Bronte's Mistress

by Finola Austin

  “Yes?” he said, when I did not speak.

  I scanned his study, as if by just looking around the room I could gauge his mood during my seclusion. Messy, as usual, but nothing out of the ordinary.

  News has a terrible power when you hold on to it. My secret was itching to be spoken.

  “Your daughter has eloped with an actor,” I said as he inhaled to question me again.

  The eyebrow fell. He blinked.

  “Which daughter?” he asked, dropping his eyes and pulling a copy of the Times toward him.

  “Which daughter?” I cried. For over twenty years I had been this man’s wife, and still, each time I tried to predict his responses, my husband found fresh ways to infuriate me. “Why, the one who has been a flirt since her days in the cradle. The one you would not reprimand but indulged in every whim, every fickle fancy.”

  “Lydia.” I wasn’t sure if he was answering his own question or commanding my silence. Emotions scared him, his own most of all.

  “It is not my fault!” I called out, losing the ability to moderate my responses despite all the promises I had made myself. “Do not think this due to me alone. She is ours. She was ours. Oh, how we loved the very dream of her.”

  It was only a few months after our wedding. He had been sitting there at his desk, just so, but back then, I had treasured every hair of him, wanted to kiss every pore. I’d perched on the edge of the desk and whispered it to him, once I was sure but before I’d summoned our doctor (not Dr. Crosby then). Edmund had pushed away his pen, cast aside his papers, rested his head against me, and promised me I would make the most wonderful mother. I’d been scared he was wrong but had held him there below my heart, caring more for him than for her who was growing inside me.

  “Lydia, this is a difficult blow,” Edmund said, running his hand through his hair, which was grayer than when I’d combed my fingers through it back then and thinner than it had been even a few months ago in Scarborough. “And you must steel yourself for another.”

  Could he, would he, divorce me? No.

  But perhaps he would send me away.

  Or was my father released from his pain at last, or had something happened to Ned? Of course, those Eades would be careless. He was not their son, their treasure. I shouldn’t have let him, Lydia, Georgie, any of them, out of my sight.

  “I am dying,” Edmund said, his voice unwavering.

  “What?” I caught onto the back of a nearby easy chair.

  I wanted to fly to him as I had every time he’d returned home in those early months, when I devoured tales of his day like the latest novel, knew his opinions on every issue, however dry, and absorbed them as my own. But now, when I took a step toward him, he raised his hand, bidding me stay back.

  “Dr. Crosby didn’t tell—” I began, fastening on to anger as the only response that made sense to me.

  “Dr. Crosby doesn’t know. I’ve been consulting with Dr. Simpson and Dr. Ryott.”

  “And they—?”

  “They are quite sure. ‘Riddled’ was the word they used. My innards, my gut.” He pulled some paperwork to him. “There is nothing to be done about Lydia now, but you must care for Ned, Bessy, and Mary in my… absence. See that both girls marry well and that Ned goes to St. John’s. Look after the property until his majority. Young Milner is a fine match for our Bessy. You judged wisely there.”

  Edmund did look frailer. I could see the hollows where his smile had once been, as bewitching as our Lydia’s in those now rare moments when his mood took a turn away from the serious.

  “How long?” I whispered.

  The memory of our youth and love hadn’t been enough for me. I had blighted all that we’d had with my desire for more. I was just like our Lydia, sustained by praise, starved if a day went by without attention and affection.

  “A few months,” he tried to tell me, but his body was wracked by a wrenching cough halfway through, giving me enough time to rush over and crouch beside him, touching his chair with the tenderness I wished I could have shown him.

  “Will you let me nurse you?” I asked, once the spasm had subsided. We both knew I meant, “Will you let me love you?”

  Edmund stood and pulled the bell cord. “I will need your assistance in making all ready, Lydia. I will teach you what you must do with the house, the farms, and with Ned.”

  I would not be a nurse, then, but a secretary, a bookkeeper, anything that would keep me by his elbow until the end.

  “That way, all will be in order should you choose to remarry.”

  “No!” I interjected.

