The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë

by Laura Joh Rowland

  I refrained from speech in the hope that my companion would grow bored and leave me, for I wanted to think about Gilbert White. Mr. White and I had talked together on the train all the way from Keighley to Haworth. We at first discussed Isabel, but soon our conversation turned personal. I told Mr. White how I had happened upon some poems written by Emily and thought to publish a book of poetry by my sisters and myself. I admitted that only two copies had sold, but the venture had spurred me to attempt novels. Mr. White told me about growing up in the town of Bradford, his father’s fatal accident in a factory, and how charity had paid for his education at boarding school, then divinity college at Oxford. We had much in common—our Northern origins, our lives as charity children, our faith. He became the most intimate male acquaintance I’d ever had.

  Before we parted at Keighley Station, he jotted on a paper the address of his vicarage, presented it to me, and said, “Shall we write to each other?”

  “Do you mean—if I remember anything else about the men on the train—or if you learn anything from your mother?” I asked, astounded because no man I admired had ever before asked me to correspond with him. “Why, yes, of course.”

  “Whatever you choose to write, I’ll be delighted to read,” Mr. White said earnestly.

  I thought it prudent to wait until he wrote before writing him a letter, and while I waited, I relived every moment spent with him. I dressed my hair with undue care, as if he could see me; we carried on imaginary conversations in my mind. For a woman to nurture affection without proof of requital is sheer folly, as I well knew, but I could not help myself.

  Now Arthur Nicholls said, “Yesterday, at the stationer’s shop, I met a stranger.” Close beside me under the umbrella, he smelled of cooked cabbage. How I wished I had Gilbert White as my companion instead! “He asked about you, Miss Brontë.”

  “Oh?” I said, bored by anything the curate had to say.

  “He wanted to know who your family and friends are, what you do, and what kind of character is yours,” said Mr. Nicholls.

  Uneasiness stirred in me; the rain and gusting wind seemed colder than a moment ago. “What was this man’s name?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  My uneasiness quickened into alarm. “Well, what did he look like?”

  “I didn’t really notice.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing, of course. I don’t gossip to strangers.” Mr. Nicholls looked affronted.

  There are people who have no notion of sketching a character or perceiving salient points of persons or things, and Mr. Nicholls belongs to this class. Would that he were as good at observation as he was discreet! Could the stranger be one of the men who had assaulted Anne and me on the train? I looked down Main Street towards the village green and the toll gate. Suddenly Haworth didn’t seem so isolated as before.

  “Miss Brontë, I hope you’ve not been doing anything to attract improper attention from strange men,” Mr. Nicholls said in a tone of sententious concern. “As the daughter of a clergyman, you should be careful about your behavior, lest it reflect badly upon your father or the Church.”

  How dare he assume I was at fault and tell me how to act? “You do seize upon any chance to sermonize.”

  “Yes; it is my duty,” Mr. Nicholls said seriously, interpreting my tart rejoinder as praise.

  It was a pity that Mr. Nicholls couldn’t be like Gilbert White, who’d cared more for my safety than about public opinion. Still, I knew Mr. Nicholls to be a good man, held in high regard by Papa and the parishioners. Perhaps Anne and Emily and I shouldn’t have stolen his middle name as our nom de plume, although we’d enjoyed our secret joke.

  Afraid that I would say something regrettable if Mr. Nicholls and I continued together, I halted. “Here’s the post office. I must step inside.” I said firmly, “Goodbye, Mr. Nicholls,” entered the building, and left him standing alone in the rain.

  Inside the post office, drawers and compartments lined the walls. Behind the counter sat the postmistress, Nancy Wills, a stubby woman with frizzy grey hair beneath her muslin cap.

  “Oh, Miss Brontë,” she said, “I heard tha was back from London. It were a nice trip, I hope? I saw your pa the other day when he come from visitin’ the Oaks farm. They’ve got th’ fever there.”

  More village gossip followed. When she paused for breath, I handed her my letter and said, “Is there any post for me?” As Nancy began searching through letters and parcels, a thought struck. “Has there been a stranger asking about me?”

