The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë (15 page)

Ellen held a perfumed handkerchief over her nose and mouth. “This must be the most unwholesome place in the kingdom,” she said. “I hope we do not take ill.”

Illness was of secondary concern to me: I had spent the journey in dread of meeting again the two men who had attacked Anne and me. Although today’s train trip had passed without incident, I nonetheless anxiously scanned the hordes of shopkeepers, laborers, businessmen, and servants on the streets.

The cab left Ellen and me at the entrance to Eastbrook Terrace. Carrying my satchel, which contained Isabel’s package, I beheld a gloomy alley enclosed by two-story attached tenements constructed of dark, dingy brick. The pavement was covered by foul muck that was inches deep. I wondered how Gilbert White could allow his mother to live in such squalor. Surely he could afford better accommodations for his family. Did he shirk his duties as a son? Though disturbed by the thought, I held out hope that I might find him here. Perhaps he was staying with his mother, and had thus been too busy to write to me.

Boards had been set atop bricks to form bridges spanning the filth. Ellen and I gingerly walked along these, then up a staircase to Number 20. I knocked on the door.

“Come in,” called a woman’s faint voice from inside.

The room we entered was dim, its window partially covered with a muslin curtain. On a chair in the corner sat the woman, dressed in a white cap, white apron, and dark frock, her face in shadow.

“Mrs. White?” I said.

“Yes, who’s there?” the woman replied in a timid tone, craning her neck.

“My name is Charlotte Brontë,” I said, “and this is my friend Ellen Nussey.”

As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw that Mrs. White was perhaps sixty years old, frail of figure. Her face was gaunt, her pale skin lined; yet I discerned in her features the same delicately sculpted bones that Isabel had possessed. She held on her lap a cloth that looked to be a bedsheet. Her fingers plied a needle and thread, hemming the sheet in quick stitches. That she could sew in such poor light puzzled me, until a closer look at her showed filmy blue eyes gazing blankly up at me. Mrs. White was blind.

“I’m afraid your names are unfamiliar to me.” She spoke in Isabel’s voice, coarsened by age. “Have we met before?”

“I knew your daughter,” I said, uncomfortably aware that the woman was still in mourning for her child and that I was intruding at a difficult time. “We met on a train to London. She asked me to call on you.”

“Ah, you’re a friend of Isabel. I’m fair glad to meet you.” Half rising, Mrs. White extended her bony, delicate hand. I shook it, as did Ellen.

“Please, do sit down,” Mrs. White entreated.

The room contained a divan, a table, a dresser, a chest, and a cupboard, all set against the walls; a hooked rug covered the floor. Everything was spotlessly clean, despite the foul odors from the street. Ellen and I settled on the divan; I placed my satchel beside me.

“Are you come to bring word of Isabel?” said Mrs. White. “Have you seen her lately? How is she?”

Ellen and I exchanged glances of alarm and puzzlement, for it appeared that the woman did not know her daughter was dead.

Mrs. White’s expectant smile faded; she cocked her head, straining to divine the cause of our silence. “What’s wrong?” she said, suddenly fearful. “Has something happened to Isabel?”

Alas, I had no choice but to deliver the news which Gilbert White had apparently not, although he had told me he was going to Bradford to see his mother. “I am so sorry,” I faltered, “but your daughter is—Isabel has died.”

Mrs. White sat frozen for a moment, her countenance blank; then she slowly released her grip on her sewing, which slid off her lap. She whispered, “No!”

“I’m sorry,” I said again, wretched at the sight of the shock I’d caused.

Tears pooled in Mrs. White’s eyes, though she shook her head in repeated denial. “But Isabel came to visit me not three weeks ago. She were in perfect health. How can she be dead?”

With great reluctance I informed Mrs. White of the murder, omitting the horrific details. A frenzy of weeping besieged the woman. “No! It can’t be!” Her hands groped, as if in a desperate search for her daughter. “Isabel! Isabel!”