  Never, never. He still thought I would install Branwell, a mere boy, in the house where we had lived, for better and, oh yes, for worse, as man and wife? Where we had loved, had hurt, had seen our dear Georgiana die?

  “I will not—” I grabbed his cold and unresponsive hand. “Edmund, I never wished to marry him.”

  “Very well,” he said, as if we had been discussing the removal of the furniture. “No matter. As I told you, my will makes provisions for you, regardless of the future on which you decide.”

  He was too good. Better than I deserved.

  “Edmund—” I started, but there was a tap on the door.

  “Come in,” he called.

  Our interview was over.

  * * *

  THE BRIDAL PAIR WAS to go to Edmund first, for a consultation. He and I had agreed. Would Lydia notice the mortal shadow that hung over her father and the house? Bessy and Mary had, I was sure of it, although for the last month, we’d taken care to close all doors and speak in whispers.

  The crunch of the gravel and thump of the carriage door. Lydia’s laugh floated to me, but I didn’t go to the window. Was it my imagination, or was there a forced note in there? Her laughter was the flirt’s, the liar’s, the gambler’s show of carefree gaiety.

  “Very good, William,” she said.

  The front door was open, or I wouldn’t have heard her. The chill dusk air flooded under the library door. Ellis was letting a draft in.

  “Thank you kindly,” said William Allison. “But you mustn’t, miss. I mean ‘madam.’ ”

  Foolish girl. She was trying to force money on my servants when she had hardly a penny to her name. Lydia should be grateful I’d sent the carriage to pick her and her actor husband up from the station in York at all, and that William Allison had been happy to go.

  I’d been thankful when his face hadn’t registered surprise at the request. “Collect Mr. and Mrs. Roxby from the new station? Very good, ma’am,” he’d said, giving me a small, encouraging smile.

  The voices crescendoed but then faded as Lydia and her husband took the stairs to Edmund’s study. I stared at the pages of my book as if into a crystal ball, picturing how the scene would play out between them. At times in my vision, Lydia was contrite. At others, she was defiant. She dropped to her knees, lamenting her father’s poor health, or she gazed, distracted, at her own reflection in the mirror, not noticing the change. She hid behind her husband’s protective arm, or she shrank from him like a dog that understands only a kick.

  When the grandfather clock in the hallway chimed the quarter hour, I rose and ascended to the schoolroom, where our girls—our two other girls—spent their idle days together now, without studying and with only Marshall as their lax custodian.

  Today, though, they were quiet, reverent, almost scared, as children are when Death is in the house.

  “Come,” I said. “Your sister has arrived.”

  Mary took my arm and Bessy followed behind. Their stiff new dresses rustled.

  “Mama!” Never one for awkwardness or reserve, Lydia fluttered over to me as soon as we entered the dining room, planting a kiss on my cheek and moving on to her sisters before I’d had time to react. She was dressed in her favorite shade of powder blue, and although I scanned her belly for those symptoms of being a young wife, she was still slight as ever, maybe even smaller.

  “Have you missed me terribly?” she asked no
body in particular. “Oh, don’t pout so, Bessy. I know you have! Henry, Henry, aren’t they all just as I said they were?”

  The acting boy—Henry Roxby—bowed in my direction with a sheepish smile and tried to say something, but Lydia was already rattling on. “They’re not a bit like me, are they? Well, some say Mary’s hair and mine are a similar shade, but hers isn’t so brilliant and simply refuses to hold a curl. Why, Bessy, I swear you’ve grown even taller! Tell me, how does Ned get on with those dreadful Eades? And what is the news in Little Ouseburn? I heard that Harry Thompson’s wife has given him his son at last!”

  “Shall we?” said Edmund, who was standing at the head of the table, holding on to his chair.

  “Oh, I will sit at your right hand, Papa, as a married lady now! Move down, Bessy.” Lydia was everywhere, arranging us all. “Henry, you may take Mama.”

  I had anticipated silence, but there wasn’t a moment to think between Lydia’s descriptions of the theater in Manchester, the city where they’d apparently rented a set of rooms (“magical”), Scotland (“Fancy it, just like England!”), and married life (“Really, Bessy, you must marry Will Milner now the oldest is wed. Surely he has grieved the death of his father long enough by now”). An absence of taste, a total lack of refinement.

