Romancing Miss Bronte (19 page)

Under the cover of her skirts, Anne poked Charlotte gently in the leg. Charlotte looked up from her own book, read Anne’s glance, shifted her gaze to the cover of
Jane Eyre
, and it was all she could do to restrain herself from laughing.

They traveled for hours without a word between them, and Thomas
Crowther didn’t so much as lift his eyes from the book, ignoring each stop, the flow of traffic in and out of the compartment, the swaying of the coach on the rails.

Finally, he laid down the book and removed his glasses to rub his weary eyes.

“By Jove, it just occurred to me,” he said, shifting in his seat and settling his glasses back on his nose, “it was your father who lent this novel to me.” He arched his eyes expectantly, only to be met by a disinterested silence and a mere nod.

“Have you ladies not yet read it?”

Anne deferred to Charlotte with a smile, and Charlotte replied, “Sir, we have little occasion to read novels.”

“Oh, but I’m quite astonished, Miss Brontë, because the first part of the story is about this poor Jane’s horrible abuse at a clergy daughters’ school, and I lay any money on it that it’s the same one you attended with your sisters.” He shifted forward in his seat. “You know, I sent my daughters to that school too, and I’m acquainted with that old Calvinist Wilson, and I tell you, Mr. Currer Bell has got him just right.”

“Indeed?”

“Well, I’m surprised you haven’t read it yourself by now.”

“So you think the portrait is true to life?”

“Oh,” he exclaimed, “why, it’s like he walked off the page, I tell you. Everyone recognizes him, you know—oh, it’s caused quite a stir in our circles. Whoever the author is, he’s done us all a service. Abominable place, that school, and Wilson deserves the calumny of having himself exposed like this. Although I didn’t suffer the terrible losses that your family did, miss, there were many others who did—”

He came to a sudden pause, for lack of breath rather than lack of anything more to say, and Charlotte and Anne smiled kindly at him.

“Please, Mr. Crowther, don’t let us disturb your reading. You seem to be enjoying it so much.”

“Oh, my goodness, indeed I am. I’m just at the part where … well, I won’t spoil the story for you,” he said. He picked up the book and disappeared
again behind its cover. Gradually, as the train headed northward, he succumbed to the heat and the movement. He nodded, awoke with a jerk, then nodded again, until his chin finally came to rest on his chest and he forwent the pleasure of reading for the greater pleasure of sleeping.

Arthur came across the novel not long after that. It was passed to him—furtively—by his good friend Sutcliffe Sowden, vicar of Hebden Bridge, during a visit Arthur paid to him one afternoon at his lodgings. Sowden waited until the landlady had cleared away their tea. Then he stood up, withdrew the book from behind a row of theological volumes, and laid it in front of Arthur with the air of a man lending a naughty book in a men’s club.

Arthur threw back his head and laughed his deep laugh. “You keep it hidden? Goodness, man, you want me to read a book you’re ashamed to keep out in the open?”

“Just read it,” Sowden said, jamming his hands into his pockets and frowning down at his friend.

“And why should I?” Unlike Sowden, Arthur rarely read novels.

“Because everyone is reading it, and as opinionated as you are, you’ll not want to be left out of the debate, now, will you?”

“You’re right on that point. What’s it about?”

Sowden shrugged apologetically. “It’s a love story.”

“Ah! Just what I was hankering to read.” Arthur picked up one of the small green leather volumes and opened it with an air of skepticism. “So, what’s all the controversy? Besides the fact that all of London is in a tizzy to discover the identity of the author.”

Sowden thought deeply for a moment. “It’s an extraordinary novel. The critics have been quite ruthless, and I do see their point. But I mustn’t taint you with their prejudices before you have a chance to judge it yourself.”

“Come now, man, you can’t tempt me like that. What are they saying?”

“What are they
not
saying? Everyone seems to have such strong opinions about it. That it is coarse and offensive. Disgusting, even. And powerful. Magnificently eloquent.”

Sowden became agitated, which was quite unlike him; he stood up and began to pace. “It’s the heroine, this Jane. She’s quite intense and honest and true.”

“Honest. About what? Sowden, you’re being obtuse.”

