Romancing Miss Bronte (43 page)

“What are you thinking, my dear?” he would ask. “You seem far away.”

“I’m listening to you, Arthur,” she would answer with a smile. “Do go on. You were telling how you ran into Mr. Sowden’s brother in York. What a pleasant coincidence.”

At times she stole looks at him through her spectacles, and try as she might, there was never that glow, that rose-tinted vision, that heat. All she felt was a sort of dull gratitude and a sense that she had run out of dreams to dream.

So she brightened her thoughts with memories in order to stir a little excitement into the moment. Into the room where she sat, with the dog and her knitting and Arthur.

With each passing day Arthur settled more and more comfortably into the framework of her life. He showed himself eager to reassure her that she was not marrying down, as her father would have her believe.

“Cuba House is a fine country manor. I should like to take you there. On our honeymoon.”

Charlotte sat knitting by the fire, her feet on a stool, and she tossed a stern look at him over her spectacles. “I don’t recall having accepted your proposal.”

“But you will.”

“I have made no promise.”

“But you will.” He rose from his chair and stood before the grate, stroking his whiskers. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, I had a surprise visit from Lord Houghton several months back.”

Charlotte looked up, curious. “Lord Houghton?”

“He’s a great admirer of yours. Claims to have met you in London.”

“Yes. At Thackeray’s lecture. He invited me to his home on several occasions, but I declined.”

“Well, he came on a most unusual mission. He offered me two positions at his disposal, one in Scotland, the other Lancashire. Both of them very generous. I daresay I was puzzled by his interest in me.”

“Scotland? What a wonderful opportunity for you, Arthur.”

“Of course I refused them both. I would not have been able to come back to you.”

She was silent for a moment, and then asked in a quiet voice, “So you would return? You would come back to serve here in Haworth?”

“In an instant.”

“After all Papa’s cruelty? You would forgive him?”

“For all the past injustices and all the future ones to come.”

Still with her nose buried in her knitting, she said, “Tell me, Arthur, if we were to marry, would you be content to live here, in this house, with my father?”

A long silence, with only the sound of the needles clicking and the wind rattling the panes.

“Put down your work, Charlotte, and look at me. Raise your head.”

At this command from Arthur, something thrilled in her, the resonant echoes of another voice she had not heard in years.

Willingly, she obeyed.

“I’m not a man of empty words. What I pledge, I will fulfill. I know your worries all too well, and you know my faults—and fraud is not one of them. We’ll live here and care for your father until the end of his days, together, as husband and wife. He need never worry about going into lodgings or being abandoned by his only surviving child. You see, I love you, my dear.”

His eyes held hers with firmness.

One evening several days after Arthur had returned to Kirk Smeaton, Charlotte rapped on her father’s door. She stood before him with trembling
hands folded at her waist and told him she had been heartily encouraged by all she had learned about Arthur. That she was inclined to esteem and affection, if not love.

“A curate,” he said with contempt. “After all the fame you’ve achieved, you’d marry this poor curate without a penny to his name.”

“Yes, Papa, I must marry a curate if I marry at all. But I would never marry just any curate. It would have to be your curate. And not merely your curate, but one who lives in the house with you, for I cannot leave you.”

Martha, who was listening at the door, heard a commotion: the sound of a chair scraping, then a thud, a metal clang, something breaking.

“Live in my house? My house? Never!” he barked. “Never will I have another man in my house!”

The door flew open and Martha scurried to safety. Patrick stormed out and up to his bedroom, slamming the door. Martha rushed into the parlor, wide-eyed with fright.

“Miss! Are ye all right?”

Charlotte sat slumped in a chair in the corner like a rag doll, her forehead pressed into one hand. She lifted red-rimmed eyes to Martha.

“He kicked over his spittoon. It’ll need to be mopped up. And there’s a broken pipe on the floor over there.”

For two days Patrick would not speak to his daughter. He shut her out of his study and took his tea alone; passing her in the hall, he treated her as if she did not exist. This coldness from him was more effective than all his tired ranting. She had been waging an exhaustive war for something she wasn’t sure she wanted, and she could no longer sustain the effort. Emotionally drained, she retreated to bed with a pounding headache and vomited up everything Martha brought her to eat. Not once did her father look in on her.

