Emily's Ghost

by Denise Giardina

  William Weightman returned from six weeks away to a chorus of “halloos” in the high street as one after another welcomed him home. A gaggle of children ran to him; a coin apiece to two older boys guaranteed that his trunk would be carried to the Widow Ogden’s. Then Weightman headed for the parsonage. Emily saw him from her upstairs window as she sat reading. She heard the knock on the front door, and her father’s voice crying “Good to see you, my boy,” and the closing of the study door. She went into the parlor and sat on the sofa with her book so she might hear when Weightman emerged. When he did, he did not look about him but only straight ahead, his face grim, as he went back out the front door. Emily ran across the hall.

  “What happened?” she asked her father.

  Patrick was not surprised to see her. He took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “We talked first of his dishonesty. He admitted it at once and was repentant. Embarrassed, I would say. Then I told him how I learned about it, and warned him he must look out for himself. He was sobered, and thanked me so for telling him that I thought he might burst into tears.” Patrick set his glasses back on his nose. “It was a bit like breaking a young horse, and gave me no pleasure at all,” he said. “Especially when he was in such high spirits when he came in. I sent him away chastened, and with much to fret about. Poor boy.”

  More would ruin Weightman’s return to Haworth. He duly attended his homecoming dinner at the parsonage and remarked on Emily’s excellent duck confit. But Branwell and Anne were absent, and Charlotte remote to the point of rudeness. Weightman sat quiet, even morose. Charlotte assumed with satisfaction that he must find his return to Haworth a comedown after traveling in more civilized locales. Given the dashing of her own hopes, she had taken a perverse delight in Weightman’s loss of Agnes Walton. Let him languish on the bed he has made, and may his Welsh love prove fickle as well.

  Emily sensed Weightman’s unhappiness but could not think how to respond without giving away her own feelings. It took Patrick, the pastor, to get at the heart of the matter. As Weightman was leaving, Patrick touched his arm and said, “You seem not yourself tonight. I hope you are not unwell.”

  “Oh,” Weightman said, “it is just that I came straight from the bedside of little Susan Bland, who is dying. She is a particular favorite of mine. I will go back now; she won’t live through the night.”

  They all had been standing by to wish Weightman good night, Charlotte reluctantly. When he had gone, she seemed chastened. “Well,” she said, “I suppose there is some good in him after all.”

  Emily said nothing. She knew Susan Bland was dying. She had stood at the kitchen door that morning and ladled broth into a dish for the child’s grandmother. Thank ye, she had been told, for a mite that would barely fill five spoons. But with the wine and the jar of fruit preserves provided by Mr. Weightman, the child’s last hours would pass as well as they might.

  Emily did not want to sit beside a deathbed; she wanted instead to defy death by ignoring it. Were Death a person, she would spit in his face. But she was glad Weightman was different, for the child’s sake. He would get no sleep but would be up the next day, going about the work of a curate.

  Emily lay awake that night as though joined in Weightman’s vigil. Long after the others slept, she called Keeper, crept down the stairs, and slipped out onto the moors in back of the parsonage. There she lay on her back in the grass and watched the stars, felt the movement of the earth as it careered through space and eternity. She picked out a star for little Susan Bland to fly to. Not until the dawn birds sang did she return to her room for a few hours’ sleep.

  The child died and was interred in a tiny grave at the far edge of the cemetery. Weightman buried her, consoled her grieving family, and then life went on as before. A few mornings after, Emily met Charlotte rushing up the stairs as she was going down.

  “I am going to my room to sew,” Charlotte said as she brushed past. “Celia Amelia is in the kitchen.”

  Charlotte seemed to expect that her sister would join her, but Emily continued on. There she found Weightman sitting companionably at the table with Tabby and sipping a cup of tea.

  “Miss Emily,” Weightman said as he stood, “do come join us. Tabby has just been telling me about the fairies.”

  Emily smiled. “Indeed, Tabby knows more about the fairies than anyone in Haworth. Only Old Dean was her match.”

