THE THREE WITCHES OF MILTON

Part 2 of 3

A North and South, Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice Crossover Parody

From: Parodies and Other Such Poppycock

Clearing her throat, it was Miss Bingley who began a conversation, (the conversation), which John Thornton would soon place in the top three most detestable discussions of his entire life, all eighty-four years of it. He could not have foreseen what was to come, but looking back, it all made sense, it all added up, and if he had known what he knew now, John would have got up and left the room there and then, both on principle, and in the pitiful hopes of sparing his already fraught heart.

If only he had known.

'How very ill Miss Halelooked today at church. I have never in my life seen a woman so altered as she is since the winter!' she declared, conspicuously stridently, just to be sure she was heard loud and clear as the woman fired her opening shot in this battle, this war of women in which she was determined to win and lay claim to the spoils.

John stilled in an instant, his strong hands clutching his newspaper possessively, protectively, the whites of his knuckles showing as they shook, and with the froth of resentment fermenting in his belly, he snarled. All thoughts of the Navigation Act flew from his mind, since he did not care a fig for anything else when his senses were alerted to the supremacy of that name, the one and only name that provoked him so, disturbing his sanity.

Oh! So this was their game, was it? Of course! That would explain why they were here…those hags!

'Yes! She is always so grave and severe,' Fanny agreed conspiratorially, her mother narrowing her eyes and shaking her head in chastisement, the daughter ducking her own and blushing at her pathetic attempt at wickedness, her tongue not nearly as poisonous nor as practised in the art of malevolence as her friend's. It was true that Miss Thornton may have had a snide side to her, but in reality, she was harmless, her heart much more caring than people often gave her credit for.

'Quite! Your sister and I were agreeing that we would hardly know her again, what say you, Mr Thornton?' Miss Bingley pronounced, leaning back as she called towards him over her lace-trimmed shoulder, her enunciation cloying in its venomous quip. 'I thought she looked absolutely dreadful.'

John bit down on his tongue, his indignation flaring up at hearing that woman, that saintly creature who was too good, too pure for all their hideous souls combined to ever rival, being belittled in such a manner. It was enough to make him shout and swear at Miss Bingley. Heck! Why was hearing her mistreated so damned excruciating to him? This goddess who cared not whether he lived or died, he was her willing slave, she being his undisputed master who commanded him like a puppet on a string.

Oh! How the mighty fall, good sir, how the powerful tumble down from their pedestals of crumbling dust, and there the vanquished Hercules collapses at the feet of a woman. But I should not goad him so, that is not what friends do, but still, I cannot forgive him for being so stubborn as to shield his heart from her, choosing not to go to her and confess all the treasures reserved there in her name, jewels of ardour that he both conceals and cherishes in that tomb of lonely longing.

Ha! − how poetic, thought he, my words amusing rather than annoying him. But even the poets could not save him now, since John was just a man, an ordinary man with nothing remarkable to say for himself, and how could one so inadequate in both word and deed ever be worthy of wooing a woman as incomparable as she?

Still, John refrained from any such profanity on his part, because not only would it be abominably rude to lash out at Miss Bingley, no matter how much she deserved his wrath, but his defensive outburst would also be revealing, far too enlightening, uncovering the truth of the sentiments he harboured in honour of that sweet lady of whom they scorned without shame.

Taking a deep breath, John tried his best to moderate his tone, his anger simmering beneath the surface like a pot of stewing ire that was about to boil over and scald him, leaving him with the fetid blisters of rage to perpetually hurt him, as if this young man did not wear enough scars, inside and out, to bitterly grieve him.

'I noticed no great difference,' he said coolly, congratulating himself on his bravado of indifference, even if within, his heart was screaming out in rebellion, these mere few words of derision against his darling girl mutilating John like the thrusts of a razor-sharp knife, those rusty teeth slicing at his soul.

God help him if they continued!

But needless to say, they did.

Yet here we must pause and take stock, because before we continue any further with this script of their merciless jibes, it is only right to ask ourselves why these three ladies would take the time and make the effort to besmirch Miss Hale's character at all?

