Romancing Miss Bronte (29 page)

“I haven’t been able to sleep in this house since they died,” Charlotte whispered to her one night in bed as they snuggled together for warmth. “Except when you’re here.”

“Do you have nightmares?”

“Yes. It doesn’t seem to get any better. If I sleep at all I sleep lightly, and then I dream. When I wake up, my thoughts are worse than my dreams. I feel haunted—I keep remembering the way they looked when they died.”

“You mustn’t be so morbid.”

“I can’t help it, Nell. If I could change my thoughts, I would. You know I would.”

“Why don’t you have Martha sleep with you?”

“Then Tabby would have to sleep by herself. And Tabby’s so old now. She shouldn’t be left in her room alone.”

“Well, I’m here now.”

“Yes. I always sleep soundly when you’re here.”

“So go to sleep and don’t dream.”

And she did.

By the end of January, when Reverend Morgan had still not returned
Shirley
, Arthur began a campaign of harassment that nearly drove Patrick out of his wits.

“Be so good as to send him a note, would you?” Arthur pleaded one morning in the vestry.

“I’ll do no such thing,” Patrick answered tartly. “That gentleman is an old friend. He can have all the time he needs.”

“Well, if I had that gentleman’s salary I’d do myself the pleasure of buying my own copies of Currer Bell’s works,” Arthur shot back as he hastily hung his surplice in the wardrobe. “But I do not have his means and therefore am obliged to borrow what I would gladly purchase for myself, if I had the means.”

Arthur shrugged on his coat, dusted off his hat, and strode out.

“What a peevish fellow,” Patrick scoffed when he recounted the incident to Charlotte after church. “Sounds like he wants me to feel sorry for him. Ha!” Charlotte was setting the table for dinner, and she had to ask her father to get down the soup tureen from the china cabinet. Emily had been tall enough to reach these things.

“I suppose they’ll all be reading it soon enough,” she said with a note of dismay. In
Shirley
she had portrayed the curates in a particularly foolish and irreverent light, and she winced at the thought of their reading it.

“No doubt about it. There’s no hiding now, my dear.”

“Do you think they’ll recognize themselves?” she asked as she smoothed out a wrinkle in the tablecloth.

“I daresay they will,” he answered with a wry chuckle.

Toward the end of the week Martha came in huffing and puffing, babbling about how Mr. Nicholls had closed himself in his room the night before and had some kind of fit.

“What on earth are you talking about, Martha?” Charlotte gasped. “Is he all right?”

“Oh, yes, miss. He was laughin’ over some book yer father’d given him. Mother said he was stampin’ on the floor an’ clappin’ his hands so loud she thought he’d gone wrong in the head.”

Charlotte went straight to her father. “Has Mr. Nicholls got a copy of
Shirley
?”

“I gave it to him last night.”

“Oh!” Charlotte exclaimed. She started to leave, then said, “Apparently he’s enjoying it thoroughly.”

“Nicholls? Doesn’t surprise me a bit. Has a good Irish sense of humor.”

“I didn’t realize,” she murmured.

“You have to dig a little, but it’s there.”

She got a good taste of it that week from behind closed doors. Every evening Arthur stopped by the parsonage to read his favorite passages aloud to Mr. Brontë, and Charlotte sat in the dining room with her armchair pulled up to the fire, sewing and listening to his deep, infectious laugh. Despite herself, it never failed to put a smile on her face. As long as he was there on the other side of the hall, laughing, she felt a little lighter and a bit less lonely.

One evening as she came up from the pantry with a jar of marmalade for breakfast, she found Arthur in the entry hall on his way out. Anne’s fat little spaniel had nudged open the dining room door and now stood on his hind feet with his paws on Arthur’s leg while Arthur lavished caresses on him.

“Flossy, get down,” Charlotte scolded.

“Good evening, Miss Brontë,” he said as he straightened, suddenly flustered by her appearance.

“Good evening, Mr. Nicholls.”

Encouraged by the warmth in her voice, he blurted out, “Fine book, Miss Brontë. Delightful. I enjoyed it immensely. The Yorkshire folk are quite proud of you.” Then he blushed beet red.

“I take that as a great compliment coming from you, Mr. Nicholls.”

“Do you now?”

“Indeed.”

“That scene with the curates at tea was capital! Capital!” he said, breaking into a smile. “And the part where the dog chases Grant up the stairs … I nearly fell off my chair laughing!”

