Romancing Miss Bronte (28 page)

After her departure, a good deal of gossip about Currer Bell spread through London; some people spoke of her visit years later, telling the tales to their daughters once their daughters had reached a suitable age to read the scandalous book. They had wanted something eccentric and striking, a figure worthy of the author of
Jane Eyre
. Instead, she appeared to them like an austere little Joan of Arc (Thackeray said this to George), rebuking them with one glance from her great honest eyes. She clearly did not suit the wordly circles of London’s literary elite with its noisy dinner parties, its fashionable opinions and easy morals. They neglected to see that it was the high-principled woman in mourning who commanded the life she led; the simple dress and sleekly knotted hair spoke of her strong sense of rectitude, her determination to do the right thing. Always. Even at the cost of her own heart.

A
freezing mist hung in the air as Arthur trudged through the winding ginnels of Gauger’s Croft, past yards where chickens and pigs scavenged in the rotting refuse. With every step he ruminated on the epic misery of this place, on the multitude of suffering hiding behind every door of these dank, dark cottages. There was an overwhelming sense of oppression in these northern textile villages. It was not the poverty of the destitute or the beggar. It was a poverty of brutal labor, of women, children, and men swallowed up in the clanking of the mechanical loom—ceaselessly spinning and weaving until they were broken, ill, or dead. Diseases gorged themselves on this kind of poverty; consumption and fevers crept in and settled down, striking and sparing with an incomprehensible rationale, then moving on as mysteriously as they appeared.

Through the gray gloom, Arthur caught sight of the new Haworth physician advancing toward him.

“Sir, are you coming from the Barraclough house by any chance?” Arthur asked when the doctor drew near.

“Indeed,” Dr. Hall replied sadly. “The man passed away not more than an hour ago.”

“I’ve been out at the Stancliffe farm. They didn’t have a conveyance to spare and I had to walk, or I would have been there.”

The physician clapped him on the back and said, “We’ve not got wings, Nicholls, and God knows we’re not angels. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“It wasn’t cholera, was it?”

“Good grief, no. His lungs failed him. He was a weaver. It gets them all in the end. What made you think it was cholera?”

“Mr. Brontë seems to think we haven’t seen the end of it.”

“Nicholls, my friend, you’ve got to take that old man’s predictions with a grain of salt. He sees mayhem around every corner.”

“Perhaps, sir, given his recent tragedies, his worries are justified.”

“Well, let me assure you, I haven’t had a case of cholera since last summer. So put your mind at ease on that matter. God knows there’s enough disease here without that one.” He touched his hat and hurried away.

That evening when Arthur stopped by the parsonage and learned that Mr. Brontë had not risen from his bed all day, he reacted with alarm.

“In bed? What are his symptoms, Martha?” Arthur asked as she took his hat and gloves. “Is it the fever?”

“Nay, sir,” Martha replied. “It’s his bronchitis. It’s gotten worse.” She added quietly, “And his spirits are low, sir. What with Miss Brontë bein’ in London, an’ the house so empty now.”

Arthur found the old man propped up in bed with a flotilla of pillows at his back, swaddled in a neckcloth up to his ears and a clean white nightcap pulled down over his silver-bristled head. He sat perfectly erect, staring glumly into the shadows. A cold draft from the window worked its way through the shutters, causing the candle flame by his bed to dip and dance.

“Come in, Nicholls,” he said, turning pitiful eyes on his curate. “Dr. Hall was just here.”

“How are you feeling?” Arthur said as he dragged a chair to the bed.

“Not well. Not well at all. I’m so very weak, and it galls me. And I do so worry about Charlotte. London’s such a wretchedly unhealthy place, and she’s so fragile.” He placed a gnarled hand over his heart and sighed. “I shall sink if God takes my beloved Charlotte from me.”

A hoarse cough tore through his chest, and he sank back exhausted into his nest of pillows.

“Is there something I can get you?”

Patrick gestured to the table. “A serum. Over there,” he wheezed.

