Emily's Ghost

by Denise Giardina

  The first movement burst upon them. Emily could imagine nothing more glorious. But the second movement, alive with energy, stirred her even beyond the first. As she listened, visions passed before her still-closed eyes of epic events, revolutionary upheavals. Then the third movement calmed her with its quiet, delicate beauty.

  But when the fourth and final movement struck (for that was the only word Emily could use to describe how it broke upon her), she straightened as though an electrical current ran up her spine. The chorus, seated behind the orchestra throughout the piece, stood. Several soloists appeared and began to sing. Emily forgot time and place.

  The chorus gathered itself; the orchestra tantalized with a few hesitant notes.

  At that pregnant moment even as the orchestra paused, a voice said in Emily Brontë’s ear, Here is the best part.

  The chorus burst into full bloom—

  Freude, schoner Gotterfunken

  Tochter aus Elysium,

  Wir betreten feuertrunken,

  Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!

  Deine Zauber binden wieder

  Was die Mode streng geteilt;

  Alle Menschen werden Brüder,

  Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

  The music washed over Emily in waves, an orgasm of sound and emotion. Freude. Freudig. Joy. Joyful. To her English ears it sounded like Freedom. She trembled at the final choral outburst and the frenzied orchestral finale. As the audience began to clap, she sank back in her seat, spent.

  The applause died and people began at once to talk, some arguing for magnificence, others puzzled at the way, as one man said, “The thing just does not hold together.” Monsieur Heger said to Charlotte, “It is odd that Beethoven waited until the very end to make use of the chorus. It puts off the balance.”

  This barely registered with Emily. She was stunned by the magnificence of the music and the realization that the voice she had heard, as familiar as any, was the voice of William Weightman.

  The letter arrived the next day. It was addressed to Charlotte, who picked it up as she and Emily headed out of their dormitory for their tutorials with Monsieur.

  “Where is your letter from Papa?” Charlotte wondered to Emily.

  “It has likely been delayed in the post,” Emily said. “I shall receive it tomorrow.” She wondered if Weightman would have written as well, but put the thought from her mind as the best way to keep from disappointment.

  In Monsieur Heger’s anteroom, Charlotte settled in a chair while Emily went in for her lesson, and read her letter. Her head went up and she stared at the door. She put her hand to her mouth and then thought frantically what she should do.

  Though Charlotte disliked William Weightman, the news of his death shocked her. She was mystified as well by the rest of her father’s letter.

  “It is up to you to tell Emily,” her father had written. “You do not know what has passed between your sister and my curate, but I beg you to give her this news in a sensitive way. Willie was most important to her. I cannot say more than that. But the news of his death will be a terrible blow, and I beg you to employ any means you have to protect and comfort her.”

  Charlotte heard, from inside Monsieur’s office, the sound of Emily reading in French. She considered what to do, even as she wondered at the little her father had divulged about Emily and Weightman. Charlotte knew the two got along amicably, and she had been frustrated at her inability to rouse Emily to any contempt for the curate. But she put it down to Weightman’s charm, which fooled Tabby and Aunt Branwell and, yes, Emily, into including him in the family circle. As if he had belonged. Charlotte’s anger rose once more though she tried to quell it out of respect for the dead. It was sad, after all, for he was so young. Haworth must find someone else to set female hearts aflutter.

  Charlotte considered. Of course Emily would mourn the loss of anyone—or anything—connected to the parsonage. Charlotte resolved to heed her father’s plea and deal with her sister as gently as possible. Monsieur Heger would be her best, and most appreciated, ally.

  When Emily emerged from Heger’s study, Charlotte said, “Wait here. Monsieur will want to speak with you further.”

  Emily looked surprised but settled onto a chair in the corner. She opened her copy of Balzac’s La Fille aux yeux d’or, bought on a street corner and of which Monsieur did not approve, and began to read.

  Inside the study, Charlotte said, “Please, Monsieur, something has happened.” She explained her father’s letter and that Emily was a friend of the dead curate.

