Bronte's Mistress

by Finola Austin

  There was fear in Marshall’s eyes when I asked for the post five times a day. I slept late in the morning but could not still my mind at night. At dusk, when the other ladies had all retreated to their bathhouses, I paddled and dreamed of wading out farther and farther. I longed for the sea to embrace me like a watery quilt, as if my body wouldn’t fight and swim and rage against the surf’s dominion, unwilling, even now, to submit.

  It was just as well dying was not easy. If it were, women and men would choose it oh so often, in each blinding rush of fresh pain. Instead we soldier through, thralls to that irrational master who bids us “live,” clinging to the hope of waking to a brighter dawn.

  Once a day, Bob Pottage made some small pretense to talk to me. And his question when he found me was always the same: “Has Mr. Brontë written to the master yet, madam?” he’d ask. “He must resign. This can’t go on so.”

  Yet he was wrong. The world carried on regardless.

  We attended parties so numerous that even Lydia bored of them, preferring, oddly, solitary walks. And then there were the picnics and card games and concerts and Ned reciting poetry, eager to impress Mr. Brontë on our return to Thorp Green.

  “Could we stay in Scarborough a little longer?” I asked Edmund on a night when he suffered me to sit at the base of his bed and massage his ugly, mannish feet. “What is it that calls us home?”

  “What has come into you, Lydia?” He laughed. “Are you actually asking to spend more time with my mother? You must be unwell. But no, you have never looked better.”

  An exaggeration, perhaps, but this was not entirely untrue. It was as if I were operating under some species of mania, which brought blood to my face and energy to my once listless limbs. I outdanced our boisterous Bessy at a gathering in the Scarborough assembly rooms and flirted as Edmund liked me to, with a lightness of touch that could cause no misinterpretation. I was the calculated, social creature whom he had married, alive enough for the both of us, an antidote to his constant fatigue and dull conversation.

  “We should go home,” Edmund said. “Nathaniel Milner’s widow writes, at last, about the necessity of discussing a union between her son Will and our Bessy. It is high time one of our girls was married.”

  Strange. I felt for Lydia when he said that. Bessy’s union would be hard for her. A girl’s vanity is a fragile thing, her worth determined solely by a market run by men. That was why, when my cousin Catherine had married Edward Scott, who would be a baronet, I’d been inconsolable for days.

  Nine days and still no letter from Branwell. When I woke that morning I asked at once—although the sun was so high it might already have been noon.

  “No letter, ma’am,” Marshall said, tightening my corset, her voice low and serious. “But Mr. Robinson is asking for you.”

  This was it, then. Bob Pottage had broken, had told him.

  Did Anne Boleyn, kneeling for her execution, feel as I did, walking the hallway to Edmund’s room? I pictured her, chin raised and snowy throat unfettered by her jewels, which were too precious to fall alongside the droplets of her ruby red blood.

  But no, Edmund wouldn’t strike me. He wouldn’t force me against the wall. I’d committed the ultimate sin by bringing disgrace upon us, and so lost forever the honor of his touch.

  What I didn’t guess was that she would be there. Although Edmund had turned to her at the beginning, when our arguments were rare, I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Yet when I entered Edmund’s room, his mother had been restored to her “rightful place” at his side. She was stroking his hair, with the authority of one who had loved him longer, had thrilled over his every breath and heartbeat.

  “Lydia, the tutor Brontë is dismissed,” she said, once I’d closed the door. “Edmund just dispatched the letter.” Her fingers sharpened into points, clawing at his scalp. Edmund’s eyes rolled back in pleasure.

  “It is just as well that your mother isn’t here to see your shame,” she added. “And that your father is too senile to know it.”

  How Mother had hated her. She’d cautioned me the day Edmund proposed about the consequences of marrying “that woman’s” son. She would have flown at her throat for these insults.

  But I no longer had a mother. Nobody loved me now.

  I was mute, pleading wordlessly with Edmund, who looked through me as if I were a stranger.

