Romancing Miss Bronte

by Juliet Gael

  Charlotte was bundling up the last of the clothing when Martha entered.

  “You can tell your father these are ready to take to the church.”

  “Yes, miss. Did you want to cut any lilacs for the table, miss?”

  “I suppose so. A few.”

  “Shall we wait until tomorrow?”

  “We’re always so busy in the morning, Martha, with the reception here. I think I’ll just cut them and take them over now. They’ll keep overnight in water.”

  The schoolroom was unrecognizable. Every corner had been soaped, scoured, and whitewashed. The school desks had been stacked to the side, replaced by rows of long tables. Scores of women in work aprons were cleaning off benches and setting out their best tea things, while others hung garlands of evergreens and flowers cut from their cottage gardens.

  Charlotte lowered the armful of branches onto the table and looked up to see florid-faced Mrs. Grant beside her.

  “How lovely! Lilacs! Oh, how we wish we had something growing at home, but we can’t get anything started.” Charlotte noticed that her stout little figure had grown stouter: she was expecting.

  “Good day, Mrs. Grant.”

  “Our table’s right next to yours. I’m so glad. We never see much of you. Or at least I don’t. It seems I never get out of Oxenhope anymore. Of course Joseph brings me news of you, but it’s not the same, is it? As sitting down to tea together.” She wrinkled up her nose and glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was listening. “I know it’s difficult for you in this dreary little place. It is for us, too. Such a want of elegance and good society. That’s why this sort of thing is so good for them, putting on their best clothes and coming to a proper tea. Having to behave like civilized folk for a change.” She laughed gaily at this.

  Charlotte asked, “Have you seen Mr. Nicholls? Papa wanted a word with him.”

  “Oh, he’s over there, with Miss Dixon.”

  “Miss Dixon?” Charlotte squinted; she was not wearing her spectacles.

  “The new mistress for the first class. She’s come from Manchester.” She leaned close to Charlotte again and whispered behind her hand. “Although I wouldn’t disturb him right now. I don’t think that would make him happy.” She smiled cheerily. “They’re hanging the canaries.”

  “Canaries?”

  “Miss Dixon thought it would be a lovely touch, to have them suspended from the ceiling and singing during the tea.”

  “Canaries? Hanging from the ceiling?”

  “Miss Dixon is very fond of canaries. She has five cages. She’s donating them just for tomorrow. Arthur’s been busy with them all morning.”

  “Goodness. I’d think he’d have more pressing things to do,” Charlotte muttered. She began trimming the lilacs. “Well, I’ll speak to him later.”

  “It would be so nice for him if they were to marry. She’s a very nice girl.” Sarah Grant smoothed out her apron and glanced at the pair in the corner. “Arthur’s such a good man.” She turned back to Charlotte and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “We need to find him a wife.”

  Charlotte met Miss Dixon the next day at the parsonage reception. She struck Charlotte as a practical young woman, with a firm voice and a steady gaze, the sort that could be counted on to keep her wits about her in a crisis and raise sensible children. To any eye other than Charlotte’s, the woman’s attraction to Arthur would pass unnoticed. But Charlotte, observing keenly through her spectacles, caught the slight change in her expression when Arthur offered to fetch her a glass of wine, and the way she followed him with her eyes ever so briefly. It was noticeable like a breeze moving quietly among leaves.

  “Nicholls, I say, we’ve been talking about the reforms we’ve accomplished, and Mr. Greenwood here reminded me of your battle with the washerwomen.”

  It was her father, who had caught Arthur on the way back from the refreshment table.

  “Ah, have you now?” He handed Miss Dixon her wine, attempting to avoid Patrick, but the room was too crowded and there was nowhere to flee.

  “We have to be thankful for the small victories, don’t we, Nicholls? Still can’t get clean water in the village, but at least we’ve no longer got sheets flying from the tombstones, thanks to you.”

  “Indeed,” Arthur replied stiffly. He turned to Miss Dixon. “It was one of those vulgarizing local customs that had gone unchecked for years. Quite a battle, but I was victorious in the end.” He shot a quick, sparring glance at Patrick over the rim of his glass. “Although I daresay the battle was a lonely one.”

