Bronte's Mistress

by Finola Austin

  “You seem to forget, Lydia, that Thorp Green Hall was my home, long before it was yours.”

  I nearly laughed. How could I forget it? She had reminded me that I was a stranger in my own house, not a Metcalfe, or even a real Robinson, not “one of them,” since the day Edmund and I had returned from our honeymoon.

  “No.” I stood. “It is no more your home than it is mine. It was your husband’s home. After that, it was my husband’s. And now it is my son’s. I have a duty to protect it, and the rest of his inheritance, until he reaches his majority.”

  “And you would have me believe that your affairs are as bad as all that?” She also stood.

  I nodded. It had taken me time to believe it too. At first I couldn’t fathom the truth, how the amounts Edmund had placed on horses had grown even as our investments diminished, how he hadn’t told me that affairs were bad, even when he was dying.

  “When my son—” Her voice cracked. “When my son was the best son a mother could ask for, a prudent father whose only fault was being too kind, a loving husband whose weakness was being too forgiving. He spent all day in his study caring for the estate, keeping his books—”

  “Loving?” I spoke over her. “My husband had a shallow pool of love. After that was spent, he passed his life locked away from us, and now he has left us with next to nothing. He failed us.” Yes. And I had never known it. I had thought him perfect. For, after all, how was I to know that he was as poor a husband as I was a wife?

  “You, you.” The old woman clenched and unclenched her hands, rage radiating from her. “What have you done, Lydia? Have you frittered away all his money, sent it to your whorish daughter and to your lover?” She threw the word at me, showering me with spit.

  I blushed. It was true I was still sending Branwell money from my monthly stipend and receiving a flood of poems—some intelligible, some much less so—in return. The checks were a salve to my conscience through my many sleepless nights, as well as a feeble insurance to keep him away. But what was the pittance I had given Branwell compared to what Edmund had lost?

  And this had not been the only way in which her precious son had neglected me. Without Edmund here, without the hurt in his eyes, it didn’t seem so wrong at all that I had gone to Branwell’s bed. After all, Edmund had refused to make love to me. And I had not been ready to live only on memories.

  “You must leave the Hall at once if you speak to me so,” I told her, very matter-of-fact, wiping the wetness from my cheek. “The children leave in two days. There is nothing to keep you here.”

  “Will you send Ned back to John Eade?” she asked.

  My calm seemed to have mollified her. If only I’d learned not to match fire with fire long ago.

  “No,” I said. “To another tutor, a man in Somerset. It is all settled.”

  “You would take my grandchildren away from me?” This was a different tactic. She was pathetic, reaching out her cupped hand to caress my face.

  I flinched. “Why don’t you go to your real daughter? To the godly Thorps?” I couldn’t resist this last barb. “I hear their children are angels, at least compared to mine.”

  * * *

  EVEN WITH MRS. ELIZABETH Robinson turfed out, it still took some time to extricate us. We were part of the fabric of the Ouseburns. I hadn’t quite comprehended that before. The Robinsons, like the Thompsons, weren’t just employers or almsgivers. We were a symbol, a source of pride, a surety against the changing world beyond. I resented my superiors, or at least coveted what I had not—a title, a house in London, a chance to see the world. But the peasants here delighted in their betters’ triumphs and grieved our misfortunes as their own.

  “All is settled, then?” Dr. Crosby reappeared around the side of the Thompson mausoleum, the grandest resting place in the graveyard surrounding the Holy Trinity, the Little Ouseburn church. He’d been running his hand across the columns that ornamented the building.

  This was the hardest of my many good-byes.

  “Yes,” I said, drawing my shawl a little tighter as the wind picked up. “Bessy and Mary return from visiting relations next week, and soon after, we will all decamp to Allestree Hall, to my sister.”

  “Is there anything I can do? Any preparations, perhaps, for the new lodgers?” The doctor strode down the bank to walk beside me, toward the church where we’d be less exposed. His boots flattened the browning grass, which was fighting hard for survival through the winter.

