Romancing Miss Bronte

by Juliet Gael

  Charlotte paced the room nervously with tiny steps.

  “We are remote, yes, but she wouldn’t get those same terms in a boarding school in a larger town. And the fact that we have only enough room to take in a few girls is an advantage.”

  Emily finished the letter and glanced up. “Moderate or not, if there are no pupils, then there are no pupils.”

  “Are you saying we should give up?”

  Emily shrugged. “Even if someone should show an interest, do you think any mother in her right mind would entrust her daughter to our keeping, with a drunken brother and blind father stumbling around the house?”

  Anne added, “She’s right, Charlotte. We must rethink our scheme in the light of our present predicament.”

  Charlotte stopped pacing and turned to face her sisters. Her taut little body seemed to lose its fire.

  “I’m deluding myself. I know I am.”

  Emily and Anne stared at her solemnly.

  “I’ve heard Branwell talk about finding a job on the railway,” Anne said. “Then he’d be gone. And things would be back to normal.”

  “But it’s all talk,” Charlotte replied. “I’m afraid that’s all he’s ever been good for. He’s done nothing with his life. After all the sacrifices we made so that he could go to London and follow his dreams … and then he never made it out of Bradford …”

  “That wasn’t entirely his fault,” Emily said.

  “Papa would have found the money if he had shown the resolve. All of his boasting, it’s all come to nothing.”

  “We mustn’t give up on him yet,” Anne said.

  They were all disappointed in him—the prodigy, the wildly talented brother who entertained everyone who met him with his stunning flashes of wit and raw brainpower.

  As children they had forged a unique bond, creating imaginary worlds of astonishing complexity and spinning them into tales that had brought excitement and enchantment to their lonely lives in this dull little village. Just as Emily and Anne had belonged to each other, Charlotte had belonged to Branwell. She alone was his true intellectual equal. But intellect was a useless quality in a girl, and so Charlotte kept her hopes bound up tightly in her imagination. She locked them into her little boxes, her writing desks and secret drawers, and she watched her brother walk out into the world to live his dreams in her stead. He would be a great artist or poet. She would fly up to Olympia on his wings.

  When he failed—recklessly, wantonly—no one was as disappointed as she.

  Emily said, “Even if Branwell found a position, we have Papa to deal with now. He needs more and more of our time.”

  “But what else is left to us? If not this school?” Charlotte asked.

  There was a hint of desperation in her voice. They knew what this scheme of opening a school meant to her. It represented more than a means of income and independence. It was a way to keep alive what she had brought back from Brussels.

  As Charlotte stewed, Anne watched her with sympathetic eyes. Not so Emily. Emily slid from the sofa and crept over to the great mastiff that lay in twitching slumber on the floor. As she crawled up to him, he raised his big head. She lay down beside him and draped an arm over his barrel chest; he fell back with a deep sigh, blissfully content.

  Emily had never concerned herself with their finances. Her material needs were few; she still wore the old-fashioned gigot-sleeved dresses she’d been wearing since she was fifteen. Charlotte did her best to keep them mended, but they were worn and faded, and Emily had no interest in making new ones for herself.

  After their aunt had died, Emily had laid claim to the task of caretaker to their father. She ran the house and left the unpleasant business of wage earning to everyone else.

  “It would be nice if we could all stay home together,” Emily sighed.

  Anne replied, “That was the great advantage of our school. There would be inconveniences, to be sure, but we would be home and together.”

  Charlotte frowned. “I cannot brace myself to go back into a home as a governess. I don’t have the temperament for it.”

  “Nor do I,” Emily said.

  “Well, that certainly goes without saying.”

  They had all three tried their hand at service. Only Anne had endured.

  Charlotte turned to Anne. “How you survived five years at Thorp Green, I’ll never know.”

  “Oh, but the Robinson girls weren’t so difficult once they got older.”

  Anne had been reticent, had said next to nothing about Branwell’s dismissal. It was Anne who had found him the position at Thorp Green as tutor to the little boy. He had stayed for two years and fallen madly in love with the mother.

  Charlotte tried again, prodding gently, “My poor Anne, was it too dreadful? You must have heard things.”