  “Quite an upheaval, that was,” John Brown laughed. “Our women don’t take lightly to bein’ told to change their ways.”

  Mr. Heaton said, “I recall ’ow I saw old widow Burder tryin’ to sneak up the lane early one mornin’ with her basket o’ sheets—headin’ straight for the churchyard despite Mr. Nicholls ’ere just ’avin’ announced from the pulpit that dryin’ sheets on the tombstones was prohibited. She caught sight of Mr. Nicholls and she turned round slick as a whistle and tottered right back down the lane—heavin’ an’ pantin’ like a ghost was after her.”

  The churchwarden said to Arthur, “Did you not write a poem on the subject?”

  Arthur chuckled. “No sir, not I.”

  Patrick turned sharply on Greenwood and peered over the rims of his spectacles. “It was I who wrote the poem.”

  “Well, then let’s hear it.”

  Hartley Merrall stepped into the group with his plate piled high with macaroons. “Don’t be bashful now, sir—go on, let’s hear it.”

  Someone laughed, “Bashful? Mr. Brontë?”

  The other guests were turning their attention toward the parson. “By all means, Mr. Brontë. Let’s have a recitation.”

  “Yes, let’s hear it!”

  Patrick paused, waiting until they grew silent; then he began reciting in his grand and dramatic manner.

  “The Parson, an old man, but hotter than cold …”

  He boomed on through the titters and smiles, thoroughly enjoying the audience. When he came to the part about Arthur, he turned to his curate with a comic flourish.

  “His Curate, who follows—with all due regard—

  Though Foild by the Church, has reform’d the Churchyard.

  The females all routed have fled with their clothes

  To Stackyards, and backyards, and where no one knows …”

  Charlotte contrived to steal a glance at Arthur over the rim of her cup. Arthur was staring into the air with his granite-like expression, but all of a sudden his eyes—most uncontrollably—flitted to catch Charlotte’s gaze. He turned a frightful color of red and glanced away again.

  “And loudly have sworn by the suds which they swim in,

  They’ll wring off his head, for his warring with women,

  Whilst their husbands combine and roar out in their fury,

  They’ll Lynch him at once, without trial by Jury …”

  At that moment the church bells began to peal, signaling the call to line up for the procession. There was a hearty applause, and the guests, believing Mr. Brontë had finished, began to set down their plates and leave the room.

  “Wait!” he cried. “There’s more!”

  “Papa,” Charlotte cautioned in a low voice, with a light touch on his arm. She recalled the last lines, their casual cruelty.

  But he would not stop. For effect, he removed his spectacles and spoke solemnly, with a funereal tone:

  “But saddest of all, the fair maidens declare,

  Of marriage or love, he must ever despair.”

  There were a few low chuckles. Greenwood and Michael Merrall clapped Arthur on the back. Arthur attempted a smile but his eyes swelled with humiliation.

  Miss Dixon blushed deeply, her gaze drawn to the worn carpet. Not a word passed between them. She set down her glass and turned to the door.

  Arthur glowered at Patrick on the way out.

  That evening, as Charlotte was folding his newspapers and tidying u
p his desk, she said to her father, “You may very well be wrong about Mr. Nicholls, Papa.”

  “How’s that, my dear?”

  “About marrying. I think he has his sights set on Miss Dixon. She certainly has her sights on him, and she is quite the type to snare her man.”

  Patrick peeled off his wire spectacles and glared sternly at her from beneath his thick black brows. He looked very tired. He had come home, changed into his slippers, and fallen asleep in his chair.

  “Miss Dixon? The new schoolmistress?”

  “The one.”

  “That would be inconvenient. If he marries he’ll need to find his own living somewhere. Couldn’t possibly keep a wife on his paltry income. I should not like to lose Nicholls. I’d be hard-pressed to find a man as capable.”

  “So you admit your curate has some qualities.”

  “Of course he has qualities,” he frowned. “But I shall not inflate his vanity with false flattery.”

