Romancing Miss Bronte (52 page)

“Oh no …”

She turned toward the washbasin, but Arthur was already on his feet; he snatched it from the stand, thrusting it into her hands just as she heaved. He held her up while she emptied the meager contents of her stomach into the basin. She strained until her face was damp with sweat, and when the sickness had passed, she crawled onto the bed and lay limp, spent.

He poured a glass of water for her and waited while she washed her teeth.

“It will pass. The doctor promised it will pass.”

He summoned Martha, who came upstairs to clean away the basin and bring a ewer of fresh water.

“Sir, ye needn’t bother yerself with this,” she whispered to him on the way out. “This is woman’s work.”

“I shall tend to her, Martha,” he said with quiet assurance. “We must do everything to make her comfortable. Bring some fresh linens. And tend to the fire. It’s far too cold in here.”

“Aye, sir.”

He stepped to the window and pulled back the curtain. Earlier in the morning the winter sun had risen against a canopy of blue, but now the church tower stood lonely and desolate against a blanket of gray. Snow had begun to fall, stirred by the eddies of wind as it swept through the garden and the tombstones below.

He glanced back at Charlotte. She was resting; the fine fairylike hands lay curled, relaxed, on top of the counterpane. Arthur drew the curtains and went about tidying the room. The dress went back in the armoire; the tiny leather boots fell in line with the other shoes against the wall (both of them would have fit easily into one of Arthur’s boots); the shawls were folded and draped over the footboard. When everything was ordered as Charlotte would have liked it, he moved the chair beside the bed and sat down. When Martha returned she found him deep in prayer.

Once again, her visits to the Nusseys and the Taylors had to be postponed. She wrote, “Don’t conjecture—dear Nell—for it is too soon yet. Keep the matter wholly to yourself. I am rather mortified to lose my good looks and grow thin as I am doing—just when I thought of going to Brookroyd. Papa continues much better—and Arthur is well and flourishing. It is an hourly happiness to me to see how well the two get on together now. There has never been a misunderstanding or wrong word.”

Ellen besieged her friend with frantic pleas to be permitted to visit. Charlotte replied, “I am well tended by my kind husband. The presence of another, even yours, my dear Nell, would only add to my worries. I am too conscious of my duties to be careless of your own comfort, and I am in no condition to be weighted down with concerns. Wait a little. Be patient. All will come well and you can visit in the spring.”

As the weeks advanced, they hoped for an improvement, but the nausea and sickness continued. Mistrusting the inexperienced Ingham, Arthur sent for Dr. Macturk from Bradford, who reassured them once again that her illness was symptomatic of her pregnancy.

Arthur, in his usual manner, tacked toward the practical.

“Is there a particular diet that would help?”

“Make sure she gets as much nourishment as possible. Anything light that she can keep down. Beef tea is good. She is merely suffering what many women suffer in the early stages. It will pass.”

He prescribed draughts, and Ellen and Amelia Taylor sent advice culled from their acquaintances who had suffered the same symptoms in pregnancy, but nothing worked. By February, Arthur and her father had taken up the task of answering her correspondence, for she had become too weak to hold a pen. Tabby, who had been ill since January with severe diarrhea (yet another contagion from Haworth’s foul water supply! Patrick lamented), had been moved to her great-niece’s cottage in the village, since Charlotte could not care for her. With the news of her death several weeks later, Charlotte sank into despair.

A biting cold settled over the entire region, blown in by a steady north wind, and the snowfall exceeded anything they had seen in many years. There were record deaths, and Charlotte lay in her bed listening to the death bells toll just outside her window.

Day after day she battled her fears; she was shocked to examine her feelings and discover ambivalence toward the child that was draining the life from her.
Do I resent this child already? Before he’s made his entrance into the world? Dear God, help me. What kind of mother am I?

She confided to Martha, “I’m not good with children. Children have never been fond of me.”

“That’s fool’s talk, ma’am. Why, Mr. Joe Taylor’s little girl takes to ye like family.”

“She finds me odd. I amuse her.”

