Romancing Miss Bronte

by Juliet Gael

  By then Tabby and Martha had had their stomachs full of the old parson. They had seen how things stood between Mr. Nicholls and their mistress. They saw how kindly he treated her—“like a queen,” Tabby said—and how calm she seemed when he was around.

  On the fifth day, Tabby put on a clean apron and hobbled into Patrick’s study.

  “Master, I ben with ye nigh on forty years now, and I tell ye what yer doin’ to yer daughter is just wrong.”

  Patrick raised his white head in astonishment.

  “Aye, sir, yer old servant is standin’ before ye, tellin’ ye what she thinks of all this. Well, it’s jes’ plain selfishness on yer part. Ye’re killin’ yer daughter. Aye, ye’re killin’ her. Is that what ye want? Well, the others are all dead, and if ye don’t stop this nonsense over Mr. Nicholls and let the two of ’em marry, she’ll be dead, too, and ye’ll have yerself t’ thank for it.”

  Before going up to her room that night, Martha let Flossy out in the garden, and when she returned she found Mr. Brontë sitting at the kitchen table in the dark.

  “Can I be gettin’ ye somethin’, master?”

  With his long-fingered hand he tapped a note on the table.

  “Take this up to her tonight, Martha. Before you go to bed.”

  “Aye, sir,” she said. “I hope it’s somethin’ that’ll make the mistress happy. She’s not ben well.”

  The faint moonlight from the narrow window, illuminating the white of his short bristled hair, lent him a ghostly quality.

  “She’s not strong enough for it.” His voice sounded drained. “I’ve seen what it does to a woman. Bearing children. Charlotte’s too tiny.”

  He covered his face with his hands and wept silently.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The lead-colored sky had been roiling with the threat of rain ever since Arthur left Oxenhope. As he came up on Higher Halstead’s field, the storm finally caught up with him. A few heavy drops and then a cloudburst; thunder shook the hills. Arthur was drenched by the time he reached the churchyard. Only a short distance from the footpath, John Brown squatted on a flat box grave, chipping a name into the tombstone.

  “Good day to ye, sir,” the stonemason called out.

  Arthur stopped, and with a hand on his hat he tried to make himself heard over the moaning wind and driving rain.

  “That’s the Fosters’ vault, isn’t it?”

  “It is, sir. The old man. Passed away on Tuesday.”

  “Foster was a good man—God give his family strength. His wife is well, I pray?”

  “Aye, well as they come, but fer grievin’.”

  “Give them my condolences, will you? I shall remember them in my prayers.”

  “I’ll do that, sir. They’ll be glad to hear from ye.”

  “I pray you’re well, John?”

  “Aye, sir. Just a little stiffness in the ’ands and knees.”

  A lightning bolt split open the sky, followed by a deafening crack. “You’d better take cover, John. Wait until this passes.”

  With his head bent into the wind, Arthur had started up the path when he heard John call out, “Is it true ye may be coming back to Haworth, Mr. Nicholls?”

  Arthur wheeled around, still clutching his hat.

  “I don’t know, John.”

  “Well, if ye do, folks’d be mighty pleased.”

  Arthur stood silently for a moment, the rain dripping down his nose, wondering what on earth to say to the man who had once wanted to shoot him.

  “It would please me even more, John,” he said before he sped up the path toward the parsonage.

  Martha met him at the door with a towel to dry his face, bobbing and nodding in a comic display of exaggerated deference.

  “Oh, Mr. Nicholls, sir, ye’re a brave one to come out in this.”

  “You know I’d brave worse than this to see your mistress.”

  “Would ye like some tea, sir? Warm ye up a little?”

  “Not just yet. Where’s Miss Brontë?”

  “Waitin’ in the reverend’s parlor, sir.”

  Seeing Charlotte for the first time after a long absence, all he wanted was to draw her into his arms and hold her close. But he had not yet been granted that favor, nor any favor.

