Emily's Ghost

by Denise Giardina

  “I would. I have long had sympathy for the workers.”

  “And how would you explain the letters to your family?” he said.

  “Aunt Branwell will not notice. She is more and more frail, and spends most of her time upstairs in her room. Anne and Branwell are away. Charlotte—” Emily thought a moment. “I hide much from Charlotte. My writing, especially. She is always urging me to publish my poetry, when I deny I am even composing it. I love my sister, but I will not jump through hoops for her like a circus animal. I shall hide the correspondence before I pass it on to you, but if she notices, I can pretend it is related to my poetry, and put her off by claiming privacy. Besides, she may not be in Haworth long. She has received an offer of a position as governess and is likely to take it after the New Year.”

  “And your father? He has already chastised me for subterfuge.”

  “As have I,” Emily said. “So you may choose between us.”

  When Weightman shook his head as though he could not believe what he was hearing, Emily hastened to add, “I know how my father esteems you. He loves you like a son, especially as his own has been such a disappointment. Besides, I see no need to worry him about something so trivial as letters. And as he has declined in age, he has delegated the task of fetching the mail to me.”

  “And what of gossip in the village about any letters you might receive?” Weightman said. “I notice that my own romantic attachments turn up quite often as a conversation piece among our good neighbors.”

  “Would it not be entertaining,” Emily said, “to wonder who might be writing Mr. Brontë’s odd daughter? But if you think that would call attention, why not have me correspond with another woman?”

  “I shall consider it,” was all Weightman said.

  A week later, when she went into the kitchen to help Tabby with breakfast, Emily found a sealed letter waiting on the sideboard. The address, written in Weightman’s hand, was

  Mrs. Margaret

  Bishop 5 vicar Lane

  Bradford

  “Mr. Weightman has been here,” Tabby said without turning from the pot of porridge she was stirring. “He said I am to give that letter to you, and t’say nothing about it otherwise. ‘Aye,’ I told him, ‘I can keep a secret well as t’nex.” Then she turned and cocked her head at Emily. “Give this to Emily.’ That’s what he said. Not ‘Miss Emily.’”

  Emily went to Tabby and gave her a hug. “He is my friend, Tabby, nothing more. But perhaps the best friend I have ever had. Except for you, of course.”

  “And what manner of mischief are you and your friend up to?”

  She was tempted to tell Tabby, but knew she must not. Instead she put her mouth to Tabby’s ear and whispered, “We’re helping the fairies return to Penistone Hill.”

  Tabby reached around and gave Emily a swat on the backside.

  Emily took the letter to the post after breakfast. Three days later she received a response addressed to “Miss Emily Brontë,” which she tucked into her pocket before delivering the rest of the parsonage mail to her father in his study. She crossed the lane and handed the letter to William Weightman at his desk, along with a basket of the bread she had baked earlier, for distribution in the village.

  “Emily,” he said as she turned to leave, “since I no longer go to Bradford on my day off, I can often be found upon the moors on Tuesdays. Perhaps I might see you there from time to time.”

  “Why, Mr. Weightman,” Emily said, “it would be improper, would it not, for an unmarried clergyman to walk unescorted on the moors with an unmarried woman. Especially a woman who goes abroad at night alone with her dog.”

  He had the decency to look abashed. “You recall,” he said, “how I chastised you when first we met.”

  “I do.”

  “Perhaps I have decided,” he said, “that women are no more to be confined to a cage than is a merlin. The moors are very large as well, and very empty.”

  “They are,” Emily said. “And people do meet upon them from time to time.” She left him with that, and closed the door behind her.

  10

  New Year of 1841 slipped in almost entirely without notice. Anne had not come home since her employers, the Robinsons, judged she had not been with them long enough to warrant a holiday. Her heartbroken letter informing Emily of this fact caused her sister to weep, but there was nothing to be done.