  “There were rumors, but I thought they were nothing more than that. I could see that Mrs. Robinson was very fond of him. But so was everyone else. He was very well liked.” She paused to take a deep breath, then pronounced firmly, “And you mustn’t suppose that I left because of his conduct—I am not so weakhearted. I quit my post because the girls had grown up and didn’t need me anymore. And I, for one, have no intention of being a burden on this family. I shall find myself another position.”

  Charlotte said, “Oh, Annie, how willing you are to deny yourself for others.”

  Anne’s face flushed with pleasure at this rare bit of recognition from her older sister. “I deny myself as you have done, Charlotte. Out of duty.”

  Charlotte gave a lighthearted shrug. “Well, I suppose the last resort is to marry.”

  “Oh, she’s in a witty mood now,” Emily said.

  “Charlotte, dear, you’re the only one who’s had an offer of marriage,” Anne said.

  “Yes, from Ellen’s brother,” Charlotte said wryly. “I fancy that was more like a business proposal. And I imagine it will be the only one I shall ever get.”

  “Annie’s the pretty one.” Emily smiled. “I vote her most likely to snare a husband.”

  Anne blushed again and smiled in return.

  “Well, we all know Emily’s not going to find a man—neglectful creature that she is. Look at that hole in her stocking.”

  Emily stretched her leg into the air for all to admire her toe.

  “Take it off and leave it for me to mend. If you keep wearing it, the hole will only grow bigger.”

  “I shall find myself a gypsy husband,” Emily said dreamily. “Tall, violently passionate, and very much like a Walter Scott hero.”

  “Oh yes,” Charlotte tittered. “I think we would all like one like that.”

  “Not I,” Anne frowned.

  “In truth, I cannot imagine living anywhere but here,” Emily said wistfully.

  Charlotte grew somber again. “Well, the reality is that Papa will not live forever. And when he’s gone we’ll be chased out of here. How shall we survive? Where shall we go?”

  “Oh, Tally, that’s too many questions to answer all at once.”

  The door was thrown open and Branwell entered. He wore his spectacles on the end of his nose and had donned a dressing gown over his shirt and trousers—a faded old woolen thing with the pockets coming unstitched. Breakfast had revived him and he shuffled in energetically humming a tune, clutching a fistful of dog-eared pages.

  “Ah! Here you are!” he cried.

  The girls stared at him with closed faces.

  “Oh, such sourpusses,” he said good-naturedly. “But I have an announcement that will put a smile on your faces.”

  “You’ve taken an offer of employment,” Charlotte said dryly.

  “God forbid, no. I’m speaking of literary exertion. I have the materials for a respectably sized volume of poetry, and if I were in London personally I might perhaps try Henry Moxon. He’s a well-known patron of the sons of rhyme, though I dare say the poor man often smarts for his liberality in publishing hideous trash.” He gave a sigh of tedium. “It all seems so hopeless. A book of verse like this tha
t requires the utmost stretch of the intellect—why, I’d be lucky to get ten pounds for it. But a novel—I could get two hundred pounds for a novel. That’s what’s really salable in today’s reading world. And I could dash off a piece of commercial fiction in the time it takes to smoke a cigar and hum a tune.”

  He announced this in the manner of a man accustomed to constant adulation, but the faces before him remained frozen.

  “I must attempt something….,” he grumbled as he stuffed the pages into his pocket. “Sitting around here with nothing to do. Roasting night and day over a slow fire. I am tormented. Tormented.”

  He caught sight of the letter on the sofa.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s not for you,” Charlotte replied.

  “The post has come?”

  “Yes.”

  “And there’s nothing for me?”

  “No.”

  His spirits drooped as quickly as they had risen, and he sank onto the sofa beside Anne.

  “How can I live without her? My life will be hell. What can the so-called love of her wretched husband be to her compared with mine? If he loved her with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”

  They listened in uncomfortable silence to his ravings. Charlotte would have loved to throttle him but managed restraint.

  He raised his sad eyes to them in a glance and muttered, “God help her. I know she’s as miserable as I am. She’ll die of a broken heart. We’ll both die of a broken heart.”