By then Tabby and Martha had had their stomachs full of the old parson. They had seen how things stood between Mr. Nicholls and their mistress. They saw how kindly he treated her—“like a queen,” Tabby said—and how calm she seemed when he was around.

On the fifth day, Tabby put on a clean apron and hobbled into Patrick’s study.

“Master, I ben with ye nigh on forty years now, and I tell ye what yer doin’ to yer daughter is just wrong.”

Patrick raised his white head in astonishment.

“Aye, sir, yer old servant is standin’ before ye, tellin’ ye what she thinks of all this. Well, it’s jes’ plain selfishness on yer part. Ye’re killin’ yer daughter. Aye, ye’re killin’ her. Is that what ye want? Well, the others are all dead, and if ye don’t stop this nonsense over Mr. Nicholls and let the two of ’em marry, she’ll be dead, too, and ye’ll have yerself t’ thank for it.”

Before going up to her room that night, Martha let Flossy out in the garden, and when she returned she found Mr. Brontë sitting at the kitchen table in the dark.

“Can I be gettin’ ye somethin’, master?”

With his long-fingered hand he tapped a note on the table.

“Take this up to her tonight, Martha. Before you go to bed.”

“Aye, sir,” she said. “I hope it’s somethin’ that’ll make the mistress happy. She’s not ben well.”

The faint moonlight from the narrow window, illuminating the white of his short bristled hair, lent him a ghostly quality.

“She’s not strong enough for it.” His voice sounded drained. “I’ve seen what it does to a woman. Bearing children. Charlotte’s too tiny.”

He covered his face with his hands and wept silently.

T
he lead-colored sky had been roiling with the threat of rain ever since Arthur left Oxenhope. As he came up on Higher Halstead’s field, the storm finally caught up with him. A few heavy drops and then a cloudburst; thunder shook the hills. Arthur was drenched by the time he reached the churchyard. Only a short distance from the footpath, John Brown squatted on a flat box grave, chipping a name into the tombstone.

“Good day to ye, sir,” the stonemason called out.

Arthur stopped, and with a hand on his hat he tried to make himself heard over the moaning wind and driving rain.

“That’s the Fosters’ vault, isn’t it?”

“It is, sir. The old man. Passed away on Tuesday.”

“Foster was a good man—God give his family strength. His wife is well, I pray?”

“Aye, well as they come, but fer grievin’.”

“Give them my condolences, will you? I shall remember them in my prayers.”

“I’ll do that, sir. They’ll be glad to hear from ye.”

“I pray you’re well, John?”

“Aye, sir. Just a little stiffness in the ’ands and knees.”

A lightning bolt split open the sky, followed by a deafening crack. “You’d better take cover, John. Wait until this passes.”

With his head bent into the wind, Arthur had started up the path when he heard John call out, “Is it true ye may be coming back to Haworth, Mr. Nicholls?”

Arthur wheeled around, still clutching his hat.

“I don’t know, John.”

“Well, if ye do, folks’d be mighty pleased.”

Arthur stood silently for a moment, the rain dripping down his nose, wondering what on earth to say to the man who had once wanted to shoot him.

“It would please me even more, John,” he said before he sped up the path toward the parsonage.

Martha met him at the door with a towel to dry his face, bobbing and nodding in a comic display of exaggerated deference.

“Oh, Mr. Nicholls, sir, ye’re a brave one to come out in this.”

“You know I’d brave worse than this to see your mistress.”

“Would ye like some tea, sir? Warm ye up a little?”

“Not just yet. Where’s Miss Brontë?”

“Waitin’ in the reverend’s parlor, sir.”

Seeing Charlotte for the first time after a long absence, all he wanted was to draw her into his arms and hold her close. But he had not yet been granted that favor, nor any favor.

Her father stood peering out the window at the ominous sky. A sour odor hung over the room—the olfactory stew of a reclusive old man careless of appearances, of clothing that had seen too many years of wear, of stale tobacco and cold ashes. He had been dictating correspondence to Charlotte and now she was tidying up his desk, her nimble fingers moving with admirable efficiency. Habits of tidiness and order. Arthur liked that about her. Then she offered Arthur her hand to shake, and reassured him with her eyes.

