Romancing Miss Bronte (48 page)

At that moment Alan Bell strode into their midst—a stout, red-whiskered man with a loose smile and an animated face and the air of a country gentleman. The two brothers fell into a bearlike embrace, and after much hearty back pounding, the elder turned to Charlotte with a mannerly tip of the hat.

“Madam, my deepest admiration to you for having taken on this troublesome old bachelor. I daresay, a few more years of single life and he would have become quite intolerable.” His eyes seemed to twinkle with an urge to do mischief, and Charlotte could sense the strong, real affection behind the sparring words.

“Indeed, sir, I believe I saved him in the nick of time,” Charlotte quipped.

Arthur broke into a proud smile, and with a protective air he drew her hand through his arm, tucking it snugly into his elbow and pressing her as close to him as her full skirts would allow. It was a gesture that was becoming familiar to her, his response whenever he was at a loss for words or overwhelmed by emotion.

Outside, Alan gave a signal, and a heavy black coach drawn by two bays came clattering toward them over the cobbled drive.

“Thought it best to come up in the old family thing. So much roomier than mine,” Alan said in a quiet aside to Arthur. “And Joseph’s coming back with us to Cuba House. The earl didn’t want to give him leave, but he explained it was to meet your new bride and showed himself quite firm about the matter. Ah, here’s Simon. Here we are.” He opened the carriage door and lowered the steps. “In you go, Mrs. Nicholls.”

Charlotte felt hands on her waist, and she glanced up to see Arthur’s whiskered face over her shoulder.

“Yes, Mrs. Nicholls,” he murmured lovingly. “In you go.”

Dublin took her by surprise. Her first impression from the carriage was that of an elegant city of classical beauty. Magnificent Georgian public buildings and terraced town houses bore witness to the extravagant
lifestyle of the gentry during the previous century’s prosperity—although there were signs of growing deterioration and neglect. She caught glimpses of fountains, squares, and greens planted with flower beds, of porticoed doorways crowned with elegant fanlights.

Over dinner at the inn that evening, Charlotte found her new brother-in-law extremely well-read and well-informed about politics. He spoke modestly of his work as manager of the Grand Canal linking Dublin to the River Shannon, although Charlotte suspected it was a position of considerable influence. For the most part their conversation turned around familial topics; they talked of the family estate, how they were managing the little bit of farmland that remained, of a favorite old retainer who had passed away, of trout fishing, of stalking and shooting, of horse trading. These were clearly subjects of intense interest to Arthur—the passions of a country gentleman rather than a clergyman. It was not so much a new man but a whole man that began to emerge.

Mary Anna remained quiet. Only Arthur seemed capable of drawing her out. To him she would chatter away in a soft voice as if she believed that nothing she said held any interest for anyone but him. Her manners gave the impression of maturity beyond her years—and upon closer acquaintance one became conscious of a perplexing sadness that somehow dulled her beauty.

That night in their room at the inn, Charlotte sat perched on the bed wrapped in Arthur’s wool sweater while he dug through their trunk for his flask of whiskey.

“Arthur, how old is Mary Anna?”

“Twenty-one.”

“She seems much older.”

“She’s always seemed that way, even as a child.”

“But what a beautiful girl. She has the complexion of a Madonna. Is Lucy as pretty?”

“Lucy is every bit as pretty, but she lacks Mary Anna’s good sense. She’s only a year younger, but they are as different as night and day.
Lucy can be a little spoiled and petulant, and Mary Anna suffers it all with the patience of a saint. And Lucy has suitors, which Mary Anna has never had.”

“Never. Not any?”

“Not one…. Ah, here it is! Now, where are the glasses?”

“On the mantel. And you keep two carriages and a coachman?”

“It’s not my property, dearest. It’s my aunt’s household. As for Simon, he wears a half dozen hats around the house, and the carriage is an ancient rattletrap, as I’m sure you noticed.”

“And what about your cousin Joseph? I overheard something about an earl’s household.”

“Uh, yes … the Earl of Kenmare.”

“You never told me he was employed by an earl.”

“I told you he was employed by a respectable family in Dublin.”

“Honestly, Arthur, you might have been a bit more forthcoming.”

“Now, don’t be cross with me. You abhor boasting, Charlotte, as do I. You would have accused me of being like Sir James if I had started touting our acquaintances.”

“Does Papa know these things about your family?”

“No, and I see no reason why it should make a whit of difference to him. How could my young cousin’s employer in Ireland brighten my prospects? I’m as poor as I’ve ever been. And having pretty girl cousins and a well-educated brother and two carriages doesn’t make my star shine any brighter. These things are immaterial to us. What’s important is that I have the qualities necessary to take care of you and your father and continue in God’s work. That’s all that matters. That and the fact that I love you madly.”

He poured a little whiskey into a glass and offered it to her.

“Here, drink this. You’ve overexerted yourself now and your cough is getting worse.”

He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead and cheek.

“You have a fever.”

“Arthur, dearest, I’m warm because you’ve got me bundled in wool up
to my ears. I assure you I’ll be quite well enough to see the sights tomorrow. I should not like to miss a thing.”

“Then get underneath the covers. You must rest.”

He made no demands on her that night. It was the first night since their marriage that he had not urged himself on her. Each night in the cover of darkness he would slide his bearlike hands beneath her nightgown and grapple in his clumsily innocent way with the unformed breasts, the boyish hips and thighs—and she would feel him swell with lust and love, which were one and the same to him.

All through the act she remained distant and alert, noting the startling changes in his body, the sweat and heat, the sensation of his beard on her nipples, the grunts and spasmodic cries when he had been satisfied. She would wrap her arms around his bullish neck and meekly return his kisses, but just as soon as she began to feel her body respond it would be over.

