Romancing Miss Bronte

by Juliet Gael

  As he hurried through the dark, damp tunnel to Main Street, he was feeling glum and dissatisfied with himself. These villagers were a baffling people, full of peculiar notions and superstitions, with crude habits and customs they were unwilling to change. There were small-landed proprietors grown rich from their tenants and mills, who would not part with a penny’s worth of education for their sons, even less for their daughters. They put their children to work in their own mills, and then they vilified Arthur when he condemned the practice from the pulpit.

  For all the good Arthur had done through his work in the church school, by his efforts to entice even the poorest in his parish to his classrooms, there were some who bore grudges against him for one thing or another. They didn’t like it that he tried to put an end to the cockfighting and campaigned to close the whist gambling houses. He was too conscientious and principled for their tastes, and it seemed he was always crusading against the superficial evils of the village.

  But those who knew him well—and it was primarily the poorest in the village—held him in high esteem. The twelve-year-old girl to whose house he now directed his steps was one of those. Hannah Grace, who had once been one of his most earnest pupils, was dying of consumption. She lived with her parents and seven brothers and sisters in a two-room stone cottage wedged like an afterthought at the end of Lodge Street. Lodge Street was not much better than the slums of Gauger’s Croft. The air smelled of wool grease and offal from the slaughterhouse across the way, and there was always a stench wafting in from the middens on the corner where they dumped their night soil and animal refuse. Arthur had never quite gotten used to the squalor and the smell of poverty, and he figured he probably never would. But not once had it stopped him from his duties. It was a constant reminder to him of the hard choices of the poor.

  As he passed the Black Bull he heard a trumpet blast out a few notes. Upstairs, where the curtains were blowing in the breeze, the brass band was setting up for a rehearsal. There was the sound of laughter and Arthur smiled, thinking what a fine day it was, worthy of laughter, and that he might still be able to make it to the stream.

  At the end of Lodge Street, he noticed a figure sitting on the steps of Hannah Grace’s cottage; he thought it might be one of Hannah’s brothers, but then he recognized the carroty hair and the spectacles. Branwell was slumped on the bottom step, staring into the depths of his hat. He gave a startled look as Arthur approached and then broke into a coughing fit that racked his thin frame; when the coughing ceased, he started to stand, but he was too exhausted and sat back down on the step and lifted his face in a weak smile.

  “Nicholls,” he said lightly. “My good man. They said you might be around.”

  Arthur was surprised at the sincerity of his tone; in the past Branwell had always greeted Arthur with the swaggering sarcasm that he reserved for anyone with a clerical collar, and he avoided their company like the pestilence he believed them to be.

  “Good day to you, Mr. Brontë.”

  “Hannah’s dying, isn’t she?” he asked, his small, dark eyes shiny with tears.

  Arthur was stunned. He had never known Branwell to visit the sick or the poor.

  “Yes, I’m afraid she is.”

  “I’m quite fond of Hannah Grace. She was one of my little Sunday scholars back … in the days of my innocence and youth …” He struggled for breath, then continued: “… when I ventured to perform a few duties incumbent on a clergyman’s son.” He added in a tone of self-mockery, “Although I confess I did them poorly.” He clapped his hat down on his head, grabbed the iron railing, and drew himself up on unsteady legs. “Don’t know if I did any good for the poor child. Although”—another gasp for air—“she seemed quite pleased to see me.”

  “I’m sure she was,” Arthur replied kindly. “It was very thoughtful of you to visit.”

  Branwell seemed surprised at Arthur’s sympathetic tone; it struck a chord in his fragile soul, and the thought occurred to him that he had misjudged the curate all these years.

  “Do you think so?” he asked eagerly. “I read her a psalm. Seemed to cheer her a little. Would have liked to pray with her.” Then he added, his voice hoarse and trembling, “But I’m not good enough. How could I pray for her? I can’t even pray for myself. I think I’ve quite forgotten how.”