The reason is really very simple. All three women had set their cap at Mr Thornton for many months, each one of them already disappointed in love, and vowing never to let it happen again, their new victim denied the right to slip through their fingers and escape their marital clutches. Nevertheless, no matter what sneaky devices they employed, none of them could get the master to pay them the slightest attention. It was almost as if, as far as he was concerned, none of them existed. As much as this had miffed them, offending their vanity, they had at least been gratified to know that the private man seemed disinterested in every young lady who fawned over him, showering him with their flattery and flirtation, his love and lust alike a prize that nobody could buy, bribe or beg from this gentleman of staunch honour.

Then she had arrived.

It had not taken the love-sick ladies long to notice how Mr Thornton's interest had been aroused by the somewhat disorientating presence of Miss Hale, this pious girl who had ridden in on her moral high horse, festooned in her drab clothes, and stolen his curiosity without any effort or intention. Even although nothing official had been declared on either side, it was obvious that the man was smitten with her, a hex that she had cast upon him from the very first day they had met. While some men would make subtle public remarks about their infatuation, he was not so uncouth, but they could all see it, they could all see it in the way he looked at her, those long, lingering, longing stares. They spied it in the way his chest thudded as his heart beat faster at the sight of her, the way his ears pricked at the mention of her, and the way his lips curled at the thought of her.

Yes, Mr Thornton was in love, madly so, and as a result, it was their duty, not to mention their pleasure, to permanently destroy, or rather, de-spell, his enchantment with Miss Hale, and that was what this gathering on this seemingly inoffensive Sunday afternoon was all about.

At any rate, I talk too much, as always, and I digress, so let us listen in once more to what they had to say about our dear girl from Helstone.

'She looks so thin,' Miss Ingram assessed, since while she esteemed the slender female form, she could not abide it when a woman dared to have a more shapely waist than she, her hungry stomach growling beneath her corset as she resisted the enticing display of mouth-watering delicacies that sat mere inches from her, taunting her with their golden pastry, ripe jam, and fluffy cream. Smacking her lips, she tried not to think of Miss Hale's pleasing curves and the way she had seen many a man cast a satisfied glance her way as the woman walked past them, none the wiser to the mesmeric pull she possessed. It peeved Miss Ingram to consider that the girl, that country bumpkin of no discernible pedigree, had the audacity to be willowy and yet so unfairly well-rounded all at once, a dual achievement that was more infuriating than she could say.

However, as she was about to surrender to her greed and reach out to snatch a piece of oral heaven in the form of a biscuit drenched in honey, Miss Ingram stopped, because she was jolted by the sound of Mr Thornton's gruff retort.

'Is it any wonder that Miss Hale is a little downcast, given that she has been obliged to endure so much anguish in recent months?!' he challenged, his head twisting round the side of his chair as he glared at them, his features menacing as his eyes gleamed with tempestuous confrontation. His blue irises were ignited by the fitful blinking of the fire, a bewitching spectacle to behold, the effect defining the ends of his coal-black hair to glint like polished spikes, the vivid embers in the hearth swaying chaotically as a blustery northern breeze blew down the chimney to chill the party of not-so-merrymakers.

'She has had to contend with a great deal!' he argued, rustling his paper as he tried to find something to read, anything at all, to improve his plummeting mood. Pondering on all that she had suffered over the past year, John thought about the way that Miss Hale had been forced to leave her home, a paradise which by all accounts was idyllic, and come here, to a town where the people were no doubt strange to her, the smog of the factories blighting her sensibilities and turning her against this metropolis of materialism and all those whom she deemed culpable as abettors to the iniquity of inexcusable greed. Good grief! John would count himself a warrior of a man indeed if he could stomach half the upheaval and unhappiness she had borne in such a short space of time and still hold his head high in all the stately dignity that she did with such easy grace and good-humour. Miss Hale was a lioness of a woman, and so, she should be venerated, not condemned, especially by those not even worthy to shine her shoes.