  Her father stood peering out the window at the ominous sky. A sour odor hung over the room—the olfactory stew of a reclusive old man careless of appearances, of clothing that had seen too many years of wear, of stale tobacco and cold ashes. He had been dictating correspondence to Charlotte and now she was tidying up his desk, her nimble fingers moving with admirable efficiency. Habits of tidiness and order. Arthur liked that about her. Then she offered Arthur her hand to shake, and reassured him with her eyes.

  For the first time in a year, Patrick greeted Arthur with something like his old familiarity and urged him kindly to take a seat. The sky had darkened and rain pelted the glass, and while Charlotte lit a lantern the three of them exchanged light banter about the storm riding overhead.

  Patrick sat down behind his desk, twining his gnarled fingers across his chest. Arthur faced him with calm dignity; his black hair sprang in wet curls around his strong, square face. Charlotte had drawn her chair into the corner and taken up her knitting, but her hands were trembling.

  “I do appreciate, Mr. Nicholls, that you were able to travel this far on such short notice,” Patrick began. “I am only too aware of how difficult it is for one who serves the Almighty to make arrangements for duties that cannot be abandoned lightly. I know your time is limited, so we shall move directly to the point. If my daughter, Charlotte, should decide to accept your offer of marriage—and she has not yet decided in your favor, Nicholls—but if she should, there are monetary conditions she would like put in place. My daughter has earned a good deal of money from her books—”

  “A modest amount,” Charlotte corrected gently, with her eyes lowered.

  Patrick shot her one of his stern glances and continued: “And she stands to earn a good deal more. I insist upon a marriage settlement that protects her interest. Therefore, I have taken the liberty to consult a solicitor. The terms he advised are these.”

  Patrick opened up a dossier, withdrew a sheet of parchment, and extended it to Arthur.

  “I have no need to see such a document,” Arthur said mildly.

  The clicking needles fell still as Charlotte glanced up.

  Patrick sat back with a frown. “What do you mean by that, Nicholls?”

  “What I mean is that I accept any terms you ask of me.”

  “You would be wise to read the conditions.”

  “Whatever they are, I accept.”

  “You won’t get anything, Nicholls.”

  “I never wanted anything.”

  Charlotte dropped her gaze. A smile crept around the corners of her mouth.

  Arthur sat calmly, his powerful hands spread on his knees.

  “Well, then—here. With that understood, for form’s sake, you might wish to read it.”

  There was a tally of her investments: £500 from Shirley, £480 from Villette, £521 from her railway shares, plus miscellaneous sums from foreign copyrights and the various editions of Jane Eyre. The settlement provided that her money be transferred to a trust for the benefit of Charlotte and any children she might have, to be paid out at her disposition during her lifetime; if she died in Arthur’s lifetime her money would go to her children, and if there were no children, the estate would revert to her father. Arthur would get nothing.

  As he read through it, he lit up. “Yes,” he murmured, a smile breaking from ear to ear. “Yes. Very good. Very well managed, I say. Exactly what I would have done myself if I had been her father.”

  With an air of impatience, he returned the document to Patrick and rose.

  “I have very little time today, sir,” he said. “If you are satisfied, I should like to have a few minutes with your daughter before I take my leave.”

  Without waiting for a reply, Arthur extended his hand to
Charlotte. She laid aside her knitting, and Arthur took her hand and drew her to her feet.

  The sky had darkened even further, and the wind-blown rain clattered against the window with raging force as she led him up the stairs and down the hall to the small, garretlike room.

  “You’ll need a study,” she said as she stepped inside. “I thought you might like to have this room. I’m afraid it’s the only one.”

  There was not a speck of dust anywhere, nor a wrinkle on the counterpane, nor a smudge on the well-oiled dresser.

  “When we were children it was Branwell’s room,” she mused quietly, “but then Emily claimed it and he never got it back again. She loved the views from this room—the sky, and the heath on the other side of the valley. When the weather was too bad to go walking on the moors she would spend endless hours up here. It was all the drama she ever needed or wanted in her life.”