Sowden blurted out, “About love. The way a woman feels those things.” He snatched the book from Arthur’s hands. “Here, let me read this to you. Just imagine a woman standing in front of you talking to you like this. She is inferior in rank but sterling true, and you have treated her most unfairly.”

“Unfairly? How?”

“You have tricked her and teased her, and led her to believe you are to marry another woman when you know she is in love with you. Then later when you are to marry her, you are found out to be a most heartless rogue. You already have a wife, but she’s mad and locked in the attic. So you beseech poor Jane to be your mistress. But I’m getting ahead of the story.”

Arthur leaned back and gave a hearty laugh. “Yes, do read it to me. I’ll know just what to expect the next time I find myself in such a situation.”

Sowden read, his eyes boring into the page, his large hands slightly tremulous.

At first Arthur was inclined to laugh at the absurdity of Sowden’s deep baritone rendering female sentiment, but Sowden was a gifted
reader, and after only a few words the woman’s voice took hold of Arthur. He felt the incandescent power of the words—only briefly—but it was enough to silence his inclination to ridicule when Sowden closed the book and returned it to him.

It was a long, steep walk from Hebden Bridge back to Haworth, and a mighty storm blew in over the moors. First there were gusts of wind and deep rolling clouds marshaling over the livid hills of heather; then came torrents of rain. Arthur had to remove his hat to save it from the driving wind, and he had to tuck the small volumes inside his waistcoat. After an hour, when the pelting rain had soaked his coat, he moved the books inside his shirt against his chest, and with his hat over his heart he braced the wind the rest of the way home. He perspired heavily with the exertion of the climb, up and down the rock-strewn paths, through the stiles, past farms and out-barns, searching for landmarks to keep him on the right path, seeing little else before him.

His thoughts wrestled with the woman’s voice. Sowden’s reading had left him with the unsettling impression that he had briefly glimpsed someone he knew but could not identify. He certainly did not think of Charlotte. He saw Charlotte in the light of a dutiful and highly conscientious clergyman’s daughter. A peculiar woman from a peculiar family, intellectual, argumentative, and overly inclined to all things artistic perhaps, but certainly not a passionate little Jane Eyre. The girls were all shy and reticent, hiding in the parlor and kitchen, appearing only when their father wished or when duty required. He could not imagine any of them writing those words.

When he reached his lodgings that evening, he removed his boots and gave his coat to Mrs. Brown to dry by the fire, and then he went up to his room and took out the books he had so carefully protected all the way home. It was damp from his perspiration, and the leather was soft and warm. He quickly changed into dry clothes and then sat down to read. He remained in his room and read late into the evening and had to ask Mrs. Brown for another candle when she came to clear away his supper.

He read until the candles burned out, and in the morning, after he had finished teaching at the church school and performed a marriage, he hurried back to his room and pulled up his armchair to read by the light of day. He burrowed through the novel like this for several days, paying hurried visits to a sick weaver and a grieving mother, and the perfunctory visit each evening to Reverend Brontë in the parsonage, just across the lane.

Arthur may not have had a poetic imagination, but he was as susceptible as any intelligent reader to the spell of Charlotte’s words. The woman’s voice, full of rage and hunger and passion, seemed to go with him wherever he went. His heart swelled, and he became moody and irritable when Patrick Brontë launched into a tirade about church taxes, and he snatched up his hat, gave a hurried excuse, and rushed home to finish the book. When he came to the passage Sowden had read to him, he found his eyes had filled with tears.

Arthur was a man of considerable reserve, as disciplined with his emotions as he was with each minute of his carefully planned day, but he found in this plain, obscure governess a heart not unlike his own—a heart capable of great love. He even thought about writing a letter to Currer Bell and telling him how the story had moved him, but the thought flitted in and flitted out, to be lost among countless noble intentions that are never performed.

I
t was a hot July day and Charlotte had intended to spend the morning on her correspondence, but when she heard her sisters clatter down the stairs and the dogs whining in the kitchen, a pang of longing for the outdoors tore at her chest. The morning sun angled through the east windows, warming the stone floor, and the garden was throbbing with birdsong. She quickly put away her writing desk and dashed into the hall as they were heading out the front door.