  Charlotte accepted the position as governess to the White family at Upperwood House and would also be gone after the new year. It could not be too soon, she thought. The situation between Bradford and Leeds was close to several of her old school chums. She talked of little else as Emily helped her pack. She had hopes, she told Emily. She would be in society, even if only as an employee at Upperwood House. On her days off, when she would visit her friends, she would be among people of education and refinement.

  “Mary Taylor’s family is a bit unconventional for my taste,” Charlotte said. “Her father is very nearly a radical in many of his opinions, and the sons are wild as well. But refined people, nonetheless, educated people I can talk with on a level of equality.” Then she touched Emily’s arm in apology. “Not that I cannot talk with you in such a manner, and Anne when she is here. But she is not here, and you are all I have. There, I will meet new people. Perhaps a young man. There are a number of clergy in that district who are also acquainted with Papa. Perhaps one might be in want of a wife. It is the surest hope for a clergyman’s daughter with attainments though not beauty or wealth. Perhaps I might be fortunate enough to meet a cleric who takes his situation far more seriously than himself.”

  Unlike Miss Celia Amelia, she need not add. Emily ignored her and continued to sort out stockings for mending. Charlotte watched and sighed. “Poor sister,” she said. “Leaving is all I want, and you are forced to stay. I am so sad for that.”

  “You are sad that I must stay here,” Emily replied. “And Anne is sad because she cannot be here. So I must either feel sorry for myself, or guilty at my good fortune. I think I will be reconciled to my situation and make the best of it.”

  Charlotte gave her a hug. “You are such a simple soul!” she exclaimed. “I am glad you are here for Papa. With Aunt so much an invalid now, you are especially valuable to him.”

  Then Charlotte was gone, and Emily was once again left alone in the parsonage with only the two old people and Tabby.

  Not long after Charlotte’s departure, a doleful ancient ritual was observed in the cemetery. The churchyard was full; Haworth parish suffered a multitude of deaths. John Brown the sexton and his gravediggers designated an area every few years to be excavated and cleared, so the grave sites might be available for the new dead. A bonfire was lit in the field beyond the churchyard, the oldest graves emptied and the contents carried off in carts to be burned. No one could recall when the practice began. Surely in the last few centuries, Patrick said. Much earlier, Emily thought. She could see in her mind’s eye the graves beneath the house, and the unmarked graves behind, and knew they too had been disturbed. She fancied the hillside had long ago held an ancient funeral pyre where the dead were burned, until a Christian missionary converted the pagans, called for burial, and established a church on the site. But then the old burning ways returned every few years, to remind that this had always been a place reserved for the dead, who were ash, dust, bone.

  She went outside to watch. Patrick and William Weightman were both present to supervise the proceedings, offering prayers for the dead and for the living men who disturbed the bones with their shovels, ensuring an atmosphere of decorum was maintained. (In earlier times, legend had it, the gravediggers would be drunk, would sing at their work to scare away ghosts and the devil, and play football with skulls they found. A strict evangelical parson in the late eighteenth century had put a stop to all that.)

  Patrick did not feel well and went inside as soon as the prayers were done, after assuring himself that Weightman would remain for the duration. The younger man stood morosely by, holding a
burning torch in one hand and his prayer book in the other, while John Brown and his gravediggers toiled. The coffins they dug up had long ago collapsed into a mixture of sawdust and earth; the bodies dissolved as well so that only a jumble of bone fragments remained mixed in with the meal of earth. Now and then a white shard appeared in the torchlight, and then disappeared in a shower of dirt onto the back of a cart. The distant bonfire, already at a roar, would be difficult to maintain, for the material was more of a nature to damp down the flames than fuel them. In truth, the fire would consume little of what it received, and purification of the remains would be more symbolic than literal. Those who found themselves walking through the far pasture would avoid the spot for years to come.

  Emily walked to Weightman’s side and stood. He glanced at her but he did not say, as John Brown had muttered when he had seen her earlier, that it was no place for a woman.

  “The worms have done their job,” Weightman said.

