Bronte's Mistress

by Finola Austin

  “It appears she, for some years, has been exchanging letters with Will Milner of Nun Monkton. Their early missives were innocent enough. They talked of hunts and horses, anticipated the Thompsons’ picnics, and, I’m afraid, mocked the good Reverend Lascelles’s sermons. The stablehand, Joey Dickinson, acted as their messenger. Do not blame him either, Mrs. Robinson. He is a child too. He cannot read and is simple about the ways of the world!

  “But, of late, Will Milner would talk of marriage and the like, and Bessy did not know how to answer him. She deferred to her sister—I mean Lydia—who fed her lines from novels and encouraged her to write all species of nonsense. I blushed when I heard what the girls had written. I am sure Bessy, at least, did not understand the import of the words.

  “And now Bessy says she is not sure she wishes to marry Will Milner after all, and thinks of him as she does Ned rather than as a husband. The young man, Mr. Milner, plans to petition Mr. Robinson for her hand and asks Bessy to name a date. Oh, and Lydia is angry too. She threatened her sister with exposure should she even think of marrying first, despite being the younger. And so poor Bessy came to me. Take pity on her, Mrs. Robinson, do. And, believe me, I knew nothing of this—had not seen a sign—until last night.”

  A pretty monologue, but I saw now why she quaked. Miss Brontë was afraid lest I choose to dismiss her. That was a governess’s primary purpose, after all—not to impart knowledge into heads pretty enough to be petted and docile enough to be yoked, but to protect her charges’ flimsy, if incontrovertible, virginities. And she had failed.

  Learned Miss Brontë might be—although not half as clever as her sister Charlotte—but two of her pupils had erred at the first feeble overtures men had made them. Plain women held themselves so high, but given the chance, she, and maybe Charlotte too, would crumple.

  “Miss Brontë, I must say I am disappointed,” I said, the power I had felt seep out of me in the hours after my encounter with Branwell returning full force when faced by her timidity.

  “Be kind to Bessy, madam!” she cried.

  “No, Miss Brontë, I am disappointed in you.”

  She didn’t flinch this time but raised her eyes to heaven, as collected as a queen waiting for the guillotine to fall.

  But we could never be rid of each other now. She did not know it, but she was protected by the very crimes she abhorred. Bessy’s indiscretions were but a pale imitation of Branwell’s and my own. What were a few harmless letters to what he and I had done?

  “A match between the Robinsons and the Milners is most desirable,” I said, relishing each syllable and stressing the “most” as if I’d been gossiping at a party and striking John Crosby with my fan. “I cannot approve of the execution, of course, or of the secrecy surrounding it, but it seems to me that a correspondence between Mr. Milner and our Bessy is not so terrible a thing.”

  “Not so terrible—” Miss Brontë let her mouth hang open.

  I suppressed my desire to slam it shut from under her chin.

  “Miss Brontë, I know your life has been somewhat sheltered, but I’m sure it can’t have escaped your attention that Bessy, in addition to being a second daughter, isn’t the most eligible of girls. She is boisterous and ill-mannered and spends most of her time talking of dogs and horses, despite the money my husband and I have invested in her education.”

  “I think Bessy is a fine girl,” Miss Brontë whispered, ignoring the references to her salary and ineffective teaching.

  “Oh, it is all very well for you to say so. To be forgiving and kind, to never say a cross word.” I could contain myself no longer and stood, my yearning for the exercise that I’d avoided for days returning. “But, Miss Brontë, you are not their mother. It is not a mother’s job to coo and coddle, to flatter with falsehoods or coat with sugar. There is one way for a woman to flourish, or, for that matter, to survive at all in this world, and that is to marry, and marry well.”

  My own mother had told me so when she’d explained what it was that husbands took from you. She’d counseled me to be “ever on my guard,” to act “always above suspicion” as a maiden and once I was a wife. And what had I done with her advice? The least I could do was protect my daughters’ interests, as she had mine.

