Romancing Miss Bronte

by Juliet Gael

  I sometimes wonder how Mr. Williams is, and hope he is well. In the course of the year that is gone, Cornhill and London have receded a long way from me—the links of communication have waxed very frail and few. It must be so in this world. All things considered, I don’t wish it otherwise.

  By April, Charlotte was immersed in preparations for her wedding. The change in her father was radical. Once the whole matter had been settled, he admitted to Charlotte that he had been far too stern. He grew kind again and declared himself happy. He discussed matters calmly and took an interest in all the arrangements. Yet there was a lingering sense of disappointment that pierced Charlotte’s heart more deeply than all his months of hostile ranting. Gentleness was far more potent than wrath, and in his quiet acceptance of her fate, she felt all the more keenly her own regrets. There were nights when she retreated to Emily’s room and gazed through the window onto the moonlit moors, struggling with her own pride and mourning the loss of something that would never be found.

  When Arthur came to visit in April, he found the parsonage in upheaval—with workmen tramping through the house, the servants scuttling about in a flurried state, and a gaping hole in the entry hall opposite the kitchen.

  “It’s your new study,” Charlotte announced proudly. “Come. Take a look.”

  He extended his hand to her as she stepped over the rubble, into the room where they had once stored peat and coal.

  “It occurred to me that all we needed to do was open up a door into the hallway and plaster up the door to the backyard. You’ll have a good deal of light from the south. When you next come it will be all scrubbed clean and painted and papered.” She tilted her head to look up at him with eager eyes. “Does it please you?”

  He slipped a hand around her waist and drew her close to him. “I wish I might have broken into your heart as easily as you’ve broken through this wall.”

  She became suddenly nervous, the way she always did when he drew close to her. Reluctant to cross the threshold—knowing she could never go back.

  Resisting him, hands pressed on his chest, she flashed him a warning.

  “Arthur,” she whispered, “please. There are workmen about.”

  “And what do you think will happen if you kiss me?”

  “Don’t tease me, Arthur.”

  “Tell me, am I that pathetic character St. John Rivers? Are you afraid of my nature?”

  “You, St. John?” she answered with a little gasp. “But he was all marble and ice. And vengeance. You are none of that.”

  “But you once thought as much—tell me it wasn’t so.”

  “Indeed, you are outwardly solemn and grave. When you fix your eyes on a body, the way your brows knit together—see, you’re doing it just now—such a stern fellow!”

  “So I was right to fancy I glimpsed something of myself in him.”

  “He had none of your qualities.”

  “Ah, but even you were ignorant of them.”

  “I was.”

  “Even when I stood at your side, through all of your terrible sufferings, through all the loss, you read only austerity and ice, and nothing of my feelings.”

  “I could see nothing beyond my own grief, Arthur.”

  “I used to keep one of your books with me, wherever I went. I read parts, here and there, my favorites, and at each reading I discovered more of you. But that was before. Now you are my book. And there is a new chapter approaching.”

  The moment was shattered by the sound of the workmen returning. Charlotte drew back and patted at her hair, although not a strand was out of place.

  “Yes, it will be a fine room,” she said audibly as she lifted her skirts and turned away.

  The next instant Arthur pulled her into his arms and kissed her. In that brief but bold kiss she was keenly aware of the firm outline of his lips—the flavor and texture of his mouth—and an unmistakable sensual charge. Then he thrust her away from him—only seconds before the workmen peered into the room.

  “Good day, gentlemen,” he said brightly as he steadied Charlotte with a firm grip on her arm and passed her back over the heap of rubble. “Pray, let the lady pass.”

  In the days that followed, she found it difficult to deter his advances. Once he had kissed her, he deemed it his right to demand more. Because her father had long established the habit of leaving Charlotte on her own, Arthur’s visits were entirely unchaperoned, and it was up to Charlotte to keep him under control. He confessed to how difficult it was to wait, that even though he might walk back and forth to Oxenhope a dozen times a day he would not be sufficiently exhausted to maintain his composure around her.