  “I always knew she would muddy our Metcalfe blood.” A thickness entered Mrs. Robinson’s voice as she turned and addressed her son. Could it be that she would cry? “But all is not lost. My grandchildren still have half of you in them.” She nodded hard, as if trying to convince herself. “Your servants sneer at you, but at least your neighbors—our neighbors—back home know nothing. And you, Lydia. You can still behave with honor.”

  “Edmund?” I ventured, ignoring her. “Say something.”

  His mother gave his shoulder a squeeze and walked toward me. “Take to your bed, Mrs. Robinson,” she said, her lip twitching at the mockery I had made of our name. “You are ill.” Her withered face was only inches from mine.

  “Ill?” I echoed.

  “So ill, so broken, you cannot have your children near you.”

  “Is that how it’s to be?” I asked, searching behind her, desperate for it to be Edmund’s voice that sounded the sentence and banished me to the shadows.

  “That is how it’s to be,” she said. She brought the back of her bejeweled hand across my face in a decisive, stinging slap, branding me with the fortune I had sold myself for.

  18th July 1845

  The Cliff, Scarborough

  My dear Dr. Crosby,

  My husband dismissed Mr. Brontë two days ago.

  Your apologies are unnecessary, but should you wish to help me, perhaps you might advance him some cash (I will repay you) and ensure that he in truth leaves for Haworth? He must not be at Thorp Green Hall on our return.

  I am terrified too about what he might say to the other Freemasons at the Lodge. See to it that any rumors there are quashed.

  Once we are home, Edmund will summon you to attend on me in a professional capacity. I have had a shock and illness keeps me to my rooms. My nerves, you know, are capricious.

  I remain, dear sir, your most unhappy friend,

  Yours very truly,

  Lydia Robinson

  21st July 1845

  The Parsonage, Haworth

  Lydia,

  Divided in the flesh, my love, but still one, inseverable soul, made of whatever it is that souls are made of.

  Write to me! Command me! I am yours.

  I am in Haworth, stealing moments to write to you when Charlotte is gone from my side. But, in my imagination, I am standing at the base of the tower in which they have encased you, hovering by your window when the flame is long-extinguished, dreaming of the day when you are free of that man, or, rather, eunuch, that long-promised day when we are one.

  I send this by Crosby, our Cupid, who tells me to stay away for now for love of you,

  Branwell

  1st August 1845

  Liverpool

  My dearest, sweetest Lydia,

  Why don’t you answer me? I write again by our friend, Dr. Crosby, true friend to me, or, indeed, to us, in this our darkest hour of need.

  I am in self-imposed exile in Liverpool, distant from my sisters’ love as well as yours, and no longer smarting under the censure of Charlotte’s judgmental gaze.

  Fresh cruelty to find that my favorite sister is a hypocrite! For, though she condemns me for my adoration of you, I have discovered that she also yearns for a forbidden love. A married man. She sends that Belgian schoolmaster of hers countless letters, although days, weeks, months go by without reply. She roams the moors in the day and, at night, paces through the graveyard that surrounds our home, a bitter reminder of the myriad losses we have suffered. Who is she to stand in judgment? Who are my father, Anne, any of them to say that I must not drink?

  My rooms in the city are bare and my rations mea
ger. The money you gave me, alas, did not last long here—but I care not for these comforts. I seek the spiritual succor, talisman against the crushing loneliness of the world, which only you can bestow upon me.

  And what of you, my love? Crosby says you keep to your rooms, but that there is no need for alarm. Doctor though he is, I say he cannot watch you with a lover’s care. Were I to think you in true danger, I would rush to your side. I would turn back to God and pray on my knees, for all you and Crosby have cautioned me to keep away.

  Write to me. Instruct me. I am your slave, your prince, and your bard. I enclose a poem I wrote this week, speaking of my agonies. I will send it to Mr. Bellerby along with the others so that they might trumpet our love to the world! They are the best work I have completed in years, though born of my sorrows.

