Romancing Miss Bronte

by Juliet Gael

Chapter Thirty-two

  The transformation that had first manifested itself on her honeymoon did not vanish in the familiar setting of Haworth. The timetable of her life—the whole range of activities, the shape of the week and the schedule of each day—had completely altered, and her response to this change was shaded by a growing pride and contentment.

  Charlotte’s letters—sprinkled with intimations of the demands made on her as the wife of a very active and practical man—testified to this: “My kind husband is just now sitting before me kindly stretching his patience to the utmost, but wishing me very much to have done writing, and put on my bonnet for a walk,” she would write, or “My husband calls me—give my love to all who care to have it.”

  Whenever Arthur had calls to make in the outlying towns, he would hire a cab and take Charlotte with him. He sought her approval on his sermons and lectures; she presided at teas given by the Haworth Mechanics’ Institute, of which Arthur was now president, and advised on books to be purchased for its library; she corresponded on his behalf, issuing invitations to sundry clergymen to visit for the night and to preach at one of the Sunday services. Her visits to the poor cottagers in the district took on new and deeper significance; she began to understand how wrong she had been about Arthur, how thoroughly he was appreciated by his parishioners, and how much gladness there was at his return. She spent hours tucked away in his snug study with its green-and-white wallpaper and the curtains she’d sewn herself, and Martha would often find her perched on the armrest of his chair, with her glasses on the tip of her nose and her nose deep in some letter or other, and Mr. Nicholls’s arm around her waist.

  She found it difficult to keep up with her correspondence; whenever Arthur went out, she would hurry to her writing desk and scribble off a hasty note or two before he returned. The French newspapers she had once devoured so eagerly now piled up in the corner. When he was home, she needed to find occupations and tasks they might share. He was jealous of her attention, and to be wanted and possessed filled her with a sense of awe.

  Patrick, who had continued poorly for months, had relinquished all his duties to Arthur since their return, and to see how her husband now shared the burden of her father’s deteriorating health was a source of immense relief to Charlotte. Patrick, for his part, found little changed in his life. Wrapped up in his politics and his local reforms, he dithered with his correspondence and muddled through his newspapers with his magnifying glass; he entertained distinguished visitors now and then and was grateful to find his routine undisturbed.

  Their squabbles were infrequent and of short duration. Arthur often vented his frustration by slogging off with Flossy onto the moors, and during his absence Charlotte—buoyed by a wave of relief at having him out of her hair—would gaily bustle around the house, tending to all the little neglected chores that always seemed to pile up, but within half an hour she would be eagerly watching for his return. If he disappeared for too long, the relief would turn to anxiety and, on a few occasions, tears.

  But their separations were few. Arthur wanted her near him, sharing his life and responsibilities, and it had always been in Charlotte’s nature to please those who truly loved her.

  Whatever the fault lines of their marriage, their solidarity was obvious to all who met them. He listened to her more radical opinions with a sardonic grimace or a groan, and she bit her tongue when he launched into a searing tirade against the Baptists. Arthur defended her fiercely from criticism and continued to protect her from the obtrusive demands of her celebrity. Charlotte—who had so often aired her doubts about Arthur in her letters before their marriage—became increasingly tight-lipped about her husband’s faults.

  Arthur was a busy man, and his large, energetic presence electrified the atmosphere of the parsonage. They had frequent callers, the clergyman sort as well as old friends, and Charlotte never complained. Joe Taylor and his wife, Amelia, brought their baby girl; Sutcliffe Sowden came on a visit with his brother; and the Grants were often guests at tea. When Sir James drove over from Manchester to meet the bridegroom and stayed over on Sunday to hear him preach, he took such a fancy to Charlotte’s high-principled husband that he offered him the living of Padiham near his house at Gawthorpe, which was within his gift, and worth a good two hundred pounds per year—twice Arthur’s present salary. Without a moment’s hesitation, Arthur kindly but firmly turned it down.

  “Your offer is extremely generous, Sir James, and I am honored, but I have solemnly pledged my support to Mr. Brontë in his declining age,” he replied. “I am therefore bound to Haworth for the duration of his life—May God preserve him to us yet for some years to come.”

