Bronte's Mistress

by Finola Austin

  Funny how the idea of clever Charlotte had taken such a hold of me. I longed to assess her intelligence for myself and examine her to see if she could provide the key to the mystery of the Brontë family. What sort of household could produce such different specimens as the dashing Mr. Brontë and docile Anne?

  “No indeed,” said Edmund. “His is not a social trip. Business brings him to York. And seeing as he has connections in the Church and is a John’s man—”

  “Business, what business?” I asked, cutting him off.

  Edmund just wouldn’t stop talking whenever he invoked the name of his beloved Cambridge college. Soon I’d be forced to endure reminiscences about rowing races and long-dead horses.

  “He is to testify in a forgery case,” he replied.

  “Forgery?” I gasped.

  Edmund’s face crinkled at my overreaction. “Nothing to Reverend Brontë’s discredit, Lydia. What has come over you?”

  “Me? Nothing.” I looked down at my lap and swept away a crumb.

  “Are you unwell? Your nerves—” He trailed off. “Should I call for Dr. Crosby?”

  Anger bristled in me, but I quenched it. With Edmund it was always “Call for Dr. Crosby.” My reactions were never acceptable and were often the subject of discussion, dissection, and medication. When I kept my feelings to myself, I was “unfeeling,” but if I voiced them, I laid myself open to the worst of charges: that I was “hysterical.”

  “I am well, Edmund.” I stood and ran my hands along my sides, taking reassurance from the hug of my corset beneath the silk. “The children should dine separately tonight,” I added, imagining Lydia, her head thrown back in laughter, batting her eyelashes at the Brontë father and son in turn.

  Edmund yawned. “As you think best.”

  * * *

  DESSERT HAD BEEN SERVED, and the evening was drawing to a close. The time had come to make the conversation more personal. I surveyed my audience. The candlelight and shadows danced across their faces, obscuring the finer details of their features, but every one of them was turned toward me.

  And why wouldn’t they be? I had taken nearly three hours preparing for tonight, helped by Marshall, the nurse I couldn’t bear to part with as the children aged and so made her my own untrained, unskilled lady’s maid. She’d dragged a copper tub to the center of my dressing room and helped me bathe for the first time in weeks, making no remark as I dabbed perfume along my collarbone and massaged it into the blue rivulets at my wrists. I’d schooled her in how to fix my hair, using a spring plate from one of the London magazines that Lydia devoured, and she’d endured my commands without complaint, teasing my curls higher, and draping three perfect ringlets so they fell against the snowy skin of my partially exposed shoulder.

  I’d been nervous when I emerged, but Edmund had kissed me on the cheek for the first time in a long time, his lips rough and dry. “Lydia, you are yourself again,” he’d said, looping my hand through his arm. “I am a fortunate man to have you for a wife.”

  I’d proved him right. My performance thus far had been admirable, as the Reverend Brontë was the kind of man I knew how to handle—the kind of man who’d frequented my father’s set. They shared not only the same Cambridge college but their religion—Evangelical, of course. It took only the smallest of encouraging interruptions and the occasional question from me to delight him. I nodded at his interpretations of Scripture, cooed in sympathy at his struggles with finding an appropriate curate, and, when an opening in the conversation presented itself, expressed my distaste on the subject of slavery and delight at manumission, another of my father’s hobbyhorses.

  “You must be proud to have such talented children, Reverend,” I said now.

  “I am, Mrs. Robinson,” the Reverend Brontë replied, his face grave, but with a warmth in his unexpected Irish lilt. “It brings joy to a man like me to see his son and daughter valued in their positions, to know there is a place for them at their employer’s table.”

  Mr. Brontë was watching me, or rather the path of my hand as I grasped the crystal stem and brought the wineglass to my lips.

  Heat slid down my throat as I swallowed, kindling a fire deep inside me. Nothing could suppress my fevered joy tonight, not even Miss Brontë’s silent accusations. A place at my employer’s table, her eyes seemed to say. Until my brother came, Mrs. Robinson never asked me to dine with the family—not once.