  He rose stiffly from his chair and took the candle from his desk.

  She watched from the hallway while he climbed the stairs to the landing and paused to wind the grandfather clock.

  “I can tell you this much: Nicholls is much more valuable to me than to any poor deceived woman.” He closed the clock case. “We’ve gotten used to each other, and I should find it very annoying to have to break in a new curate as old as I am.” He shook his head grimly. “After seven years, I expected a bit more loyalty than this.”

  Charlotte thought that Arthur’s happiness should be a consideration, but her father saw people—particularly women and inferiors—in terms of solutions to his problems, not as individuals with tastes and affections of their own. She would not express her opinion. He was working himself into a state, and she needed to appease him.

  “Papa, you tired yourself out with that walk today. Get on up to bed.”

  “It’s a sad thing to lose your strength,” he said morosely as he raised his candle to light the stairs. “A sad thing. I don’t recognize myself anymore.”

  “It’s quite cool tonight. Shall I have Martha bring up some coals?”

  “Nonsense. I won’t have a fire in my bedroom in May. Sheer extravagance.”

  “Good night then, Papa.”

  That night as she lay in bed, her thoughts dwelled on Arthur. He had become a quiet, seamless presence in their lives. So much of the responsibility for her father’s parish had been left to his capable hands. From the first day he had assumed all the duties of the incumbent—the funerals, weddings, and baptisms, the additional load of Sunday services in Stanbury that were held in the schoolhouse built by him, the running of their own Haworth church school, the visits to the poor—and all of these operations had flourished under his hand. He had shouldered it all without so much as a murmur of complaint.

  The thought of his leaving weighed on her that night, and when dawn broke she had still not gone to sleep.

  That summer Charlotte had ample opportunity to watch for any blossoming romance as she tended the garden in the front, hoping to bring forth a few blooms from the rocky soil. But neither soil nor schoolhouse yielded anything of interest. Arthur seemed intent on showing Miss Dixon his most rocklike and intimidating countenance. Whenever they passed in the lane, he nodded politely and bowled on by. Miss Dixon, on the other hand, seemed to slow her step, and once Charlotte caught her glancing at him over her shoulder. Charlotte was wearing her spectacles that day, and she was sure of what she had seen.

  Thus it came as a shock to her when her father appeared at the back door one afternoon as she was helping Martha remove sheets from the line.

  “I don’t know what to think of that man,” he said sourly as he squinted into the sunlight. Charlotte placed the folded sheet in the basket and turned to him.

  “I can only assume from your tone of voice that you’re referring to your curate,” Charlotte said wryly.

  “He takes his vacation in a few weeks and he’s been dropping hints that he may not come back.”

  “How odd.”

  “It’s quite unlike him, going all moody and womanish like this. After all these years, all of a sudden he’s unhappy. Says he’s thinking about going back to farming in Ireland. Farming! Can you imagine? Proud as he is!”

  “He couldn’t possibly mean it.”

  “I have no patience for the man. Needs to toughen up.”

  Charlotte said, “To be honest, I thought he’d been looking a little peaked these days.”

  Patrick looked toward Martha. “Have you noticed Mr. Nicholls behaving oddly?”

  “Why, yes, sir. hasn’t seemed hisself lately.”

  “Is he ill?”

  “Well, not in body, sir. Strong as an ox, he is. But there’s somethin’ eatin’ at him. Mama’s noticed it. His spirits is low.”

  “Has Miss Dixon turned him down?” Charlotte asked.

  “No, miss. I’m sure of it. I think she’d welcome his attentions. But he hasn’t paid suit to her. I’d know it straightaway.”

  “Do you think it’s a woman in Ireland?” Charlotte asked.

  Martha’s dark eyes flashed excitedly. “Could be, miss. I’ve often heard rumored he has a sweetheart back home.”

  “Why in blue blazes do you women think that whenever a man’s unhappy there’s always a woman involved?” Patrick bellowed.

  “Because generally there is,” Charlotte said.