  “Whoosht,” Tabby said, and made a movement with both hands as if to push away compliments.

  “Tabby was just saying that when she was a child—” Weightman prompted as Emily drew up a chair and poured herself a cup of tea.

  “When I was a little ’un fairies lived on the moors and in the dells, I was saying. Yon crest of Penistone Hill was one place they met, as Old Dean has told Emily. But I was raised beyond, below Ponden Kirk. Where the great rock is, Mr. Weightman. Have you been there?”

  “I have on some of my walks,” Weightman said. “Branwell and I have hunted down below.”

  “In the shelter of the great rock at Ponden Kirk, that is where I saw the fairies when I was young. Saw them with my own een.”

  Emily had heard the tale many times but enjoyed it again, and the company.

  “I spent the night with my father’s sheep, for we sheltered ’neath the rock during a storm and it grew too dark to move about for fear of losing the way and falling into a bog. I saw their lights then, I did, though it were raining too heavy for fires, one would think. Yet these burnt on despite. Next day there were the black marks upon the ground where they had been. They could burn through the rain, fairy fires, and the little people themselves stay dry round them. I thought it might ha’ been a wedding, for there were little garlands strewn about.”

  “I wish I could see fairies,” Emily said. “When I go out at night and watch the stars, I wonder if they have fled somewhere there, to the Pleiades or beyond.”

  “They have fled,” Tabby agreed. “Sometime after I was grown. It were the factories as had driven them away.”

  “Indeed they did, Tabby,” Weightman said. “Indeed they did. And a great much else besides.”

  They fell silent, as if the fairies had laid a spell upon them. Then Weightman finished his tea and turned to Emily. “I brought something for you from Appleby,” he said, and produced a leather pouch he had placed on the floor beside his chair. “A present from the gamekeeper at Mr. Walton’s estate. Tabby tells me you still have the hawk.”

  “I do,” Emily said, and dropped her eyes. “Though I think now it might have been wrong, Mr. Weightman, even if it would be dead if we had not rescued it. For it is still in its cage and is a sad prisoner. I would not be a jailer. But I fear what would happen if I let it go. As you predicted, it is much attached.”

  “Here is a remedy,” Weightman said, and, opening the pouch, he removed several lengths of leather, a large glove, and a small handbell. He held up several short strips of leather. “Jesses and bracelets,” he said. “The bracelet goes on each leg and the jess is attached to it. And here is a collar of little bells to go around the neck while you’re training. So you can hear where the bird is when you can’t see it.” Next he unrolled two long leather leashes, one around ten feet long, the other fifty feet. “These are creances. You attach them to a jess on one leg. Use the short one at first when you are training until the hawk learns to come to you at the sound of this.” He picked up the bell and rang it a few times. Keeper, who was sleeping in the corner, raised his head and pricked his ears. “When you reach the point where you want to fly the bird out in the wild, you switch to the longer creance. You should have trained the bird to come to your fist. That is why you wear the gauntlet. And someday, if all goes well, the hawk will fly out and hunt and return to you all on its own.”

  Emily had been looking from one object to the other, her eyes wide. “Oh, Mr. Weightman,” she whispered. “Oh, Mr. Weightman.” Suddenly her eyes filled with tears and she was so ashamed for him to see that she fled into the parlor and shut the door
. After a few moments of standing in the middle of the parlor clenching and unclenching her fists and wiping her eyes, she regained her composure. Weightman was still at the kitchen table with Tabby. He showed no surprise at her sudden flight, or equally abrupt return.

  “Will you show me how?” she asked, not looking at him but kneeling beside Keeper to scratch behind the dog’s ears.

  Weightman smiled. “When I finish my tea.”

  “Lord,” Tabby said, “a good thing ’tis not wash day!”

  Emily and Weightman went to the shed with the leather pouch and a parcel of offal from the butcher’s. When they pushed open the door to the washroom, the bird squawked in greeting. Emily said, “This is Nero, Mr. Weightman.”