For the first time in a year, Patrick greeted Arthur with something like his old familiarity and urged him kindly to take a seat. The sky had darkened and rain pelted the glass, and while Charlotte lit a lantern the three of them exchanged light banter about the storm riding overhead.

Patrick sat down behind his desk, twining his gnarled fingers across his chest. Arthur faced him with calm dignity; his black hair sprang in wet curls around his strong, square face. Charlotte had drawn her
chair into the corner and taken up her knitting, but her hands were trembling.

“I do appreciate, Mr. Nicholls, that you were able to travel this far on such short notice,” Patrick began. “I am only too aware of how difficult it is for one who serves the Almighty to make arrangements for duties that cannot be abandoned lightly. I know your time is limited, so we shall move directly to the point. If my daughter, Charlotte, should decide to accept your offer of marriage—and she has not yet decided in your favor, Nicholls—but if she should, there are monetary conditions she would like put in place. My daughter has earned a good deal of money from her books—”

“A modest amount,” Charlotte corrected gently, with her eyes lowered.

Patrick shot her one of his stern glances and continued: “And she stands to earn a good deal more. I insist upon a marriage settlement that protects her interest. Therefore, I have taken the liberty to consult a solicitor. The terms he advised are these.”

Patrick opened up a dossier, withdrew a sheet of parchment, and extended it to Arthur.

“I have no need to see such a document,” Arthur said mildly.

The clicking needles fell still as Charlotte glanced up.

Patrick sat back with a frown. “What do you mean by that, Nicholls?”

“What I mean is that I accept any terms you ask of me.”

“You would be wise to read the conditions.”

“Whatever they are, I accept.”

“You won’t get anything, Nicholls.”

“I never wanted anything.”

Charlotte dropped her gaze. A smile crept around the corners of her mouth.

Arthur sat calmly, his powerful hands spread on his knees.

“Well, then—here. With that understood, for form’s sake, you might wish to read it.”

There was a tally of her investments: £500 from
Shirley
, £480 from
Villette
,
£521 from her railway shares, plus miscellaneous sums from foreign copyrights and the various editions of
Jane Eyre
. The settlement provided that her money be transferred to a trust for the benefit of Charlotte and any children she might have, to be paid out at her disposition during her lifetime; if she died in Arthur’s lifetime her money would go to her children, and if there were no children, the estate would revert to her father. Arthur would get nothing.

As he read through it, he lit up. “Yes,” he murmured, a smile breaking from ear to ear. “Yes. Very good. Very well managed, I say. Exactly what I would have done myself if I had been her father.”

With an air of impatience, he returned the document to Patrick and rose.

“I have very little time today, sir,” he said. “If you are satisfied, I should like to have a few minutes with your daughter before I take my leave.”

Without waiting for a reply, Arthur extended his hand to Charlotte. She laid aside her knitting, and Arthur took her hand and drew her to her feet.

The sky had darkened even further, and the wind-blown rain clattered against the window with raging force as she led him up the stairs and down the hall to the small, garretlike room.

“You’ll need a study,” she said as she stepped inside. “I thought you might like to have this room. I’m afraid it’s the only one.”

There was not a speck of dust anywhere, nor a wrinkle on the counterpane, nor a smudge on the well-oiled dresser.

“When we were children it was Branwell’s room,” she mused quietly, “but then Emily claimed it and he never got it back again. She loved the views from this room—the sky, and the heath on the other side of the valley. When the weather was too bad to go walking on the moors she would spend endless hours up here. It was all the drama she ever needed or wanted in her life.”

Emily’s German grammar and a book of Schiller had been neatly
arranged on the table beside her ink-stained writing desk. Charlotte opened the drawer.

“She hid herself so completely, Arthur. From all of us. It was only when we began to publish together that I felt I was beginning to see her and understand her. We were closer during those short years than ever before. After she died I found a few small souvenirs she’d kept.” Charlotte removed a printed program to show him. “Here. It’s from a concert we attended together in Brussels. And I found clippings of reviews of
Wuthering Heights
. It was like seeing a piece of a tender heart that she had hidden behind a wall of stoicism. She never really understood all the attacks on her book. She could not see what she had written—not the way others saw it. But she’s gone. There will be no more novels. Nor verse. I still can’t quite believe it.”