  After Sir James had departed, Charlotte said, “It is a pity, isn’t it? Such a good situation. A beautiful new church, and quite grand.”

  Arthur turned one of his stern frowns on her. “But he annoys you to no end. He puts himself into such an excited fuss, and I know how you dread that sort of thing. You couldn’t possibly live within walking distance of him—he’d be on our doorstep every day.”

  Charlotte laughed and drew herself up on her toes and kissed him firmly on the lips.

  It was to be expected that her friends adapt to her new role. Lily, who knew how Charlotte feared her husband’s reactions to her nonconformist friends, refrained from writing to Charlotte until she was back in Haworth.

  “She is married and I ought to write to her, but I’ve a panic about the husband seeing my letters,” Lily said to Katie Winkworth. “Bridegrooms are always curious; husbands are not. Oh, I should so hate to be cause for turmoil on their honeymoon. I shall wait until she’s home. He’ll have less of a chance of intercepting my letter.”

  “Do you think he’ll change her?”

  “Certainly not. Miss Brontë could never be a bigot if her life depended on it.”

  “We shall see much less of her now, I suppose.”

  “Yes, it is sad, but she has a good and kind husband, it seems—his little foibles apart—and she has had so little affection shown to her—by men, I mean—so we must not regret losing her if it is to such a good cause.”

  Ellen was the first to visit upon their return to Haworth. She descended from the train on a steamy summer day, nursing a tender heart and a muted resentment of Arthur. Life had not been so yielding of its prizes, despite her pretty blond looks, and she had already fallen into the habits of spinsterhood—the preoccupation with health and heightened anxieties about her future. The life she had once imagined as the surrogate sister of the celebrated author Currer Bell, the dream of living out her days in a house by the sea sharing the limelight with her old friend, all this had been shattered; she held Arthur solely accountable.

  Their walks on the moors were always arranged around Arthur’s schedule so that he might accompany them. In the evenings as the women sat chatting in the dining room, with the windows open to scented breezes from the garden, Arthur would wander in and out, looking so lovesick and lost without his wife that Charlotte would break down and laughingly invite him to join them, which he always did. Charlotte never seemed to mind his intrusion. She became more spirited in his presence; she would scold him in her affectionate, bossy manner, and he would play the beleaguered husband—parrying with his own sardonic quips. Beneath the sparring ran a current of affection, and on occasion Ellen would intercept a meaningful glance between the two—the sort of sexually charged look between men and women sharing a secret. Through all this, Ellen concealed her jealousy and bore up with frozen smiles, resenting the loss of late hours full of the loose, gossipy talk they had always enjoyed. Now Charlotte retired with her husband—willingly, at his bidding. Ellen would find herself climbing the stairs alone to the back bedroom, feeling neglected and deprived of her closest friend.

  Only in the mornings, when Arthur was giving religious instruction at the school, were they able to speak without constraint. After several days, Ellen gave in to her frustrations.

  “To be truthful, I find it rather disturbin
g, Charlotte. The way he’s tamed you. You’re far too compliant.”

  Charlotte smiled good-naturedly. “You yourself have often wished for me to be more compliant and less selfish. And now that I am, you regret it.”

  “It’s so unlike you, to be at the beck and call of another, and to enjoy it.”

  “I do enjoy it. To be wanted continually—to be constantly called for and occupied seems so strange, but it’s a marvelously good thing. My life has always been turned inward, and that has been a source of great pleasure but also much anguish.”

  “But how will you find the time to write? He will certainly not allow it.”

  “Of course he will. But at the moment I have no desire to write, and I don’t think that is a bad thing. I believe it’s good for me that he should be concerned so entirely with matters of real life and so little inclined to the literary and contemplative. Look at me, Nell. I’ve never been so free of sickness. My headaches and nausea and stomach ailments have all but disappeared.”

  “You should take care. He tires you out. I’ve seen how he is with you on your walks. He always wants you to go the extra mile.”

