Romancing Miss Bronte (33 page)

He paused on the gravel walk and turned, his imposing figure in tall black hat and black garb blurred by the falling shadows.

He reflected thoughtfully for a moment and then said, “I may be mistaken, but I thought I saw a resemblance to Anne in your portrait.”

Charlotte felt tears rise to her eyes. She said, “I thought so, too.”

“Did you now?”

“Yes. It was the first thing I thought when I saw it.”

“Rather remarkable that he could capture it. Such a subtle family resemblance. Quite impossible to define.” Then, gazing up at the sky, he added, “Yes, a spectacular night. There is great beauty in God’s gift of life. May we rejoice in it.”

After he had gone, Charlotte remained in the garden. She walked around Emily’s flower bed, now overgrown with grasses, and sat on the moss-covered stone wall below a thorn tree for a long while, listening in the darkness; there was an occasional churlish voice coming from the path that cut through the churchyard, the sound of boots in the cobbled lane, the cry of a lone owl, the wind.

She could not bear to go back inside and sit alone in silence.

From that evening on, Arthur understood what it meant to be falling in love. It was a miserable state of mind, he discovered, and he was completely blindsided by his feelings. The sound of her footsteps and the
rustle of her skirt on the stairs were enough to provoke a sudden weakness in the knees and pounding of the heart, as if he’d just dashed all the way to the brow of Cockhill Moor. Whenever she attended one of his services he had to be quite severe with himself; he dared not glance toward her pew during the sermon for fear of losing his train of thought and going absolutely blank.

S
ummer slipped quietly away, and most days London lay softly shrouded in a chilly mist. Thackeray found George Smith waiting for him at the club that afternoon, sipping his brandy and water and leafing through the
Times
. George had acquired a certain eminence in the literary world now, and the waiters—who knew these things—tended to him with a shade of obsequiousness beneath their placid masks.

They each lit a cigar and sat in contented silence, watching the gray smoke coil over their heads, glad to be out of the drizzle and in the relaxed warmth of their club.

“And how is your angry little lady of genius?” Thackeray asked in his droll manner, which Charlotte had found so difficult to understand.

“You provoke her, Thackeray. And I believe you do it quite intentionally.”

“Of course it’s intentional. The woman rouses my antagonism. All that idealistic cant about my mission as an author. I quite appalled her when I told her I was going off to America with Barnum and Bailey’s to give my lecture series. She thought it undignified. So I proceeded to tell her I would be dressing up like a clown. I can be quite contrary, you know. Of course I take my work seriously. But writing is a business to me, not some higher calling. I write to pay the bills. I have two daughters to raise and I am determined to leave them with a good dowry. That is the extent of it, Smith.”

George thought he should say something in Charlotte’s defense, but his club always put him in an entirely different frame of mind from that
which operated at Cornhill or at home. He studied his cigar, admiring the shape and feel of it.

“You must know how she admires you,” he said at last. “She once said to me that one good word from you is worth pages of praise from any ordinary judge.”

“Ah, but she’s such a strange creature—staring up at me with those intense eyes of hers and hanging on every word I say, and then when she gets me alone she proceeds to tell me I have feet of clay because I pander to the upper classes.” He scowled at the end of his cigar, then took a puff and leaned back to exhale. “I find she judges us London folk prematurely. We’re not entirely without scruples.”

“Indeed, she can be disarmingly frank.”

“I shall never forget that fiery little lecture she gave me after I’d introduced her to my mother as Jane Eyre. She quite intimidated me, you know.” Thackeray paused to muse. “She will defend her book quite boldly but is outraged when anyone tries to identify her with her character. I sometimes think she didn’t fully understand what she had written until after it had been published. I think she revealed more about herself than she wanted to admit.”

“Revealed what?”

“Why, all that story about resisting the temptation of an adulterous love.”

George reflected on this for a moment and thought it better to steer the conversation away from the possibility of Charlotte Brontë’s adulterous affairs, an idea he found entirely absurd.