  Miss Brontë flinched at the invocation of my motherhood, a trump card in every argument. Branwell had told me Anne had no memories of their poor mother. She, Charlotte, and Emily had suffered from the absence of a seasoned, pragmatic woman like me. So this was a moment to teach her, not to scold.

  “I pity you, Miss Brontë,” I said, holding both hands out toward her. “You might not believe me, but I do. You never had your chance. You never had a mother to show you the way. And, now, look at the life you are forced to lead—you and your sisters. You must choose between being a drudge or a burden, and suffer for years with the knowledge that with death, you will slide into an only marginally more acute obscurity.”

  But Miss Brontë did not take this as an olive branch. She stood too, ignoring my outstretched hands. “Bessy does not wish to marry Will Milner, Mrs. Robinson. And she should not part with her hand and heart without reason. She will have other chances.”

  “She will have none as good as this.” I snatched the letter from where she had left it on the chair and walked past her to the door.

  “Mrs. Robin—”

  I was already halfway down the landing, making for the schoolroom. And Miss Brontë hadn’t followed me.

  “Lydia, you have rejoined the world of the living.” There was Edmund, pausing on the final step on his way upstairs. His cheeks were blotchy from the strain of climbing, and his eyes weren’t so difficult to meet, for all I’d thought I could never face him again after what had happened with Branwell.

  “Not now, Edmund.” I surprised myself with my surety. “I am needed in the schoolroom.”

  I opened the door. The three of them were arranged as in a painting—Lydia reading a novel, Bessy staring out the window, Mary petting Flossy by the fire. They did not look like girls, but little women who’d outgrown the furniture around them and that childish way of wearing their long, loose hair. But they were my girls just the same.

  “Lydia, Bessy, Mary,” I said.

  Looks of confusion and fear passed between them at my entrance.

  “This morning Miss Brontë brought me a letter—”

  “She wouldn’t!” gasped Bessy.

  “I told you she would,” said Lydia.

  “What letter?” asked Mary, studying each of our faces in turn.

  “And it seemed to me we should talk,” I said. “Do not cry, Bessy! Come.”

  I tapped the Pembroke table where they’d learned their French, geography, history, and motioned them to sit.

  Mary levered Flossy off her lap and came to me first. Lydia and Bessy followed. The terrier rolled even closer to the grate, its head thrown back at a near-impossible angle.

  “It is time for us to speak of our family and what is expected of you,” I began. “And to discuss the behavior that is, and is not, acceptable when being wooed by a young man.”

  Lydia rolled her eyes.

  “Lydia,” I said sharply. “Don’t you wish to be married?”

  “I do, Mama,” she said, chastised.

  I took her by the hand.

  “But Mama,” said Bessy, her eyes downcast, “I’m no longer so certain that I do—”

  “Do not be a fool, Bessy.” I took hers too. “To be married is a wonderful thing.”

  I should have said merely that being married was better than not being married, but I hadn’t my mother’s strength to be so truthful.

  The taste of Branwell’s sweat came back to me. And the sound of his panting, the waves of his back muscles rippling under my hand. Silly boy. He’d just been too eager, too hasty. That was all. At its worst, lying with a man was but a few moments of discomfort, a small price for my daughters to pay for a better life. And at its best—well, I would school Branwell to please me better next time.r />
  “Marriage is what you should all aspire to, my darlings,” I said, squeezing the girls’ hands harder. “For once you are married, you may do anything you wish.”

  * * *

  I HAD RARELY BEEN in Dr. Crosby’s home since the call Edmund and I had paid when he’d first moved there. He was a stalwart at local social functions, wherever they were held, and, in a household our size, there was always some reason to summon the doctor, so it seemed ridiculous to upset the order of the world and visit him myself.

  His house was small compared to Thorp Green Hall, but large when seen beside the cottages that lined the only street in Great Ouseburn. It was just a decade old (it had been built to the doctor’s specifications), and so the bricks were a rich red and not blackened by smoke or bordered by lichen. A carpenter had fashioned neoclassical columns in relief around the front door, and the maidservant ushered me through here, rather than down the passageway to my right, which led to the rear of the property and Dr. Crosby’s surgery. The parlor was the first room on the left, with a view of the street.