  He was racked again by a cough so violent that his knees gave out, and he collapsed back onto the steps. The effort seemed too much for him, and he grabbed his chest while he struggled for breath.

  “Perhaps you should go home,” Arthur said, bending over him anxiously. Branwell rested his head against the railing.

  “They never have a kind word for me, my man.”

  “Oh, but I’m sure they do.”

  “No,” Branwell said with a tired shake of the head. “I told Charlotte … said I was coming to visit Hannah, and she … she only gave me this look, like I wasn’t in my right mind. Why can’t they give me credit when … I’m trying to do some good? I’m not … so selfish as they think.”

  This long confession seemed to drain the last bit of energy from his body.

  “You are indeed quite ill, sir. I trust you’ve seen a doctor.”

  Branwell managed a sickly grin. “Wheelhouse? Been hovering over me all summer. Man’s an incompetent booby.”

  Arthur tended to agree with him and did not press the subject.

  “Come,” Arthur said, lifting him to his feet. “I’ll help you home.” Arthur remembered having helped him home a year ago, and he was slight then, but now Arthur could feel his ribs underneath the broadcloth coat.

  Branwell was so short of breath that he had to pause every few feet on the way home. They met John Brown coming out of the Bull, and John took him up Church Lane to the parsonage. Arthur turned back toward Lodge Street and Hannah Grace’s cottage. By then the light was fading from the sky.

  “I’m afraid the end is near. Quite near, Mr. Brontë,” Dr. Wheelhouse said gravely. Patrick sat behind his desk, with Charlotte standing by his side. Emily and Anne waited in the dining room.

  “But I fancied I’d seen a change, for the better.” Patrick said in disbelief.

  Charlotte spoke up. “Papa refers to his attitude. He’s been, well, kinder. More affectionate these past few days.”

  The doctor sighed, “Ah, indeed—that sort of change often signals the end.”

  “He’s dying? My boy’s dying?”

  Charlotte could not bear the sound of anguish in her father’s voice; she laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “It appears to be a general wasting away,” the doctor pursued. “Between his bronchitis and the drink …” He shook his head sadly—a practiced gesture indicating they should resign themselves. The matter was out of his hands.

  The three sisters sat side by side on the sofa, hands and arms linked, finding solace in the nearness of one other.

  Charlotte said, “Poor Papa. He’s in there poring over his medical books. He thinks we’ve been quite blind.”

  “In what way?” Anne asked.

  “He says Branwell’s been showing all the symptoms of consumption when the doctor thought it was just bronchitis. He’s seen it before, with Maria and Elizabeth, and he’s being quite harsh on himself for not recognizing it earlier.”

  “Papa thinks it’s consumption?” Emily asked.

  “Yes.”

  Emily said, “So he’s dying.”

  None of them was prepared for this; wasted and ill though he was, none of them believed he would die.

  Emily’s eyes grew watery and she suddenly bolted up, snatched a book from the table, and lapsed into the rocking chair.

  A gloomy silence hung in the room.

  Emily sniffed loudly, and Charlotte rose to offer her a handkerchief. Emily declined with a shake of the head, preferring to wipe her nose with the back of her sleeve. Without taking her eyes from the page, she said gruffly, “If I should ever fall ill, by God, I swear that man Wheelhouse will not touch me—you must promise me—he’s
repulsive—and his breath reeks.”

  And he had a disturbing manner of glancing at them, with a lascivious smile, when their father’s back was turned.

  Patrick Brontë had a horror of sickrooms; he had always left his sick children to be tended by the servants, or one another. But that Saturday he pulled a chair to the side of his son’s bed and kept an unbroken vigil through the day and night. For years Branwell had opposed every attempt his father had made to restore his faith in God, but that night Patrick won the battle for his son’s soul.

  During the evening Branwell grew utterly calm. Serene. And his eyes looked with tenderness on his father, who knelt beside the bed.

  “I did love you all dearly, but I loved you most of all, Papa,” he whispered. “I know you did your best, and I pray God will forgive me for all the suffering I caused you. I have wasted my life, the life you gave me, and I am deeply ashamed.”