  “Good Lord! A bloodthirsty name!”

  “Hawks are bloodthirsty creatures, are they not?” Emily replied.

  The bird regarded the intruder with a beady eye. Weightman examined the merlin. The bird’s back was a dark bluish gray. When he opened his mouth to squawk, Weightman saw the tongue was a matching blue.

  “A male,” he said. “Take him out of the cage and hold him, since he is used to you.”

  Emily did as she was told and held Nero to her chest. Weightman took out a bracelet and showed Emily how to fix it to the bird’s right leg. Then he instructed her to hand Nero over while she attached the second bracelet to his left leg. They repeated the process with each jess.

  “He seems not to mind my holding him,” Weightman observed.

  “No,” Emily said. “He has lost his fear of humans.”

  Weightman showed Emily how to attach the shorter creance. “Are you right- or left-handed?” he asked.

  “Left-handed.”

  “Then put the glove on your right, so the left will be free.” He handed her the gauntlet, then the end of the creance. “Now let him go,” he commanded.

  She did so, and the bird made at once for the rafters, where he hopped about for a time, shocked to find himself elsewhere than his cage or Emily’s embrace. He shook himself with excitement.

  “Oh!” Emily said. She was too moved for words.

  Suddenly Nero launched out and landed on the edge of a washtub. Emily was forced to let the creance go as it tangled in the rafters, lest the bird be caught up. But Weightman stood on tiptoe and managed to retrieve and untangle it. He handed it back to Emily, and gave her the bell. He took a strip of raw meat from the pouch and hid it in his hand.

  “Now,” he said, “we must time this.” He stood close beside her and took the creance. “Hold up your fist. Then ring the bell.”

  Emily rang the bell as Weightman held up the meat next to her glove and tugged on the creance; the bird sensed the meat and the upraised fist and flew toward them, but veered and headed for a far corner of the rafters. He squawked at Weightman as though lecturing him.

  “I think,” Weightman said, “he wants me away. Perhaps he is jealous. Never mind, Nero, you must put up with me for a time.”

  He urged Emily to stand next to the bird, and then used the creance to force Nero to step on her fist while she rang the bell. Weightman thrust meat into the bird’s mouth.

  They repeated the experiment. Sometimes the bird stepped cautiously onto Emily’s upraised fist from an adjacent post; other times Weightman must use more force to guide it to the glove while Nero protested. When they moved, the bird veered away.

  But on the final attempt, Nero flew in from a distance of about five feet. The merlin settled upon the glove even as Weightman guided the meat into its open craw with two fingers. Then the hawk flapped his wings once and settled onto Emily’s upraised fist. She could feel the grip of its claws through the leather.

  For a second no one moved. Then Emily and Weightman reacted together, he crying, “It worked!” and she simply, “Oh! Oh!” Their cries startled Nero so that he flew back up into the rafters once more. He was so adamant in his refusal to return that Weightman was forced to mount a footstool and bring the bird down himself, even as Nero flapped his wings and verbally abused the man most vigorously.

  Weightman handed the merlin back to Emily and said, “That’s enough. The gamekeeper said the training sessions should be short, especially at first. And I think I have tried Nero’s patience so he will not want to see me again for a while.”

  Emily gave Nero a hug and put him back inside his cage, where he settled upon his perch and glared at the two humans.

  “I wish you had four hands,” Weightman said. “It will be harder for you to manage by yourself.”

  “When he is more consistent about gaining my fist,” Emily considered, “I can hold the bell, meat, and creance all in one hand, with the creance wrapped around my wrist in case I drop it. Later I can keep the meat close and grab it quickly after he lands.”

  “Soon you will not need the creance at all as long as you stay inside. But when you decide you are ready to try outdoors, I will help you with the longer leash.”

  “Mr. Weightman, I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Would you consider your friendship to be sufficient?”