“Wait,” she pleaded. “I’ll come with you.”

Emily whirled around. Every fiber in her body yearned to be out the door. “Hurry, then. If you dawdle we’ll go without you.”

Charlotte paused on the stairs and called, “Did you pack lunch?”

Anne said, “We have enough for you. Just hurry and change.”

It had been weeks since they’d been on a ramble together. Charlotte always had something to do around the house or was busy replying to letters from friends and publishers. Now, with Keeper and Flossy trotting in the vanguard, the three of them headed up the lane, nearly colliding with a trio of boys who were racing toward the church school, shouting taunts at one another, their arms churning and jackets flapping. A cap flew off, and one boy dashed back to get it.

Charlotte stopped to pick it up and handed it to him. He snatched it out of her hand, muttered a breathless thanks, then sped into the school.

Charlotte watched him go with a bemused smile. “Poor child. Confined to a schoolroom on a day like this.”

Emily and the dogs had already outdistanced them, and Charlotte and Anne fell into a single file on the path.

They came to a stile at the top of the field, and they gathered up their skirts to squeeze through. Emily was already far ahead on the path, her arms swinging freely in a carefree gait. She came to a muddy puddle and leapt over it, flashing a single flannel petticoat beneath a limp gingham dress that had gone out of style when she was twelve. On her head she wore a ratty straw cottage bonnet. The effect was one of absolute disregard for her appearance.

And yet, Emily was deeply content with her lot in life. She had at her doorstep the only thing of interest to her: the natural world of the moorlands. Her material needs were simple, and she was oblivious to the restraints and frustrations that consumed Charlotte. Like a creature perfectly adapted to its function, Emily accommodated her daily domestic routine to her vibrant inner life and the recreation of her visionary world. She kneaded bread with a book of German poetry propped on the kitchen table and created stories in her head while she swept the floor or made the beds. Others might find her life rather cold and sad, but Emily, who knew bliss, was not one whit to be pitied.

Charlotte—who had such a profound desire to please—had always been in awe of this inflexible and extraordinary sister. On this bright July morning, watching her disappear over the hill, Charlotte thought there was nothing on this earth as near and dear to her as Emily.

Anne was wheezing, and they paused to rest on a low stone wall.

“Did you tell Martha we were all going out?”

“Yes.”

“I do hope Branwell doesn’t pull anything foolish.”

“She’ll keep an eye on him,” Anne reassured.

“Do you think he’s heard the news about Mrs. Robinson planning to marry again?”

Anne exchanged frequent letters with the Robinson girls. They knew very little about Branwell’s sufferings and cared even less. But they were very fond of their old governess and shared all the details about their family life with her, including the fact that their mother expected to marry a certain Sir George Scott—once old Lady Scott died.

“I don’t believe so,” Anne replied. “I certainly wouldn’t tell him.”

“No, certainly not. He’s quite miserable enough as it is.”

Anne’s black-and-white spaniel had rounded back and now stood before them on the path, wagging his body excitedly, begging his mistress to hurry along.

“Yes, Flossy. We’re coming.” She stood, drawing a deep breath. “Let’s go on now.”

They struck on up the hill, following the narrow trail, winding between the great swells of tall grasses moving like waves with the shifting winds. The heath was in bloom, carpeting the treeless tops in undulating patterns of pinkish-purple flowers. Low stone walls cut across the slopes and the dells, dividing the pastures into a mosaic of coppers, browns, and greens that ravished the eye with color. Moorland sheep grazed everywhere.

When they reached the top of the knoll, they saw Emily waiting on the next rise, her bonnet in her hand and her loose hair whipping around her face. She turned and, seeing them, waved a wide arc with her arms, like a seaman flagging his crew at the discovery of a new world.

They stopped to rest at the Meeting of the Waters and ate their apples in the cool spray of the waterfall. As children they had played here often with Branwell. The moss-covered rocks, the leafy bracken, and rushing waters had set the scenes for their little plays; in these nooks, toy soldiers had been transformed into the heroes of their imagination, epic battles had been won and armadas sunk amid the tadpoles and the bees.