Romancing Miss Bronte (49 page)

“You’re such a noodle, Arthur,” she said, tugging him away from her mother and giving him a peck on the cheek. “Mama’s been on tenterhooks for days and everyone’s been holding their breath, so it’s really much to our relief that you’ve arrived early rather than late. Hello! I’m Lucy!”

“Lucy, my wife, Charlotte Brontë Nicholls,” he said proudly.

There was more commotion as Arthur broke away to greet the household servants who hovered near the kitchen door, bobbing and curtsying and beaming with joy. One or two of them whispered words of congratulations and threw furtive, deferential glances at the tiny, fragile-looking lady who stood awkwardly at the center of attention.

“What’s this about your bride not being well?” Harriette Bell asked her nephew in a commanding voice. “I gather Arthur has quite exhausted you—he’s inclined to do things a bit too thoroughly.”

“I never complain about my husband’s thoroughness,” Charlotte said quietly. “He arranged for such marvelous excursions in Wales. We saw absolutely breathtaking sights.”

“But, my dear Mrs. Nicholls, you are pale. And you, Arthur, you’re thin as a rake. What have you done to yourself? Well, I suppose it’s to be expected—what with all the excitement. But you’re home now, and you shall be well cared for. You must be bone-tired. We shall have a light supper and all go straight off to bed. No, Lucy, I’ll not have a word of dissent.”

The rooms were spacious and lofty, and the drawing room and dining
room elegantly appointed, but as the maidservant led them down the wide, empty hall Charlotte suspected that they had not the means to furnish it as grandly as it deserved. Charlotte was accustomed to close, snug spaces, and their bedroom on the ground floor seemed vast and cold, with only an ancient four-poster bed, a vanity, and a table and chairs by the fireplace. A turf fire was already blazing in the wide old chimney, and the maidservant lit candles on the mantel while the coachman brought in their trunks.

Here, her meager reserve of energy depleted, Charlotte collapsed. Arthur was full of remorse.

“I should have brought you here directly,” he apologized the next morning as he sat beside her on the bed. “It was quite selfish of me.”

“I do so dislike being weak, Arthur,” she murmured. “Why am I not well and strong like other people?”

“Hush,” he said, and he kissed her and brushed her hair back from her face.

For two days, Mrs. Bell nursed Charlotte on vegetable and beef broth and a good dose of firm kindness, sitting quietly by her bedside every afternoon with her cat and her sewing basket. Mary Anna and Lucy gathered flowers from the garden and arranged them in cut-glass vases on the tea table, and Joseph lent her books of verse to read. Arthur would blow in and out during the day—followed by his dogs, which would lope up to her and sniff around her head and then curl up on the hearthrug, waiting on their master. During the day he smelled of horses, hot sun, and wind, and when he came to bed in the evening there was the faint odor of cigars. He abandoned his clerical collar and most days set off wearing only a light summer shirt and a straw hat.

“There could be a little something for Arthur if he chose to take it,” his aunt said one afternoon, “but he has always insisted that the modest income should go to his cousins and myself. You mustn’t find it odd that I speak so openly to you. You are Arthur’s wife now, and you should know these things. I doubt Arthur’s told you himself.”

“I confess, he has not.”

“Because he has always put us first. He’s a selfless man when it comes to material things. But he has a wife now—and perhaps soon will have a family of his own. If you should ever find yourselves in distress, you must apply to us. We will do what we can. I would hate to think that he has deprived himself and his family of any comfort on our account.”

“Mrs. Bell, I assure you, that will not be necessary. You have merely revealed to me another small proof of my husband’s goodness. I can only admire and respect his choice.”

“Well, things will be easier when the children are all grown. My boy Joseph shows every promise of doing well for himself—I don’t fret about him—and Lucy has a serious suitor. I expect we’ll announce an engagement soon. But I doubt my dear Mary Anna will ever attract a husband. Arthur is always anxious about her future.”

“But she is so pretty.”