Ellen enfolded Mrs. White in her arms. I was glad Ellen had come, for she provided much better comfort than I could have. At last Mrs. White’s sobs abated. Ellen went to the kitchen to make her a cup of tea, while I stayed by her. She looked shrunken and forlorn, and suddenly older than her sixty years; her eyes were red, and her complexion mottled from her tears.

“When I was in London, I met your son,” I said. “He knows of Isabel’s death. Has he not been here?”

“My son? I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve no son.”

Her evident confusion was nothing to that which I experienced. “But he introduced himself as Isabel’s brother. His name is Gilbert. He was coming here to see you.”

“There must be some mistake,” Mrs. White said. “Isabel is—or was—my only child.”

What horror and surprise were mine! Gilbert White—I knew not what else to call him—had lied to me about his name, his past, and why he wished to know the truth about Isabel’s death. He must have arranged a false address at which to receive my correspondence. Had his attentions to me been part of the lie? A dark emptiness opened inside me, then filled with panic. An idea surfaced from the chaos in my mind.

“Has any man been to visit you since you last saw Isabel?” I asked Mrs. White.

“Only a clergyman from the benevolent society. I forget his name. A bit odd, it were. While we was talkin’, he tiptoed round the house, openin’ cupboards and movin’ things.”

My heart began to pound. Perhaps Gilbert White was the stranger who had questioned people about me in Haworth. If he had also entered Mrs. White’s house under false pretenses to search for Isabel’s package, was he now on his way to Haworth to obtain it by whatever means necessary? The thought was horrifying.

Ellen came into the room, bringing a cup of tea for Mrs. White. I decided to say nothing of more of Gilbert White, for I did not wish to trouble Mrs. White nor Ellen. I did my best to hide my emotions, while Mrs. White sipped her tea. Presently, she began to speak in a small, sad voice.

“Isabel was my only comfort after her father died. He worked in the mill until a boiler exploded and killed him. Did Isabel tell you about that?”

“No,” I said, for it had been Mr. White who’d told me. Whatever his real connection with Isabel, he must have known her well, and she had died violently. He now knew much about me. To what sinister purpose would he put his knowledge?

“When her father was killed, Isabel was ten.” Mrs. White cradled her teacup in her hands as though craving its warmth. “I got a job running a spinning machine in the factory. Isabel was in school, but I couldn’t earn enough to keep us, so she went to work at the factory, too.”

My mind pictured a pretty blonde woman and girl laboring in the dirty, noisy mill, then trudging home through the dark, dreary streets of Bradford.

“I wanted better for Isabel, but there seemed no hope,” Mrs. White continued. “Then one Sunday, some strangers came to our church. A Reverend and Mrs. Grimshaw. They said they ran a charity school in Skipton, and they was looking for poor girls who needed schoolin’. They came here and talked to Isabel alone for a long time. Afterward, they said she was just the kind of girl they wanted, and they took her away in their carriage. I hated to let Isabel go—we both cried—but I knew it was for the best.”

I imagined a frightened young Isabel, riding off into the unknown, as I had done on my own first journey to the Clergy Daughters’ School.

“While she was away,” continued Mrs. White, “she wrote to me about all the things she was learnin’ and all the nice people she’d met, and she sounded happy. But when she came home for the summer holiday, she was changed. They had fixed her hair, given her smart new clothes. She talked and acted like a lady. She was a stranger to me.”

The shadow of past worries fell over Mrs. White’s aspect. “Isabel had been such a happy, friendly, talkative child. But all the time we were together again, she never smiled nor said much. When I asked her if somethin’ was wrong, she said no. She wouldn’t talk about school at all. But at night I heard her cryin’ in bed. I was afraid I’d done wrong to send her away, so I asked her if she’d like to stay home, even though there was naught for her here but the mill. She said no, and when her holiday was over, she returned to school.”

A fragment of Isabel’s conversation came back to me:
We are indeed products of our early training.
If something had happened to Isabel at school, was that at the root of her later troubles?

“The next holiday, she seemed more like herself,” said Mrs. White, “so I stopped worrying. She were just growin’ up, I thought. And later I was glad I had let her stay at the school, because when she was eighteen, the Reverend Grimshaw found her a good post as a governess for some rich folk up in London. By that time, my sight was going, and I couldn’t work at the mill anymore. Isabel sent me money to live on.”