Arthur rose and went to the table, searching in the dim light for a vial amid the books and papers. His attention was arrested by a trio of small volumes. He paused, picked up the top one, and turned back to Patrick.

“What’s this?” Arthur said with a startled look. “
Jane Eyre
? Goodness gracious, I hope you don’t leave this out where your daughter might read it.”

This provoked a coughing fit so violent that Arthur dropped the book and hurried back to old man’s bedside. Patrick had gone red in the face, and Arthur poured him a glass of water from the carafe by his bed and thrust it into his hand.

After the fit had calmed, Patrick lapsed back with his hand on his heaving chest, fixing Arthur with a narrow look.

“Have you read
Jane Eyre
?” Patrick croaked.

But before Arthur could reply, Patrick waved a gnarled finger and commanded, “Just bring me the book.”

When Arthur did so, Patrick said, “Take at look at the cover. Read it to me.”

“‘Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
.’”

“By?”

“‘Edited by Currer Bell.’”

“It’s a pseudonym, you know.”

“Yes, I’ve heard as much,” Arthur said with a touch of impatience. “I
have
read the book, sir.”

“You’ve read it, then? Good, good! I didn’t think you to be the literary sort.”

Arthur stiffened but let the barbed comment pass without reply. Patrick reached for the bedpost and drew himself upright. With a gleam in his eyes he said, “You know, Nicholls, mine are no ordinary children. You’ve remarked that yourself.” He jabbed at the book. “Look again at the name. Note the initials, if you please.”

In a flash, even without Patrick’s prompt, Arthur understood.

“Currer Bell stands for Charlotte Brontë,” Arthur said in a low voice, not quite believing himself as he spoke. The beaming look of pride on the old man’s face was confirmation enough.

“She’s in London visiting her publisher as we speak. It was her wish to remain anonymous, but the word is out in London now, and it would spoil my pleasure to have you hear it from someone else.”

Arthur was too stupefied to respond. Patrick leaned closer to boast, “They’ve paid her five hundred pounds, Nicholls. Five hundred pounds! And another five hundred for her second novel,
Shirley
!”

“As I recall, there were other Bell brothers, were there not?” Arthur asked.

Patrick nodded. “Ellis Bell and Acton Bell.”

“Why bless my soul,” he said with awe. “It was Emily and Anne.”

Arthur thought back to all the moments he had watched them in the simple activities of their daily lives, how he had strained to understand their whispered conversations, observed their unconventional ways. Sometimes timid, sometimes sullen, they had seemed to him strange and unknowable. There had always been something remarkable about them, something he could not put his finger on. Unexpectedly, his eyes began to burn. He remembered Anne’s obscure comment, about schemes she had planned for the future, and he wondered if this was what she meant.

“God rest their souls,” Arthur said quietly. As he looked up, he saw tears streaming down the old reverend’s face. He was staring gloomily at the wall again, lost in his memories.

Inside the cover, Arthur found a batch of newspaper clippings. He unfolded one and saw that it was a review.

“Read it,” Patrick muttered. “Read it aloud to me.”

For the next half hour, Arthur read to the old clergyman, first the reviews—which were only the positive ones. Then, at Patrick’s request, he began the first chapter of
Jane Eyre
.

After a while Patrick began to doze, then snore, but Arthur continued to read. Only when the clock struck nine and Martha looked in did he close the book.

“Do you need another candle, sir?” she whispered.

“No. He’s asleep. I’ll be going now.”

Arthur blew out the flame and followed Martha down the stairs.

As she handed him his hat, he said, “Martha, tell Mr. Brontë I’ve borrowed his book.”

“Oh,” Martha said, suspiciously eyeing the small volumes he was slipping into the pocket of his greatcoat, “I’ll be sure to tell him, sir. He’s very particular about his books.”

Arthur stayed up late into the night reading
Jane Eyre
a second time. He found himself pausing to reflect on certain passages, attempting to weed out fact from fiction. He was interested not so much in the workings of Charlotte’s mind as the inclinations of her heart. He did not want to think there had actually been a Rochester somewhere in Charlotte’s past, that a man had wreaked such havoc on her heart. Rochester had affairs with French cabaret singers; he kept abominable secrets and seduced his governess. Somehow, this kind of hero didn’t fit into Arthur’s knowledge of Charlotte’s life. For years he had watched her mingle with the most prosaic order of men, with curates, schoolmasters, and parish clerks; there was not a Rochester among them.

