Syrie James

VOLUME I

Chapter One

      I have received a proposal of marriage.
      Diary, this offer, which came some months past, has thrown my entire household—nay, the entire village—into an uproar. Who is this man who has dared to ask for my hand? Why is my father so dead set against him? Why are half the residents of Haworth determined to lynch him—or shoot him? Since the moment of his offer, I have lain awake night after night, pondering the multitude of events which have led up to this conflagration. How on earth, I wonder, did things get so out of hand?
      I have written about the joys of love. I have, in my secret heart, long dreamt of an intimate connection with a man; every Jane, I believe, deserves her Rochester—does she not? Yet I had long since given up all hope of that experience in my own life. Instead, I sought a career; and having found it, shall I—must I—now abandon it? Is it possible for a woman to give herself fully both to an occupation and a husband? Can these two critical halves of a woman's mind and spirit peacefully coexist? It must be so; for true happiness, I believe, cannot be achieved any other way.
      It has long been my practice, in times of great joy or emotional distress, to escape into the comfort of my imagination. There, in prose or poetry, I have given vent to my innermost thoughts and feelings behind the protective veil of fiction. In these pages, however, I wish to take a completely different tack. I wish herein to unburden my soul—to reveal certain truths which I have hitherto shared with only a few of my most intimate connections—and some which I have never dared breathe to a living soul. For I find myself to-day in a time of crisis, faced with a dilemma of the weightiest proportions.
      Do I dare to defy papa, and incur the wrath of every one I know, by accepting this offer? Most importantly, do I wish to accept? Do I truly love this man, and wish to be his wife? I did not even like him when first we met; but a great deal has happened since then.
      It seems to me that every experience I have ever had, and every person I have ever loved, has contributed in some essential way to the human being I am to-day. Had one stroke of the brush touched the canvas in an altered manner, or splashed upon it a darker or lighter colour, I should be a very different person now. And so I turn to pen and paper in search of answers; perhaps in this way, I can endeavour to make some sense of what has led me to this moment, and come to understand how I feel—and what it is that Providence, in his goodness and wisdom, intends for me to do.
      But hush! A story cannot commence in the middle, or at the end. No, to tell it properly, I must go back—back to where it all began: to that stormy day, nearly eight years past, when an unexpected visitor arrived at the parsonage door.


      The 21st of April, 1845, was a gloomy, bone-chilling day.
      I was awakened at daybreak by a great clap of thunder; moments later, the cloudy grey heavens opened up in a torrential downpour. All morning, rain spattered against the window-panes of the parsonage, pelted the roof and eaves, drenched the densely packed headstones in the nearby graveyard, and danced against the flagstones in the adjacent lane, merging into rivulets which flowed in a steady stream past the church, toward the steep, cobbled main street of the village.
      Inside the parsonage kitchen, however, all was cosy, full of the fragrance of new bread and the warmth of a generous fire. It was a Monday—baking-day—which my sister Emily said was very convenient, for it was also my birthday. I had always preferred to observe such occasions with as little fuss as possible; but Emily insisted, as I was turning twenty-nine, that we should make time for a private celebration.
      "It is your last year of an important decade," said Emily, as she expertly kneaded a mound of dough on the floured centre table. Already, two loaves were in the oven, another bowl of dough was rising beneath a cloth, and I was well under way with preparations for a pie and a tart. "At the very least, we must mark the occasion with a cake."
      "I see no purpose in it," said I, as I measured out the flour for a pastry crust. "Without Anne and Branwell here, it will not feel like much of a party."
      "We cannot put off our own pleasures in their absence, Charlotte," said Emily solemnly. "We are meant to prize life and enjoy it, so long as we retain it."
      Emily was two years younger than I, and the tallest person in our family, other than papa. She was a complex personality with twin, diverse sides to her nature: brooding, melancholy introspection concerning the meaning of life and death; and sunny delight in contemplation of the world's many joys and natural beauties. As long as she could live at home, surrounded by her moors, Emily was happy and took life easily; unlike me, she was rarely distressed. She preferred being lost in thought, or in the pages of a book, to any other occupation in life—a preference with which I heartily agreed. Emily had no regard for public opinion, and no interest in fashion; although it had long been the style to wear neatly waisted, fitted frocks and full petticoats, Emily still preferred to wear the old-fashioned, shapeless dresses and thin petticoats which clung to her legs, and did not particularly suit her lean frame. As she rarely ventured out except to walk on the heath, it hardly mattered.