  Write, my beautiful and afflicted one,

  Your Northangerland forever,

  Branwell Brontë

  “Cannot my soul depart

  Where will it fly?”

  Asks my tormented heart,

  Willing to die.

  When will this restlessness,

  Tossing in sleeplessness—

  Stranger to happiness—

  Slumbering lie?

  Cannot I chase away

  Life in my tomb,

  Rather than pass away

  Lifetime in gloom,

  With sorrows employing

  Their arts in destroying

  The powers of enjoying

  The comforts of home?

  Home, it is not with me

  Bright as of yore

  Joys are forgot with me

  Taught to deplore.

  My home has ta’en its rest

  In an afflicted breast

  That I have often pressed

  But—may no more.

  P.S. If you can send me more money, dearest, do

  4th August 1845

  Thorp Green Hall

  My dear Mr. Bellerby,

  It has come to my attention that your esteemed publication, the Yorkshire Gazette, has been publishing poems signed “Northangerland,” penned by a tutor previously under my husband’s employ.

  Without shocking you with the unsavory details, I must let you know that all ties have been severed with this person, whose conduct was not only unsatisfactory for a gentleman in his position, but outrageous by all standards of moral decency.

  I hope we—by which I mean not only my husband but all the great families in the vicinity of the Ouseburns, from the Milners of Nun Monkton to the Thompsons of Kirby Hall—can rely on you to do likewise and to refrain from publishing any libels that reach you from his hand.

  Looking forward to many more years of reading your publications and patronizing your circulating library,

  I remain, dear sir, yours very truly,

  Lydia Robinson

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  OUR JOURNEY HOME FROM Scarborough was as painful as it was bizarre. The children were scared, sensing something had shifted. Edmund and his mother pretended all was as before. And I, weak and pale, closed my eyes to avoid them all, resting on Marshall’s bony shoulder for support.

  And then, my rooms. Solitude. I stayed in there as summer turned to autumn.

  The days were long, punctuated only by Dr. Crosby’s visits and the letters they brought, peepholes into Branwell Brontë’s mind, as deranged as before, or, perhaps, even more obsessive now that Mr. Bellerby had reneged on his word.

  “The world is conspiring against us, Lydia,” he would write. “But, do not fear, it was ever thus for destined lovers. It is human nature to be jealous of the absolute happiness we find in each other.”

  I didn’t answer him. But I dreamed often of Charlotte, my twin in pain, my distorted mirror image. Despite the differences in age and looks and station, Branwell had said we were alike. And now she suffered from an unrequited love, just as I suffered from an unrequited longing for something more.

  My head lolled, my limbs ached with stiffness. The light that fought its way through the crack between my curtains shone less brilliantly than it had just days ago, abandoning me to the dark.

  And yet even though Marshall said his mother had left the house, still Edmund did not come. He’d sent Ned away to be tutored by his uncle John Eade, in Aycliffe, and cared for by that gentleman’s new, young wife. And I would not have the girls visit me on the rare occasions that they asked, so I saw only Marshall.

  With her, I was testy, spiteful even, complaining at the bitterness of the soup I had no appetite to eat and fussing over the arrangement of my pillows. At times I felt a flash of guilt at the toll it took on her; she was growing even thinner than before.

  “Mrs. Robinson?” she called to me one morning from near the door. It might even have been afternoon. Her voice was soft but with a note of panic in it, a fear that went beyond her usual nervousness at waking me.

  “If you’re addressing me, come closer, Marshall,” I said, angry to be thought asleep, although I’d bobbed about on the sea of semi-consciousness for some hours.

  She did so.

  “Well, what is it?” I asked, hauling myself up. The sheet was damp and uneven below me, soaked with sweat and sprinkled with crumbs from yesterday’s meals.

  “It is Miss Robinson, madam. Miss Lydia. She is missing.” She coughed.

  “Missing?” I repeated, thinking for a second that I had misheard due to her hoarseness. I rubbed the hardened drool from around my mouth and licked my cracked lips. “I am sure you will find her soon. She is always going about her own affairs without asking permission. She spent most of this summer ranging around Scarborough like an unpenned chicken.”