  Charlotte laughed. “My walks with Arthur are one of my greatest pleasures.”

  “But in the winter!”

  “Even in the winter. Just last week when we were out on the moors Arthur suggested the idea of the waterfall. He said it would be fine after the melted snow. It’s so powerful in the winter, Ellen. Such a magnificent sight. So we walked on. Oh, it was fine indeed. A perfect torrent racing over the rocks, white and beautiful.”

  “Yes, and as I recall, it rained on you on the way back. You came home soaked to the skin. How rash of him.”

  “Oh, but I enjoyed it inexpressibly. I would not have missed it on any account.”

  Ellen was subdued into a long, sullen silence.

  “I don’t think he likes me much,” she said at last, turning wounded eyes to Charlotte. Charlotte quickly set down the shirt she was sewing for Arthur and reached across the sofa to take Ellen’s hand.

  “Oh, my dear Nell, that is not true.”

  “But he seems so hard.”

  “But he’s not at all, not underneath. And he is fond of you.”

  “I’ve yet to see proof of that.”

  “Because he’s not an effusive man—but he always speaks warmly of you, and one friendly word from him means as much as twenty from most people.”

  Ellen sat staring at the toes of her shoes, reluctant to believe in Arthur’s good will.

  “It was his idea to invite Mr. Sowden while you were here. Did you know that?”

  A glimmer came into Ellen’s eyes. “Was it truly?”

  “It was. And nothing could be more proof of his kind regard for you. Mr. Sowden is his dearest friend and a very worthy gentleman.”

  “Does Mr. Sowden remember me?”

  “From the wedding party? Of course he does. You are far too pretty to forget, Nell.”

  “When does he come?”

  “Next week. And Arthur loves his walks, as you know, so there will be many opportunities for the four of us to go rambling on the moors—and with the weather so warm and fine, we’ll have a very merry time, the four of us.”

  Charlotte sat back and took up her husband’s shirt again. “Just imagine, Ellen—now, wouldn’t that be something? You and Mr. Sowden?” She twinkled over the rims of her glasses. “We’ve talked about it, you know—about getting you settled. Arthur has quite a few bachelor friends.”

  Sutcliffe Sowden’s arrival did lighten the mood. He seemed quietly amused by his friends’ attempt at matchmaking and responded with just enough interest so that Ellen went home at the end of two weeks with hopes that everything might come right again.

  But Charlotte’s allegiances had shifted—fully, irrevocably. She had once written of her desire for a master, “one in whose presence I shall feel obliged and disposed to be good. One whose control my impatient temper must acknowledge. A man whose approbation can reward—whose displeasure punish me. A man I shall feel it impossible not to love, and very possibly to fear.”

  She had written those words thinking of Constantin Heger. But it was Arthur who was revealed to be the conquering David, the man chosen by God to defeat all the Goliaths in her life.

  As the passion and intimacy between them grew, so did he gain ascendancy in her life.

  Lily had correctly predicted that he would be curious about her correspondence, and on occasion he exercised a husband’s right to read her letters. Martha and Tabby, habituated to years of conspiring for the mistress, once intercepted a letter from Mary Taylor and hid it in the kitchen behind the salt cellar so that Charlotte might read it away from his prying eyes. But Charlotte had no desire to lead a double life; she had found a man who bore her faults tenderly, who accepted her strengths and insecurities in all their complexity, who was undaunted by the task of loving her. His religious prejudices aside, his motives were undeniably honest and pure; he loved her unconditionally and sought to protect her from injury and from the clamoring, grasping, curious world beyond their doors.

  Which was why he expressed a growing concern about her letters to Ellen with their wickedly humorous observations of their friends. More than once he had declared them as hazardous as lucifer matches, which Charlotte found terribly funny. It all came to a head one morning when she was dashing off a biting account of a recent visit by Joe and Amelia Taylor; Arthur, leaning over her shoulder, sounded an alarm.

  “Good heavens, Charlotte, have you no sense of caution?”

  “Caution?”

  “Look at what you’ve written there.”