      With her slender physique, pale complexion, and dark hair knotted up carelessly under a Spanish comb, Emily reminded me of a sturdy sapling: thin and graceful, yet unyielding; hardy in solitude; impervious to the effects of wind and rain. In the presence of strangers, Emily withdrew into herself, all gravity and silence; but in the company of family, her ebullient, sensitive nature found its full expression. I loved her as dearly as I loved life itself.
      "How long has it been since we were all together for your birthday?" continued Emily.
      "I cannot recall the last time," said I with regret.
      It had, indeed, been a long while since all my siblings and I had been in one location at the same time, other than a few short weeks at Christmas and the summer holidays. For the past five years, our youngest sister Anne had been serving as a governess for the Robinson family at Thorp Green Hall, near York. Our brother Branwell, younger than I by fourteen months, had joined Anne there three years previously, as a tutor to the eldest son. In the years before that, I had been much away at school, first as a student, and then as a teacher, followed by a stint of my own as a governess. Then had come two years in Belgium: a sojourn which had proved to be the most powerful, exhilarating, life-altering—and heartbreaking—experience of my existence.
      "I am making you a spice cake, and that is final," said Emily. "After supper, we shall sit by the fire and tell each other stories. Perhaps Tabby and papa will join us."
      Tabby was our elderly servant, a good, faithful Yorkshire woman who had been with us since childhood. Over the years, when she chanced to be in good humour, Tabby had brought her ironing-table to the dining-room hearth and allowed us to sit about it. While she got up the sheets and chemises, or crimped her night-cap borders, she fed our eager attention with tales of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and ballads—or, as I later discovered, from the pages of her favourite novels, such as Pamela. On other occasions, our evenings by the fire had been enlivened by papa's thrilling renditions of ghost stories and ancient, local legends.
      To-night, however, it was uncertain whether or not papa would choose to participate.
      I glanced out the kitchen window at the moors beyond. A shower wept over the distant hilltops, hiding their crests with the low-hanging, dishevelled tresses of a cloud. "Wonderful weather for a birthday. At least the day matches my mood: dark and somber, with turbulent storms and no end in sight."
      "You sound like me," rejoined Emily, as she mixed together the ingredients for her cake. "Do not lose hope. If we take one day at a time, everything may yet work itself out."
      "How?" I sighed. "Papa's eyesight grows dimmer with each passing day."
      My father was an Irish immigrant who, through perseverance and education, had risen far above his poor, illiterate family's station. When the registrar at St. John's College, Cambridge, could not understand the spelling of papa's surname due to his broad Irish accent, he wrote it down himself, changing it from Brunty to the more interesting Brontë, after the Greek word for thunder. A good, kind, lively, and highly intelligent man, papa was widely read, with interests in literature, art, music and science which reached far beyond his province as the parson of a small Yorkshire parish. He enjoyed writing, and had had several poems and religious stories published, as well as numerous articles; he was greatly involved in the politics of the community; and he was a deeply committed clergyman. He was also greatly troubled: for to-day, at age sixty-eight, after a lifetime of faithful service to the church, our adored father was going blind.
      "I must now do all of papa's reading and writing for him," said I. "Soon, I fear he will not be able to keep up with his most basic duties in the parish—and if he loses his sight entirely, what shall we do? Not only will papa forfeit all his scanty pleasures in life, and grow entirely dependent on us—a circumstance you know he greatly dreads—but he will no doubt be forced to forfeit his incumbency. We shall then lose not only his entire income, but our home as well."
      "In any other family, the son would come to the financial rescue," observed Emily, shaking her head, "but our brother has never been able to hold a job for long."
      "Indeed, his stint as tutor at Thorp Green is the longest he has ever held a position," I added, as I rolled out my pastry crust. "He seems to be highly valued there; yet his income is barely enough to cover his own expenses. We must accept it, Emily: should papa's health fail, the entire burden of supporting the household will fall squarely upon our shoulders."