“I sometimes wonder how she manages to write at all up there in that bleak little village of hers,” George said. “Several of us in Cornhill correspond with her frequently. And my mother sends off a letter from time to time. To keep her spirits up.”

“I’m afraid you can’t count on me there. Ah, now, don’t take me wrong, George. I have great respect for her integrity and her love of truth. She has an unspoiled quality and a simplicity that I greatly admire. But I’m sure you see why she and I can’t be great friends. There’s a
fire raging in that little woman—and it doesn’t suit me. She has had a story with a man and a great grief that has gone badly with her.”

George, who had often suspected the same thing himself, thought it best to maintain a respectful silence.

After a moment, Thackeray asked with a sharp-eyed glance, “So I can assume there is no truth in those rumors about a possible match between you and your authoress?”

George threw back his head and laughed. “Not a grain of it. It would be pure conceit on my part to even consider myself worthy of her.”

It was a gentleman’s response, and George—businessman though he might be—was nothing if not a gentleman.

Several months later Sutcliffe Sowden stood by the narrow window of his vicarage in Hebden Bridge, admiring the minutely detailed illustration of a goshawk in Bewick’s
History of British Birds
. Arthur had just presented the two volumes to him as a Christmas present.

“I thought it was time you had your own copy of Bewick,” Arthur smiled.

“It’s far too extravagant, Nicholls. I should be quite annoyed at you.”

Arthur had taken on an additional private pupil to pay for it, a fact he did not find necessary to share with his friend.

“Came across it at a bookseller’s in Leeds. I was looking for one of those dry philosophical things you seem to covet and there it was, sitting on a shelf right before my eyes. Calling out to me.”

“Well, I should box your ears for it, but I won’t. I shall cherish it. Now I shan’t have to borrow Mr. Brontë’s books.”

“Precisely. And I shan’t have to haul them back and forth over the tops.”

“How is the old man?”

“Lonely,” Arthur said. He unbuttoned his coat and turned to the fire to warm his hands. “This is the first Christmas he’s ever spent without his family.”

“Where did Miss Brontë go?”

“Brookroyd. To the home of her friend Ellen.”

“Rather hard-hearted of her, don’t you think? Going off and leaving the old man at Christmas.”

“Ah, Sowden, you mustn’t judge her harshly. She can’t bear to be at home this time of year. Miss Emily passed away just before Christmas, you know.”

“Well, you were the paragon of Christian charity, forgoing Sarah Grant’s roast goose and Christmas pudding to keep him company. Especially knowing how frugal the old man is with his table. I suppose you had the same old joint and boiled potatoes.”

Arthur gave a noncommittal shrug.

“Well, your presence was sorely missed in Oxenhope. It was far too quiet. Not a single argument. Everyone agreed with everyone. Very dull. Even Mrs. Grant commented on how tame we all were. ‘Oh, where is that dear mule-headed Mr. Nicholls when we need him?’ That’s what she said.”

Arthur filled his pipe with tobacco and lighted it. After a few puffs, he said, “In truth, I was glad of the opportunity to get the old man alone.”

Sutcliffe Sowden placed the book on the side table. He could tell where Arthur’s thoughts were heading. He picked up a carafe of port and poured them each a glass.

“The timing’s all wrong,” Arthur said.

“So you didn’t ask for her hand?”

“Didn’t even come close to it.”

“Don’t look so forlorn, my friend,” Sowden said as he handed him a glass. “God will make your path clear.”

“I may sound a little blasphemous here, but I tell you, Sowden, understanding God’s will is like reading a first-year primer compared to guessing the minds of women. If I detected the slightest bit of encouragement it would help.” He took a sip of his port. “But then, I don’t know why she would encourage me. I don’t think I’ve shown myself attentive in that way. I don’t know.” He scowled. “I watched Grant make after that Hodgson girl before he married Sarah. I thought he made an absolute
idiot out of himself.” He glanced up hopefully at his friend. “Perhaps I should just come out with it. Write her a letter.”

Sowden barked out a laugh. “Egads, man, she’s Currer Bell. How do you write a love letter to Currer Bell? I should be quite terrified.”