“It’s different with yer own wee one. That’s what my mother says. Ye’ll see. Just ye wait—when ye’re holdin’ the little bundle in yer arms, ye’ll see. An’ Mr. Nicholls will be a good father.”

“Yes, I think he will be.”

“As good a father as they come, ma’am.”

Charlotte missed Tabby dreadfully. She missed the old servant’s comforting
wisdom and nonsense. Her Yorkshire superstitions and love of fairies, her grim, harrowing tales told over the kitchen table on winter nights when the fire burned low, with all the children gathered round, hungering for visions to come alive in their heads.

So many things taken away. The young and the old. The memory keepers. All gone.

In the midst of these bleak thoughts, Arthur came striding into her head, that great whiskered man in black, so solid, so dauntless. Anxieties fled at his approach. She lay in bed with her eyes closed, imagining squat little demons scampering away at the sight of him. Like the washerwomen. In her imagination she smiled.

Arthur moved through the days like an iron-clad locomotive: on track, punctual, dependable, his energies thrown into the service of others. When villagers stopped to ask after his wife, his stiffness was so off-putting that no one dared pry. They judged the seriousness of her illness by the increasingly rigid manner of his speech and bearing.

One day late in February the Keighley solicitor who had managed the matter of her will arrived at the parsonage. In the hush of the sickroom, with the wind rattling the windows, he sat at a table and drew up a new will wherein Charlotte Brontë bequeathed to her husband all her property, to be his absolutely and entirely. It was a brief piece of business; she signed it with her shaky hand, and her father and Martha Brown signed their own names as witnesses. Arthur remained stony-faced and silent throughout the proceedings.

She said she had been thinking about revising her will for some time, and that the changes testified to her love for him. She had not given up on life. There was too much to live for. But Arthur took it as a sign. It was a turning point in his resolve. His defenses collapsed.

Only strenuous physical exertion distracted him. He could be seen early in the morning shoveling snow from the wide steps rising to the church, and spreading salt on the steep lanes so the children could make it to school. When a coal carrier’s wagon went off the road in a blizzard,
dragging the horses into the icy waters of Bridgehouse Beck, Arthur led a rescue team to the site. One of the horses was green, and he’d gotten himself in a hopeless tangle of line and rope. It was treacherous work, unhitching the wagon and freeing the animals in the rushing, numbing water, and the carrier crushed a couple of fingers between a wheel and a rock. They lost the wagon but saved the horses, and for about three hours that day Arthur didn’t think about his wife.

It was a daily struggle dealing with Patrick’s laments; he bemoaned the weakness of his own frail body, the loss of his strength, his eyesight, his children. All the miseries of his fate had come to reside in the frail body of his last living daughter, whose books were so famous, and who was dying in the bed upstairs. One day when Patrick came into Arthur’s study to leave some correspondence related to church business, Arthur looked up at the old man and said, “I can understand if you resent me, sir. That you blame me for this. It’s a guilt that has haunted me from the beginning of her illness.”

Patrick interrupted: “You are mistaken, sir. I bear you no grudge.”

Arthur said, “You should know that if I could have foreseen the future, I would have given her up if it meant saving her life.”

“But you forget, Mr. Nicholls, that Charlotte herself had a say in these matters. She knew the risks. If I had a choice, I daresay, I would have chosen otherwise. But God determines these matters. You have made my daughter happier in these past eight months than she has ever been. We must accept God’s will and have faith in His mysterious Love and Mercy.”

Their talk turned to church business, and for those few minutes at the back of his mind Arthur marveled that this man could lose so much and keep his faith. Arthur admired him but did not for a second wish to be like him. It wasn’t that Arthur’s faith in God had weakened, but if he believed in the power of everlasting love it had been taught to him not by doctrine, but by a prickly-tempered, insecure, melancholy little woman with fiery opinions. How could this odd little bundle inspire in him, at once, in the same moment, the fiercest desire to ravish and protect? Agape and Eros. Not separate but one.

If there was a Mystery, it was this: that his old self had dissolved into a muddle and the new man made seamlessly whole.