'Not to mention the passing of her mother, God rest her soul,' Mrs Thornton chimed in pensively, patting the cross which rested around her neck, the only trinket she ever wore aside her wedding ring, a simple brass and silver symbol of her faith passed down to her by her grandmother. Mrs Thornton may have had a low opinion of the late Mrs Hale, what with all her ridiculous low spirits, but that was irrelevant, because death was a solemn matter that warranted respect, and she herself remembered only too well what it was like to lose a mother, she being the same age as Miss Hale when it had happened.

John grunted noisily in agreement. 'Aye, that too,' he granted, pleased that his mother had stepped in and spoken some sense, her surprising defence of Miss Hale almost enough to make him forgive the fact that she had coerced him to stay here this afternoon, trapped in this den of malign mockery.

Nevertheless, the ladies were not prepared to put up with his infuriating logic blinded by love, each of them having several more criticisms regarding Miss Hale squirreled away in their arsenal.

Propelling her nose into the air, Miss Bingley wrinkled it in disdain. 'Yes,' she conceded, rather half-heartedly, her tone insipid in its diluted sympathy. 'But honestly, that is no excuse! The girl is quite beyond the pale. And speaking of pale, she is no such thing. She is so brown and coarse, most unladylike,' she disparaged, shaking her head gravely, as if the sight of a slight tan upon the skin was an indefensible crime against femininity.

Miss Latimer chuckled in harmony as her grey eyes rolled. 'That is what one gets for pigheadedly traipsing about outdoors at all hours with no chaperone,' she tittered, underlining Miss Hale's disgraceful conduct, trudging about the town visiting the dirty and dissolute labourers of Princeton, not a care in the world regards her safety or the diseases she might contract from their grubby houses, if houses were what one could call those squalid hovels. No, there was one thing for sure, Mr Thornton would not like that, and so, this ruse was sure to devalue his enamoured infatuation with the southern flower, the thought of her being sullied by mingling with the great unwashed enough to turn him green with disgust.

'To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! What could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum!' Miss Bingley added with animation, because, you see, the thought of a young lady scampering about and catching the eye of any passers-by was enough to make her scream, since it reminded her of another minx who had done just that. The insolent girl from Hertfordshire may have won out with all her walking, her ploys now giving her the right to roam the grounds of Pemberley as her own and pollute their shades, but mark her words, this time, Miss Bingley would not let a plain bit of frock ruin her chances.

John let out a boisterous, "ha!," his paper crumpling as he threw it down on his lap, odd, since he always took meticulous care of his belongings, no matter how small or significant they may be, years of hardship training him to be careful with what he had.

'I think it hardly surprising she is so tanned,' he maintained. 'Not when she spends every waking hour going here and there to attend to the needs of the sick and impoverished, never a thought for her own wants! It is easy for a woman to be as pale as milk if she sits inside all day long and does no more than gossip,' he ridiculed pointedly, the ladies behind him puffing in indignation as they fanned themselves, their temperatures rising along with their tempers.

'It is to be expected that a lady will acquire a little ruddiness to her complexion if she goes about some hard work and applies herself,' he lectured, his mind wandering to think of Miss Hale's delectably alluring skin with her tapered arms, petite hands, and curvaceous chest, all dusted in a hue of russet, giving her a healthy glow that heated his own red blood, turning it into a frenzied splutter that pounded in his chest with the sole purpose of serving her, thrumming a constant beat of devotion.

God save him, John was helpless when it came to her.

That would explain why he had…why he had abandoned his principles and protected Miss Hale from undergoing the ordeal of a public enquiry, keeping her out of danger from both the convicting punishment of the law and the reproachful verdict of society, even if it had been at the sacrificial cost of his own integrity. But John did not regret it, no, and he would do it all again, time and time again, if only it meant she could be spared, that she would be safe, no matter what became of him as a consequence.

