Romancing Miss Bronte (4 page)

Reverend Brontë looked up and saw only a shadow at the door.

“Martha? Is that you?”

“It is I, Papa,” Charlotte replied as she set down her tray on the dining table.

“Ah! You’re back. Good,” he said with obvious relief, gazing in her direction with clouded eyes. He relied heavily on her when there was entertaining to be done. “Mr. Nicholls, I believe you’ve met my eldest daughter, Charlotte.”

“Not formally, sir,” Arthur said, rising to his feet and greeting her with a deep bow. He dwarfed her tiny figure, and Mr. Smith exchanged an amused smile with the others. She was too nearsighted to read their mocking glances, but Charlotte could feel their eyes on her, and she knew quite well what they were thinking. They considered her an unattractive old maid, and any encounter with an eligible bachelor made her the subject of gossip and ridicule.

She held her composure and extended her hand to Arthur, who clasped it firmly.

“I’m honored, Miss Brontë,” he said. “In the short time that I have known your father, I can say I have a very high opinion of his worth and character, which can only give me a very high opinion of yourself.”

At this Mr. Smith ejaculated an awful sound that came out like a cross between laughter and an effort to clear the throat of phlegm. It was intended to tease Arthur for his overblown courtesy but instead came off as offensive to Charlotte and had the effect of startling them all. Martha,
who was busy laying out the plates of ham and scones, looked up in horror at his outburst.

Mr. Brontë turned his head toward the sound. “Are you quite all right, sir?”

“Ah, yes, he’s fine, just a little tickle in the throat.” The reply came from Mr. Sowden, who turned to his colleague and slapped him a little too heartily on the back.

Charlotte had quickly turned away but Arthur saw the heat rise to her face. He would have liked to say something to put her at ease, but he feared he would only exacerbate her discomfort, and so he sat back down and assumed a stony silence.

When Charlotte had entered, he had just begun to tell them about his arrival in town and the unfortunate incident with the farmer and his horse, but after Mr. Smith’s rudeness to Charlotte, Arthur took a sudden disliking for the man. He recognized a mean spirit and thought it best to avoid giving him any more fodder for ridicule. So when Mr. Brontë prompted him to continue, Arthur shrugged it off.

“It’s nothing. I merely meant to comment on the lack of civility I encountered, nothing more,” he said.

Unfortunately, the news had already come to Mr. Smith’s ears.

“Oh, but you must tell it, Nicholls.”

“It’s not worthy of telling, I assure you.”

“Oh, but it is! It is!” Mr. Smith said with glee.

The tea was laid out, and the men eagerly brought their chairs to the dining table. Faced with Arthur’s stubborn refusal to entertain them, Mr. Smith gladly took up the tale and told what he had heard, that the new curate had arrived in town in a most unceremonious fashion—leading a tired old workhorse up the hill with an old farmer cracking a whip over his head. Mr. Smith could be amusing when he wished, and he elaborated the incident in a manner that made them all laugh. Martha suppressed a giggle and even Charlotte was tempted to smile, but one glance at Arthur’s solemn and petrified face stifled the urge. She felt his humiliation just as he had felt hers. She did her best to distract them by passing around the cups of tea, and they took the bait and grew
quiet. All but Mr. Nicholls, who set down his cup and seemed to be quietly gathering his thoughts.

After a pause, he said, “I believe in upholding the dignity of the cloth. I am ever mindful of my position, and I seek to conduct myself at all times as a representative of the holy church. The treatment I suffered was not only a disgrace to myself personally, it was a disgrace to all men of the priesthood and, by implication, an insult to the church.”

“Ah, but farmer Clapham’s a tough old Methodist,” Sutcliffe Sowden said kindly, attempting to lighten the mood. “I heard he once went after a curate with a pitchfork. By Jove, you’re fortunate you made it here alive.”

Patrick Brontë spoke up. There was a momentary hush as they set down their cups and listened respectfully. “These men are a product of generations of isolation,” he said, “and their natures reflect as much. They have learned to rely only on themselves, which is quite necessary to their survival. The outcome is that they have no faith in strangers. If they are crusty and rude, it is because they recognize no superiors and therefore have no need of civility.”

“And how do you manage to win souls to Christ if their hearts are shut to man?” Arthur asked.

“I go only where I am wanted,” Mr. Brontë replied simply.