He wondered if Patrick Brontë had ever experienced this all-consuming passion for his wife. Perhaps. But he thought not. Patrick Brontë loved God first and then himself. Arthur felt as if he had quite lost himself altogether in another. If Charlotte should pass from this earth, he could not imagine how he would find himself again.

Arthur abandoned his study and brought his work into their bedroom. He wrote his sermons there and replied to Charlotte’s correspondence. When she felt she could eat a little something, he fed her spoonfuls of water mixed with wine, and a little applesauce or light pudding. But most days the very sight of food made her sick, and Arthur took his meals hurriedly in the dining room by himself before returning to her bedside. Twice a day he knelt by her bed for the ritual of morning and evening prayer. Daily he read to her from Psalms, choosing only those that sang of consolation, hope, and love.

Her father checked in on her every day but stayed for only a moment. He could not bear the stifling closeness of sickrooms, with the cloying smell of medicines and draughts.

Their nights were sleepless and utterly miserable. She was constantly ill and would strain until she vomited blood. Arthur nursed her through it all with unfailing patience. Charlotte urged him to take the bedroom next door.

“I would not think of leaving you,” he answered sternly. She didn’t press him again.

Arthur never spoke of the baby.

She knew that her thoughts should be turned to her Maker in these difficult hours, that she should be preparing her mind for submission to His will. But all she could think about was this man at her side, this mortal who loved her and whom she loved in return. Her thoughts drifted in and out of dreams and memories. Often she was too exhausted to care for life, but then she would hear him shuffling about the room in his slippers, opening a drawer, closing the shutters, drawing the curtains, fanning the fire. The scratching of his pen, the soft lisping
of shuffled papers soothed her like a lullaby. She welcomed the smallest utterances, a sigh or muffled cough. The weight of his body as he lowered himself onto their bed, his strong hands so tender in their touch, all these faint impressions sensed through the fog of her suffering formed a cocoon that sheltered her from her fears. She escaped into Arthur and prayed that he would intercede for her, in life and with God. It was the ultimate act of submission. It was not God’s will but Arthur’s to which she relinquished herself. His prayers. His judgment. She submerged herself in his presence, and in her total exhaustion she believed that his strength would be sufficient to all their needs.

The doctors were baffled. She was wasting away, could not keep down even the smallest morsel of food, and even with her stomach empty she strained to vomit.

What am I doing?
Charlotte thought in her dark moments. There was too much time to think. Whenever Arthur left her side, he took his reassurance with him. In his absence she took one of his old sweaters and curled up with it like a lover. The scratchy wool testified to his hardiness and strength.

What am I doing? Am I so afraid of this infant that I reject it from my body?

When she heaved and strained and her muscles contracted like a vise around her abdomen, she felt that her body was struggling to defy human physiology and expel this child through her mouth. Nothing came but bile and blood.

Then one day, a horrid thought:
Could it be that the child wants nothing to do with me? It knows what kind of mother it has and does not want to be born
.

The thought made her weep.

One Sunday late in March, as Arthur came up the lane from church he found Martha shivering in the cold on the doorstep.

“Oh, sir, thank the Lord ye’re home—her mind’s wanderin’, sir…. She don’t recognize us anymore … ben seein’ all sorts o’ things … creatures
like ghost dogs with moon-yellow eyes, and talkin’ like her sisters was in the room—”

“Did you send for Ingham?” Arthur said as he tore off his coat.

“Aye, sir, we sent for him … but he’s sick himself. There’s that young Mr. Dugsdale—”

“Yes! Send for him! And send to Bradford for Macturk! Send for all of them! Quickly!” Arthur cried as he took the stairs in giant strides, three steps at a time.

From that morning on, Arthur never left her bedside. From Oxenhope, Oakworth, Hebden Bridge, and all the surrounding hamlets, his brethren quietly descended on Haworth to take up his duties; they preached the Sunday services and evening prayers, they took the burials and baptisms and taught his class at school.

Over the next few days as she drifted in and out of consciousness, her body seemed to be willing itself to live. Finally she begged for food and wine, and for the first time in two months she was able to keep down the little that she ate.

“It’s a good sign,” Arthur whispered to Patrick outside the bedroom door. “I think the worst has passed.”