  “Matter of fact, there was,” Nancy said. “It were two days ago. A man were botherin’ me with all sorts of questions, like who do tha send letters to or get them from.”

  I felt a ripple of foreboding. “You didn’t answer him, did you?”

  Nancy’s cheeks flushed. “Nor me. I told him to mind his own business.” She turned away and mumbled, “I think I did see something for thee, Miss Brontë. Now where can it be?”

  I shuddered to think that a murderer may have tapped her extensive store of knowledge about my family. “Can you describe the man?”

  “Oh, he were a gentleman with black hair and city ways.” Nancy tittered. “Fair handsome, too.”

  At least she had better powers of observation than did Mr. Nicholls, even if she lacked his discretion. The stranger could have been the dark man from the train. If he now knew where I lived, why had he not approached me?

  While I stood stricken by fear, the postmistress exclaimed, “Oh! Here it is!”

  She gave me a flat rectangular package that was approximately seven inches long, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. It had a London postmark, but no sender’s address. “Whoever could have sent thee a present?” she said with expectant curiosity.

  My thoughts flew to Gilbert White. Had he gone back to London and from there sent Jane Eyre for me to inscribe? Would there be a letter? Happy anticipation replaced my earlier fear. I hurried home and shut myself into the room above the front hall. With trembling fingers I unwrapped the package.

  A letter is a wondrous treasure. Letters from my friends and family had comforted me while I was away from home. The absence of letters caused terrible unhappiness; I once had waited three years for a letter that never arrived. This time, however, fortune had blessed me.

  Inside the package was a book wrapped in the same brown paper as the entire parcel—I could feel the curved spine and the edges of the binding. A sheet of white paper bearing a few lines of script accompanied the book. As I eagerly read the letter, anticipation turned to shock.

  Dear Miss Brontë,

  Forgive me for initiating a correspondence which you did not authorize and may not welcome. But I am in desperate straits, and I must presume upon you. Enclosed is a package. I beg you to deliver it, unopened, to my mother, Mrs. Mary White, 20 Eastbrook Terrace, Bradford, Yorkshire. Thank you for your kindness. I hope I will be able to repay it someday.

  Isabel White

  10

  EVENING AT THE PARSONAGE GENERALLY FOLLOWS A LONGSTANDING routine, and so it did on the day I received Isabel White’s package. My family ate a simple dinner, and by half past nine, we had finished our evening prayers. Papa had locked the parsonage doors and gone upstairs to his bedchamber, where he sleeps near his loaded pistol in case thieves or marauders should come. Branwell was out, presumably carousing at the Black Bull Inn. My sisters and I sat around the table to read aloud and discuss our literary works in progress. The wind from the moors wailed around the house; drafts rattled the windows. The flickering candlelight painted our shadows on the walls as I read aloud from the manuscript of my new novel.

  On the surface this resembled any other of our gatherings, but I was uncomfortably aware of the difference. Emily had remained unrelentingly taciturn all day. Anne’s hurt was palpable; there was none of our usual camaraderie. And I kept thinking of the package. What was the book? Was it the object sought by the thief at the Chapter Coffee House, and the reason I’d
been chased at the opera then nearly abducted in Leeds?

  While I read, the image of Gilbert White materialized upon the pages. He had asked me to write, and now I had something to tell him. Distracted by my pondering, I lost my place in the manuscript and ceased reading. I looked at Emily and Anne, but neither spoke. Anne unhappily watched Emily, who gazed downward, seething with ire.

  “What do you think of my story, Anne?” said I.

  Anne murmured, “It seems quite good to me,” then fell silent, although she was usually an astute, voluble critic.

  “Emily?” I said. “What do you think?”

  Her head came slowly up. Her eyes were the turbulent dark green of stormy oceans; she rose and spoke in a hushed, ominous voice: “Do you really want to know what I think?” Pacing around the table, as was her habit, she said, “Well, I don’t like it at all.”

  “Why not?” My chest constricted with alarm.