  There was no mention of Lydia, not even to John Brown when the sexton came to his bedside. In those final hours it seemed that Branwell had found his center again, his home, his family, and his God.

  On Sunday morning when Charlotte entered the room, she heard her brother praying for the first time in years. He seemed untroubled, and as he prayed he looked with love on his father, white head bowed in his knotty old hands, muttering his long, eloquent prayers. It was a strange duet, father and son in whispered prayer after they had been locked in battle for so many years.

  When the end finally came, it was too much for the old man and he cried out, “My son! My son!” All the father’s stiffness and austerity were stripped away, and he gathered his dead child in his arms and rocked him, murmuring tender words of love they had never heard him express to any living human being. Witnessing her proud father so broken and helpless was more than Charlotte could bear. She stepped forward and laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Papa,” she whispered gently. “Papa, he’s gone now. He’s at peace.”

  He would not be consoled. “Leave me alone,” he cried. “This is my son, my son!”

  That afternoon the servants prepared his body. Martha, who had shaved Mr. Brontë during his blindness, now performed the task on the dead, lathering up the boy’s face and wielding the razor with smooth strokes and a steady hand, taking care to leave the red side whiskers long, the way he wore them in life. Old Tabby stripped off his clothes and tenderly sponged down his arms and chest, his hands and feet, muttering to Martha about how he was the closest thing to a skeleton she’d ever seen. When he was bathed, they buttoned him into a clean shirt and his best jacket, although his clothing hung loose on his wasted body.

  Once the life had gone out of him and all the unhappiness had been released, he looked handsome again, like his old self. As Charlotte stood in shock over his pale corpse, the memories of his transgressions faded swiftly. The natural affections between brother and sister, once so strong, rushed into the void in her heart and drowned her in sympathy. That she had let him depart from this world without a parting sign of her love for him was a regret she could not bear to face. She took her guilt and fled to her bedroom, and for a week she shook with a fever that had no origin in any pathology.

  They had the coffin finished by nightfall, and when they brought it upstairs Martha exclaimed that Thomas must have got his measurements wrong because the wooden box was barely big enough for a child.

  That night, with Branwell laid out nicely in his coffin in the dining room, mild and serene in the golden glow of lamplight, a quiet descended on the parsonage. Gone were the loud drunkenness, the raised voices, the distressing sounds of a restless man searching for a way out of his misery in a locked room in a parsonage in the middle of the night. They all lay awake listening, but the only sounds that broke their grieving silence were an occasional cough, and the wind rattling the window-panes, and the clock ticking away the hours on the landing.

  Arthur wanted very much to be a comfort to them that week, but there didn’t seem to be a place where he could fit in. He came by every day, but he found few people he cared to engage in conversation. There were artists and poets from Halifax and Bradford and plenty of dissenters, and village men from Branwell’s circle of drinking friends at the Black Bull. Branwell’s weaknesses were common enough to the Yorkshiremen—they were hard-drinking, entertaining types, talkers rather than doers. Arthur greeted them with stiff civility and then looked in on his parson.

  Mr. Brontë kept to his study that week, receiving the vicars and incumbent clergymen from all the neighboring parishes who had known him these thirty-some years. It was an older, tight-knit crowd, and they passed the time reminiscing, soothing their sorrows with anecdotes of bygone days. Arthur was himself a big talker and was well known for his love of argument in the circle of his brethren, but on this occasion he held his tongue and showed himself perfectly mild-mannered.

  He looked for Charlotte but never found her. On Wednesday he found Martha in the scullery with her arms in a tub of water, scouring a heavy pot, and asked if Charlotte was ill.

  “Aye, she is,” Martha snapped impatiently. “Took to her bed with one of her headaches the day her brother died an’ hasn’t been down since. Got a fever now. An’ she’s the one the reverend depends on so, an’ the house full of people mornin’ to night, an’ the funeral tea tomorrow. Miss Emily helps me out in the kitchen, but she ain’t no good with the visitors, an’ Miss Anne’s not much better. Those girls’d rather walk on fire than chitchat to folk.”