Arthur was only too aware of the one-sided nature of their pleasure.

“Oh, my dear,” he sighed one night in Wales as she lay nestled in his arms, “I’m afraid innocence does have its disadvantages, doesn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, if I had acquired a little experience in these matters, I might know better how to please you.”

Charlotte rose on her elbows and scowled at him. “Arthur Bell Nicholls, you are a man of the church.”

“I assure you there are many young bachelor clergymen donning surplices every Sunday with blemishes on their souls.”

“And do you think they make better husbands?”

“I speak of lovers, not husbands.”

Charlotte was silent. She laid her head on his chest and listened to the steady drumming of his heart. She did not know how to talk about these things. She could certainly not talk about her own desires, or how to satisfy them.

He gave a sort of relieved sigh and kissed the top of her head. “Well, we shan’t need to talk about it again.”

Charlotte felt an instant liking for Joseph. He was waiting for them the next morning just below the college’s massive bell tower—a pale, slim figure with spectacles and an appealing air of distraction. He slouched in the shadow, reading a book, his long hair ruffled by the wind; at the sound of their approaching steps he squinted into the bright sunlight, and then he stuffed the small volume in his pocket and rushed forward to greet them.

With Charlotte he seemed mildly starstruck—which they all noted with tacit amusement—and he was clearly relieved when his sister began asking about his examination.

“I think I performed passably well,” he replied modestly. “The texts were poetry. Virgil and Dante.”

“Joseph’s had three firsts since he’s been at Trinity,” Mary Anna said with quiet pride.

Arthur took command of their little party, shuttling them from chapel to museum, to dining and examination hall. The entire setting thrilled Charlotte to the core; here she was walking the green lawns and cobbled quads of Trinity College in Dublin, breathing the exalted air of an exclusively masculine and privileged domain. As Arthur recounted anecdotes of his student days, Charlotte was moved by a quiet sense of irony. There flashed through her mind a vivid memory of Emily, Anne, and herself as children gathered in her father’s study, listening to Branwell recite Virgil in his flawless Latin, and she recalled how she had once dreamed of her brother walking halls such as these at Cambridge or Oxford. She would have visited him. She would have stood in the ladies’ gallery of the halls to hear lectures delivered by great men, and sat in the chapel listening to strains of the organ and the glorious choir.

Branwell and his dreams were buried, but she was here with Arthur. It seemed that her own dream had come true in the way that dreams often do, in their own time and in a manner quite unexpected.

When they came to the old library, the spectacular long gallery with towering walls of ancient manuscripts, it was Joseph who stepped to her
side and picked up the narrative. As she listened to him speak in a hushed voice, Charlotte could not refrain from making comparisons to Branwell. There was the same impressive command of English, the flashes of brilliance and erudition, the passion for poetry. But Joseph Bell had been blessed with a sense of discipline and a steady temperament that left no doubt that he would succeed where her brother had failed.

When Arthur attempted to usher her down an aisle to show her a section of philosophical volumes, she pulled him aside and whispered, “I would so like to have liberty to take this in my own way, Arthur.”

“What? You would forgo my commentary?” he teased.

“It would mean a good deal to me to have a few moments to myself.”

“I understand. I shall wait for you here.”

“Thank you.”

“You won’t get lost, I pray.”

“If I do, I’m sure you’ll find me.”

“Arthur said this would give you pleasure,” Charlotte remarked as she withdrew a small package from the corner of the carriage and presented it to Joseph. It was evening, and they had just pulled up in front of his lodgings.

He gave her a wide-eyed smile. “Are these your poems?”

“Yes. I confess I didn’t know until today that you wrote verse yourself. This was the first thing we published. My efforts are quite juvenile, I’m afraid, and Anne’s—well, we indulged our sister out of affection. But Emily’s poems are of considerable merit.”

“Ellis Bell’s novel was the work of a genius,” he said quietly.

“You’ve read
Wuthering Heights
?”

“Oh, madam, I’ve read it twice.”

Then, with an impetuous kiss on her cheek and a murmured word of gratitude, Joseph Bell bade good-bye to all of them and bounded from the carriage.

T
he road to Banagher took them west along the lush green banks of the Grand Canal, past bogs and morasses, and fields of grazing cattle. Night was just falling as they drove through tall wrought-iron gates and up a rutted avenue lined with leafy linden trees. At the end, faintly outlined against the gloom of the woods, stood Cuba House—a great old Georgian pile of the sort built by the gentry in the previous century.

“There’s the old home,” Alan said as the drive curved and the house came into sight.

Charlotte turned to Arthur with a look of wide-eyed wonder.

“Why, Arthur, it’s splendid,” she whispered. She reached for his hand, and she couldn’t help but feel a sense of vindication. She wished her father could see this. And Ellen. Her father and Ellen, who had convinced her that she was stepping down in the world.

“Gardens are looking fine, aren’t they?” Alan said in an offhand manner.

“Very fine,” Arthur replied.

“Narcissus gets slower every year. Don’t know how he manages to keep up the grounds, but he does.”

Harriette Bell was a formidable-looking matron with marked masculine brows and heavily pomaded hair that shone in the candlelight like the lustrous jet cameo fixed to her snowy-white fichu.

“My dear aunt—you must forgive the inconvenience.”

“Inconvenience? Pray what do you mean, Arthur?” she said, holding her cheek up to him for a kiss.

“You weren’t expecting us for several more days.”

“But we’re quite prepared. You did send a message, my dear.”

“Which was quite unnecessary,” Alan said as he passed his hat and gloves to the servant. “Arthur’s such a stickler about those things.”

Lucy came gaily tripping down the wide stairs and flew up to them in her summer dress of creamy rose-sprigged cotton, aware that all eyes had turned her way.