Charlotte had been buttering a slice of bread for her father, and when she finished preparing his plate she took up her knitting.

“You must learn to take their rudeness with good humor, Mr. Nicholls,” she said quietly. “Take it with a grain of salt and you will discover beneath it all a good deal of kindliness and warmth. They
can
be a hospitable people.” Her hands fell still and she looked up directly at Arthur. Her large brown eyes held his own, and he felt himself grow very still inside. “They are indeed stubborn in the face of strident authority but will yield like lambs to gentle persuasion.”

Mr. Grant raised an eyebrow over his cup of tea. “Like lambs? Lambs, Miss Brontë? The man who can make them yield like lambs, now, that is a shepherd I have yet to meet in these parts.”

Charlotte buried her gaze in her knitting and grew quiet. Arthur found himself watching her out of the corner of his eye.

“You’ll have your hands full with the church school, Mr. Nicholls,” Patrick Brontë continued.

“I look forward to the challenge, sir.”

“It will be a challenge, indeed. They have a strong dislike of authority. And what little learning they have is steeped in superstition and heretical in nature.”

“However, we are making progress on some fronts, Nicholls,” Mr. Grant said. “We shall soon have a church in Oxenhope, thanks to my unyielding efforts. It’s not a simple matter, raising subscriptions from these people. They’re a tightfisted race.”

Charlotte eyed Mr. Grant surreptitiously over the rims of her spectacles. More like extortion, she thought. The way he badgered everyone, going back again and again, rarely showing gratitude.

To Arthur he added, “Oxenhope’s the village just up the hill to the south. The Methodists have a chapel there. They’ve quite overrun the place and gotten their claws into everyone. We sorely need a presence.” He leaned forward with an air of secrecy. “I was counting heavily on the Greenwoods, but they contributed only a measly sum—I shan’t tell you how much. It would embarrass the old man.” He shook his head. “Very shabby.”

“Do you hunt, sir?” Arthur asked, noticing the musket on the wall.

“Papa,” Charlotte whispered, “Mr. Nicholls is speaking to you.”

“Do I hunt?” Patrick repeated, swinging his dim gaze in Arthur’s direction. “No, sir. But I served in Lord Palmerston’s regiment at Oxford and have, by necessity and training, acquired a great appreciation for weaponry. I lived through the Luddite uprisings and we would not have been so foolish as to walk outdoors unarmed.” He leaned back in his chair and spread open his jacket to reveal the pistol at his belt. “Habit, I suppose. I should feel quite exposed without it.”

Charlotte glanced up at Arthur, anticipating his discomfort. Inevitably there would be a shocked reaction. He would ask if the pistol was loaded, which it was. But Arthur surprised her.

He nodded solemnly. “I suspect it serves you well in these parts.”

“Indeed,” Patrick said. “We are all warriors for Christ. We do not weaken even in the heat of battle, even with the enemy surrounding us. We are sustained even at the darkest hour by belief in our cause. Belief in ourselves.”

“Amen.”

“Amen.”

During all this time, Mr. Smith’s mouth had been full of Tabby’s spice cake. But once he was sated and had washed the last bites down with copious quantities of tea, there was nothing to restrain him from joining the discussion.

“I tell you, the best way to serve the Yorkshiremen is to leave them alone. And they never forget a harm done to them. Remember that.” He dabbed his mouth with his napkin and leaned back in his chair. “It’s a backward place, and there’s no high society to speak of. If you’re a man of refinement, as I observe you are, Mr. Nicholls, you’ll be begging to get out in no time.”

“Don’t let yourself be discouraged, Nicholls,” Sutcliffe Sowden said. He was a tall, delicate man with a calm and friendly demeanor. “We have made great strides in the district and Mr. Brontë does a commendable job of dealing with them. He’s your example to follow. You’ll never meet a man more patient or impartial when it comes to arbitrating between the locals. He’s greatly respected, by churchmen and dissenters alike.”

And that statement opened up the floodgates. Charlotte happened to be refilling their cups; she glanced up and saw that Arthur had gone a deep red, and she wondered if perhaps he had bitten down on a bit of nutshell in his spice cake.

“I should not think it much of a compliment to be respected by the dissenters,” he said sternly.

At this, Patrick’s eyebrow rose. “May I assume from that statement that you are intolerant of dissent?”