  “The worms think it common work,” she replied. “But we cannot bring ourselves to do it in the daylight.”

  Weightman took a deep breath and said, “Though I deal with death every day, and have done for years, I have not seen this before. How old do you judge this part of the graveyard to be?”

  “I believe most of the headstones go back to the late 1600s and the turn of the last century,” Emily said. “They will disturb none who have been here less than a hundred years.”

  They stood for a long time watching the flash of shovel and soil and bone in the torchlight.

  “What does it matter,” Weightman said, breaking the silence, his voice so intense that Emily started. “Life is elsewhere. It must be.”

  He turned to her, his face hidden in darkness, as was hers.

  “Mr. Weightman,” John Brown called, “we have the last of the bones out, and waiting to be carted off. A final prayer at the bonfire, if you please.”

  Weightman stirred, clutched the prayer book to his chest as though for protection, and trudged away into the dark. But not before he had reached out and brushed Emily Brontë’s cheek, ever so gently, with his fingertips. As though to assure himself, Emily thought, that she was warm flesh.

  Winter passed into spring. Weightman again sent valentines to the Brontë sisters, now in their scattered locations. They shared their responses by letter. Anne and Emily laughed over the verse, as badly written as the previous year. Charlotte noted to Emily that she had received her valentine at Upperwood House. “I consider it to have the same worth as its sender,” she wrote, and Emily could almost hear her sister sniff with disdain as she penned the words. “It might have been written to anyone.”

  But it wasn’t, Emily thought. He was kind enough to write it to you. She determined to say not a word in Weightman’s defense. If Charlotte wished to turn her back on friendship, that was her decision.

  Emily went out each afternoon after dinner with the hawk Nero. They had progressed to the long creance on the moors above the parsonage, and Emily knew it was time to try the merlin on his own. But she hesitated. First she decided she must wait for warmer weather, so if the bird did become lost, she might stay for hours if necessary and look for him. But as the snows thawed and the earliest spring flowers began to appear, she was forced to admit she had become attached to the hawk. He had shown himself to possess a personality and an intelligence that surprised her. Nero tolerated Keeper, and sometimes, to Emily’s amusement, perched on the dog’s broad back and dug its claws into his thick fur. Keeper would twist his head back left and right to try to see what had hold of him, and then stand still as a statue until the bird lifted off in a slow leisurely flight.

  But fifty feet was its scope. As the spring air quickened the hawk’s blood and made him more and more agitated so that he even began to peck at himself with his sharp beak, Emily decided it was time. But she wanted William Weightman to be present.

  Tuesday afternoons with Weightman became a habit that winter. Weightman had noticed the regularity of the parsonage schedule: breakfast at nine, followed by the post and newspapers, then chores, dinner at two, an afternoon walk for the younger family members, tea at six. Then came a time Weightman knew nothing about, when the sisters wrote or read or talked together in the parlor. If the mood called for music, Emily sat at the cottage piano and played. At half past eight the family gathered for prayers. Patrick and Aunt Branwell went to bed, and the sisters continued for several more hours.

  Weightman supposed that Emily would be alone on the moors sometime between three and six. He knew just as well the Brontës’ favorite haunts, having accompanied them himself from time to time.

  On a cold February afternoon Emily arrived with Keeper at the last stile on the path that led up Penistone Hill to find Weightman leaning against the stone wall. Neither asked permission; they simply fell in together.

  On a subsequent Tuesday when the weather turned and a rare sunny day promised spring warmth, the curate stopped early by the parsonage, as Emily was peeling potatoes for Tabby, and suggested they carry books to the waterfall at the head of Sladen Beck.

  “We could sit upon the rocks and read,” Weightman suggested.