  I still could not have the Brontës join us at dinner every day. I’d first suggested the idea around a month ago as an antidote to Edmund’s lack of male conversation, without thinking that the invitation must naturally extend to Miss Brontë too. Every few evenings, Edmund and I sat at opposite ends of our long mahogany table, the Brontës and Ned stationed along one side, the girls on the other. Mr. Brontë was always farthest from me, placed at my husband’s elbow so that he could listen to Edmund elucidating his latest agricultural experiments.

  But sometimes, maybe only once or twice a night, Mr. Brontë’s gaze would slide to meet mine and we’d engage—I thought so, at least—in a shy and silent conversation. After dinner, we would all retire to the anteroom. Once the girls had finished bashing out their simple tunes or squabbling over cards and bagatelle, I’d take to the piano and sing and play—with skill, yes, but also with all the feeling I had in me. Maybe Mr. Brontë knew what each note contained, maybe he did not, but the possibility raised the temperature in the room and fizzed like a firefly through the air.

  “My children, unlike yours, Mrs. Robinson, did not have a mother to guide them,” the Reverend Brontë continued, shaking his head as the Irish do when they speak of death.

  My smile became forced at the reminder that we were the parents at the table and Mr. Brontë one of his father’s children.

  “When my poor wife was taken from us—and Anne just an infant!—I reared them as I knew how, with the help of books and my late wife’s sister. But in some ways, they were raised by the moors around Haworth, our home. It is another world out there. Just steps from our parsonage, you escape the town and the smoking chimneys. The house itself disappears from view. Instead, there are rolling hills and hidden waterfalls. Miles without fences and only the occasional rock to sit on, thick purple heather you trample underfoot or make your rustic daybed. Now that she’s alone, with Charlotte teaching in Brussels and her other siblings here, my daughter Emily vanishes for hours and comes back with her eyes clouded over with bracken and burrs in her hair. You’d take her for a gypsy.”

  Emily—so this must be the third sister.

  “In such a place it is unsurprising that my children grew up in worlds of their own imaginations,” he went on. “As youngsters, they astounded me with their tales of far-off lands, their writings, and their art. Did you know they created books and magazines in miniature, as if scribed by fairy hands?”

  I had not known this. But I’d seen the letters Miss Brontë sent and received, and how the cursive raced over the page in tightly coiled lines, as if the pages could hardly contain the writer’s confidences.

  “Father,” Miss Brontë said, reaching out to touch his arm in a gesture that conveyed in equal parts her affection and her desire that he change the subject.

  But I wanted him to keep talking, to speak specifically of Branwell and, most of all, of Charlotte. Alone, and in Brussels! I’d only ever been abroad on my honeymoon.

  The Reverend patted Miss Brontë’s hand. “My Anne needn’t worry,” he said, turning back to me. “I know few of my children’s secrets. My daughters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—squirrel away as if preparing for winter and don’t think to inform me of their plans. But when you trust your children, it warms your heart to see them conspire. Isn’t that so, Mr. Robinson?”

  I couldn’t think of my children in the plural. They had inherited only the worst of each of us—Bessy and Ned Edmund’s love of horses and hunting, Mary his avoidance of conflict, Lydia my vanity. And, worse, unlike these talented Brontës, they didn’t possess an artistic bone among them
. Only little Georgie had. She’d told fantastic stories that Edmund deemed lies and invited me, and only me, to watch her plays and join her at her reverent, imagined tea parties.

  Edmund laughed. “There is little occasion for secrets here at Thorp Green Hall.”

  My stomach clenched. My heart held its own secrets. And Bessy’s valentine was only the start. Soon my remaining girls would deceive me, resist me, leave me.

  “No secrets,” said Mr. Brontë, raising his glass, “unless it is the secret of how to manage such a happy household, which Mrs. Robinson holds close to her chest.”

  The men laughed.

  Miss Brontë frowned at her brother as he refilled his wine without waiting for a servant.

  I blushed, not at the compliment—they never bothered me—but at the admiring glance that accompanied Mr. Brontë’s reference to my chest.

  “To Mrs. Robinson!” he toasted.

  The party drank.

  Edmund beamed at me.

  I smiled down at my plate.