  “I would not have come to you alone, Dr. Crosby, unless it was to consult with you on something serious,” I said, as soon as the fuss of tea was over and we were at last alone.

  The good doctor nodded.

  His furnishings were tasteful. The creams and pinks that made up the color scheme reminded me of my dressing room. But I was not here to exchange observations, compliments, and small talk.

  “I can rely on your discretion?” I asked.

  “But of course, Mrs. Robinson.” John Crosby replaced his teacup in its saucer and set it on the low table with the steady precision of a surgeon, although the only operations he conducted in the area around the Ouseburns were resetting the broken and dislocated bones of farmers and laboring men and pulling the occasional rotten tooth.

  How to begin? I clasped my cup with both hands. The milky brown puddle splashed, threatening to cascade into my lap, and I held on tighter, imagining how it would scald and slice if the shards of porcelain shattered between my fingers.

  “Dr. Crosby.” I swallowed. “It is a sad fact of life, of our society, I think, that a girl—a woman—can at times, through, perhaps, little fault of her own, find herself in trouble.”

  “A sad tale but a common one, Mrs. Robinson,” he said, his brow furrowing. He leaned forward from the low-slung sofa, his elbows propped on top of his knees.

  “And—forgive me, Dr. Crosby, I am no doctor—but, in such cases, I believe, there are things that can be done, procedures that can take matters out of God’s hands?”

  John Crosby nodded slowly, as if reasoning out a complex argument, and took another gulp of tea, draining the dainty cup in one and setting it down before he replied. “That may well be the case, Mrs. Robinson. But wouldn’t it be easier, and safer, to send the unfortunate girl away? With some small sum of money, of course, to support her through her trials?”

  I winced. “No, no, you misunderstand me,” I said, covering my face and peering at him through the latticework of my fingers. “I am not speaking of a servant.”

  “Oh. One of your daughters.” He stood and leaned past my shoulder to fold over the wooden blinds. That was kind of him. It was true I didn’t wish to be watched. “The oldest Milner son, perhaps, or—? But no, I won’t inquire. In that case, Mrs. Robinson, I say, if he won’t marry her, the young man is a rogue.” He sat again and reached out his hands toward me. “But I can help you and do what needs to be done.”

  Even he knew about Bessy and Will Milner, then? But there was no imminent danger there. Edmund had been planning a visit to Nun Monkton to delay any proposal. We’d determined that Bessy was young and skittish, like the fillies she spent hours brushing. It wouldn’t hurt for the boy to wait a few years. But then word had come that Nathaniel Milner, Will’s father, was ailing and wasn’t expected to last until Christmas. That would put a stop to his son’s romantic attentions for now.

  Dr. Crosby threw and caught a small, unevenly embroidered cushion that some poor girl—a niece of his, maybe—must have worked on for months. There were flecks of blood caught under his fingernails. Of course. I’d called him away from his surgery, without a thought for the injured farmhands or colicky infants he might have been examining.

  I shut my eyes tight and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyelids, sick at the sight of what I had longed to see for the last month or more, streaking my linens, floating in clots on the frothing surface of my chamber pot, racing down the silver-white paths that had traversed my thighs since my pregnancies. It hadn’t come, but I hadn’t panicked. Not at first. For I didn’t feel quite as I had with the girls, or Ned, or Georgie. Or maybe I’d simply forgotten.

  “But what if, Dr. Crosby—John—what if I wasn’t asking about my daughters either?”

  I considered him a friend, my ally against Edmund when he tried to medicate me, my eyes and ears at the Freemasons’ meetings in York, my dependable and favorite card partner. But I’d never plumbed the depths of our friendship before. My heart and stomach were giddy as dancers who’d overindulged at a ball, spiraling harder and harder until they flew apart, eating, drinking, laughing until the only release was to belch and purge.

  The cushion thudded to the floor. Dr. Crosby did not speak for at least a minute.