  Emily’s German grammar and a book of Schiller had been neatly arranged on the table beside her ink-stained writing desk. Charlotte opened the drawer.

  “She hid herself so completely, Arthur. From all of us. It was only when we began to publish together that I felt I was beginning to see her and understand her. We were closer during those short years than ever before. After she died I found a few small souvenirs she’d kept.” Charlotte removed a printed program to show him. “Here. It’s from a concert we attended together in Brussels. And I found clippings of reviews of Wuthering Heights. It was like seeing a piece of a tender heart that she had hidden behind a wall of stoicism. She never really understood all the attacks on her book. She could not see what she had written—not the way others saw it. But she’s gone. There will be no more novels. Nor verse. I still can’t quite believe it.”

  Carefully, reverently, she slipped the program back into the desk and then opened the top drawer of Emily’s scarred old chest.

  “She never really thought her work meant anything to anyone but herself, and I would often sit and watch her toss old drafts of her poetry into the kitchen fire. But at the same time she had this habit of neglect—she would leave her things all over the house. We would have these constant little quarrels; she’d be looking for something and I would have put it away. When she was gone, I gathered up everything and stored it in here. Here, this is her work.” She withdrew a sketchbook and passed it to Arthur. The pages were filled with romantic scenes of ruined castles and graceful allegorical figures. There were exquisitely detailed studies of nature: a tiny whinchat perched on a rock, a solitary Scotch fir twisted by the wind. And portraits of the many animals she had so loved: their dogs and cats, their pet hawk.

  Coming across a portrait of Keeper, Arthur paused and grew very still. Charlotte was observing him closely, and she saw how his features softened in sadness.

  “‘Until the day break, and the shadows flee away,’” he murmured.

  There was a long moment of silent complicity, and then she took the sketchbook from him and shut it away.

  “It’s a great comfort to me that you knew them,” she said. “I won’t ever have to explain them to you.”

  Arthur laid his hand on her shoulder—a reassuring gesture, no more.

  She turned to him with sudden earnestness. “If I survived when all the others died, I can only think it was because God had a purpose for me. He gave me a gift of words, and intellect, and imagination—although God knows Emily’s gift was so much greater than mine. If I write at all, I must write the truth. I don’t write out of vanity.” Her brown eyes pleaded with him.

  He seemed perplexed by her earnestness. “My darling, I never believed you cultivated a desire for notoriety.”

  “But there are certain things I’ve written—about the church and about women—that have drawn a good deal of criticism. If we were to marry …”

  “I confess I sometimes cringe at your opinions on certain matters, but I have always known that we disagreed on these things. My only concern is that you leave yourself open to such wounding criticism. It is from this that I would hope to protect you.”

  She nodded. Satisfied, for the moment. Thunder rolled in the distance; the storm was passing.

  Arthur could no longer restrain himself. He drew her into his arms. She came willingly, her head nestled just below his heart.

  “I should never be at peace in here,” he said in a low voice. “It’s Emily’s room and it should remain as such.”

  When she made no move to withdraw, he lowered his head and brushed her soft hair with his lips.

  “My sweet Charlotte,” he murmured. “How I’ve longed to be close to you like this.”

  She tightened her arms around his waist, and his heart soared.

  “Arthur?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Yes?”

  “What made you smile when you read the marriage settlement?”

  “I smiled when I came to the part about the children.”

  The rain fell lightly now and the gloom was slowly lifting.

  When Charlotte learned from Miss Wooler that Ellen was seriously ill with influenza, it was enough to spur her to write. Ellen, also eager to make amends, replied. Thus their correspondence resumed—brimming with the old warmth and affection but confined to safe topics such as the health of friends and family; there were long pages dedicated to paralytic strokes and remedies for obstructed bowels. The subject of Arthur was scrupulously avoided on both sides.