  “I do not know how to break the news to her,” Charlotte ended, hoping for Monsieur’s sympathy and praise for her judgment. “It would be better if you did so, and if I stood by to support her.”

  Heger nodded. “A terrible situation. Cholera, my God. You must be worried about your family.”

  “Oh yes,” Charlotte assured him. And please God, she thought, do not suggest that I go back for a long, long time.

  Heger rose to the occasion, took a deep breath, and smoothed his thinning hair from his forehead. “I am not a priest, and yet I am forced now and then to deliver bad news to our pupils. Ask your sister to come in, and I shall tell her.”

  Charlotte opened the door to the anteroom. “Emily,” she said, “Monsieur wants to speak with you.”

  Emily closed Balzac without a word and went back into Heger’s office, where she settled herself upon a chair and looked at him.

  Monsieur’s clasped hands pressed upon his desk as though they held it down.

  “Mademoiselle,” he said, “we have had a letter from your father.”

  Emily looked from Heger to Charlotte, alarmed at the tone of his voice and the gravity of Charlotte’s expression.

  “Haworth has suffered an outbreak of cholera,” he said.

  Emily stiffened.

  Monsieur Heger, Charlotte noted with admiration, softened his voice. “I am sorry to inform you, but an acquaintance of yours has died. Your father’s assistant, Guillaume Weight-man, has succumbed to the cholera.”

  Emily sat so still Charlotte had the impression of a cracked porcelain figurine. But then before anyone could move, Emily bolted.

  She ran. Across the quadrangle of the Pensionnat Heger to the main gate, which she wrenched open despite bloodying her hands. She ran across the Rue d’Isabelle, up the elegant flight of steps past the equestrian statue of General Belliard across the Rue Royale, dodging traffic into the park. She ran until the painful stitch in her side allowed her to run no more.

  She did not know when Charlotte and Monsieur Heger came for her. But at last they led a dazed Emily Brontë back to the Pensionnat Heger.

  Emily took to her bed for days, felled by a dark melancholy. When finally she roused herself, she refused to speak to Charlotte, who was hurt and puzzled.

  “Sister. Must you punish me for bearing bad news when I had no choice but to tell you?”

  “It is not because you gave me the bad news. It is because you hated him. And you brought me here so I could not be with him when he needed me. I don’t know if I can ever forgive you. Though I will forgive you sooner than I will forgive myself for what I have thought about him this last month.”

  Charlotte put her hand on her sister’s arm. “I cannot bear for you to be so angry with me. I am your sister! And what was Mr. Weightman to you?”

  Emily shook off Charlotte’s hand and stood. “You shall never know what he was to me!” she declared.

  Charlotte was forced to find her own explanation. She made certain Emily was occupied giving music lessons to the other pupils, a task she now performed with all the joy and energy of a corpse. While Emily was so engaged, Charlotte looked through her sister’s trunk. She found the volume of Shelley and its inscription, and the letters in Weightman’s hand, though she only glanced at them. It would be rude and shocking to read them, Charlotte decided. She had seen enough to know Weightman had played her younger sister for a fool just as he had every other female in West Yorkshire. And I w
as concerned about Anne, she thought, never dreaming that Emily—A swell of anger filled Charlotte’s breast that she dispelled be reminding herself that the object of her rage was beyond feeling it.

  Emily knocked upon the study door of Monsieur Heger. He stood when she entered and offered her a chair, concerned at the haggard expression on her pale face. “How may I help you, mademoiselle?” he asked.

  “The other night at the Monnaie,” Emily said, her voice barely above a whisper, “the program notes for the Ninth said Beethoven took his text from a poem by Schiller. Do you know it?”

  “Ah yes,” Heger said. “To Joy.’ I have it in the German. If you wish, you may translate this into French and English for your assignment.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said.

  Monsieur Heger searched his bookshelf for the slender volume of Schiller’s poetry. He handed it to Emily. “You have a German lexicon?”

  “Yes,” Emily said, her head down as she clutched the book to her chest. She turned back when she reached the doorway and said, “You are kind.”