  “It’s quite alarming, the effect you have on me,” he murmured to her one day in the dining room when he had cornered her next to the window and pressed her to the wall.

  Charlotte was tense and ill at ease. “Arthur, that’s quite enough kissing.”

  “But we’re engaged now, my dear.”

  “It’s not that—I’m just afraid of making noise,” she whispered, glancing anxiously toward the door.

  He only laughed and said, “And what kind of noise shall we be making when we’re married?”

  “Arthur!”

  “You know as well as I do that these walls are thick.”

  “But the doors are not.”

  “And do you anticipate someone standing on the other side with an ear to the door?”

  “You’re trying to shock me, and it won’t work.”

  “Come, draw the curtains and sit on my lap,” he urged.

  “I shall not!”

  “Why not?”

  “You know perfectly well why not.”

  “If you don’t, I swear I’ll be quite undone from the strain by the time we’re married.”

  “Good grief, Arthur, pull yourself together.”

  There was a quick tap on the door; Charlotte broke free and made a dash for her workbox just as Martha entered. But Martha instantly read the situation, and she only gawked, then spun around and hurried out.

  “Martha!” Charlotte cried. “Come back! Oh, confound it, Arthur, that was very naughty of you.”

  “Do you think Martha’s never seen anyone get kissed before?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “All right. I’m going for a walk.”

  Charlotte gave him a crushed look. “You’re leaving?”

  “You’re coming with me,” he said firmly. “Go on. Find your shawl and change your shoes.”

  And Charlotte—who thrilled to his stern commands—instantly obeyed.

  On the first of May she set off on a brief bridal tour, stopping in Manchester to visit Lily before going on to Hunsworth to see Mary Taylor’s family, and finally to Brookroyd to stay with Ellen. At Lily’s, Charlotte found herself in the company of open-minded women who spoke candidly about those things that were troubling her.

  “I know there are places where he cannot follow,” she said.

  “You mean intellectually?” Katie Winkworth asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” Katie laughed. “Intellectual men are highly overrated. They can be such cold fish. Affection and constancy in a husband are worth much more, I promise you.”

  Charlotte set down her cup of tea and folded her delicate hands in the lap of her gray silk gown. Katie was struck by her resemblance to a swan settling on a quiet pond, gracefully folding its wings and returning to a state of utter stillness.

  “Perhaps, but I know myself. I require a good deal of intellectual stimulation.”

  “You’re afraid he won’t be exciting enough?”

  “The winters in Haworth are long, and by five o’clock there’s no light left in the sky. We shall be stuck with each other on many a long evening.”

  “So, you invite friends.”

  “Arthur is rather sticky about that.”

  “Does he disapprove of your friends?”

  “Some of them. He is quite intolerant of certain religious views.”

 
; “Oh, you’ll manage him. You know, the nice thing about”—Katie started to say “dull” but caught herself just in time—“about uncomplicated men is that they appreciate it when their wives bring excitement to the table. So you can be the fickle one and be quite unpredictable if you choose, which is ever so much fun.”

  This made Charlotte laugh. Katie glanced over her shoulder to make sure there were no servants lurking in the hall and then leaned forward. “I’ve heard—and this is from someone who is very close to them—I know for a fact that Jane Carlyle is a virgin.”

  Katie sat back and watched Charlotte’s wide brown eyes take on an astonished look. “Thomas Carlyle’s wife?”

  “Yes. That brilliant historian and critic whom we all revere.”

  Lily came back in at that moment, and Katie repeated what she had been saying.

  “Katie, you are so wicked!” Lily laughed.

  “I understand his wife is an invalid,” Charlotte said.