Closing his eyes, John reached out a finger and traced the spattering of freckles that speckled her rosy cheeks, adorning that cherubic face that he could map every inch of, something he did every night while he tried in vain to fall asleep. Smiling, he pictured those irresistibly impertinent lips that told him off more than they volunteered to utter a compliment. God! What he would give to see those rosette petals bend upwards, just a touch, all so that she might smile at him. And, oh! To kiss them, to press his own untrained lips against her own and feel the soft and supple flesh of her virgin mouth compel against his own and couple with him. It was too delicious to describe, and the very idea drove John mad with hunger, causing his nails to dig into the arms of his chair and scratch brutally at the wood, just so that he could stop himself from crying out to her.

Still, John was brought back to the moment by yet another nit-picking comment, one which troubled him, because it made him wonder whether his guests, (not that they were his guests), could read his mind.

'For my part, I must confess, I never saw any beauty in her face. Her features are not at all handsome. Her complexion has no brilliancy. Oh, her teeth are tolerable, I suppose, but nothing out of the common way,' Miss Bingley prattled on, listing Miss Hale's apparent failings.

John made a silent, "what?!" with his mouth, his face scrunched up in exasperation. Her teeth?! Were they talking about a woman or a horse here?

'Miss Hale has a simplicity about her which some men find attractive,' John snapped before he had a chance to consider the candour of his retort. 'Some gentlemen are not thrilled by tawdry baubles that hang here, there, and everywhere on a woman. No, they are drawn to the aura of her character. While many a woman may need dresses to disarm her suitor, others require nought but her unadorned self, the grandeur of her mind, the magnificence of her force of nature, and the tenderness of her heart, these will be enough to charm any man and secure his good opinion, rendering him lost to her!' On asserting this, John could not help but blush beneath his bristles to think that in essence, he was in fact depicting Miss Hale as being perfection itself in her exposed modesty, as in, naked.

Self-consciously, he finished: 'Yes, some women are arguably plain, but then again, some men find that pretty.'

Miss Ingram gritted her teeth, (rather horse-like, actually), as she grumbled. 'And as for her eyes,' she ventured, pretending that he had said nothing at all, 'of which I have sometimes heard called fine. I could never perceive anything extraordinary in them. I think in her air, there is altogether a self-sufficiency without fashion which I find intolerable.' At this, Miss Ingram gave her friends a punitive glare, extremely annoyed by their lack of headway in squashing Mr Thornton's affection for Miss Hale.

When a woman is self-sufficient, then she does not need to rely on any form of fashion, thought John.

On gaining no audible reply from him, Miss Ingram decided to play another card, because at the end of the day, there was nothing that pleased a man more than being soft-soaped and buttered-up by a compliment from a woman. 'A man should pay no heed to his good looks, he should only possess strength and valour. Gentleman or highwaymen, his beauty lies in his power,' she theorised, projecting her well-polished voice, given that she knew the man sitting irksomely far away from her was keen on philosophy, his few precious hours of leisure spent with his nose buried in a book. However, when they were wed, she would ensure that his attention was firmly transferred and transfixed upon her at all times.

Miss Ingram was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite feeling. Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say. She was very showy, but she was not genuine; she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments, but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature; nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness. She was not good; she was not original; she used to repeat sounding phrases from books; she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment, but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her.

John scoffed, and this time, he stood up, bounding out of his chair and disturbing it enough to make it scrape backwards across the wooden floor with alarming vigour, impressive if one took into account the heft of its solid build. Soaring to his feet, the master loomed above them all, tall and terrifying with his intimidating stance. His shoulders, muscular sculptures of bone and flesh, were hunched over forebodingly as he stooped, his arched bearing almost affecting him to appear deformed, like a wounded animal that might strike out spontaneously at any moment.

With his eyes flashing with the blaze of outrage, he stared at the women beneath the hood of his thick brows, his teeth almost gnashing as he snarled at them most savagely.

They had well and truly gone and done it now!