“Precisely.”

“I’m afraid I’m entirely useless in these matters. Couldn’t tell you the first thing about how to go about making love to a woman. Why, the mere idea sends shivers down my spine.”

“I’m being a bore, aren’t I?”

“Absolutely not. I have no objections to listening to you moan. Just don’t expect any commonsensical advice.”

“Listening is good enough.”

“You’re entirely right, come to think of it. God help the poor soul who would try to convince you that you’re on the wrong path about anything. Most hardheaded man I’ve ever met.”

Arthur raised his glass of port and bowed his head in acknowledgement. “Thank you. Thank you.”

Sutcliffe Sowden was as sexually innocent as Arthur, but the vicar of Hebden Bridge was Arthur’s only true friend, so it was to Sowden that he bared his heart. They often shared their muddled thoughts about women, harping at length about the confusion provoked by something as simple as a lingering glance, while the real confusion of sexual desire and what to do with it hunkered silently in the obscure, frightened corners of their minds. As clergymen, they upheld the values of their age; they wished to be seen as moral men, respectable, pure, and wholesome. There was no room for the freedoms of that other class of bachelordom, the army officers who indulged in exotic experimentation with mistresses in India or Europe. On occasion they may have feigned a little envy of their licentious brethren. But for the most part, the idea of facing a woman in the flesh provoked only fear. Palm-sweating, jelly-kneed fear.

Once, in the name of science, Sowden had shared with Arthur a small publication describing Eastern practices of teaching young men arrived at the age of puberty the proper conduct of their instruments. “A woman
must be prepared for intercourse if she is to derive satisfaction from it,” the author wrote.

“By Jove, we’re an ignorant breed,” Arthur had bellowed while Sowden secreted the pamphlet away inside the cover of some dull, dusty volume and slid it back on the shelf not far from his copy of the naughty
Jane Eyre
.

Sowden hadn’t seemed particularly concerned. “God will make these things clear to man in the hour of his need.”

“I should hope so,” Arthur had grumbled wryly.

In his university days, Arthur had been exposed to the occasional titillating read—short pornographic novels full of endless orgies with inexhaustible women, and books of prints portraying Indian figures in a multitude of imaginative and somewhat bestial acts. Apart from a few passing twinges of guilt, Arthur had found them enlightening. He had come away with a sense that the real truth about human desire fell somewhere between the pornographic and the perfectly pure. In short, he believed in—or, rather hoped for—the existence of physical love.

Having warmed himself sufficiently, Arthur sank into an armchair with his pipe and port.

“I can’t put it off much longer, Sowden.” He gave his friend a mournful look. “I might lose her forever.”

Sowden sank into the chair opposite and studied his friend carefully. “Then make your move, man. What do you have to lose?”

Arthur reflected for a long while, staring blankly into the fire. “Perhaps I should wait until she finishes her novel. I know it’s weighing on her. Even her father seems a little impatient with her. I can’t imagine that a marriage proposal would be welcome right now.”

“You’re making excuses for yourself.”

“Perhaps I am.”

Defeated, Arthur sank even deeper into the chair.

To her dismay, Charlotte found herself incapable of moving forward with her third novel. She played with ideas and narratives while she
dusted bookshelves, swept the hallway, and fed the dogs. She struggled with what she wanted to say and how to say it. She found no inspiration anywhere. On an occasional bright day, bundled in cloak, bonnet, and gloves, she would wander a short distance out onto the moors. But the landscape that had once enthralled her now seemed a wilderness. She would return shortly, saddened and chilled to the bone. Then her father would hound her for days afterward about her health, noting ominously the slightest cough or sniffle.

She wrote to Mr. Williams:

After a lifetime of losing herself in imaginary worlds, she found that writing had somehow lost its power to take her out of the real world. Instead, she found herself probing corners of her heart and soul, and wherever she shined her inquisitive light, she came upon wounds and sores that had never healed.

Subjects of social interest, as she had attempted in
Shirley
, held no appeal for her.