Emily's Ghost

by Denise Giardina

  “I wrote it,” said a voice behind her. “John Brown carved it. There is no memorial so elaborate in the entire church.”

  She had not heard Branwell come in and settle onto the back pew. Now he came forward.

  Emily pressed the back of her hand against her mouth. Branwell put his arms around her and pressed her face to his shoulder, and she began to sob again. Then, exhausted, she slipped to the floor and sat with her back against the wall, her face turned to the ceiling. Branwell slid down beside her.

  “Who else was with him?” she asked, still looking up at the ceiling.

  “Papa and I, and the Widow Ogden and her Ruth.”

  “You wrote me and told me to stay in Brussels. You kept me away from him.”

  “Because Willie asked me to. He said if you knew we had cholera, you would come back at once.” Branwell regarded her sideways. “Would you?”

  “Of course,” Emily said.

  “Willie knew what he was doing then,” Branwell replied. “He wanted to protect you.”

  “He should have known,” Emily said, “I do not want protecting. That is something he never understood.”

  “He wanted me to tell you,” Branwell said, “that he loved you.”

  Emily closed her eyes.

  “He made me promise to tell you, even before he was taken ill. In case he didn’t make it, he said. I had forgotten that I wrote you about Isabella Greenwood, and I regret it now. I didn’t understand at the time that it was a holiday for him, a moment of respite. It meant nothing. The summer was so difficult. Willie was set to take his time away to visit his family in Appleby, you know, but he couldn’t leave after all. I only told you he was there to explain why I was writing instead of Willie. We don’t know how cholera spreads; he was afraid any paper he touched might be contagious.”

  Branwell took Emily’s hand. She continued to stare at the ceiling.

  “What was his death like?”

  “Emily, it was terrible and you do not want—”

  “Tell me!” She was implacable.

  Branwell sat for a time. Then he said, “He was skeletal, his skin turned dark, he could not close his mouth for he had no moisture, he could not breathe except to gag—”

  Emily hunched up suddenly, her arms wrapped around her knees.

  Branwell reached inside his coat. “He wrote this. Dictated it, rather. But he wanted you to have it.” Branwell draped one arm around Emily and drew her close. He opened the sheet of paper so she could see it. “It is in my hand, but these are Willie’s words.”

  Emily read:

  Dearest Emily,

  I do not know what the future would have held for the two of us. But I must believe there is still a future. I go on alone for a time. I am sorry to leave. If it is possible I shall stay close. I will always love you.

  Willie

  Emily turned and threw her arms around Branwell.

  “I shall never forget this,” she whispered. “Never.”

  They held one another for a long time. Keeper rose from his spot beneath a pew when they departed, and followed them down the aisle like an attendant at a wedding.

  16

  Madame Heger wrote that the Pensionnat would welcome the services of the Brontës as teachers for the spring term. Charlotte found Emily in the kitchen and waved the letter over her sister’s head. “Is it not wonderful?” she cried.

  But Emily refused to return to Brussels with her sister and turned away from Charlotte’s pleas. Patrick, ever indulgent of his daughters and without Aunt Branwell to dissuade him, agreed Charlotte would make an unescorted journey to Belgium. So Charlotte returned to the Pensionnat, where she made her attentions to Monsieur obvious over the course of the year. She would realize, indeed be forced by Monsieur’s growing reserve and his wife’s anger, to understand that she must give up any hopes of love from that quarter.

  But while Charlotte’s sad drama played out on the Continent, the parsonage was quiet. Anne and Branwell were gone as well, for Anne had convinced her employers, the Robinsons, to engage her brother as a tutor for their son. The only residents of the house in Haworth now were Patrick, Emily, and Tabby, who had returned from her sister’s though she was no longer able to do much work. Instead the old woman kept Emily company by the hearth, the cat Tiger asleep in her lap. Young Martha Brown came every day to help out but returned to her family’s home beside the Sunday school building at night.

  Emily went at night to her favorite spot on the moor above the parsonage. She lay upon the ground in a clump of moor grass with Keeper close for warmth. She studied the stars and listened for the voice of William Weightman. She heard only wind and birdsong. Now and then, as she wrapped her cloak more tightly against the cold, she coughed.

  Emily Brontë knew she was consumptive. Her time in Brussels had masked the problem, for the exertion of household chores had not been required, nor was she able to take long rambles upon the moors. But on her return to Haworth she noticed she grew short of breath while climbing the high street with her shopping basket, or blacking the kitchen hearth. Then came the invariable stitch in her side when she strode along on her walks. Nothing so severe as to prevent her from rambling. But Emily went more slowly. She wished to tell someone, but did not. Anne, she had long believed, was a fellow sufferer, but had never spoken of her situation, not even to her sister. Emily had no desire to disturb her sister’s peace. Patrick had his own concerns, for his eyesight was failing. Charlotte was out of the question. One did not confide weakness to Charlotte.

  One frigid morning, Emily wrapped her wool cloak about her and set out on her errands. She went first for the post. But she was forced to step back before entering the doorway of the shop, scraping her elbow against the rough stone. A burly man had forced his way out, heedless of anyone in his way. He passed by, a mustache beneath a large hat. Then he stopped and noticed Emily for the first time.

  “Well,” he said, looking her up and down, his eyes undressing her, “if it isn’t the chit from the parsonage.”

  Emily stood her ground and held the gaze of Constable Massey from the Metropolitan Police. He took her directness for an invitation and sidled closer.