“How can I possibly be tolerant of a schismatic sect that wishes to destroy the established church and bring down all of England? Because that’s what will happen,” he said heatedly.

Charlotte observed him keenly. His massive frame seemed to be threatened with upheaval, an eruption just waiting to blow.

“I see you have been influenced by the Oxford movement,” Mr. Brontë said.

“I align myself with all those who seek to block the advance of liberalism in religious thought,” he explained.

“You’ll need to get along with the nonconformists if you want to be effective,” Patrick said matter-of-factly. “This is a disaffected population, and the dissenters are flourishing here in the north. They outnumber us two to one.”

“I intend to change those statistics, sir,” he said confidently. “I know the Baptists and the Methodists have built their schools here in the district, and their attendance has grown. But as part of my duties I intend to expand our own church school and make it flourish. The dissenters are a radical influence, and they should be eradicated like the plague that they are.”

Patrick smiled again at this, and said, “Well, Mr. Nicholls, I gather I need not ask you to serve on any arbitration committee with me.”

“Indeed, sir, I would have to decline,” he said proudly, and held his cup out to Charlotte for more tea.

Charlotte poured with a steady hand, which was admirable considering how she felt about this new curate’s narrow-minded views. She was losing patience with the whole lot of them. She had listened to their complaints and their squabbles for years, and she wondered if she would ever be free of this life of petty-minded curates and tea taking. She finished filling his cup, picked up her knitting, and then, during the lag in conversation, she spoke up once again.

“I have a dear friend from school who’s a dissenter,” she said breezily, with a quick glance at Arthur. “Her name is Mary Taylor. She is not the type to be easily eradicated. Indeed, if I were to place bets, I’d put my money on her.”

Everyone laughed except Arthur. Charlotte had the advantage of her knitting and did not have to meet his gaze.

Arthur was distant and cool to her from that day on, although he never lacked in courtesy. Charlotte thought it just as well. She considered him merely another narrow-minded curate.

Arthur adopted the same cool reserve with Mr. Smith, whose manners he found repulsive and little better than those of the locals he so detested. Unfortunately, this coolness was ineffective in deterring visits from Mr. Smith, who seemed to spend more time calling on the other curates than tending to the needs of his parishioners. Arthur, on the other hand, plunged into his responsibilities with a conscientiousness that would come to define him, and he had little time for idle social calls.

It was quickly observed that Arthur was a punctual man, and Mr. Smith always contrived to call at just the moment when Arthur was sitting down to tea in his room, obliging Mrs. Brown to serve him as well. Before he knew it, Joseph Grant would be on his heels with Sutcliffe Sowden in tow, and they would sit around the table gossiping like magpies while Arthur anxiously glanced at the clock on his mantel and worried about all that was not getting done that day.

He learned that the Brontë family was always a source of good gossip. It was a family that fascinated: an eccentric old father, a dazzlingly brilliant son wasting away for love of a married woman, and three daughters who were little more than ghosts, although the villagers thought them very proud.

Mr. Smith took particular delight in heaping scorn upon the young women.

“If they had a mother, you could be sure she’d be on us like flies on a carcass to marry one of them. But the old man knows better than to try to foist one of those girls on his curates,” he said.

Arthur spoke up and surprised them. “Oh, I don’t think that’s the case at all. I suspect they wouldn’t take any one of you sorry fellows, even if you might be so inclined. I haven’t laid eyes on the other two except from a distance—”

“Ah, well, they’re as shy as church mice,” Joseph Grant said. “They scurry into their holes when they see us coming.”

“That may be,” Arthur continued, “but I can tell you that Miss Charlotte Brontë is a proud woman and thinks much more highly of herself than you do of her, and rightfully so. She strikes me as a very clever lady, her father’s daughter through and through.”

“Precisely my point, Nicholls. Who wants a clever woman for a wife? Who wants a woman who can think like a man? And an ugly one at that?”

“She is certainly not ugly,” Arthur replied, a little more vehemently than he realized.

“She’s stunted, poor creature.”

“I rather think of her as delicate.”

“Think of her? Do you indeed think of her, Mr. Nicholls? Do your thoughts turn to her at night when you’re lying alone in your cold bed? Ah! Ladies! Ladies! Come right up! Don’t be shy!” Mr. Smith cried. He sat up from his perpetual slouch and wagged a finger at Arthur. “Here’s a man just waiting to be ensnared! Right here!”