  “Oh no, my agent will see to all that,” I said. How bizarre the word felt—not “our” or “my husband’s” but “my” agent. “The Sewells, Ellis, Joey—they will all stay on at Thorp Green Hall for now. And Marshall of course must come with me. My only concern is for William Allison. It will hardly be necessary for us to keep our own carriage and coachman in addition to the Evanses’. But I will think of something there.” I said it breezily, though the thought had kept me up at night. Allison, discreet though he’d proved himself to be until now, had, after all, been my emissary to Haworth. He knew so much and had always been kind. For that, I owed him something.

  I paused as we neared the church. Over there lay Edmund, just feet away from our pew. Yet the stone wall of the building divided him from us when the girls and I trooped in for Sunday service. The patch where the ground had been disturbed was still just about discernible, but, come spring, flowers would obscure my husband’s grave. And I wouldn’t be here to see them.

  My throat tightened.

  I couldn’t look anymore, so glanced instead toward Fish Pond Bridge and the winding road to Great Ouseburn beyond.

  It wouldn’t do for me to be so morbid when I wouldn’t see the doctor for who knew how many months. I opened my mouth to ask him some question about the gossip in the larger village but realized he was pensive too, staring back toward the domed mausoleum, with a fixed and faraway expression in his eyes.

  “Is something the matter, Doctor? John?” I asked.

  “Well, for one, I will miss you, Lydia,” he said. “The Ouseburns won’t be the same for me when you are gone. You are, after all, the only one who understands my—”

  “Enough.” I cut him off. He’d shared the shameful secrets of his heart once, but that didn’t mean they required repetition. I started back toward the Thompsons’ vault, hearing the squelch of the doctor’s steps behind me. “I will write. I promise.”

  “But that is the thing, Lydia. Didn’t you promise Mr. Brontë that too?”

  The squelching stopped, and I turned.

  “I fear you will not,” he went on. “That you will leave my letters unanswered like Branwell’s when you are with your grander friends.”

  “Is that what he said—that I promised him?” I demanded.

  For the last month, Dr. Crosby had been returning Mr. Brontë’s letters unopened, on my instruction, although they still arrived with almost the same regularity as the checks I made out to him were deposited.

  “You did not?” asked Dr. Crosby, head bowed.

  He had never questioned me before.

  “I did not,” I echoed.

  “Then I apologize. Only—”

  “Only what?” I snapped.

  Raindrops were misting the air between us.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “Only, when one has gone so long without love, it seems to me it would be impossible to turn it away.”

  There was a time when I would have thought that too.

  The rain was falling harder, so I ran up the bank and into the unlocked mausoleum. There was just about room for my dress and me to fit into one of the eight marble alcoves. The doctor perched in the one beside me.

  “There was a time when I longed only to be loved, ideally to madness,” I said, a low laugh creeping into my voice. “And, for a while, the adoration, the idolatry—for that is what it is—was enough. But then—”

  “Then?”

  “Then the loneliness returned, only more acute. I want more than to be loved, John. Any handsome woman can win a fool into lo
ving her. I want to be seen clearly and loved for what another soul sees there. I want love to be a perfect mirror that reflects me, flaws and all, and still meets me with a smile.”

  “Lydia, I see you,” John Crosby said.

  My heart nearly burst with it. I reached out, took his hand, and gave it a short, sharp squeeze. “And I see you, Doctor,” I said.

  “Do you know, Lydia, what the villagers think?” he asked after we’d sat in silence for some minutes.

  “What’s that?”

  “When they see me visiting the Hall each week? Attending church at Holy Trinity, rather than St. Mary’s, just in order to be near you? Giving you my arm on our walks? Well, they whisper that I am in love with you.” The doctor smiled.

  I laughed loud and true this time and imagined old Mary Thompson, in the crypt below us, seething in her coffin at our disrespect.