It took Arthur the better part of a week to finish his second reading of
Jane Eyre
, and then he came to the parsonage begging for Charlotte’s other book.

“Can’t have it, my man,” Patrick said from his throne of pillows.

“And why not?”

“It’s loaned out.”

“Loaned out?” Arthur frowned. “To whom?”

“My old friend Morgan in Bradford.”

Arthur scowled darkly. “And when will you get it back?”

“End of the week.”

Arthur looked so wretched that Patrick began to laugh, which brought on a coughing fit.

At last the old man was free to boast about his daughter, and when Charlotte’s letters came, Patrick was quick to share them with his curate. “She’s met Thackeray!” he crowed several days later, slipping on his spectacles while Arthur leaned over the grate to warm his hands. “And Harriet Martineau.” Darting a look over the rims of his spectacles, he added, “Very celebrated lady. Writes essays on political theory. Brilliant.”

Arthur gave a careless shrug. He didn’t read many essays on political theory; nor was he the sort to be starstruck.

Plunging his nose back into the letter, Patrick mumbled, “She quite objects to all this notoriety, you know, but can’t avoid it. Dinner parties in her honor, that sort of thing.” He turned over the single sheet. “She talks about the theater here somewhere … let’s see, where is it …” Finally, frustrated by his poor eyesight and the frugal light afforded by his candle, he waved the letter at Arthur. “Oh bother. Here, you read it to me, Nicholls.”

For Arthur it was a bittersweet thing to be brought at last into the bosom of this proud, strange family, to be made privy to Charlotte’s travels, her reflections, her experiences. Each time a letter was given to him to read, he unfolded the pages with a mixture of dread and delight. He searched between the lines for intimations of a romantic attachment and
found none, although Mr. Brontë insinuated otherwise. He spoke often and quite convincingly of the young publisher’s attentions toward Charlotte.

“If she marries him, I’ll have to give up my home and go into lodgings,” he said with a grieved air. “It would kill me, Nicholls, having her go off to London, leaving me sick and old and alone. But how could I object to such a marriage?”

Arthur wore his best granite-like expression and refused to reply.

“A sound businessman, that George Smith. They’ve got a successful import-export firm, along with the publishing arm. He publishes Ruskin, you know.”

A vague jealousy crept into Arthur’s heart, and he anxiously waited for Charlotte’s return.

Charlotte arrived back in Haworth only a few days before the first anniversary of Emily’s death. They observed the day in gloomy silence—indeed, there was little to distinguish it from any other day. The seismic shift in their lives had effected only a slight shift in the order of things. She took breakfast and tea with her father and dined alone; if there were no letters or callers, no domestic business that required his attention, she might not see him until prayers at half past eight that evening. The dark hours were whiled away in a desolate silence, her father in his parlor with his pipe and glass of port, she in the dining room with her knitting.

How badly she craved companionship on these winter nights with the wind haunting the chimney. Her thoughts dwelled on her London friends, and every morning she waited impatiently for the post, hoping for a letter from George. At night on her knees she prayed, “Dear God, please don’t let me think of them too often, too much, too fondly.”

On Sundays when her father preached, she sat alone in the cold box pew where they had once all sat crammed together, snug and warm on wintry Sabbath mornings. Now her eyes remained locked on the prayer book in her lap or fixed dully on the steady, familiar figures in the pulpit. Christmas that year was the bleakest she had ever known.

After Christmas, Ellen came to visit. With Ellen there was no strain of keeping up appearances. They knew each other intimately, faults and habits, hopes and broken dreams. They sewed doll clothing and hemmed pinafores for the poor children in the village. They talked silliness and grumbled to each other, and made each other laugh. Ellen always brought with her a semblance of the way things used to be when Charlotte’s brother and sisters were still alive.