  Until by accident Charlotte posted a letter to Arthur in an envelope addressed to Ellen. Ellen immediately returned the letter to Charlotte. The mistake prompted a speedy confession, and Charlotte replied:

  My dear Ellen,

  The enclosure in yours of yesterday puzzled me at first, for I did not immediately recognize my own handwriting; when I did, I was deeply vexed, for the letter to Mr. Nicholls ought to have gone on Friday—it was intended to relieve him from great anxiety as he had not heard from me in several days. I must have inadvertently slipped it into the envelope I had prepared for your letter—and sent yours to him. I can only be thankful that the mistake was no worse and did not throw the letter into the hands of some unscrupulous person.

  Since you were here in July, matters with Mr. Nicholls have progressed thus. Last winter I obtained permission to continue communication with him. He came in January and was then received but not pleasantly. I told him the great obstacles that lay in his way. He has persevered. He came again and was here all last week. The result of this last visit is that Papa’s consent is gained—that his respect is won—for Mr. Nicholls has in all things proved himself disinterested and forbearing. He has shown too that while his feelings are exquisitely keen, he can freely forgive. Certainly I must respect him—indeed I owe him more than mere cool respect. In fact, dear Ellen, I am engaged.

  In a few months Mr. Nicholls—I now call him Arthur—will return to the curacy of Haworth. What seemed at one time impossible is now arranged, and Papa begins really to take a pleasure in the prospect.

  For myself, dear Ellen, while thankful to One who seems to have guided me through much difficulty, much and deep distress and perplexity of mind, I am still very calm, very inexpectant. What I taste of happiness is of the soberest order. I trust to love my husband—I am grateful for his tender love to me—I believe him to be an affectionate, a conscientious, a high-principled man—and if with all this, I should yield to regrets that fine talents, congenial tastes, and thoughts are not added, it seems to me I should be most presumptuous and thankless.

  Providence offers me this destiny. Doubtless then it is the best for me.

  Arthur wishes our marriage to be in July. He spoke of you with great kindness and said he hoped you would be at our wedding. I said I thought of having no other bridesmaid. Did I say right?

  Do not mention these things just yet. I mean the marriage to be literally as quiet as possible.

  There is a strange half-sad feeling in making this announcement. The whole thing is something other than imagination paints it beforehand: fears come mixe
d inextricably with hopes. I trust yet to talk the matter over with you.

  Yours affectionately

  C. Brontë

  In all of Charlotte’s letters announcing her engagement, there was the echo of sad resignation and a kind of forced cheer, a sense that she had to reassure herself that she was doing right for herself. She was far too honest to portray Arthur as anything other than what he was. She could boast only of his moral virtues, not of wealth or standing or worldly connections. There was nothing interesting about Arthur, nothing that would be grist for the imagination or excite curiosity. Her acquaintances in London would not be in the least surprised; they had seen how she floundered amid their sparkling society, with their women of beauty and men of wit. She had landed where she belonged, in the hands of a most ordinary man.

  Most painful of all was the letter to George. She framed it as best she could, in the context of her peculiar existence, but she could not feign an excitement that was not there. She wrote:

  The step is not a hasty one: on the gentleman’s side, at least, it has been meditated for many years, and I hope that in at last acceding to it, I am acting right. My future husband is a clergyman. He was for eight years my father’s curate. He left because the idea of this marriage was not entertained as he wished. But various circumstances have led my father to consent to his return. Nor can I deny that my own feelings have been much impressed and changed by the nature and strength of the qualities brought out in the course of his long attachment. I fear I must accuse myself of having formerly done him less than justice. However, he is to come back now. He has forgone many chances of preferment to return to the obscure village of Haworth. I believe I do right in marrying him. I mean to try to make him a good wife.

  My expectations, however, are very subdued—very different, I daresay, to what yours were before you were married. I hardly know in what form of greeting to include your wife’s name—as you have never told me any particulars about her, though I should have liked them much. Say to her whatever may seem to you most appropriate and most expressive of goodwill.