  “One doesn’t die of a broken heart,” Charlotte snapped.

  “Oh, hear the mighty oracle, Tally, speaking of love!”

  Emily rolled over and stared up at him from the floor. “I don’t like your hair like that. It’s too long.”

  “’Tis my laureate, sister dear.”

  “It’s a wonder it doesn’t give you a headache,” she replied.

  He glanced around the room at them, then, in deliberate provocation, pulled a flask of gin from his dressing gown pocket.

  “Branwell!” Charlotte cried sharply.

  “Only way I can survive all of you is to drink,” he smirked. Anne watched him in frozen horror as he unscrewed the cap. Emily rose to her knees and crawled toward him.

  “No you don’t,” he cried, snatching it from her grasp.

  Anne said softly, “God have mercy on your soul.”

  “Mercy? Why, on the contrary, I shall have great pleasure in sending my soul to perdition, just to punish its maker. Here’s to hearty damnation!” He took a long swig and screwed the cap back on the flask.

  “Now, that will kill you,” Charlotte said emphatically.

  “You mustn’t talk like that, Branwell,” Anne pleaded. “Have you no shame?”

  “None, sweet Annie. Kill me? I think not. Unfortunately, my constitution defies me. I wager I’ll outlive every man this side of Lancashire and go to the grave a stooped and white-haired old sinner.”

  Branwell had been sitting on the letter, and now he tugged it out and opened it.

  “Ah,” he muttered with sincere remorse after he had scanned it. “So sorry, Tally. Two years studying in Brussels gone to waste. All that fluent French and German. All that Chateaubriand and Hugo. And not a soul to share it with. As for Emily, I can’t see what good Brussels did her. She came back as savage as she went.”

  “That’s not true,” Anne interrupted. “Emily worked like a horse in Brussels, didn’t she, Charlotte?”

  “That’s nothing new. She’s always loved her studies—haven’t you, Em? Never so content as when she’s got her nose in a book.”

  “I’d like to see you play that Beethoven sonata as well as I do,” Emily said smugly.

  “But you have no audience, dear sister, apart from us.”

  “I wish for none, apart from you.”

  “There. Proved my point. But honestly, can you blame folks? Who on God’s green earth would pay to come here? Most of us would pay to get out.”

  It was a sad truth, and the recognition of their shared plight momentarily erased the tensions. In an instant they became the close-knit family of their childhood—traumatized at a very young age by the loss of their mother and the deaths of their older sisters, taking refuge from sorrow in one another’s company. And thus they had grown up and turned inward. The four siblings, the dogs, cats, and pet geese, the servants banging around in the kitchen, the father aloof and secluded in the parlor two walls removed—and the outside world nothing more than a memory or a dream.

  There was a moment of sweet unruffled silence, and then Charlotte rose. “We should set the table.”

  At that moment, Keeper began to growl and they heard the crunch of gravel on the walk. Charlotte stepped to the window.

  “Now, who is that?”

  Anne rose and came to stand beside her.

  “He’s wearing a clerical collar.”

  “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “It’s probably Papa’s new curate,” Branwell said with a yawn. “John said he arrived last night.”

  “Good gracious, why didn’t you tell me? I didn’t expect him until next week!” Charlotte flew into action, straightening the chairs and clearing the sewing off the table.

  Emily made a dash for the door.

  “Emily Jane Brontë! Don’t you dare! Your books are scattered all over the floor!”

  Emily snatched up the books and vanished in a flash, with Anne close behind. Branwell immediately appropriated the entire sofa for himself and stretched out on his back, hands crossed over his stomach, toes twitching to the music in his head.

  “Branwell, do please stay out of sight. You look appalling and smell even worse.”

  “John said he’s a stiff sort. Invited him down to the Black Bull with us this evening but he declined.”

  “Well, you can’t expect a clergyman to keep company with the likes of you.”

  “I beg your pardon. Sutcliffe Sowden and I are on very friendly terms. He’s the only curate I can stomach.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Branwell, go! Get out! Upstairs with you!”

  She hurried out, nearly tripping over Keeper, who was making his way to the front door in good defensive form. She crossed the entry hall and knocked on her father’s study, then entered.