  “Well, she certainly wasn’t an invalid when he married her,” Katie continued. “How do you think she got that way? I think I’d be quite ill, too. After twenty years in an unconsummated marriage. Can you imagine? How utterly appalling. It’s scandalous, but of course no one really cares. At least the husbands don’t. Now, I’m sure Mr. Carlyle would provide many an evening of intellectual conversation, but no thank you. Anyway, I don’t think you need worry about Mr. Nicholls on that score, according to what you’ve told us about him.”

  Lily cried, “Why, Katie Winkworth!”

  Charlotte blushed, but at the same time she felt a quick rush of pleasure.

  “No,” she answered quietly, “he is an affectionate man.”

  After Charlotte left, Katie said to Lily, “Poor Mr. Nicholls. She really isn’t in love with him.”

  “Oh dear, I thought she would be a little more sure of herself by now,” Lily sighed.

  “I think she would like him to be more like those impulsive, fickle men she puts in her novels. I suppose her one truly great love was Paul Emanuel.”

  “Who?”

  “The professor.”

  “Oh! In Villette! Do you think there really was such a man?”

  “Oh, absolutely, I do. He is far too unpleasant to be made up.”

  “If her novel is true, then he must be dead.”

  “Perhaps. Anyway, she never speaks of such a man, so we’ll never know.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  There were only five letters.

  They were not love letters—not like those Arthur had written to her. But beneath Constantin Heger’s affection and esteem for his star pupil there lay an intensely passionate and intimate voice, a style and manner of thinking that had seduced her as surely as if he had made love to her. For years after returning from Brussels she had lived off those letters and the wild, futile hope of seeing him again.

  After Emily’s death she had been tempted to write to him, but it seemed like such a pointless gesture. Then she had written Villette with its true-to-life portrait of him. The book had been translated into French and received wide acclaim. He would have read it.

  There was no need for any more words between them.

  In her nightgown and slippers, she knelt on the hearthrug before the fire, the letters nestled in her lap. She debated whether to read them one last time. But that would only stir old wounds. Hope had lingered long before dying, and she had already suffered enough.

  Carefully, she loosened the limp blue ribbon, then paused to study the envelope addressed in her name. His handwriting. How many hours, days, and months had been spent waiting to be handed a letter with that handwriting?

  Charlotte rarely kept correspondence. She had saved a few of Mary’s letters. For sentimental reasons she had preserved Southey’s letter in which he admonished her to put aside her literary ambitions. She kept letters from her publisher pertaining to payments for her books. But little else. Most letters made their rounds to friends, to be forwarded on to all interested parties and then back; once digested, they were consigned to the fire.

  But Heger’s letters were treasures to be hidden away, locked in a small lacquered box and stored at the back of a deep chest of drawers.

  She had thought of finding a more secure hiding place—the cellar perhaps, or beneath the floorboard where as children they had stashed their stories. But there would always be the risk of discovery. A few days hence her home would no longer be exclusively her own. A husband’s eyes would pry into corners—perhaps unintentionally, perhaps not; drawers would be opened, and the contents of locked boxes might be cause for mistrust.

  In Brussels she had heard a story from one of the Belgian girls about illicit love letters that had been closed in a bottle, hidden in the hollow of an ancient pear tree in the pensionnat garden, and then sealed with cement like a tomb. The girl had shown Charlotte the very spot, where the cement was now overgrown with ivy. Heger had laughingly denied the story, told her that there were no love letters buried there, that the cement had been poured to shore up the rotting tree. But Charlotte preferred the romantic version. She had written the incident into Villette, having Lucy Snowe bury Dr. John’s letters in a bottle in the hollow of a tree.

  But Charlotte wanted no tomb. Nothing that might be unearthed one day.

  The coals put off an intense heat that would consume the letters quickly.

  With a casual gesture that betrayed the great sense of loss in her heart, she tossed the letters—ribbon and all—onto the fire.