  “Caroline Helstone is a weak, insipid, pitiful excuse for a heroine. Robert Moore is a cad.” Emily’s eyes shot vindictive sparks; her shadow followed her like a malevolent ghost. “And the curates are silly. In fact, all the characters are trivial and lifeless.”

  Her cruel criticism provoked a surge of anger in me. “Suppose you show me what good writing is,” I said. “It’s been months since you’ve read us a new story.”

  She recoiled as if I’d struck her, then muttered, “I’ve nothing ready yet. But that doesn’t change my opinion of your book.”

  That I knew Emily was venting her rage at me upon my book did not relieve my fear that there might be some validity to her criticism. Perhaps Shirley was indeed a bad book. Yet its defects were of secondary concern to me at present.

  “Emily, you are torturing me!” I cried. “I’m sorry I broke my promise. I’ve apologized over and over, and so has Anne. How can we gain your forgiveness?”

  Hands clenched, Emily stood rigidly by the fireplace, her face ashen and her angry eyes reflecting the candle flames.

  “No harm has come of telling Charlotte’s publisher the identities of Currer and Acton Bell,” Anne said in a pleading voice. “Smith, Elder & Company know nothing of you.” She rose and moved towards Emily, her hand outstretched. “Everything is quite the same as before.”

  “Everything has changed!” Emily flinched violently away from Anne’s touch. “Mr. Smith will tell more people the secret, and soon curiosity seekers will be knocking on our door.” Her voice ragged with hysteria, she began pacing the room, as if already under siege. “I can’t bear that. I’ll die!” It would do no good to tell Emily that she was magnifying the threat, for her fear of strangers was real and extreme.

  “We must talk about what happened to Anne and me,” I said.

  “Anne has already told me everything. It makes me ill. I won’t hear anymore.” Emily pressed her palms over her ears. But as I told Anne how a strange dark man had questioned Arthur Nicholls and the postmistress about me, Emily’s hands dropped. She crouched on the floor. “It’s started,” she whimpered. “The public has found Acton, Currer, and Ellis Bell. The hordes will invade Haworth, and we’ll never have another moment of privacy!”

  This explanation for the stranger in the village had not occurred to me. Had a reader of our books tracked the authors Bell to their lair?

  Anne put her arms around Emily. “It seems more likely that the stranger is one of the men from the train, come to harm us again. Oh, Charlotte, we must keep the doors and windows locked. We must tell Papa, and we must never go out alone. Should we take turns staying up at night to watch over the house and keep Branwell inside?”

  “Those measures might postpone trouble,” I said, “but the only way to protect ourselves is to identify our enemies so that they may be apprehended.”

  “But how can we identify them?” Anne stroked Emily’s hair.

  “This may provide the answer,” I said, and drew from beneath my notebook the package from Isabel White. “I retrieved it from the post office this afternoon. Miss White sent it the day we arrived in London. She must have conceived the idea while we were on the train—surely, that’s why she took such pains to learn my address and the correct spelling of my name.”

  “How strange,” Anne said, though Emily seemed not to listen. “Do you think Miss White’s package contains clues as to who killed her and why?”

  “I hope so; but alas, I can’t look inside.” I read aloud Isabel’s letter. “My conscience won’t allow me to open the package.”

  “Your conscience allowed you to break your promise to me,” Emily said bitterly.

  How well she knew how to worsen my guilt! “That was necessary. This matter is altogether different. Isabel White’s letter represents her dying wish, and I cannot defy it.”

  “Will you tell Gilbert White about the package?” Anne said.

  I had promised to tell him if I had further information regarding the murder. I also wanted to tell him that my attackers appeared to have located me in Haworth; yet my doubts concerning Mr. White had resurfaced. Was this package what he sought when he asked if Isabel had given me anything? Had he befriended me that I might lead him to the book? Would I receive aid by communicating with Mr. White, or further endanger myself and my family?

  Before I could frame an answer to Anne’s question, Emily exclaimed with caustic triumph, “Ah, I understand! This man Gilbert White is the reason for your interest in the murder. You’ve fallen in love with him, just as you did with Monsieur Heger in Belgium!”