  Monsieur Heger bowed.

  Emily carried the book to the end of the dormitory where she and Charlotte had their beds and desks. Charlotte was already there, working on a lesson. Emily grabbed up pen and ink without speaking and went out again to the Allée Défendue.

  Poetry was Emily’s sustenance. She read the Psalms, those that comforted and those that raged, and she turned often to Shelley’s “Adonais” with its mourning cry, “I weep for Adonais—he is dead!” But she could not shake the sense that Schiller, set to the music of Beethoven’s Ninth, bore some special message. “The best part,” Weightman had called it.

  Emily listened for Weightman but heard nothing. She begged him to speak again until she wept. She gave up and sat with the volume of Schiller and a German dictionary, translating word for word, not bothering to shape the lines.

  Joy, light divine. God we storm thy kingdom.

  World, do you sense the Creator? Truth enters through the cracks of burst coffins.

  Poverty, grief forgotten. Anger, revenge forgotten. No remorse. The dead shall live and hell shall be no more.

  Emily smeared her tears with the heel of her hand. A pair of girls strolled by and stared. Emily did not care.

  Seek him above the canopy of stars. Surely he lives above the stars.

  Emily knew she must walk upon the moors beneath those stars before she would hear his voice again. She gathered her meager belongings and slipped off into the city to find the schedule for trains to Ostend. She finished at a bank where she withdrew her share of Aunt Branwell’s money.

  But even as she made ready, another letter arrived from Patrick. Aunt Branwell was dying, and Charlotte and Emily must come home at once. Charlotte raged until she realized Monsieur and Madame Heger expected her to go, indeed would not have thought well of her if she insisted upon staying. So she put on a brave face and agreed to accompany Emily back to England.

  Before she left Brussels for good, Emily Brontë presented Louise de Bassompierre with a drawing of a tree, its trunk split in two, one half alive and flowering, the other broken and dead.

  Aunt Branwell had already died and was sequestered in the family vault before Charlotte and Emily reached England. Charlotte was almost glad they had not arrived in time for the funeral. It supported her point that a precipitous return to Haworth had been a waste of time and money. She had already decided to write Monsieur Heger and ask if she and Emily might return for the term after Christmas.

  Emily greeted the sight of the moors with the desperation of one starving for oxygen. She turned her face away from her sister on the journey up the brow from Keighley in the rented carriage and spoke to Charlotte only in monosyllables. Had it not been for the necessity of hauling their trunks, she would far rather have walked. When she climbed down from the carriage, she could not speak, so strong were her emotions.

  Emily mourned Aunt Branwell, but the loss of Weightman was fresh and made more intense by the return to Haworth. Her last sight of him was burned into her memory, and she half expected he would come sauntering out of the Sunday school building, a smile of greeting on his face. To alight on the familiar cobblestones of Church Lane, and to know he would never more appear there, gave Emily more pain than at any moment since she had learned of his death.

  But Emily was grateful to be greeted by the other creature she most longed for—Keeper. Branwell held the dog by the collar, but as soon as the beast saw Emily, he could not contain himself. He danced about in a circle and gave a series of high-pitched yips. Branwell was forced to let the dog go to save his arm being wrenched out of its socket. Keeper hit Emily in the chest and she went down to her knees, her arms around his neck. She buried her face in the dog’s nape so the others could not see her face.

  Anne, who knew Emily better than any, waited until her sister had time to compose herself. Then she knelt and encircled her in her arms.

  “I am so sorry,” Anne whispered.

  “You loved him too, didn’t you?” Emily said.

  “Of course. How could I not? Everyone loved Mr. Weightman.”

  Emily wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Not everyone,” she said, glancing at Charlotte, who was out of earshot.

  Patrick approached and helped Emily to her feet. He pressed her to his chest and patted her back. Charlotte watched the reunion, her eyes narrowed. She wondered how much to share with her father about Weightman’s dalliance with her sister. Meanwhile Branwell stood alone against the garden wall.