  He was at his desk with his glasses perched on the tip of his nose and a magnifying glass in hand, struggling to read a letter that he could see only dimly. Charlotte had been back from Brussels since January, and still she could not come to terms with how he had aged. His snowy-white hair bristled around his face, and he kept his neck swaddled in yards of white linen to ward off colds. At sixty-eight, he was still a handsome man, with an upright air of dignity that age would never diminish, but the forcefulness of his will had drawn unflattering lines on his face, and the mouth let you know that this was a man who would not be contradicted.

  He had been irritable at breakfast, and she could tell at a glance that his humor had not improved.

  “You must give me some of your time this afternoon, Charlotte,” he said sternly. “I need you to read this for me. I have to respond today.”

  “Papa, it’s your new curate,” she announced.

  “Ah, at last. God willing, they’ve sent me a good one,” he said, straightening in his chair and laying down the glass.

  “Can you see him now or should I show him into the dining room?”

  “No, no, show him in.”

  “Good, because I can’t dislodge Branwell from the sofa.”

  “My son is up?” The eyes took on a baffled look. “That poor boy. That evil woman has quite devoured his soul.”

  The doorbell rang again, sending Keeper into a barking frenzy. Charlotte raced back to the kitchen, calling for Martha. Martha appeared in the doorway to the back kitchen, her face wet and red, her sleeves rolled up, and her hair dangling in her eyes.

  “Why haven’t you got the door?” Charlotte exclaimed.

 
“I’m up to my ears in laundry, miss.”

  “Oh goodness, you do look a fright. I suppose I’ll have to go myself.”

  Charlotte took off her apron and patted back her hair.

  “Do ye think he’ll be stayin’ for dinner?” Tabby asked.

  “I should hope not. We’ve not planned for him.”

  “Those curates’re pushy,” she scowled. “They hang around like dogs an’ won’t let up till ye toss ’em a few scraps.”

  Charlotte was already on her way to the door, smoothing down her skirts. It was her thoughts that needed smoothing, however. Home was no longer a place of retreat. Home was an overindulged brother wallowing in self-pity, an irascible father with failing eyes, and fading dreams.

  As for the clergymen who traipsed through their doors, she thought them more trouble than they were worth—the underpaid, newly ordained who came to Haworth to assist her father on their way to greater futures. She thought them vain young men who thought too highly of themselves and too lowly of the lower orders, men of petty jealousies and narrow minds.

  The tall, broad-shouldered man who stepped into the parsonage that morning struck her as unusually reserved; he had a proud, statuelike face that might have been handsome had it revealed the slightest hint of feeling. He offered no smile and yet showed every sign of courtesy. He removed his hat, bowed to her, and introduced himself as Mr. Arthur Bell Nicholls. Keeper, who had once driven a terrified curate up the stairs and into a bedroom, smelled no fear on this stranger and treated him accordingly. Arthur let his hand linger before the dog’s inquisitive nose, allowing himself to be thoroughly inspected, and if Charlotte had not been so eager to deliver the curate to her father, if she had taken just a moment to inquire about his journey or the suitability of his lodgings, she would have seen a softer side to the man. She would have noticed how he slid his hand underneath the dog’s chin and gave it a good scratch; she would have seen the stiff reserve melt and a smile break from ear to ear and a twinkle light up his blue eyes. Instead, she ushered him into her father’s study, closed the door behind him, and shut him out of her thoughts.

  There was in Arthur Nicholls much to recommend him to Charlotte Brontë, not least of which was the disparity between surface and soul, and it might be argued that Mr. Nicholls was the hidden gem of the two. Behind a veneer of a quiet, ladylike demeanor, Charlotte concealed an acerbic mind and ruthlessly harsh opinions on the weaknesses of the human species. Arthur, on the other hand, was the blustery, bigoted sort who could barely open his mouth without offending someone. Yet when the gloves came off, he had a great and tender heart, and was capable of love that would bear all wrongs, endure all tempests—in short, the very stuff that Charlotte took great pains to fabricate in her stories and that she was convinced she would never find.