  I was shocked by her accusation and by the mention of a name I still cringed to hear. I stammered, “That’s ridiculous. I am not in love with Mr. White, and I was never in love with—”

  “Oh, yes, you were.” A spiteful smile lit Emily’s face. “I saw how you looked at him during our French lessons. I saw you writing letters to him and watching the post for his reply. Do you think I’m blind, that I wouldn’t notice?”

  Horror filled me. If my self-absorbed sister had noticed, how many other people had guessed my secret love for my professor, the married man over whom I had humiliated myself ? I hated Emily for suggesting that I had fallen in love with Gilbert White as unwisely as with Monsieur Heger. She wanted revenge, and if I wanted peace between us, I should let her wound me; but I couldn’t bear to discuss Monsieur Heger—or Gilbert White—in this manner.

  “My feelings towards Mr. White are beside the point,” I said coldly. Loath to mention my suspicions of him, I went on: “I may or may not write to him, but the fact is that Isabel has assigned me the duty of conveying the package to her mother. I must go to Bradford at once. Since I shouldn’t travel alone, I need someone to go with me.”

  “Not I,” Emily declared with a passion. She huddled closer to the floor, as if sinking roots in it. “When we returned from Belgium, I said I would never leave home again, and I—unlike you—always keep my word.”

  Anne’s expression was pensive, worried. Still embracing Emily, she said, “Perhaps you should send the package by post.”

  “There must be a reason why Isabel didn’t want to post the package directly to her mother,” I said. “I must deliver it in person. Anne, since Emily won’t go with me, will you?”

  Emily turned a fierce gaze upon Anne, who looked torn asunder. I said, “The package is a possible clue to discovering who killed Isabel and attacked us. The only way to learn what’s inside it is to obtain her mother’s permission to look. Papa is too frail to travel, and Branwell too unreliable. Anne, you must go to Bradford with me.”

  Neither of my sisters spoke. They looked as they had in childhood, when they would whisper together, and if I came into the room, they would fall silent and wait for me to leave. “Dear Charlotte, I’m sorry,” Anne said with quiet regret.

  As I recall the scene above, the wind wails round the parsonage; candles glow. But mine is the only shadow on the wall, for I sit alone at the table. The chairs once occupied by Anne and Emily are vacant. Emily’s bulldog, Keeper, lies near the hearth beside Anne’s little
spaniel, Flossy. They prick up their ears and look towards the door, expecting the return of their departed loved ones. How my heart aches with loneliness! In the hope of distraction, I will relate a part of my story which occurred on the same night Emily and I quarreled, although at the time I knew nothing of these events.

  John Slade’s travels had again brought him to London. At midnight, the River Thames, black and oily under a clouded, moonless sky, flowed past the city, beneath the arches of London Bridge, and wended onward to the sea. By day, the Thames is a busy highway crowded with ships, barges, and ferries, but the traffic was now ceased, the shipyards deserted, the vessels moored at the wharves. The river slept—until a lone ship glided into view. Her tattered sails had borne her from the Orient. Painted in faded letters on her hull was the name Pearl. She approached the London Docks and navigated the canals along the quays. Warehouses loomed, dark and abandoned except for one: Here, lamplight shone through windows, and a man waited outside.

  He was Isaiah Fearon, a prosperous merchant, once a trader in the East Indies. As he spied the Pearl drawing near, he shouted an order. The warehouse discharged a horde of dock laborers. They hurried along the quay to guide the ship into a berth and secure her; they transferred cargo from the Pearl’s hold to the warehouse. The captain disembarked, carrying a small wooden chest, and joined Isaiah Fearon. The chest exchanged hands. Fearon’s men brought out scores of heavy crates, which they stowed aboard the Pearl. Soon the ship sailed away down the canal. Isaiah Fearon dismissed the men; alone, he locked himself inside the warehouse, a vast, dim cavern filled with goods and reeking of exotic spices. He went to his office, placed the chest on his desk, and opened it. Inside were hundreds of gold coins.