  Martha giggled behind a sheet, and Patrick stomped inside.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  She had begun the novel evasively, with a game of screens and mirrors and an aloof, benumbed heroine that even Charlotte didn’t like very much. But Lucy was no accident. Charlotte intended her thusly. She would refuse Lucy Snowe even the most muted optimism; she would equip her mentally and psychologically for sorrow and loss.

  A mere spectator in life, more dead than alive, Lucy Snowe resembled no contemporary heroine. Unable to be truthful about herself, Lucy diverted the reader by narrating a story about a child, Polly, a tiny doll-like creature of extreme sensitivity. Polly was still vulnerable and alive; she still cried when she was abandoned by her father and pattered about after the young man Graham Bretton, eager for his attention and love. It was Charlotte as a child, when she could still feel, worshipping her once-adored brother.

  But after a while, it became clear that Lucy’s nature was not as it appeared to be. Hers was a singularly constructed personality, a cauldron of anxiety, guilt, sorrow, and an enormous capacity to love, all of it sealed behind an imperturbable, tomblike calm.

  Lucy had not one drop of faith in the future, but neither would she shrink like a coward before Fate. She would assert a choice, through the small window Fate had left open; she would bravely set off to Villette, an imaginary city resembling Brussels, on a journey of self-discovery.

  It was inevitable that George work his way into Charlotte’s novel after all of the shared ambivalence they felt toward each other, the impressions he made upon her and the longing he inspired in her. But she knew better than to fabricate a falsehood, even in her fiction; she saw herself—and him—too clearly. George’s vanity would not be sacrificed for love of a woman with neither beauty nor station, regardless of the bond between them. He would have society’s approval and play by the conventional rules. Villette would not revive the myth of Jane Eyre, the illusion of a great love that completes us and resolves all of life’s problems. Lucy could not have the handsome, charming hero, Dr. John; Charlotte would betroth him to the beautiful Polly.

  If Charlotte was suited for anyone on earth, it would always and only be Heger. At long last she brought him successfully to life as the schoolmaster Paul Emanuel, and on the pages of Villette she shaped the relationship that had shaped her life. He had wielded such tyrannical power over her with his dark scowls, his irrational and tempestuous moods, his soaring intellect and explosive passions. Deeply flawed, he was also profoundly human. He could read her eyes, her gestures, her unspoken language. She had never been a shadow with
him; he had brought her into the light and seen and loved her for what she was. In his eyes, she had been a whole woman.

  All that year writing Villette, Charlotte suffered psychologically and physically. The work forced her to confront the truth about her past and come to terms with the harsh reality of what was left of her life. It provoked headaches and depression, wrenching pains in her neck and numbness in her back and arms, blurred vision and eyestrain. At times as she dipped her pen in the ink, she felt her breathing suddenly constrict as if a mighty fist were squeezing the air from her lungs; at other times the tension produced a viselike tightening of her stomach. Her entire body rebelled against the memories she had revived and the scrutiny of truth.

  She finished the novel one morning in November. She had worked all through the night and her fingers were cold and cramped. She put down her pen and stopped the inkwell, then, with head bowed and mitten-clad hands folded in prayer, she whispered thanks to God. Gathering her shawl close around her shoulders, she rose and knocked on the door of her father’s study.

  “It’s done, Papa. It’s finished.”

  She stood before him light as air.

  He folded his newspaper and came around the desk to take her hands in his.

  “Well done, daughter,” he said kissing her on the cheek. “Well done. Are you happy with it?”

  “I’ve tried to do my best.”

  That morning she buttoned on her boots and took the dogs as far as Haworth Moor. Rain-sodden clouds hugged the treeless hills, and the distant views were lost in gray fog. For the first time in years she was able to breathe in the beauty and freedom of her beloved moors. She recognized them like long-absent friends.

  On the way back, passing down a narrow, high-walled snicket she caught sight of a black-clad figure approaching through the mist. Flossy recognized him first, bounding ahead.

  “Miss Brontë,” Arthur said as they came upon each other. “It’s much too cold for you to be out. There’s nothing wrong, I hope.”