  Emily studied Weightman and was surprised to see he was sincere. And as she judged his sincerity at that moment, another thought, equally astonishing, occurred to her—that William Weightman, gregarious and flirtatious William Weightman who was loved by many throughout Haworth, adored by women in Keighley, and esteemed as well in Appleby and beyond, was, at some other level, deeply lonely.

  An idea came to her that, even as she blurted it, she feared he would think absurd. “May I share with you a poem I wrote, as you once offered yourself in a valentine? I have shared my poems with no one except Anne. If you look for a token of my friendship, I can think of nothing that would cost me more.”

  To her relief he said, “I would be honored.”

  Emily ducked her head, unable to look at him. Then she said, “The verse is about this hawk. I hope you will not think it trivial.” She closed her eyes and recited:

  “And like myself lone wholly lone

  It sees the day’s long sunshine glow

  And like myself it makes its moan

  In unexhausted woe

  Give we the hills our equal prayer

  Earth’s breezy hills and heaven’s blue sea

  We ask for nothing further here

  But our own hearts and liberty

  Ah could my hand unlock its chain

  How gladly would I watch it soar

  And ne’er regret and ne’er complain

  To see its shining eyes no more

  But let me think that if today

  It pines in cold captivity

  Tomorrow both shall soar away

  Eternally entirely Free”

  Emily dared open her eyes. Weightman was looking at her intently.

  “That was lovely,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Emily nodded.

  “You speak of eternity as though it is not to be feared, but longed for.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I sense it will be larger.”

  “And not far away but close at hand,” he mused. Then, “You spoke of yourself as well as the falcon. Do you feel so alone, even with your family here?”

  She thought he required honesty, and so did she. “Yes,” she said. “Are you not lone as well, Mr. Weightman?”

  He didn’t answer. Then he smiled. “Might we not call one another by our Christian names?” he said.

  She considered. “You may call me Emily. Although not when the family is about, especially Charlotte. I do not know that I could call you Willie. Perhaps it will come more naturally someday.”

  Weightman laughed. “Very well. I have one more request and then I shall go. I wonder if I might have a copy of that poem? I should like very much to look at it again.”

  “You will be my first reader,” Emily said solemnly.

  She went to her room as soon as he had gone and copied out the poem in her best script on a precious sheet of paper. When she saw him leave the Sunday school building, she slipped
across the lane and into the room. She laid the poem in the middle of the desk, with his Book of Common Prayer at one corner for a paperweight.

  Emily had another gift to offer later that week. She went with Keeper to the Sunday school building and found Weightman at his desk. The curate stood, offered her a chair, and sat back in his own seat as though not at all surprised at her presence. But he noted, “When you appear unannounced, I expect a challenge.”

  “And any thoroughgoing Christian should welcome a challenge,” she answered.

  Weightman laughed and said, “Please let me hear it.”

  “You no longer go to Bradford on your day off?”

  “Not for a time,” Weightman said. “I had been visiting a young woman but I no longer—”

  “Mr. Weightman,” Emily interrupted. “I most certainly will not call you Willie if you continue your deception. I overheard the policeman talking to my father about you and the Chartists.”

  “You overheard?”

  “I eavesdropped,” Emily said. “A particular sin of mine. I know a great deal about the goings-on in Haworth and the district, Mr. Weightman, but very little of it is told to me directly.”

  “I see,” said Weightman.

  “I am aware the Metropolitan Police watch your mail. It is difficult now to be in touch with your Bradford friends.”

  Weightman studied Emily Brontë. “It is,” he said. “The mill workers here depend upon me for their news. I have not yet figured out how to continue to help them.”

  “I do not know how to restore your South Wales correspondence,” Emily said, “and I suppose your friends there will find other means. But I should be glad to receive any mail from Bradford.”

  She expected he would laugh at her. Instead he narrowed his eyes and gave another of those searching looks that seemed to scour her soul. “Events are moving toward some sort of action in the next year,” he said. “Not violent, of course, or I would not be party to it. But a stoppage of work. Would you wish to support that?”