“Yes, she is, with a heart as pure as her eyes are blue. And men are always quite drawn to her, until she walks across a room, and then, well … I’ve noticed that they turn away and ignore her after that. But then, we each have our burdens to bear, as God sees fit. He will give us the strength to bear up, of that I’m sure.” She snipped off a thread and held her work up to the light. “I say this only to reassure you that you have, dear madam, the most loyal and devoted of husbands. When Mr. Bell passed from this world, Alan was at university in Edinburgh, and Arthur insisted that his elder brother’s education should come before his own, so he gave up his studies and came home to take care of us. Lucy was only seven, and Mary Anna not even nine. Arthur is very protective—as I’m sure you’ve discovered. It’s in his nature. Eventually he returned to Trinity and finished his degree. It must have been very difficult for him, having taken all those years off, but he never once uttered a word of regret to any of us. Arthur’s a bit of a surprise, isn’t he? He always strikes one as so fierce and stiff on the outside, and he’s certainly not without his faults, but he’s got a heart of gold. He’s the favorite around here, you’ll see.”

It was a refrain Charlotte heard all throughout the week. She took to
making inquiries whenever she had the opportunity—the housekeeper or the old man they called Narcissus, who pottered in the flower beds beneath her windowsill every morning.

“Sir, have you seen my husband this morning?”

She stood at the bedroom window in her dressing gown, looking out onto the lawn glistening with dew. The air had a clean, loamy smell.

“Aye, ma’am, he’s gone off riding with his young cousin.”

Charlotte’s stomach sank. “Which cousin is that?”

“Master Joseph,” he said as he set down his wheelbarrow, shooting her a wary look from beneath his bushy white brows. “The young mistress don’t ride, what with her crippled legs, and Miss Lucy goes out only in the carriage.” He took off his cap and wiped the sweat from his bald head.

“When will they return?”

“Can’t tell you. He’s a great one for the outdoors, Master Arthur is. Outdoors from dawn till dusk. And he’s always doin’ for others. Not got a lazy bone in his body, that one.”

“Have you been with the family long, Narcissus?”

“I was the Reverend Bell’s manservant back when he was a bachelor.”

“So you’ve known my husband a long while.”

“Since he first came to live here. A rugged lad. Always gettin’ in fights, but for good cause. Took it upon himself to defend the weak ones. I’ve always said the lady who wins his heart is a fortunate lass indeed, for there’s not a better gentleman in all the country, if ye don’t mind me sayin’ so, madam.”

“No, Narcissus, I don’t mind at all.”

She had never imagined that marriage would change her in so many subtle ways. She did not shed her anxieties, but the sting of critical glances and insensitive words was mitigated with Arthur by her side. As a newly married couple, they had social visits to make in the neighborhood, and her aversion to meeting strangers would have to be overcome. It was a duty she could not avoid; to snub her husband’s friends would be unthinkable.
Nor could she retreat into a corner and speak in monosyllables, as she had done in London when she’d felt overwhelmed by a situation. She had made a solemn pledge to herself before their wedding:
Whatever he exacts, you force yourself to perform
.

But she had not understood the transformative power of complicity, the protection afforded by a true and selfless love. Arthur would no more allow her to flounder in a drawing room than he would abandon her to the depths of the sea.

Every day they drove out to call on neighbors—sometimes alone, other times accompanied by his cousins or his aunt. They went on picnics and excursions to distant lakes; they visited friends in outlying country homes. What had once been intolerable now became a higher order of business to her. Her fame was rarely acknowledged in the homes they visited; instead, they saw her as the fortunate wife of a well-liked and highly respected man, and Charlotte began to prefer it this way. As a wife she took pleasure in people and things that she had once dismissed as foolish, and at some point along the way the firmly held notion that she was insignificant and plain began to fade away.

Arthur was impatient to have her to himself again, and at the end of the week he announced that they were setting off for a watering place on the west coast.

“It’s terribly uncivilized out there,” Lucy claimed.

“But you must not miss it,” Joseph replied. “It is glorious beyond words, Mrs. Nicholls. You’ll never see a finer coast.”

“I wish you might stay longer, my dears. But I do understand,” his aunt said.

Mary Anna regretted their departure the most, although she protested the least.