I should be thankful that I was given an education that won me pleasant, lucrative employment,
Isabel’s voice echoed in my mind.

“She wrote to me, but she never said much about what she was doin’ or the people she was with. She was always changin’ posts and hardly ever came home. I asked to visit her, but she always had some excuse.” Mrs. White said mournfully, “She didn’t want my company. She was risen in the world and ashamed of her mum.”

But a different explanation occurred to me: Perhaps Isabel had been ashamed of herself, for doing something she hadn’t wanted her mother to know about.

“You mentioned that you saw Isabel recently,” I said to Mrs. White. Three weeks ago would have been just before the murder. I understood why Isabel had been in Yorkshire when we met: She must have gone directly from here to the London train. “How did she behave?”

Mrs. White sighed, and her expression grew all the sadder. “She talked ever so cheerful, but I could tell she was nervous. I felt her fidgetin’ and leanin’ over to look out the window as if she was watchin’ for someone. She started at every little noise. And at night, when she thought I was asleep, I heard her cry, just like when she were a child.”

I asked Mrs. White if she knew what had ailed Isabel.

“She didn’t say. And I didn’t like to ask, because she was ever so secretive.”

Alas, it seemed that I would not learn the reason for Isabel’s death nor the identity of her killer from her mother. But my suspicions inclined ever more strongly towards Mr. White.

“Now I wish I’d made Isabel tell me what was wrong,” said her mother. “Maybe I could have helped her.” Sobs shuddered the frail old woman; her teacup sloshed, and Ellen gently removed it from her hands. “Now she’s taken her troubles to the grave. She’s gone forever, and I wish the Lord had taken me instead, for I can’t bear to live without her!”

The time had come to discharge my duty. “Before Isabel died, she wrote to me and asked me to bring you this package,” I said, and gave it to Mrs. White.

She eagerly accepted the last communication from her child. “Oh, thank you, miss,” she cried. “I’m ever so grateful.” She fumbled to open the package, then begged my assistance.

With great anticipation did I break the seal and remove the contents. There was a book bound in green cloth, and two papers—one a sheet of white stationery, the other a certificate from the Bank of England. Taking up the certificate, I said to Mrs. White, “Isabel sent you a banknote for a thousand pounds.”

Such a vast sum I had never before handled, and my companions’ faces reflected my amazement. Now I knew why Isabel wanted me to deliver the envelope: She’d deemed me less likely to steal than whoever else might have otherwise opened it for her mother.

Mrs. White exclaimed, “A thousand pounds! How generous Isabel always was! She didn’t forget her mum.” The old woman wept for joy. “But my heavens, where did she get so much money?”

I could not help thinking Isabel had come by the money dishonestly, for a governess’s savings could hardly amount to such a fortune. Perhaps she’d been carrying her ill-gotten cash in the carpetbag that she guarded so closely, and exchanged it for the note at a London bank the day she died. She must have sought me out at the Chapter Coffee House because her killer was pursuing her and she had no one else to turn to for help.

“There’s also a letter,” I said. “Would you like me to read it to you?”

“A letter from Isabel! Oh, please do, miss!”

I read aloud:

Mrs. White and Ellen listened in obvious mystification. This message from beyond the grave sent chills through me, yet offered no enlightenment. I asked Mrs. White where Isabel might have meant to go, but she could offer no suggestion. I then turned to the book.

“Isabel also sent you a copy of
The Sermons of the Reverend Charles Duckworth
,” I said, reading the title.

“But why would she send me a book?” Mrs. White shook her head in bewilderment. “She knows—she knew—I would be unable to read it.”

Leafing through the soiled, musty volume, I scanned the dull ramblings of an ordinary clergyman who had immortalized himself in this tract. Surely, no one would kill to steal it. Then I noticed words filling the inner margins of the book’s pages, penciled in Isabel’s handwriting.

“Mrs. White,” I said, “may I please borrow this book? I promise to return it.”