A Brontë Romance

In the rainy month of November, the English countryside is but a gray husk. A modern Mr. Rochester is reading in his study when a knock comes on the door.

Six months into my stay at Thornfield Hall, the season was in that peculiar limbo between autumn and winter. Outside, the skeletal poplars of the garden stooped in apparent gloom over their once red, orange, and yellow dresses that were slowly turning brown on the soggy ground. The sky itself was an imitation of the gray color and lackluster of the gravel in the courtyard. 

I sat in my study, emerged in a play by Beckett when cold November rain started trickling down the windows. Shuddering, I went over to the fireplace and put another log into the churning flames. That’s when the doorbell chimed. 

With a sigh, I journeyed down the curved staircase and along the dreary corridors towards the entrance hall. The sight that met me when I opened the door was one of pure misery. A girl, no older than twenty years, was shivering in the downpour. Her soaked coat looked heavy on her tawny shoulders, and her hair was clinging in wet disarray to her bony cheeks. 

“What do you want?”

“Good sir, I only seek refuge from the weather,” she said, her teeth chattering. “I am frozen and wet, please have pity on me!”

I might be a loner and a bit of an eccentric, but I do possess a heart, and after helping her shed the drenched coat I led her by the hand into the gallery. Her fingers felt fragile and clammy, much like melting icicles. While I fanned the flames in the fireplace, she stepped out of her wet dress and draped it on the mantelpiece. Her underdress was dark from wetness at the edges and hems, but she was modest enough to keep it on. She climbed into the sofa closest to the fire, and I handed her a thick blanket. Then I sat down in an armchair opposite of her and returned to my studies. 

Soon her teeth stopped chattering, and she started shifting awkwardly in the sofa. The reason for her discomfort, I mused, was probably the neglected civilities, such as the introduction and pleasant chitchat. I watched her squirm for a while, pretending to read. Her face was sickly pale, and her delicate hands worked hard to wring the water from her long locks of brown hair.

“Let me guess, your name is Jane, and you’re a teacher looking for work?” I said after a while.

She looked at me - a brief wrinkle of indignation rippling her brow. 

“Do I appear a servant, Sir?” 

“It’s hard to tell from the way you dress.”

“You jest at my expense!” she said, covering up her underdress further in the blanket. “A decent host would introduce himself and offer a hot beverage.”

“Who said I’m decent?”

“You are right!” she cried, color finally touching her cheeks.  “And I shall be gone as soon as the rain has left my hair and the dress is fit to be seen. Preserve in your precious loneliness!”

“By all means, if I were in need of company I wouldn’t have bought this property, to begin with.”

She gasped at my rudeness and turned her face towards the fire. Feeling guilty, I closed the book and looked at her.

“Fine,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Catherine Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights,” she muttered without looking at me.

“Miss Earnshaw, I apologize, I have little interest in pleasantries,” I said. “But if you want to a genuine conversation I can oblige.”

She shrugged but looked at me again.

“So, tell me, what is your passion in life; what makes Catherine Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights’s world turn?”

“Life in itself is my passion,” she said slowly. “Life and love are the cornerstones of my existence.”

“Who is it that you love then?”

She took a deep breath and gazed dreamily at the ceiling. 

“He is a tempest with tousled raven hair. His eyes are black like glowing embers,” she said, closing her eyes. “He is the most stubborn of men.”

Her fingers curled into fists, and her lips pouted, but when her eyes reopened, they were burning with lust.

“Oh you see, Sir, he is not the same as he once was; now he would not relent one moment to keep me out of the grave. *That* is how I’m loved! Well, never mind. That is not my Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me; he is in my soul!”

*****

Edward put his phone down and glanced at the clock. The library was about to close, and he needed to return the books. He found them on the kitchen table; their pages intertwined and locked in a paper-thin embrace. He didn’t remember leaving them like that. The cover of Jane Eyre was comforting the spine of Wuthering Heights.

An idea struck him. What if the characters met? How would that play out? He knew now what he was going to write for his literature course! Perhaps he could extend the time of the loan and explore it? Maybe he could make Catherine and Mr. Rochester fall in love?