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 Bronte.”
“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 Bronte, 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 Bronte,” 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 Bronte. 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 Bronte, 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.”