  She hung the pot on a hook and shook her head. “What kind of headache hurts that long. I can’t understand it. If she’s grievin’ it ain’t no more than anyone else.”

  Branwell’s godfather came up from Bradford to perform the burial rites. Arthur merely assisted, along with Sutcliffe Sowden, the only clergyman Branwell had ever befriended. Throughout the service Arthur strained to catch a glimpse of Charlotte’s face behind her black silk bonnet, but she was too small, and seemed swallowed up in the crowd.

  Chapter Thirteen

  September brought forth a few last gasps of glory—bright, sun-filled days with balmy breezes—but then the dreary autumn crept in, trailing a wind that smelled sharply of cold rain. The sky hung like a canopy of gloom that barely changed its countenance from dawn to dusk, and the earth was muted to a single tone of gray the color of stone. On some mornings the village was swallowed up by fog that lifted only at noon, and darkness fell all too soon. The cold weather confined them once again to the parsonage, their lives unfolding quietly within its walls, in rooms shorn of all but the most necessary comforts by a father with spartan tastes and an eye on heaven. Coals were used sparingly; fires were lit in the study and the dining room, but they burned brightly only after nightfall or when visitors came to call.

  As the days marched by, each of the sisters wrestled with her brother’s ghost, and shifted around the material remains of his sad life in an effort to put order in death where there had been none in life. Branwell’s amateurish portrait of his sisters, which hung on the landing next to the clock, where it might catch the eye of visitors, was taken down. Patrick carefully rolled up the canvas and stored it away in the deep drawer at the bottom of his dresser beside treasured keepsakes from his dead wife and daughters. On her hands and knees, Martha scrubbed and oiled the wood floor in Branwell’s bedroom. A freshly laundered counterpane was spread on the bed and every nook and cranny thoroughly dusted, so that when they were finished the room had the same austere sheen as the rest of the parsonage, and not a trace of shame remained. Emily, as self-appointed trustee of his literary estate, had long since gathered up all his personal papers, his scattered poems, the novel fragments and childhood stories, and quietly taken them to her room.

  “What should we do with it all?” Charlotte asked one evening as they sat in the dining room. Still weak from the fever that had laid her low, she sat wrapped in a heavy shawl, her feet on a stool before the fire, looking through Branwell’s notebooks, which Emily had placed on her lap.

 
; They reflected on the question, each of them turning it around in her thoughts in her own way.

  Anne said, “It only reminds me of how terribly unhappy he was.” She leaned into the warmth of the fire. “But he’s at peace now, and we can find strength in the knowledge that God is merciful and loving. There is no sin so great that He cannot forgive.”

  “He wasn’t always unhappy,” Emily said.

  Emily rose to add a few lumps of coal to the fire. She pumped the bellows until the coal burst into flame, and in the sudden flash of light Charlotte scrutinized her sister’s face. Her cheeks seemed to have lost some of their plumpness. She professed only to have a touch of bronchitis, but to Charlotte’s ears her cough had the deep, hollow ring that suggested something more serious. Now the physical effort of working the bellows brought on a spasm of coughing. Emily returned to her chair, pressing a handkerchief to her mouth and avoiding Charlotte’s sharp, inquisitive stare.

  Charlotte resisted the urge to inquire about the state of her health. It would achieve nothing. Instead, she asked, “Has Papa seen any of this?”

  “No. I took everything before he had a chance to go through his room.”

  This was the way they always handled their father, protecting him from anything that might upset him.

  “What about the letters from Mrs. Robinson?” Charlotte asked.

  Anne and Emily exchanged a look.

  “There weren’t any letters from Mrs. Robinson.”

  “The ones he carried around in his pocket.”

  “They weren’t from her. They were all from Dr. Crosby. The Robinsons’ family doctor.”

  “They were very kind letters. But they repeatedly urged him to forget the lady—”

  “She was no lady.”