  “Why do you not take dinner with us first, Mr. Weightman?” Tabby asked. “I have a fine roast chicken, and Emily has made pudding.” And so began a second habit, for Weightman had until then packed a sandwich and a wedge of cheese for his dinner on his day off, to be eaten cold and alone. With Charlotte not around to disapprove, Patrick and Aunt Branwell also looked forward to the cheerful young man’s presence at Tuesday dinner. Were they so distracted afterward, one by pastoral duties, the other by the need for a nap, that they did not question if Weightman and Emily went off together? Or did they not notice, because Weightman always set off first, and went to the stile, while Emily followed soon after to meet him. Emily thought it an odd situation; she and Weightman had not so much as held hands, and yet some people would think their actions scandalous. For the sake of Weightman’s career, she worried. But when she mentioned it to him, he said, “There is nothing wrong if I happen to run into Mr. Brontë’s daughter on my walk. Besides, I think my position in Haworth is established enough to risk the gossip.” Charlotte would have made great fun of his self-assurance had she been there to hear him.

  Emily especially remembered the “book day,” as she thought of it. She brought her copy of Sir Walter Scott’s Rob Roy, which she was rereading for the fourth time. She had nothing new. The Brontës, too poor to purchase many new books, depended upon the lending library at Keighley. Branwell used to accompany the sisters to the town but he was long away, and Patrick no longer able to walk the distance. There were times when the sisters would slip off together, so desperate were they for books. But now Emily was stranded, for if she went alone she was sure to be noticed. On occasion she heard of someone making the trip, John Brown, or a local tradesman, and begged for a copy of anything new. But this resulted as often as not in a disappointing read, something trivial and sensational rather than satisfying, and then there was the problem of returning the material before a fine might be levied.

  On that clear March day when she settled upon the turf with her back to a gray boulder and Keeper beside her, and pulled out her book, Weightman asked what it was.

  “Sir Walter Scott, my favorite novelist,” she replied. “Rob Roy.”

  “Oh yes. Have you not yet read it?”

  She ducked her head. “Many times.”

  Weightman seemed surprised. “You must like it then.” He opened his own book. Emily could not help but stare. The book was new, its cover shiny with lack of use and half of its pages uncut.

  “What do you have?” she asked timidly.

  “I am behind,” Weightman said. “This is Balzac, Le Père Goriot. It has been out several years now, but I have only just sent for it.”

  “You sent for it?” Emily said. “Not from Keighley library?”

  “Oh.” Weightman sat up, suddenly realizing what she had assumed. “No. I mean I orde
red it from London.”

  “You—you bought it?”

  Weightman chided himself for his insensitivity, and for his continued reliance on the allowance his father posted.

  “I’m over halfway through,” he said in an embarrassed rush. “When I’m done, I’ll give it to you.”

  “No,” Emily said at once, and felt near tears. “I would only borrow it.”

  Weightman shut the book. “Emily, I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought.”

  “I cannot even get to Keighley,” she said.

  Weightman said, “I have two shelves of books in my room and you are welcome to them. Here is what I shall do. Tonight I will list everything I have and bring it to you. Then you may choose whatever you like and I will share it.”

  Emily closed Rob Roy and looked out over the fall of water. “Thank you,” she said.

  “It must be very hard for you,” Weightman added. “You have lost the companionship of your sisters, and you are forced to read books you already know well. Do you have trouble filling your time?”

  “I write,” Emily said. She quailed inwardly as she said it, and yet she also longed to speak again about her work, as she had not done since Anne and Charlotte left.

  “You wrote the wonderful poem about Nero,” Weightman said, his voice gentle. He picked up a pebble and tossed it into the beck, which ran fast because of the time of year. “What else do you write?”

  She considered how much to tell him. Her prose was devoted to tales of the fantasy island of Gondal she had shared with Anne for many years. She sensed Anne was not so keen as she had once been, though Emily still found it a comfort to follow the exploits of Alexandrina Zenobia, an adventuress who went where Emily had never been able to go. But Emily thought it a betrayal, even though Anne wrote less and less, to talk about their work with anyone else.

  She could, however, talk about her own hopes. “I long to write a novel,” she said at last. “I have not written a word as yet, but I think about it often.”