  “No, madam, she—” Marshall came even closer. “Miss Lydia said she was feeling unwell last night and so took to her bed early. Now her room is empty. Nobody has seen her since. And just now, Miss Bessy found a letter from her.”

  “A letter? For whom?” My eyes adjusted.

  Marshall was holding a silver tray toward me. “Why, for you, madam.”

  There was the letter, small, sealed, and addressed to “Mrs. Robinson.”

  I took it from her and gestured for Marshall to open the curtains. She twitched them apart just wide enough for a faint beam of sunlight to stream across the bed.

  Mama,

  Do not blame me. You know I was always willful and, no doubt, always shall be. I wanted to marry Henry as much as he did me and so here I am, on my way to Gretna Green and soon no longer “Lydia Robinson” at all, but “Lydia Roxby” henceforth and forever.

  Other girls might find the change strange, but not I. My name has never seemed my own. You are welcome to it.

  I am sorry that you hadn’t the chance to see me decked out looking fine. I promise I look very pretty, although you won’t be with me to pin the orange blossom in my hair or wonder at how your oldest child has grown a woman and so no longer needs you.

  Please see that Papa isn’t angry. I couldn’t bear that.

  To run away was the only choice I had open to me. The more I thought of it, the more I realized I wouldn’t choose to live as you have and marry a man I hardly knew. Henry loves me and always shall. It won’t matter if we’re poor, although why should we be? If Papa will be kind, we shall want for nothing. And besides, Henry is so clever at his acting, he is sure to be the next Macready!

  Does it make you blush to think that the coming night will be my wedding night? Other girls quake at the thought, even with their mothers by their sides, but not I. I have waited but I am ready. You taught me better than you knew.

  Ever loving, though no longer yours,

  Lydia

  “Where is she?” Marshall asked with unaccustomed directness. She’d returned to stand by the side of the bed and was still holding the tray, calm and dutiful, although a slight tremor, throwing glances of light from the silver, betrayed her emotion.

  “She is—” I let the letter fall to my lap. “She has gone.”

  “Gone?” Marshall moved her
hand as if she would have taken the letter from me, but she remembered herself and instead set the tray on top of the washstand. “Should I tell Mr. Robinson?”

  “No,” I said. In spite of everything, he should still hear this from me.

  When she was a child, Lydia would increase the pitch of her screech semitone by semitone until it provoked a scream from me, or kick me harder and harder until I had to leave the room so I wouldn’t strike her. Yet she’d always smiled like a cherub at the footsteps of her father, basked in the warmth of his admiring love, and cast me into the shadows. Tonight, would she laugh over her wedding dinner, with that handsome actor beside her, her teeth flashing bright as the crystal decanters, at the thought of me lying dejected in the dark?

  “Dress me,” I said.

  “Oh, madam, it is so good to see—” Marshall broke off again, coughing.

  “Ann Marshall!” I threw the blankets from the bed for the first time in weeks and pulled the cap from my limp and lifeless hair.

  I was not ill. Or old. Or dying. I would not have her pity me.

  “Dress me.” I swung my legs out of bed and brought my feet to the floor. “And ask Miss Robinson and Miss Mary to wait for me in the schoolroom while I speak with their father in his study.”

  “Miss Robinson?” she repeated, her forehead creasing in confusion.

  “Miss Bessy is Miss Robinson now,” I said.

  * * *

  I KNOCKED ON THE study door. My mother’s brooch was pinned at my breast. I was wearing that shade of green that made men judge my eyes handsome.

  Edmund called out in answer.

  I rested my hand on the knob for only a fraction of a second longer than I should have before walking in.

  Months of fearing to face him and yet Edmund’s expression was, as ever, neutral, excepting one raised, inquiring eyebrow. He would have looked at me the same way had I tumbled in in my stained nightgown, fallen on my knees, and howled for forgiveness.