  Mary’s eyes grew wider and wider. Bessy looked as if she might slap her older sister. And when I glanced toward Edmund for help, all I found written across his face was pain. The very effort of raising his fork to his mouth overwhelmed him. At intervals, he clutched his side and grimaced. And our firstborn didn’t bat one well-combed eyelash, but gossiped on about musicians, players, and ne’er-do-wells.

  “Lydia,” I said, interrupting her at last. “I think we’re all eager to hear more from your husband. About your family, perhaps, Mr. Roxby?”

  The boy’s face turned vermillion. “I—I—” he stuttered.

  “Oh, the Roxbys are all so talented!” cried Lydia. “The theater is much maligned, I think. I say it is the highest art form of our age.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that, Lydia, dear,” Henry Roxby said, head twisting between her and me in turn. “But you could say that the theater is in the Roxby blood. You met my father and my uncle once before, I remember, Mrs. Robinson?”

  “You did?” I hadn’t thought he’d been listening, but Edmund turned to me, his question descending like a dark gauze between us.

  “No. That is, yes. You see, Miss—” But I didn’t wish to speak the name “Brontë.” I paused in indecision. “They were actors, I think?” I asked, addressing Roxby again.

  “Harry Beverley, my new father, isn’t just an actor. He’s a star! And his brother, Henry’s uncle, is the manager of the Scarborough theater,” Lydia corrected me. “Really, Mama, I’m surprised by you.”

  And I of you, Lydia, I would have said, but she was gushing over the kindness of “Mrs. Beverley,” who I hoped was the father’s wife, and bragging about the accomplishments of another “new uncle,” some paltry scene painter.

  Lydia and her husband left two days later, in the same frantic flurry in which they’d arrived.

  “I will change my will. Ensure she gets nothing,” said Edmund, as we stood in the doorway, watching Allison guide the horses down the drive.

  Our shared contempt for Roxby and his ilk had brought us closer together. It was bad enough for Lydia to marry without our blessing, worse still for her to put on such a show of heedless vulgarity.

  “Not a penny,” he added, shutting his eyes to stem the pain. “Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. Ironic that now, after all this time, we understood each other.

  14th February 1846

  The Parsonage, Haworth

  My darling Lydia,

  The feast of St. Valentine is upon us, my love, and you are still far from my side. Crosby writes that your husband (God, how I hate to write the word) is ill. Forgive me but my wicked heart rejoices at the news.

  As he bids farewell to his life, so must you feel yours teeming back into existence.

  At the word of your release I will journey to Thorp Green Hall without delay, choosing to ignore your cruel silence.

  Months and no letter, weeks and no money (I value this, of course, only for what it means: your remembrance!). Send me some sign, some token, my dear one. Yet even if you do not, cannot, your love will still fly to me on the wind and whisper to me as I sleep.

  Dr. Crosby’s missives, with their glimpses of you as a patient ministering angel at that brute’s bedside, sustain me. Charlotte tries to hide them from me, but Emily and Anne are not so fierce.

  Ever yours, although weak, nourished as I am by your love alone,

  Your Northangerland

  25th March 1846

  Yoxall Lodge

  Mrs. Robinson,

  It is with sadness that I write to tell you, and Mrs. Evans by the same post, that your father and my master, Mr. Gisborne, died gently last night in his sleep. I found him in his bed.

  Pray forgive me for not writing sooner, madam. Mr. Gisborne hadn’t been himself these three years but there had been no recent symptoms to cause particular alarm. Indeed, no doctor had visited Yoxall Lodge for some days.

  I have written also to your brothers and am preparing the Lodge to receive visitors. I have heard, ma’am, that Mr. Robinson is also unwell. I’ll be sure to keep him, and you too, in my prayers if his indisposition precludes you from attending the service for your father.