      I believe I felt the weight of this responsibility even more keenly than did my siblings, perhaps because I was the eldest child—a position acquired by tragedy and default, and not by rank of birth. My mother, of whom I have only the vaguest of memories, gave birth to six children in nearly as many years, and died when I was five. My beloved older sisters Maria and Elizabeth died in childhood. My brother and younger sisters and I, schooled by our father and reared by a stern and orderly maternal aunt who came to live with us, retreated into a delightful world of books and fantasy; we roamed the moors; we drew and painted; we read and wrote obsessively; we all dreamt of becoming published authors one day. Although our dream of writing never faded, it had long ago been set aside by necessity: we were obliged to earn a living.
      Only two professions were open to my sisters and me—teaching or governessing—both occupations of bonded servitude which I despised. I had, for some time, believed that our best option was to commence our own school. It was with that aim in mind—to gain attainments in French and German, to improve our chances of attracting pupils—that Emily and I had gone to Brussels three years ago, and I had stayed an extra year on my own. Upon my return, I had attempted to open a school at Haworth Parsonage; despite all my most concerted efforts, however, not a single parent was willing to send his child to such a desolate location.
      I could not blame them. Haworth was but a small village in north Yorkshire, far from anywhere. In our entire moorland parish, there was not a single educated family other than ourselves. The region was blanketed in snow in winter and assailed by a cold and merciless wind three seasons of the year. There was no railway service; Keighley, the nearest town, lay four miles down the valley. Behind the parsonage, and surrounding it, lay the silent, sweeping, endless, windy slopes of the moors. Not every eye could discern the beauty which my siblings and I found in that vast, harsh, bleak landscape. To us, the moors had always been a kind of paradise, a place into which to escape, to allow our imaginations to run free and wild.
      The parsonage, which lay atop the crest of a ruggedly steep hill, was a two-storeyed, symmetrical grey stone house built in the late eighteenth century. It overlooked a small square of crabbed lawn, which, on the other side of a low stone wall, adjoined the crowded, weedy graveyard, and beyond that the church. We were not enthusiastic gardeners; as the climate did not encourage growth other than the mosses which covered our damp stones and soil, we had but a few fruit bushes and some straggling thorns and lilacs along our semicircular gravel walk.
      Although the garden may have been neglected, our house was not. Everything about it was kept lovingly, scrupulously clean, from the sparkling, Georgian sashed window-panes to the spotless sandstone floors, which extended beyond the kitchen to all the downstairs rooms. The unpapered walls were painted a pretty dove colour; because of papa's fear of fire (and the dangerous combination of children, candles, and curtains), we had always had internal shutters instead of curtains, and only small carpets in the dining-room and parlour (papa's study). All our rooms, upstairs and down, were compact but well-proportioned, our furnishings scant but sturdy: hair-seated chairs and sofa, mahogany tables, and a few bookshelves filled with the classics we had relished since childhood. The parsonage was not a grand house by any means, but it was the largest in Haworth, and as such held some distinction; we neither required nor desired more; we dearly loved its every nook and cranny.
      "Here we are, seven months without a curate in Haworth to assist papa," said I, "if you do not count Reverend Joseph Grant of Oxenhope, who is too busy with his new school to be of any real help."
      "Is not papa meeting with a prospective candidate for the curacy to-morrow?"
      "Yes." Since I had been handling my father's correspondence for some months, I knew a little bit about the gentleman in question. "He is a Mr. Nicholls from Ireland. He responded to papa's advertisement in The Ecclesiastical Gazette."
      "Perhaps he will suit."
      "We can always hope. A good curate will buy papa a measure of time, and then we can all determine what we must do."
      "There be no sich thing as a good curate ony more," grumbled Tabby, our white-haired servant, in her broad Yorkshire drawl, as she hobbled into the kitchen with a basket of apples from the larder. "Them young parsons to-day is so high an' so scornful, they set everybody beneath their fit. In this house, I'm a servant, an' so not worthy o' their civility; an' they're always speaking against Yorkshire ways an' Yorkshire folk. An' th' way they drop i' from th' sky for tea or supper at th' parson's house, why there be no excuse for 't. It's just for naught else but t' give women-folk trouble."
      "I would not mind so much," I interjected, "if they would only seem satisfied with what we serve them; but they always complain."
      "Th' old parsons is worth th' whole lump o' college lads," said Tabby with a sigh as she sank into a chair at the table and began to peel the apples. "They know what belongs t' good manners, an' is kind t' both high an' low."