They followed the Shannon to Limerick and then struck off across wild, uninhabited country to a remote spot on the southwest coast, landing in a resort town nestled in a deeply curving bay girdled with stupendous cliffs. Their accommodations were of the most primitive sort and the food appallingly bad, but they were more inclined to laugh about any
shortcomings than complain. The coast here was bold and grand, with sandy shores to the south; to the north rose iron-black cliffs that dropped precipitously into the raging Atlantic. They spent the daylight hours exploring the outdoors and their nights in deep, untroubled sleep.

In the days that followed, as their sexual intimacy increased, this last and most powerful bond slowly began to deepen.

One night Charlotte stood before a looking glass brushing her hair while Arthur sat in a chair behind her, a map and train schedule spread across his knees. Gazing at her reflection, her eyes were drawn to the dark buds of her nipples faintly visible through her light muslin nightdress. She was astonished to feel desire creep into her stomach, low between her legs. With a furtive glance at Arthur, she lay down the brush and raised her hand to her breast, lightly grazing the nipple with the back of her hand. A tentative gesture, experimental.

“Arthur?” she whispered.

He looked up. “Yes?”

“I look at my image in the mirror and wonder that you should find anything that fascinates you.”

He put down the map and came to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her and fixing his eyes on her reflection.

“The matter has always been entirely beyond my control, my dear,” he said solemnly. “I have only to look at you and it sparks something in me—I find you irresistible.”

“Irresistible?”

He kissed her neck and allowed his hands to roam over her body.

“Entirely,” he murmured.

She had steeled herself against ever anticipating any pleasure. But she knew at that moment it was possible.

“Arthur,” she whispered, closing her eyes. She took his hand and moved it between her legs, quite forgetting who she was and how she should be.

They traveled through seaport towns with islets packed with dense forests, through villages set against spectacular mountain peaks and deep
gorges, and Charlotte gave up trying to keep a record of the places they had been. Some parts were beautiful beyond anything she had imagined, and it all became intertwined with a progression of feeling for her husband, feelings so deeply private and fragile that she would only hint of them in her letters home to friends or family.

“Much pleasure has sprung from all this,” she wrote to Ellen, “and more, perhaps, from the kind and ceaseless protection which has ever surrounded me, and made traveling a different matter to me from what it has heretofore been.”

As for Arthur, by the end of their honeymoon he had gained twelve pounds and reclaimed his hale and hearty physique. That she should be the cause of this transformation was a subject of quiet wonder to Charlotte.

T
he transformation that had first manifested itself on her honeymoon did not vanish in the familiar setting of Haworth. The timetable of her life—the whole range of activities, the shape of the week and the schedule of each day—had completely altered, and her response to this change was shaded by a growing pride and contentment.

Charlotte’s letters—sprinkled with intimations of the demands made on her as the wife of a very active and practical man—testified to this: “My kind husband is just now sitting before me kindly stretching his patience to the utmost, but wishing me very much to have done writing, and put on my bonnet for a walk,” she would write, or “My husband calls me—give my love to all who care to have it.”

Whenever Arthur had calls to make in the outlying towns, he would hire a cab and take Charlotte with him. He sought her approval on his sermons and lectures; she presided at teas given by the Haworth Mechanics’ Institute, of which Arthur was now president, and advised on books to be purchased for its library; she corresponded on his behalf, issuing invitations to sundry clergymen to visit for the night and to preach at one of the Sunday services. Her visits to the poor cottagers in the district took on new and deeper significance; she began to understand how wrong she had been about Arthur, how thoroughly he was appreciated by his parishioners, and how much gladness there was at his return. She spent hours tucked away in his snug study with its green-and-white wallpaper and the curtains she’d sewn herself, and Martha would often find her perched on the armrest of his chair, with her glasses on the tip of her
nose and her nose deep in some letter or other, and Mr. Nicholls’s arm around her waist.

She found it difficult to keep up with her correspondence; whenever Arthur went out, she would hurry to her writing desk and scribble off a hasty note or two before he returned. The French newspapers she had once devoured so eagerly now piled up in the corner. When he was home, she needed to find occupations and tasks they might share. He was jealous of her attention, and to be wanted and possessed filled her with a sense of awe.