  There was a knock on the dining room door, and Marshall interrupted our festivities, bobbing awkwardly and looking in my direction.

  “Excuse me.” I rose.

  The men did too as I hurried past them.

  “Is anything the matter?” I asked her, once we were in the cool hallway.

  “It is Master Ned, ma’am. I am so sorry to have come for you,” Marshall said, her pockmarked face earnest and a little fearful. “But he woke up screaming and wouldn’t be comforted.”

  “Thank you, Marshall. You were quite right. I’ll go to him.”

  I ran up the stairs, longing to be back in the dining room but not having it in my heart to be angry, as I would have been had the summons been from one of the girls. I’d almost expected Lydia to stoop to dramatics to spoil my evening, but this was unlike Ned.

  He’d drawn his blankets up to his throat and was shivering when I entered his room, although he had a bed warmer and a fair fire.

  “Ned, darling,” I said, taking his small damp body in my arms. “You are far too old for nightmares. You know they aren’t real.” I stroked his hair, imagining the scene two floors below, the meal drawing to its conclusion without me.

  “It wasn’t a nightmare,” said Ned, burrowing his head against my breasts. I hoped his tears wouldn’t stain my neckline.

  “Then what is it?” I asked, pushing his forelock from his eyes.

  He paused. “It’s a secret—” he muttered.

  “What kind of secret?”

  If Lydia and Bessy had been tormenting him again, those girls wouldn’t dine with us but would have only bread and butter, for a week.

  “A secret about Mr. Brontë,” Ned whispered. “I saw him, and he was different.”

  “Different? Different how?” I held him by both shoulders and looked square at his snot-covered face.

  “I don’t know. Different. Angry.” He sniffed. “It was the other night, after supper. I went to the Monk’s House—”

  “You went to the Monk’s House at nighttime, Ned?” I said, my voice a little sterner.

  He looked down and nodded.

  “Then no wonder Mr. Brontë was angry.”

  “But—”

  “No ‘buts,’ ” I said, running my hand down his cheek. “You mustn’t leave the Hall by yourself and a boy your age mustn’t cry so. What would your papa think?”

  I stood to leave but felt a twinge of guilt at his woebegone expression.

  “There.” I bestowed a kiss on his forehead. “Now sleep.”

  Marshall was waiting outside his room, so I instructed her to stay with him.

  I padded down one flight of stairs and was just about to round the corner to descend the next when hushed voices emanated from the hall below.

  I paused, registering the Reverend Brontë’s low growl and the soft timbre of Miss Brontë’s voice.

  “The seclusion here is what Branwell needs,” said the father. “The temptation is too much for him in Haworth, what with the Black Bull just around the corner from the parsonage. I hope he will prove worthy of the trust we have all placed in him. I don’t want a repetition of what happened at the railway.”

  “I fear— I hardly know what exactly, but that my own position will be compromised,” said Miss Brontë, her voice more animated than I had heard before. “Did you see how much wine he drank at dinner? Or how he looked at Mrs. Robinson? He’s immoderate, reckless. I wish you would take him away. No good will come from this.”

  My heart expanded and contracted with each sentence she uttered, then overflowed with the most important revelation. He had looked at me. He had noticed me. I was no longer alone.

  “Hush, daughter,” Reverend Brontë said.

  There was a pause. I imagined they were embracing and gave them a moment before I swept down the staircase and into sight.

  “Dinner is over, then?” I asked them with a smile.

  Father and daughter exchanged a worried glance.

  “Mr. Robinson and my son are settling a geographical dispute by consulting an atlas in your library, Mrs. Robinson. When they are finished, I’m afraid I must be on my way,” the Reverend Brontë said, with a short bow.

  “You won’t stay?” I reached out my hand so the Reverend would kiss it. It was difficult not to let my face fall.

  There would be no music tonight, then. No more chances for me to watch Branwell and assess the truth of Miss Brontë’s observation. At the beginning, in the early years of living at the Hall with Edmund, I couldn’t wait for guests to depart at the end of the evening, leaving us, at last, to each other. But now—

  “I’m afraid not,” Reverend Brontë replied. “My presence is necessary early tomorrow in York. Please accept my deepest thanks for your hospitality and that of your husband.”