“You mean Mr. Donne,” Charlotte corrected. “The character’s name is Donne.”

Arthur’s grin stretched wider. “Well, it was Keeper that took a bite out of Joseph Grant’s backside, if I remember correctly.”

“Mr. Nicholls, these characters are wrought from my imagination.”

He belted out a full laugh. “Ah, say what you will, but you’ve got us all in there, warts and all, and I think I’m a better man for it.”

Charlotte found herself glowing. “I doubt Mr. Grant will be quite so amused.”

“Mr. Grant’s sulking, but he’ll get over it.”

“Has he read it?”

“He has. Got it before I did. His wife has it now.”

“Oh, goodness,” Charlotte said, trying to keep a solemn face. “I suppose he knows I’m the odious Currer Bell.”

“His wife heard it at the market in Bradford.”

Charlotte reacted with surprise. “You didn’t tell him?”

Arthur stiffened. “I’m no gossipmonger, Miss Brontë. I told no one.”

Typically, he had taken offense, but she had no wish to argue with him this evening. She answered him gently, teasingly, “That’s the last thing I would fault you with. You’re as tight-lipped as they come.”

He nodded, softening only slightly, not quite sure how to respond.

Soothingly, she added, “I understand that my father let you in on the secret, and I would have found it perfectly normal for you to tell your friends.”

“I knew they’d all find out soon enough.”

“You didn’t even tell Mr. Sowden?”

“Mr. Sowden heard it from the Merrall brothers. Not from me.”

“My goodness,” Charlotte exclaimed, “you are a marvel.”

“And you are being sarcastic,” he answered, his mouth twitching with a repressed grin.

“Not a whit!”

“Then if you’re going to flatter me, pray do it truthfully. Say something I can believe.”

“What? That you are ‘sane and rational, diligent and charitable’?” she teased, which was how she had described him in her novel.

Arthur laughed, and Charlotte flashed her crooked smile. The crusty irritability that had always poisoned their relationship was suddenly gone. Swept away.

Arthur said gently, “Miss Brontë, I know how you cherish your privacy.
I presume that if you kept your secret for this long, there must be a reason. Given how famous your books are, I would be ashamed to think that through any indiscretion of mine, I had caused you the least bit of discomfort.”

Charlotte was momentarily taken aback; she immediately thought of Lewes and his rush to print everything he had discovered about her. What a different breed of man this was standing before her.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” she said quietly.

They were startled by her father’s cough on the other side of the door.

Arthur hurried to button up his greatcoat. “Good night, Miss Brontë.”

“Good night, Mr. Nicholls,” she said. Arthur opened the door and stepped out into the cold February night.

The following week, Charlotte’s anonymity was dealt its final blow. One morning she was in the kitchen when Martha returned from the market, red in the face from having run all the way up the lane with her heavy basket. She slung it onto the kitchen table, puffing and blowing, and cried, “Oh, miss! I’ve heard such news!”

“Goodness, Martha! Calm down! What have you heard?”

She collapsed onto the bench and panted, “Why, they’re sayin’ ye’ve been an’ written two books—the grandest books that ever was seen! Father heard it at Halifax and Mr. Greenwood heard it at Bradford! They’re goin’ to have a meeting at the Mechanics’ Institute to settle about orderin’ ’em!”

They had the meeting that evening, and Martha reported back that once they received the books, the members would be required to cast lots; whoever got a volume would be allowed to keep it for only two days, and overdue fines would be calculated at the exorbitant rate of a shilling per day.

“Oh, miss!” Martha exclaimed. “There was such a crowd o’ folk, ye wouldn’t believe! They was all pushin’ an’ shovin’ to get to the front to sign up even before we got the books!”

“What silliness,” Charlotte said without lifting her eyes from her sewing.

“It’s not silliness, miss,” Martha said excitedly. “Ye’re famous, miss!”

“Don’t be a goose,” Charlotte said with a surly frown. “It’s late. Be off now. To bed.”

At the end of the month, a notice appeared in the Bradford
Observer
.

“It is understood that the only daughter of the Rev. P. Brontë, incumbent of Haworth, is the authoress of
Jane Eyre
and
Shirley
, two of the most popular novels of the day, which have appeared under the name of ‘Currer Bell.’”

She stood in the parlor, reading the notice to her father, and her palms began to sweat.