      "Tabby," said I suddenly, glancing at the clock on the mantel, "has the post come?"
      "Aye, an' there be nothing for ye, bairn."
      "Are you sure?"
      "I have two eyes, don't I? Who d'ye expect t' be writing? Didn't ye jist get a letter from your friend Ellen, not two days sin'?"
      "I did."
      Emily glanced sharply at me. "Do not tell me you are still hoping for a letter from Brussels?"
      I felt a heat rise to my face, and perspiration break out on my brow; I told myself it was the warmth of the fire, and had nothing to do with Emily's remark, or the intensity of her penetrating gaze. "No, of course not," I lied. I wiped my forehead with the corner of my apron. In so doing, my spectacles became dotted with flour; I removed them briefly, and gave them a gentle polishing.
      In truth, I had five precious letters from Brussels hidden in the bottom drawer of my dresser: letters from a certain man, which had been read and re-read so often that they threatened to crumble at the creases from wear. I longed for yet another missive, but it had been a full year since I received the last one, and the sought for letter never came. I felt Emily's eyes upon me; of all the people in the family, she knew me best—and she never missed a thing. Before she could say more, however, the wire of the door-bell began to vibrate; then the bell itself rang.
      "Who could 'at be i' this awful weather?" asked Tabby.
      At the sound of the bell, the two dogs who had been lying contentedly by the fire leapt to their feet. Flossy, our sweet-natured, silky-haired, black-and-white King Charles Spaniel, just blinked with quiet interest. Emily's dog Keeper, a bulky, lion-like, black-headed mastiff, barked loudly and bolted for the kitchen door; in a flash, Emily grabbed his brass collar and held him back.
      "Keeper, hush!" exclaimed Emily. "I do hope it is not Mr. Grant or Mr. Bradley come for tea. I am in no mood to serve the local curates to-day."
      "It is too early for tea," said I.
      Keeper continued to yap furiously; it took all of Emily's might to restrain him. "I will lock him in my room," said Emily, as she hastened out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
      I understood Emily's abhorrence of strangers well enough to know that she would not be returning with equal haste. As Tabby was old and lame, and Martha Brown, the servant-girl who generally handled the heaviest share of our house-work, had gone home for a week with a sore knee, it was my unspoken job to answer the door.
      Hot and tired after a full morning in the kitchen, I had no time to consider my appearance, other than a passing glance in the entrance-hall looking-glass. I had never liked to look at my image; I was extremely small and short of stature, and I always found dissatisfaction in the plain, pale face reflected there. Now, to further my dismay, a brief glimpse reminded me that I was attired in my oldest and most unflattering dress; a kerchief covered my head; my apron was streaked with flour and spices from the pie in progress; and my hands and forehead were dusted with flour as well. I quickly dabbed at my forehead with my apron, which only made matters worse.
      The bell rang again. With Flossy's toe-nails clicking against the stone floor at my heels, I hastened down the hall, went to the front door, and opened it.
      Rain and wind blew in with a frigid blast. A young man who appeared to be in his late twenties stood on the steps before me, clad in a black coat and hat, beneath a beleaguered black umbrella, which, to his consternation, suddenly turned inside out in a gust of wind. With the partial protection of the umbrella now gone, he appeared, at first glance, like nothing so much as a very tall, drowned rat. His squinting, frantic efforts to right his umbrella and blink back the driving rain made it difficult to accurately perceive his features, a circumstance compounded when, upon catching sight of me, he immediately withdrew his hat, receiving in return an even more thorough dousing from the elements.
      "Would your master be at home?" The Celtic lilt of his deep, rich voice, which at once announced his Irish origins, was further complicated by a hint of Scottish.
      "My master?" I repeated indignantly—an emotion followed by mortification. He had mistaken me for a servant! "If you are referring to the Reverend Patrick Brontë, he is indeed at home, sir, and he is my father. Please excuse my appearance. I do not generally greet visitors covered in flour from head to toe. It is baking-day."
      The young man did not appear in the least perturbed by his blunder (perhaps because he was being pelted by freezing rain), but only said, squinting, "I beg your pardon. I'm Arthur Bell Nicholls. I've been corresponding with your father regarding the position of curate. I wasn't expected until to-morrow, but as I arrived in Keighley a day earlier than anticipated, I thought I might drop by."