  She had strongly resisted white—she was, after all, thirty-eight years old—but Ellen sounded off such a storm of protest, quickly joined by every female in their circle, that Charlotte allowed herself to be taken in hand. In Halifax, going from shop to shop, she had tried on a score of white dresses; Ellen had vowed fervently that nothing had ever suited her so well—and that she had to buy white—and so white was what she bought. She soothed her conscience by sticking to muslin rather than the tulle and silk Ellen dangled under her nose.

  “Plain book muslin, with a bit of embroidery—that will do nicely,” Charlotte had stated firmly. “It will be ever so practical later.”

  There it was, laid out on the bed with the bonnet and veil beside it. Charlotte’s trunk and a smaller traveling case stood packed and ready.

  All day long, Martha had been trotting in and out with trivial questions about this or that, but it was really just to keep an eye on the dress.

  “Martha, the dress is not going to get up and walk away,” Charlotte scolded affectionately, looking up from her sewing.

  “Don’t ye think it should be covered with tissue paper, miss?”

  “I’m wearing it tomorrow. And the only dust in here is what you keep kicking up. Now go. Eliza needs you in the kitchen.”

  Ellen came in and collapsed at the dressing table, her face flushed from the heat. “It’s a madhouse down there,” she cried.

  “Which is why we’re staying up here.”

  Charlotte turned to Miss Wooler, who sat near the window fanning her neck.

  “I am sorry to make you suffer, my dear Miss Wooler. I know it’s warm up here.”

  “Have you asked her yet?” Ellen asked Charlotte.

  “Not yet.”

  “What is it, my dear?” Miss Wooler replied.

  “Oh, nothing important,” Charlotte said with her tight little smile. “I just wanted to know if you would do the honor of giving me away at church tomorrow?”

  “You wish for me to give you away in marriage?”

  Miss Wooler, that stout old headmistress who had handled with serenity legions of hormonal schoolgirls, momentarily lost her composure. She dropped her fan, retrieved it with a mild exclamation, then raised startled eyes to Charlotte.

  “But is that not your father’s duty?”

  “Papa’s not well. He’s been having dizzy spells again, and his deafness has returned. He’s barely been out of bed these past few weeks. And his spirits are depressed. I just don’t think he’s st
rong enough.”

  “At his age, these kinds of changes are so difficult to adjust to,” Ellen said.

  “But you’re his daughter …”

  “I assure you, we’re quite settled. Papa asked specifically that you do the honor in his stead.”

  “Oh, my dear … but I’m a woman.”

  “Arthur has consulted the prayer book—he can be trusted on these things, I assure you. At the moment when the bride and groom pledge their troth to each other, it is written ‘her father’s or friend’s hand’—those are the very words, and it makes no distinction about the sex of the friend. So, will you give me away in matrimony?”

  “Oh my dear child. Of course I shall.” She began to cry. “Oh my dear Charlotte, I remember your first day at Roe Head as if it were yesterday.”

  “Pray, don’t cry, Miss Wooler,” Ellen pleaded, “or we shall all be in tears.”

  Charlotte waited while Miss Wooler tugged a handkerchief from her sleeve and blew her nose.

  “It will be quite intimate,” Charlotte said, taking up her sewing again with a contented smile. “The Grants are coming over, but they will only attend the wedding breakfast. Arthur has been wonderfully good about that—he’s conceded on every point. Sutcliffe Sowden will do the service. There will be the two of you. That’s all.”

  “Now, are you sure, my dear? Perhaps I should try to persuade your father—”

  “Absolutely not. I much prefer it like this. I think there will be sufficient drama with just Arthur. He had me quite worried for a while, thinking he had something seriously wrong with him, but it was only his nerves.” She added, with an air of sweet complacency, “He’s fretted himself thin, I’m afraid.”

  Martha scurried in bearing a letter.

  “For you, miss,” she said excitedly.

  As Charlotte took the letter, her composure suddenly melted. She opened the seal with trembling hands. It was brief. She tucked it back into the envelope. She spoke in a hollow voice, as if the air had been sucked from her lungs.