  Yours humbly, with respect,

  W. Rowley

  24th May 1846

  Thorp Green Hall

  My dear daughter Lydia,

  Your father’s health is failing fast. If you wish to see him before the end, you should come at once. Ned arrived today from Aycliffe. The doctors tell me there is little hope.

  Very truly, your ever-forgiving mother,

  Lydia Robinson

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “HUSH NOW, HUSH, MY love,” I said, kneeling by the bed and kneading Edmund’s hand.

  His breathing had grown more labored in the space of the last hour. The fight was fruitless. It was time for him to go.

  Ned’s eyes were red from crying. Mary was sobbing into Bessy’s arms. Edmund’s mother was sleeping fitfully in an armchair closer to the door, one of his nightshirts across her knee.

  Only Lydia had not joined us. What might have been a baby had come too soon, and she was confined to bed, according to her husband’s latest letter.

  The velvet bed curtain fell against me, brushing my cheek. I gasped. It was almost a caress. How many nights had Edmund and I shared here? Each of our children had been made here. I lowered my forehead to his knuckles and prayed—half-whispering and half-willing him to hear the words I could not say.

  If you hold on, your hands will be burned by the rope that ties you to the world and to me. If you fight your way to the surface, another wave will strike you, with more force than before, and another and another.

  “Mama?” said Ned, his voice wobbling. “Mama.” He dropped down beside me. I wrapped my other arm around him and he nuzzled into my neck.

  But if you slip away, it will be as if into a slow and steady slumber, excepting those jolts of remembrance. You’ll start back from the precipice, but be still now. All is well, my love. We are here.

  My heart was on fire with all the words that Edmund and I should have said to each other, with the poetry that had been ours, more real than anything Branwell and I had shared.

  We are here. We have fought with you, but now you must leave us.

  “Mama,” Ned said again, more panicked now.

  Mary’s sobs stopped.

  I raised my head as Edmund’s hand slipped from mine.

  “God, God, no,” I heard myself say. “It is over. He is gone.”

  * * *

  “THEY ARE HERE!” I flew from Marshall, who had been trying to make me decent for the first time in a week and teasing the stubborn, minuscule buttons through the stiff
hoops of thread to strangle me to my throat.

  New mourning. This time we’d had a chance to prepare.

  William Allison was hastening to greet the carriage when I emerged into the sun.

  I hadn’t been outside for a long time—not since before—and the daylight was blinding, hot.

  Allison tipped his hat to his fellow coachman, eyeing the younger man with wary politeness.

  The Evanses’ carriage was grander than ours, with a crest on its side, two horses, not one, and a groom who sat to the rear, whistling and spitting to the road behind them no doubt all the way since Derbyshire.

  Allison ignored him, speaking instead to the coachman. When had the horses last had food and water? How was traffic on the road?

  “Mary,” I whispered, tempted to fling the door of the carriage open myself, as the servants dawdled.

  It had been two days since Edmund had died and a yet-unmeasured portion of myself with him. Two days when only the thought of my sister had sustained me. We were both orphans now, deprived of mother and father, but I was also something still stranger: a widow. And only she, who, after all, had known me longest now our parents were both gone, could bring me back to myself.

  Metal was cold to my touch, light unbearable. Bessy, Ned, and Mary raised their voices too loud; even the loss of their father couldn’t put a pause to their bickering. The very hours seemed to have passed more slowly since Ellis had stilled the grandfather clock in the hall, the minute hand pointing neatly to the hour. Edmund had never before been so punctual.

  His mother, robbed now of a second child and so more pitiable than me, had conducted all. She told us when to eat and where to sit. She was the one who’d set the date for my husband’s interment.

  The Hall’s innards had been exposed to a parade of visitors, stabbing me anew. Richard Thompson, our grand neighbor, condescended to set foot in Thorp Green Hall for the first time in our long acquaintance, even though he had lost a daughter recently—the sickly one, Mary Ann. The Reverend Lascelles haunted us every day, urging me to pray. Mrs. Milner turned up uninvited, claiming kinship in our shared widowhood. And my brother-in-law, Charles Thorp, assumed his role as Edmund’s executor with all the pomp and circumstance of an archbishop presiding over a coronation.