  Charlotte went to her sisters and linked her arm through Anne’s. Emily held back.

  “It is a sad time,” Charlotte said. “Yet we are all together.”

  “My presence comes at a price,” Anne replied. “The Robinsons will not allow me home for Christmas.”

  “But that is terrible!” Emily cried.

  “Yes,” Anne said, “but it is more important to be here now. Poor Aunt, and poor Mr.—” but catching Emily’s expression, Anne caught herself and bit her tongue.

  “And yet Aunt was old, and had a long and full life,” Charlotte said. “Let us reminisce about the old days.”

  Anne glanced at Emily as Charlotte led her away. Go on, Emily mouthed as she lingered. She leaned over and stroked Keeper’s head. The dog licked her face.

  “Dear Keeper,” Emily crooned, “let us go together and see Nero.”

  “Emily,” Patrick said rather too loudly, “it has been a long journey. Won’t you have some tea?”

  Emily straightened, sensing something was wrong. “May I not see the bird first?”

  Patrick started to speak, and then caught himself. Emily stared at him implacably. Finally he said, “You can never be spared the truth, can you?” He took her arm in his. “Dear child, when your aunt was in her last illness, she was not in her right mind. She sold your poor geese to the butcher. And the hawk—” He hesitated. “We don’t know what happened. Branwell found his cage ajar, and we could not understand from her whether he was sold or let loose.”

  Emily was beyond tears. “I see,” she said. She continued to stroke Keeper. “Papa, do not bid me come in to tea. Nothing shall pass my lips until I have counted up all my losses. Only tell me now, where is Willie?”

  Patrick said, “Willie lies beneath the church in our family vault.”

  “Where is the exact spot?”

  Patrick hesitated at the intensity in her voice. He glanced at Branwell, who had come closer. “You know the vault is beneath the far right corner as you face the communion table. Willie is closest to the entrance at the back of the building.”

  Emily nodded. She said in a low voice, “Go on in the house, Papa. Leave me alone with him.”

  Patrick looked at Branwell, who echoed, “Go on, Papa.” Patrick went on to the parsonage.

  Emily began to walk toward the church. Branwell followed. Emily stopped. “Please,” she said. “Leave me be.”

  “For God’s sake, Emily,” Branwell burst out
, “I tended him upon his deathbed! Does that not give me some right to comfort you?”

  “You tended him? I would have thought you would be off drinking with your friends.”

  “How could I leave him?”

  “I did!” Emily said so ferociously and with such self-loathing that an alarmed Branwell thought her capable of doing some harm to herself. “I left him! And I shall never forgive myself. Never, ever!”

  “Willie was glad you weren’t here.”

  “Was he?”

  She looked so stricken Branwell rushed to say, “No. No. You misunderstand. Willie’s death was—” He looked at Emily’s pale drawn face and knew she required honesty. “He died horribly. He did not want you to witness it. Nor did he wish to put you in danger.”

  “I would have been nowhere else,” she said. She turned and ran, to get away from Branwell, into the church, Keeper at her heels. But she paused at the entrance to repeat her plea. “Leave me alone. Please,” before slamming the door behind her.

  Once her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Emily made her way to the front of the church. She stopped near the far wall where she judged Weightman to be interred beneath the floor. Then she sank slowly onto the flagstones and wailed, her voice rising to a keen, letting herself go as she could not do in Brussels. When she had cried herself out she lay still and imagined Weightman in the space below her, his body crumpled and consumed by the slow rot of death. She turned away from the appalling image and buried her face in her arms. She dreamed of digging up the floor of the church, her bare hands bloodied by the work, until she came to his coffin, tore it open, and threw herself on top of him.

  Finally she drew herself up until she rested on her knees, and looked up at the wall. On a plaque she had not noticed before she made out the words WILLIAM WEIGHTMAN. She stood and began to read. Greatly respected for his orthodox principles, active zeal, moral habits, learning, mildness, and affability: his useful labours will long be gratefully remembered, by the members of the congregation; and Sunday school teachers, and scholars.