  “I’ve said nothing rash.”

  “You’ve called Amelia a simpleton.”

  “You’ve said as much yourself.”

  “But you’ve put it down in writing. There’s a vast difference.”

  “My dear, letters are a vehicle of communication—that is their purpose; we women write as if we were in the room talking to one another.”

  He had taken up the letter and was reading it through. “What’s all this business about my threatening to bolt the next time Amelia comes to visit?”

  “Those were your words, my dear.”

  “But I should not like to see this kind of thing reported in a letter for anyone to read. You write too freely of other people and that is most reckless. What if it should get into Amelia’s hands?”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “But you and Ellen share all your letters with your friends.”

  “Well, she certainly won’t share this one with Amelia.”

  “I do not wish to speak unkindly of Ellen, but she did turn on you once—when I was courting you and she had such strong objections. Have you forgotten?”

  “Oh, Arthur, you are being really silly. But if you insist.”

  “I do. She must burn your letters.”

  His voice had that stern quality that thrilled her.

  “Yes, dear. I’ll say as much to Ellen. Now give me back the letter.”

  She looked up at him, now solemn and obedient, holding out her hand for the letter. “Honestly, I never really attach any importance to these notes, you know. I don’t give a penny for their fate.”

  “Then tell her to fire them. She must give you a pledge.”

  “And if she does, then we may write whatever we wish?”

  “You may write any dangerous stuff you please.”

  She dipped her pen in the ink and read to him as she scribbled, “‘Arthur thinks I have written too freely about Amelia—he says letters such as mine never ought to be kept—so be sure to “fire them!” as he says, or else he will elect himself censor of our correspondence and you will get such dull uninteresting notes as he writes to Mr. Sowden.’”

  She looked up at him with a bemused smile. “There, dear. Is that satisfactory?”

  “Quite,” he murmured as he kissed her on the back of the neck.

  As the year drew to a close, Charlotte kept d
elaying her much-anticipated bride visit to Brookroyd—her first as a married woman. Ellen’s sister fell ill with a fever, and Arthur refused to allow her to go. Several days later, through Miss Wooler, Charlotte learned that the fever had been diagnosed as typhoid.

  “It’s good that I stood firm with you,” Arthur told her. “To think if I had allowed you to go, and you had been exposed! It was most unwise of her to conceal the nature of the fever.”

  “I don’t think Ellen knew.”

  “Did the physician not tell them it was typhoid?”

  “I don’t believe he did.”

  “These medical men ought to be more candid.”

  “I shall say nothing to her on the subject—but Ellen shall be very disappointed. I must find an excuse.”

  “Just tell her the truth. Tell her I put my foot down. You need not be more specific than that.”

  “My dear Ellen,” she wrote,

  I shall not get leave to go to Brookroyd before Christmas now—so do not expect me. For my own part, I really should have no fear—and if it just depended on me, I should come—but these matters are not quite in my power now—another must be consulted—and where his wish and judgment have a decided bias to a particular course, I make no stir, but just adopt it. Arthur is sorry to disappoint both you and me—but it is his fixed wish that a few weeks should be allowed yet to elapse before we meet.

  She showed him the letter.

  He groaned. “Well, she’ll be very unhappy with me. But if it preserves your friendship …”

  “It is all so disappointing. I should so like to see her sisters, and all my old friends in the neighborhood.”

  “Are you already bored with me?”

  “Bored? Arthur, I never have a moment’s peace. I have to run away from home to be bored.”

  In December, Charlotte learned that Charles Dickens would be in Bradford to give a reading of A Christmas Carol. The thought of attending brought her a twinge of nostalgia as she remembered her halcyon days in London, but it was just the sort of gathering where Arthur would feel at a disadvantage. He would be the husband of Currer Bell, insignificant and ill at ease. Lily would be there, since she and Dickens were great friends, and Lily and Arthur had still not met. Lily’s new novel—the story of a clergyman who leaves the church in a crisis of faith—had been coming out in serial form, and the work had stuck in Arthur’s craw. It was just the sort of thing to set him off.