  “Ah, Dr. John Crosby, another naive man enraptured by the dazzling Mrs. Robinson,” I cried. The rain drummed harder on the lead roof. “It makes for a fine story, it’s true. If only they knew the truth. That would be much more scandalous.”

  * * *

  BUOYED BY THE KINSHIP I had found in Dr. Crosby and the revelation that love was sometimes sweeter for being platonic, I practically ran home once the rain lightened.

  I would quit Thorp Green Hall within weeks, although it had never been so dear to me as in the last months. But at least Marshall, that second loyal friend, would be with me wherever we went, always present, ever patient, and making each grand house we visited feel like home.

  Thorp Green now ran to my rhythms. Breakfast was when I rose, dinner whenever I was hungry. I had even torn down those awful faded floral curtains in my dressing room, although I wouldn’t enjoy for long the heavy dark velvet I’d chosen to replace them, an almost indefensible extravagance given our current situation.

  I’d missed the children on occasion since the girls had gone visiting, but it was in that fleeting way, where I hoped Ned and Mary were eating enough and Bessy not too much, otherwise enjoying the silence. Or enjoying that I was the only one who could interrupt it.

  Today, although my boots were wet and my hair was ruined, I rushed straight to the anteroom when I entered the Hall, lobbing my sodden shawl at Miss Sewell en route.

  I threw back the lid of the pianoforte and struck a chord, rich, harmonious, and unapologetically loud. I could play what I liked, without trying and failing to please Edmund. There was something magical in the way my body remembered, in how my fingers flew just as fast over the keys as they had in my girlhood, and in how the music thrilled me, just the same. It was as if the melodies wove a fine, taut, invisible thread between my earlier self and me, as if I could give voice to what I felt inside without the necessary translation and obfuscation of speech.

  “Madam?” By the time I heard her, she was so close I jumped, so maybe Marshall had been calling to me for some time.

  I swiveled to face her, although I knew her from her voice. “Yes?”

  “May I— I should like to talk with you,” she said.

  “You are talking to me now,” I replied, my earlier affection toward her evaporating at her unexpected, almost insolent, interruption.

  She began to answer but broke into a cough. It was too shallow at first, and it took her several attempts before she was able to break through the phlegm. She struck her chest with the heel of one hand as if the gesture would clear it, raising the other to me in apology.

  “Honestly, Marshall, it is as bad as having Miss Brontë here again,” I said, closing the piano.

  I’d done it. I’d said the name “Brontë” and without so much as hesitating.

  “I am sorry, madam,” she said, weakly. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  It was unlike her to ask for anything for herself.

  “Not at all,” I said, taken aback. “Please do.”

  She sank onto the sofa. It was strange to see her there.

  “Are you unwell?” I asked, rising from the piano stool and moving instead to the armchair, closer to her but not so close that I’d risk catching her cold. I couldn’t bring sickness into the Evanses’ house. A widow, two daughters, and a servant were already enough of an imposition on my sister and her husband.

  “Yes, madam, I am,” said Marshall, her voice low and steady. “I am sorry to say it, but I will not be well enough to accompany you to Derbyshire.”

  “Nonsense!” I had the urge to stand up again but instead began plucking at a loose thread in the upholstery. My fingers weren’t strong enough to break it. “A cold is unlikely to last more than two weeks, and we can always delay our departure, although that is less than desirable.”

  I couldn’t go to my sister, Mary, in such a sorry state, without even a maid to dress me. I wanted to cause a stir in society there, to be thought a sophisticated and fascinating widow, not a poor relation down on her luck.

  “But, madam, Mrs. Robinson, I am not suffering from a cold.” Marshall studied my face like she would a baby’s when he is on the verge of tears.

  “Not a cold? Then what?”

  “Consumption, madam. I’ve known for some time.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” She said that very sharply.

  Marshall had never been one for melodramatics. I could not doubt her.

