon-bright. Just inside the great double doors a blocky, ruffled matron stands with a lamp lifted high overhead. The woman makes a loud cooing in welcome as the coachman opens Karen’s door and helps her down onto the kerb.
“Miss Page I presume? How do you do, my dear?” she passes the lamp to a maid and takes Karen’s hands in her own.
“I’m Mrs. Nelson. Welcome to Thornfield House. Come in and sit by the fire.”
The older woman glows with efficiency and warmth. The house may have seemed imposing upon approach, but inside it is bright and well-furnished. Mrs. Nelson conducts Karen along a colorless but grand front hall to a sitting room deep in the house. There, she takes shawl, cloak, gloves and bonnet with the practiced ease of a lifetime welcoming guests. The older woman keeps up a comfortable, if one-sided, conversation throughout.
“I am afraid you must have had a tedious ride. Sam drives so slowly; you could have added another day to your journey! Do draw nearer the fire, child. November is no time at all to suffer the chill. You’ve brought luggage with you, my dear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Karen replies and is immediately overrun by Mrs. Nelson’s chatter.
“I’ll see it carried up. Are you hungry, Miss Page? I’ll have Dinah to cut a sandwich or two.”
A welcome warmth fills Karen’s spirit. She is immediately comfortable in the presence of Mrs. Nelson, who clearly runs the home with a deft hand. Servants dip in and out of the room like swallows in a barn. Dinah, in neat cap and apron, delivers thick sandwiches and a pot of tea. Mrs. Nelson seats herself in the armchair opposite Karen and resumes her knitting, the tide of words flowing strong.
Sipping from a nearly translucent teacup, Mrs. Nelson continues as Karen takes in the room.
The woman has a cheery opinion of most things; the weather; the folk of St. John’s parish; the purchase and development of land throughout the lower end of Manhattan. There are framed ink portraits on walls covered by flower-patterned paper. The furniture froths with lacy covers knit by the woman herself. A small piano-forte stands in the corner, though no sheet music lays in its tray. When Mrs. Nelson pauses to sip her tea, Karen takes the moment to interject.
“Will I have the pleasure of meeting Miss Nelson this evening?”
The teacup pauses under Mrs. Nelson’s hands. “I’m sorry, my dear?”
“My pupil. Will I meet her tonight?”
This draws a chuckle from Mrs. Nelson, who sets her teacup and saucer on the side table and takes up her knitting again. “You mean Miss Lieberman! Little Leo we call her – Leo Lioness. No, I have no family here.”
Karen gives a small, confused smile, though Mrs. Nelson does not see the emotion of it. She continues her narrative, needles clicking: “I am glad you’ve come. Thornfield is a fine old home. The family has held this property since the Dutch! Respectable, but quite lonesome, particularly come winter. Ah, but we’ve had such wonderful developments. Miss Leo arrived in September. Children make a home, I believe. Now you’ve come, Miss Page, and the house shall feel quite full!”
Karen nods in agreement, then in weariness. The comfort of the room, the food and conversation have reduced what was left of her energy to embers. She lifts a hand to stifle a yawn and catches herself before stumbling into embarrassment. Mrs. Nelson, cheeks rosy and demeanor even rosier, leans across the rug to pat Karen’s knee.
“Bless you! I do go on. Come, I’ll show you to your bedroom. I had Dinah prepare something at the back of the house – thought you’d prefer it to the front chambers. They can be so solitary.”
Karen wonders if it is possible to feel alone with such a large personality in the house. She agrees that she is indeed tired from the journey and appreciates Mrs. Nelson’s thoughtful choice. The pair climb a set of servant’s stairs to a broad hall that winds along the spine of the home. Rich wood paneling in the ancient style brings the space in close and swallows the single light of Mrs. Nelson’s lamp.
Arriving at a door nearly imperceptible from the paneled walls, Mrs. Nelson ushers Karen in with a cheerful narrative on the age of the room, the design of the fireplace and the furnishings chosen years before by Mistress Castle. There is a beat of silence as Mrs. Nelson gathers herself – she has spoken out of turn.
“Forgive me, Miss Page.”
Karen is taken from her study of the space – it is close and comfortable; brightly polished and well-loved furniture; an overstuffed chair beside the fire; a substantial desk under a wide window and a bed piled high with soft quilts – to the sudden silence of her hostess.
Mrs. Nelson brings fingertips to the scarf knotted at her chest in self-chastisement. “We don’t often speak of Mrs. Castle, even amongst ourselves.”
Puzzled, Karen tilts her head, “Mrs. Castle?”
“The departed wife of master Castle, of course.”
“…Then Thornfield is not yours?”
“Mistress of Thornfield?” Mrs. Nelson offers a small laugh of disbelief, “Gracious, child, what an idea. No, I’m the housekeeper.”
Mrs. Maria Castle, continues Mrs. Nelson, was the beloved wife of Master Francis Castle, Thornfield’s owner and its sole heir. He was the only child of a retired captain with a shipping fortune fed by Lake Ontario. The son disappointed his father greatly by refusing to enter university, enlisting in the military instead. There was a thawing of relations when young Castle, freshly commissioned, arrived to Thornfield with Maria. She was charming, bright, and the spark of life needed for the quiet home.
“She made this place her own. Such a sweet girl. Sometimes, I –” Mrs. Nelson catches sight of Karen’s questioning stare. She shakes herself briefly to clear away ghosts and shades, and pats Karen’s arm.
“Apologies, I’ve gone on again. I’ll take my leave – I do hope you’ll be comfortable.”
Mrs. Nelson’s unexpected turn steals a moment of warmth. The two women say their final good nights and Karen is left to dress for bed. Before she settles to sleep, Karen finds herself revisiting the words of Mrs. Nelson. An unseen master, departed souls, and a new question: what sort of place is this, really?