  * * *

  “OH, I DOUBT ANYONE will even notice, and here I am fretting, Marshall. You shouldn’t let me rattle on so,” I said, turning from the mirror.

  “I’m sure they’ll mark how fine you’re looking, madam, but they won’t pay no attention to some gray crepe at your cuffs. At least I reckon not, ma’am.”

  Marshall was right. Nobody but me would care if my black was trimmed with gray, a promise of an easier tomorrow. Besides, it was a foolish thing to wear your grief, to veil yourself with what you felt inside.

  I smiled up at her, leaning against Marshall’s bony chest since the dressing stool had no back. She always knew just what to say, in situations when Edmund would not. Or no, he knew by now what it was that I wanted to hear, but withheld it almost from spite.

  “Leave my hair.” I grabbed her hand—large, chafed, red—a little too hard and then kissed it by way of apology. “It is early and the sun is shining at last. I’ll take a walk and let it dry in the air. The exercise will do me good.”

  “You’ll catch a chill, madam,” she said, but she stepped aside to let me go, lifted a silver brush from the dressing table, and started to extract the hair, remnants of the youth and beauty I would never regain—long, silky, black.

  I passed the housekeeper, Miss Sewell, on the landing. My throat tightened to think that she might note the lighter details in my dress and judge my grief light also. But she was scolding Ellis and didn’t notice me sail by.

  There was something delicious about the solitude of the Hall’s grounds early in the morning, when the sun was out and the world alive to the promise of spring. I threw back my head to let the rays lick my face. The wind lifted my hair, dispersing the water that had weighed it down. A duck skipped from one spot on the fishpond to another with a confusion of wings, setting circle upon circle vibrating across the surface.

  I imagined Edmund, deep in thought, strolling from his desk to the window and catching sight of me far below, his heart stirring in recognition of the girl I had been, sensitive to each tremor of nature’s orchestra, subject to the seasons as much as the birds and the flowers and the trees.

  “Your capacity for joy almost scares me,” he�
��d said once, in the weeks before our wedding, when we, a betrothed couple, were at last allowed some time alone. “For mustn’t it be matched by fathomless unhappiness? I have always been a quiet, steady man. No woman has moved my heart before. Until you.”

  I sat on the low stone wall that surrounded the pool, but not because I wanted to rest. It completed the picture—the woman in black gazing out across the troubled reflection of the sky, trailing her gloveless fingers in the water.

  I drew back. It was cold. Winter was not ready for her abdication. I rubbed my hands together and glanced back at the house and then in the other direction, toward the outbuildings, to check if anyone had seen me indulging in my fantasy. I might not be as young as I was back then, but mightn’t I still move him?

  I was alone, but floating toward me on the wind was something unexpected—a sheet of paper. It circled nearer, yet evaded me when I reached for it. I jumped up and grasped it with my wet hand, leaving a constellation of dark blots along the right side.

  March 30th 1843, Thorpe Green

  I sit, this evening, far away,

  From all I used to know,

  And nought reminds my soul to-day

  Of happy long ago.

  “Thank you!” I was interrupted before I could read the rest—four more verses that snaked down the page in strong, dark, even handwriting. Mr. Brontë was striding toward me, his shirt hanging loose, his hair uncombed, and a bundle of manuscript pages and sketches clamped under one arm, while in his other hand he held a cane.

  “Mr. Brontë,” I said, flustered. I proffered the page, as if there were no scribblings in the world I wished to read less.

  “Please excuse my appearance, Mrs. Robinson,” Mr. Brontë said, equally embarrassed, not taking the poem, but switching his cane to the other hand and smoothing his hair. “A morning habit of mine—editing last night’s feeble attempts at poetry. Forgive me.”

  It was ridiculous. Me, with wet hair, in a gown too frivolous for a housekeeper to see me in, constructing a tableau for an absent audience, and the unkempt tutor playing the eccentric poet. I laughed, and, while Mr. Brontë looked puzzled, I felt a new fragile bond forming between us.