  “The blood, it comes more frequently. The fits, they last longer. I cannot serve you as I should.”

  I waved her objections aside. “But you are welcome—” I struggled to find the words. “You can stay with us—with me—until the end, like you did with—”

  How many nights had she dabbed Edmund’s and Georgiana’s brows, how often had she reasoned them out of their fevered delusions?

  “I wish to go to my sister, Mrs. Robinson.” Ann Marshall stood.

  This was it, then, all she would give me by way of good-bye. It was her sister she wanted. Not me.

  “Of course,” I said.

  Had I been wrong? Had there never been anything more than the relationship between a lady and her maid between us? But it had felt that way when she rocked and caressed me, when I grabbed her hand to kiss it, when, during my weekly bath, she had sponged my back and tickled my neck with a steady stream of water, through those months and years when Edmund wouldn’t touch me at all.

  Who would nurse me to my end when it came? I had no mother to hold me, no husband to mourn me. By then, perhaps, all my children would have faded away.

  Marshall held out her hand and I pressed it, unable to rail at her for abandoning me, unwilling, even now, to admit that I needed her.

  “You will come to the study later, so I can settle your pension and the pay that we owe you?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  Her bones poked through her papery skin under my too-tight grip. If only I need never release her. My Marshall, dying. How was it I hadn’t noticed before?

  15th February 1847

  Thorp Green Hall

  My dear Sir Edward,

  Some months ago, you bid me write if you could render any assistance to me. Now I do so, remembering the generosity of that offer.

  The months since my husband Edmund’s death have been a sore trial for me, and I have taken on much beyond the small realm of a woman’s knowledge. I have secured the services of an agent, and Thorp Green Hall is now let. I have managed sales of oak wood and farming stock and learned all manner of agricultural terms.

  My daughters and I are to travel to Allestree Hall, home of my brother-in-law, William Evans, MP, in Derbyshire, within the fortnight.

  Yet one difficulty remains, which I have been unable to surmount: the fate of our coachman. William Allison, for that is the fellow’s name, has been a most loyal servant to my husband and to me, but I, a widow, can hardly think of maintaining a carriage or expect my sister and her husband to harbor my horse in addition to myself and my unmarried daughters.

  I have, as you know, never been to Great Barr Hall, but, having heard of the size of your estate and fame
of your stables, thought I would inquire whether you were in need of a man?

  Allison is decent, hardworking, and honest. He has a family who rely on him.

  If you can’t offer him a place, perhaps you have an acquaintance who could?

  Ever grateful for your kindness and sending my familial love to my dear cousin Catherine, I remain, yours very truly,

  Lydia Robinson

  19th February 1847

  Great Barr Hall

  My dear Mrs. Robinson,

  What a joy it is to bring comfort and help to a friend in need when to do so is to lose nothing oneself!

  I must tell you I am deeply touched by your compassion for your inferiors, even in this time of your own grief.

  Your man William Allison would, of course, be a most welcome addition to our household. Bid him come to Great Barr Hall as soon as it is convenient for you to part with him. If all goes well and I find him to my satisfaction, his family should follow him shortly after.

  Looking forward to a time when we will meet again (how I desire to hear your lectures on agriculture!).

  I remain your most sincere admirer,

  Edward Scott

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “LYDIA!” MY SISTER, MARY, threw her arms around me. I submitted gratefully.

  It had been kind of her and her husband to send their carriage for me. Patroclus and our other horses I had sold and William Allison had already decamped to Great Barr Hall. A part of me couldn’t help but envy him. Yet the journey here, while comfortable, had been lonely. The girls wouldn’t arrive in Derbyshire for a few more days, and the latest novel from Mr. Bellerby’s circulating library wouldn’t hold my attention. So I’d stared out the window, trying not to think, and when the countryside was too monotonous or the hedgerows too high, read and reread Sir Edward’s letter, delighting to have such a lofty and considerate friend.