“Then what did happen?” George asked. “Where did you go?”
“I was arrested and put in Newgate Prison,” I said.
Shocked gasps burst from everyone at the table. George said, “Whatever for?”
I explained that I had gone to call on Katerina and described the condition in which I’d found her. “I didn’t kill her. I was wrongfully arrested.” I didn’t tell the Smiths what had happened afterward. If I told them where I’d been last night, they would never believe me. Indeed, there was much about me that they would never believe. But my manner must have convinced them that I was telling the truth about my arrest.
“How terrible.” Mrs. Smith spoke with pity and distaste, but she couldn’t hide her delight.
I suppose I should have been embarrassed about what had happened and fearful of what the Smiths would think of me; but I had other, bigger concerns.
George was aghast. “Why didn’t you let me know?”
“I tried to send word.” I told him about the priest at the police station. “But it seems the priest didn’t bother to deliver the message.”
“That’s unfortunate,” George said. “Had I received it, I would have hurried to your rescue at once.”
Some impulse made me look at Mrs. Smith. Her expression was compounded of slyness and pleasure. George’s gaze followed mine. Astonishment appeared on his face as he drew the same conclusion that I had. “The priest did come,” he said. “I wasn’t at home. He delivered his message to you, didn’t he, Mother?”
She stammered, then said, “Well, yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” George demanded.
Guilt flushed her cheeks. “When the priest said Miss Bronte had been arrested, I didn’t believe him. I thought he was a prankster.” It was obvious to me that she was lying. I could tell by their expressions that it was obvious to George and her other children as well. They all looked appalled. “I didn’t want to bother you,” she finished lamely.
I had turned the other cheek to her gibes, but this malicious act I could not tolerate. “You knew I was in trouble and you deliberately turned your back on me! Madam, you are a selfish, jealous, wicked woman!”
She reacted with the chagrin of someone who has been tormenting a cat and had it suddenly scratch her. I could have raged at her until Christmas, but as her family gaped in shock at both of us, I remembered that George was my publisher and refrained from telling off his mother as thoroughly as I would have liked.
“I won’t inconvenience you any further,” I said, icily polite now, to Mrs. Smith. Then I walked out of the room.
I heard Mrs. Smith sputter and George say to her, “You and I will talk later.” He hurried after me. “Charlotte, wait!” He caught up with me outside the house. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gotten into Mother. I thought she liked you.”
Men are so thickheaded, I thought. “It’s quite all right.”
“No, it isn’t,” George said. “That my mother would do such a thing to an author of mine! And I’d hoped you and she could be friends. Because…” He gazed into my eyes. I was dismayed to see tenderness in his. “I’d hoped that you and I-that perhaps we could be more than author and publisher.”
Once I would have thrilled to hear that. Now I had no time to let him down gently. I had only a few days of freedom, their definite number unknown. “George, I’m sorry, but what you suggest is impossible. I am not the sort of woman who could make you happy. Please say no more. Let us just continue to be friends.”
George was clearly disappointed, and surprised. “Well. If that’s what you wish.” Few women he knew would have spurned him. Then I saw a gleam in his eyes: he was a man who relished a challenge. “Friends, then. For now.”
I was glad his feelings hadn’t been hurt too much, but sorry that I’d not discouraged him. I saw a carriage coming up the road, hailed it down, and climbed inside. “Goodbye.”
“Are you going back to Haworth?” George called as the carriage rattled away.
“Yes.” I called to the driver, “Take me to Euston Station.”
Although time was short, I had to return home. There I could recover from my ordeal. Only there could I find enough peace of mind to figure out how to exonerate Slade and myself.
22
The experience of a journey between Haworth and anywhere else depends on which direction I am traveling. A trip to London takes all night, requires a four-mile walk or wagon ride to Keighley Station and a change of trains in Leeds, and severely taxes my health and nerves. Yet no matter that the return trip involves the same exertions, I feel myself rejuvenating the closer I get to Haworth. It is as if home exerts a life-giving force that heals body and soul. Although I cannot bear the isolation of Haworth for long, and I repeatedly flee from it, I am always drawn back.
Rain fell as I rode in the wagon, whose tattered canopy did little to keep me dry. The moors were sodden, the morning sky an unrelieved gray. When I reached the village of drab stone cottages, I felt like a sailor who has been lost at sea and finds himself miraculously washed up on the shore of his native land. But, even though Haworth was the same as it had been forever, my own position there had changed during recent years.
The farmers, shopkeepers, and housewives I met spoke their usual respectful greetings to me, but when I passed, I heard the buzz of conversation: “What a surprise that our Miss Bronte turned out to be the famous authoress!”
I was no longer just the spinster daughter of their parson, for my fame had spread to Yorkshire. Indeed, the local people had been the first to deduce Currer Bell’s identity. The postmistress had noticed the many letters and packages I received from London, and I suspected that she’d opened my correspondence with my publisher and gossiped about it. The cat was let out of the bag when the brother of my old school friend had gone about bragging that he knew Charlotte Bronte was Currer Bell. But the fact that I was an object of gossip, stares, and criticism was my own fault. I had written fictional settings and characters that bore too strong a resemblance to those real places and people upon which they were based. Too many folks had recognized them and decided that only a local person could have written Jane Eyre and Shirley. They’d eventually tracked Currer Bell to my door.
The wagon left me at the bottom of the road that led up the hill to my house, the gray-brick parsonage. Although I was nearly ill from exhaustion, my heart was lighter than it had been since the day I’d seen Slade in Bedlam. The stimulating essence of inspiration flowed, and suddenly I knew what my next step should be.
In order to find Slade, I must first find Niall Kavanagh. In order to find Kavanagh, I must go back to the point where this whole business had started.
Unfortunately, that was not to happen without complications.
As I toiled up the hill, I met Arthur Bell Nicholls, my father’s curate. He lumbered along beside me. A tall, heavily built man, he had heavy features in a square face adorned with thick black eyebrows and side-whiskers. “Back from London, are ye?” he said in his strong Irish brogue.
He often seized on opportunities to talk to me, and more often of late. I didn’t understand why, since we had little in common. Mr. Nicholls was a stolid, conventional man of the cloth, while I hardly led a conventional life. I didn’t much care for him, and today I was in no mood for his dull attentions.
“If I weren’t back, you wouldn’t be seeing me here, would you?” I said.
He laughed heartily, as though I’d made a joke. I had the grace to feel ashamed, for he was a good man, diligent in his duties and a great help to Papa, kind to everyone and loved by the villagers. My terrible experiences in London were no excuse for treating him ill.
I forced myself to smile and make polite conversation. “It’s good to be home. Did anything interesting happen while I was gone?”
“I went to visit friends in Hebden Bridge,” Mr. Nicholls said.
“They’re all reading a book called Shirley, by an author named Currer Bell.” His eyes twinkled. He liked to pretend that Currer Bell’s identity was still a secret-one that we shared. When he spoke the name, he always emphasized the word “Bell.” He seemed to think it meant something special that I’d chose his middle name for my nom de plume. I’d never told him it was a joke that my sisters and I had played on him. “They had much to say about the scenes with the curates.”