'You think a man, a true man, so shallow?' he disputed in abhorrence at being labelled as such a contemptible sod just because of his sex, a branding that was dictated by nothing more than a shaft between his legs that he had no say or sway over whether it was there or not. 'Yes, power gives us options, it gives us privilege, and I daresay, a degree of gratification, for we are human, after all, and as so, we are corrupted by a hunger for self-promotion. But a gentleman is so much more than that!' John asserted hotly. 'What of decency? Humility? Generosity? Should a man not be grounded in honour as well as brute strength? Does character not give us courage more than achievement does? Because while one is fickle and fleeting, the other endures if it is authentic, allowing us to be resilient in withstanding the trials of life,' he reasoned still, stalking towards them like a tiger, the ladies all leaning back in fright, whilst at the same time, tilting forwards, desperate to get close to his fierceness and be burnt by the thrill of his ferocity.

Miss Ingram swallowed thickly, gulping at the sight of his striking form edging nearer and nearer, so close that she could almost smell the sweet and spicy aroma of his sweat, her eyes hypnotised by the way his Adam's apple bobbled as he roared at them.

'I meant,' she began, licking her lips, since they were as dry as parched soil in the heat of summer. 'I mean more that a woman should value these attributes of which I speak more in a man, than in herself. She should seek them out in her partner and praise him for embodying them. In contrast, it would be wrong if she herself were to crave or cultivate these faculties.'

John knitted his temple sardonically. 'Why?' he pressed, unimpressed by her baseless reasoning.

'Because we women are feeble in comparison to men!' Miss Latimer piped up, envious of the amount of time and attention Mr Thornton was dedicating to Miss Ingram, albeit as he ridiculed her.

Fluttering her eyelashes, Miss Latimer continued. 'We merely have our good looks and charms to recommend us,' she explained, a hand lifting to delicately fondle the ringlets of blonde which hung about the nape of her neck in carefully set spirals. 'It is true that we may be validated by means of our accomplishments, but that is as far as our talents go. On the other hand, when it comes to a man, he can boast of greater things, since he is endowed with so much more than us inferior women. He can also be brave. He can be dominant. He can be energetic. He can be unique. And most of all, he can be autonomous, he can be the master of his own fate,' she described with slow and seductive teasing, deftly choosing her phrases as to define the attributes she recognised in him, ones which she misguidedly thought he championed also, the word, "master," being no blunder.

John stepped back, dumbfounded. 'And can a woman not claim any of these for herself?' he asked after a while, his voice weak, reflecting the shock he felt to hear Miss Latimer so easily condemn her own kind to a fate of subservience.

'No!' Miss Bingley hollered, rather abruptly, causing her companions to gawk at her in fright. 'That is,' she corrected, a little embarrassed, 'a woman can, but she should not, for her own sake as well as others. Women who attempt to be the equal of a man are not praiseworthy characters. All this desire to be headstrong, obstinate and independent, it is not natural for a woman to aspire to such individuality, and so, she should not be rewarded for it,' she hissed severely, thinking of one such woman who had used her intrepid ways and fine eyes to capture the only man Miss Bingley had ever truly wanted. 'No, there are not many women out there like that, they are rare, thank goodness!'

John cast his eyes to the ground and soberly thought on this. Hmm, rare indeed. It occurred to him there and then that such a woman was as uncommon as stardust, and more precious still for all her astounding originality. Therefore, when a man found her amongst the masses of conventional people upon this earth, unexceptional souls that excited him not, if he were lucky enough to discover such a creature as she, he should do all he could to encourage her friendship, and, in time, work to win her hand and thus secure the cherished gift that was her heart, something he would treasure always.

So, why had he stopped trying?

And what was more, had Miss Hale been right all along? Had he never really tried to win her over at all? Had his fears of rejection got in the way and prevented him from opening up to her? Had he failed to be honest with her, sharing with her the sacred sentiments of his heart?

Perhaps.

Perhaps he had been too reserved. Perhaps he had been too hasty. Perhaps he had been too officious. Perhaps he had been too impatient. Perhaps he had been far too unforgiving.

Oh, help!

Perhaps he had deserved her refusal after all.