C
harlotte was helpless to hold back the swelling tide of curiosity. That spring, celebrity seekers turned up from all over the region hoping to catch a glimpse of the infamous author of
Jane Eyre
. Although the remoteness of Haworth and Main Street’s steep incline deterred the fainthearted, it was an indication of her novels’ popularity that so many made the journey across the rugged hills. Once at the top of the village, they would stop at the Black Bull or the White Horse Inn, hoping to draw a little information from the taciturn locals, who more often than not answered their curious questions with hostile stares. The visitors would fortify themselves with a pint of ale and then set up Church Lane to gawk at the lonely gray parsonage and wonder at the inhabitants cloistered inside.

As Charlotte’s circle of correspondents grew, her mornings were occupied writing letters. The few attempts she made to start another novel only led to depression, but letters were another thing. In her letters, she was at ease and at her best. Invisible and far away, she could engage in discussions with authors and readers who would form their impressions of her based strictly on her thoughts and her words. Her fame now extended across the ocean. She heard from Americans in remote mountainous regions and Canadian professors of literature. Unannounced callers showed up on the parsonage doorstep: a vicar from a township so obscure that Patrick couldn’t find it on the map, a Penzance cousin they had never met before.

Arthur was appalled when, during one Sunday service, he noticed two
strange young men ogling Charlotte from one of the free pews. His suspicions were confirmed when the service was over and they hung back, twisting their hats in their hands, and then made a rush toward her as she came down the aisle. Arthur barreled through the crowd and pounced on them like a hawk on a titmouse, shielding her with his voluminous snowy robes and detaining them long enough to allow her to slip behind him and escape through the south door and up the path to home.

“Who were they?” Charlotte asked her father that afternoon at tea.

“A couple of so-called poets from Bradford,” he said. “One of them has written a book of verse, and he had come seeking Currer Bell’s sage advice.”

“I see. And what did my defender do?”

“The lad tried to give the manuscript to Nicholls to give to you, but Nicholls wouldn’t take it. He was quite put out with them. Told them it was sacrilegious to come to church with such falseness in their hearts.”

Charlotte tittered and said, “That’s our boy.”

There were new friends to be made that year, women writers like Harriet Martineau and Elizabeth Gaskell, but making new acquaintances was a daunting challenge for Charlotte. She would resist unless literally besieged, which is precisely what Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth and his young wife did. He was a baronet, a distinguished physician renowned for social reform, and when Charlotte stubbornly rejected their repeated invitations to visit Gawthorpe Hall, their magnificent castellated seventeeth-century pile just ten miles across the moors in Lancashire, the kind lord and lady swooped down on the parsonage one spring afternoon in their grand carriage and—encouraged by her father—gently abducted her.

Arthur disapproved, and he said as much when Patrick told him where Charlotte had gone.

“She was very reluctant to go,” Patrick said.

“To her credit,” Arthur stated, his jaw set.

Patrick scowled. “Well, I heartily approved.”

“It’s overbearing. Imposing themselves on her like that. Quite typical of their class.”

“Sir James used to be secretary to the Council on Education. Done a tremendous amount of work on behalf of the poor. A very fine, courtly gentleman and precisely the kind of acquaintance she needs to cultivate. There’s no one here worth knowing, Nicholls. Not a single gentleman with any prospects at all.”

Arthur wisely dropped the subject, and they turned their attention to the work at hand, their petition to the sanitation board and a new roof for the schoolhouse. Arthur thought with dismay about how prosaic this life must seem to Charlotte, and any dreams he had once entertained seemed more remote than ever.

All that year, Charlotte’s life swung like a pendulum between the anxiety of drawing rooms full of strangers and the silent gloom of the parsonage. Both were torture. The more she struggled for some kind of balance, the higher the pendulum would swing. Every time she left Haworth to visit her new friends in London, Windermere, or Manchester, the homecoming would be so painful that she would resolve never to leave home again.

That spring, Sir James insisted on the exclusive right to introduce her to London society at the height of the season, with its rounds of balls and soirées. “I shall have you to Hampton Court and Windsor, Miss Brontë. The royal family are great admirers of yours,” he claimed during her visit, hammering away at Charlotte’s resistance. He would send his carriage to collect her and bring her to Gawthorpe Hall; then they would leisurely travel down to London together, stopping along the way at the homes of his friends and family to show her off. Charlotte balked at the mere thought of such an ordeal, but her father wouldn’t hear of a refusal.