  “Then I would say that congratulations were in order?” he ventured, making a question out of what should not have been one.

  “But what if—” My voice dropped to a whisper. “What if my husband— What if such a thing were impossible?”

  No way out now. Branwell Brontë had seen my naked flesh and I had not felt so exposed, but before Dr. Crosby, I was Diana, trying to shield herself from the hunter with only her hands for protection.

  “Then, Lydia,” he said, mirroring my use of his forename and crouching beside me, “you have my utmost sympathy and compassion.” He took my hand between his.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, my eyes welling up.

  Another beat. A tear dropped.

  “Mr. Brontë is a fascinating, if troubled, man,” he said.

  I couldn’t react to that so held myself very still.

  “And I know how hard it is to be spurned,” he went on. “To lie alone at night with only your own thoughts between you and oblivion.”

  “You do?” I asked, confusion coaxing my chin from my chest.

  His expression was uncharacteristically sincere. His breathing had quickened, but I did not withdraw my hand for there was not even a hint of lust in his eyes.

  “But—” I cast around for the right words. “You might have married again. Chosen from any number of ladies.”

  He paused. “Any number of ladies, Lydia, yes. But I am afraid the truth is that it is not women who hold delight for me.”

  No wonder the discourse between us had always been so natural and easy, devoid of insidious competition or ulterior motive.

  He retreated and sat on his ankles. Now he was the penitent, and I the—what?—confessor? Ridiculous. I laughed, laughed until my tears flowed with undiluted joy, and at last he joined me.

  Oh, we were as vulnerable to each other now as the lovers we would never be. Ever the gentleman, Dr. Crosby had divulged his secret as a security against mine. And his admission, which might have disgusted and alarmed me before, now seemed little compared to my own baseness. It was as if he had drawn back the veil that had divided us and cast over all our past interactions a warm and unmuddied light.

  I did not need him in the end. My courses came in the carriage on the way home. Not in a flood but, rather, spluttering in protest like a leaking tap that had been twisted shut.

  “It is the beginning of the end of a chapter,” Dr. Crosby said when he visited me later that week. “You’ll bear no more children.”

  And he didn’t ask me why my response was not relief, but passed me a handkerchief when my tears sprang up again, wrenching my heart this time, shed for the woman I had been, the girl I had lost, and the bab
e whom I would have murdered.

  9th April 1845

  Allestree Hall

  My darling sister Lyddy,

  I write today with somber news. Our cousin, Lady Scott, has suffered a sad misfortune. Her son, William Douglas, always a sickly child but a boy I thought out of danger since he was now sixteen, has died. Do see to it that you send your condolences to her and Sir Edward at Great Barr Hall.

  Do you remember how, when you were young, you used to say you would marry Edward Scott and be a Lady? You were always an ambitious child. At times, you quite dominated me, although I was so many years older. And now look at us, Lyddy! Ah well, the remembrance of you wearing your bedsheets as a veil brought laughter to my lips even after receiving such news.

  Do come and visit us in Derbyshire before long. And send word if you hear anything from Father, or his man Rowley.

  I remain your ever loving and faithful sister,

  Mary Evans

  P.S. I was ever so surprised by your last letter. To think that the Reverend Eade is married again! Do the Thorps take it well? How irate old Mrs. Robinson must be that “dear John” is no longer loyal to the memory of Edmund’s darling sister Jane! The man may be a bore, but he has certainly gone up in my estimation.

  And how sad the plight of your neighbor Mrs. Milner! I can’t imagine how terrible it must be for the poor woman to be widowed and with so many daughters to marry off.

  This time, in truth, good-bye,

  Mary

  10th April 1845

  Thorp Green Hall

  My dear Lady Scott,

  It is with sadness that I write to console you on the loss of your son, William Douglas.

  All of us at Thorp Green Hall were very shocked.

  I know, from experience, that to lose a young child is as painful as it is expected, but to lose a boy on the cusp of manhood must be intolerable.

  I hope that your own health has not worsened and that your other sons take after Sir Edward with regards to their constitution.