  “Do you know,” he said, “we have proof of your Mr. Weightman’s involvement in the indecencies of last summer, when the mill boilers were vandalized. Some documents have come into our hands that show he deserves even more blame than we imagined. So I came to this sewer”—he gestured around at Haworth—“to place him under arrest. Only I am told he has saved me a great deal of trouble and kicked the bucket. I always was a lucky bloke. Now I’ve time to raise a pint in the Black Bull, and I needn’t return to Bradford until tomorrow morning. If you’re free tonight, I have something extra in my pocket.” He winked. “And in my trousers.”

  Massey thrust his hand into his pants pocket to make a bulge, and a jingling sound from the change. Emily turned on her heel without a word and headed back to the parsonage. Patrick was out on his pastoral rounds. Emily ran upstairs to her father’s room and flung open the drawer in the bedside table where he kept his pistol. The same pistol he had taught Emily, of all his children the only one interested, to shoot.

  Emily placed a bullet in the chamber, shoved the gun in the capacious pocket of the old dress she wore for household work, and went downstairs.

  She found Massey in the Black Bull. He sat quaffing a pint, his hat off, and held court before a pair of admiring bagmen who frequented the coach line between Keighley and Lancashire.

  Emily wrapped her hand around the gun. Massey was so close she could see the greasy tufts of hair that lay at odd angles on the base of his skull.

  A voice said, No.

  Emily froze. He deserves to die, she thought. So I am going to kill him.

  No.

  Emily recognized the voice. She clutched the gun and squeezed her eyes shut.

  No. If you wish to hear more.

  “Please God,” she murmured.

  Massey swerved at the sound of Emily�
��s voice, and his fellow travelers turned as well, their conversation interrupted. Massey leered at Emily. Bits of foam from the ale flecked his mustache.

  “Well, well,” he said. “Come to offer me something, have you?”

  Emily hesitated for a moment. Then she said, “No. Only to tell you that you were correct. You are very, very lucky.”

  Massey smiled and reached out his hand, but Emily had already turned, still clutching the pistol in her pocket, and departed the Black Bull.

  Emily continued to write poetry, but she also took up the novel she had long wished to write. She chose the names of her principal characters: Catherine Earnshaw, and Heathcliff. Heathcliff had no second name. Emily thought Heathcliff was her primeval self, made of moor grass and earth, the passionate outsider. She jotted down a variety of impressions to describe his character. Then she turned to Cathy. Emily’s first impression of Cathy came clear when the character described a dream she’d had: “Heaven was not my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the moor; where I woke sobbing for joy. So I remain close.” Emily thought the dreamer could have been Weightman.

  And Emily had no sooner set down her pen than a voice said, I have found Nero.

  Emily sat up straight.

  Go tomorrow morning to Ponden Kirk.

  Emily went to the parlor window and looked out. The tombstones, the church, a full moon. Silence.

  The next day was Tuesday. Tuesdays had been Willie’s day off, the day he and Emily had rambled the moors together.

  Emily went out the next morning as soon as it was light. She buttered a piece of bread for her breakfast, and stuffed a cold mutton sandwich into her pocket for dinner, along with strips of chicken skin from leftovers destined for the stockpot. Outside, she went to the washroom. Nero’s cage, three years empty, stood in the far corner gathering dust. Emily opened the drawer in the old cupboard and rummaged about. The jesses had long disappeared, and the collar and leashes and gauntlet. But stuck in the far back behind a box of nails she found the bell. This went in her pocket as well. Then she set out.

  The morning mist rose from the flanks of the hills like incense. She tried to talk to Willie but heard little except Go, Go. The sun was high overhead when she finally arrived at Ponden Kirk. She stopped at the foot of the rock formation and rang the bell. Nothing.

  She sat and ate the food she had brought with her, cupped her hand and drank from the nearby beck. Now and then a raptor launched itself from the great rock, although Emily thought that even from a distance they appeared larger than merlins. Then Willie said Further. She trudged on.

  She was so far beyond Ponden Kirk it had begun to appear distant and small again, so far past she was about to give up though she still rang the bell, when a bird burst from a hollow and flew toward her, then wheeled away at the last moment. She realized she had forgotten to raise her arm. She rang the bell again. The bird came about. She thrust her fist skyward. The hawk swooped, pulled up, and with a beating of wings, lighted.

  Nero’s claws cut into Emily’s flesh until trickles of blood ran down in several places. She forced herself to stand immobile despite the pain as she grappled for the scrap of chicken in her pocket and thrust it into the merlin’s open craw.

  “Oh,” she said then. “Oh.” She pulled Nero close. He stayed on her fist even as she drew him to her chest, his yellow eye fixed upon her. Then he fluffed himself and settled while she ran her fingers through his feathers.

  “Oh, Nero. After all these years you have not forgot.”

  Nero screeched. A second bird flew close and settled on a nearby stand of gorse. Nero squawked again and was answered by a fierce scolding. The second merlin’s feathers were drab brown so as to render it almost invisible against the heath. A female.

  “Nero, you have a mate! Of course you do, and I suppose you have hatched chicks between you. But she is worried. I daresay she fears I will do you some harm.” Emily leaned close and kissed the bird on the top of his head. “I have missed you so much. But you are free, and you have your companion. I know I will not see you again, but now I shall not mourn.”

  Emily flung her arm high and the merlin took off, leaving behind final punctures of Emily’s fist. She barely felt the wounds. As the pair of birds disappeared into the midday sun, she gave an inchoate cry of joy and began to run back the way she had come, as she had done that long-ago day with William Weightman. She even fell as before, only this time she began to cough and could not stop for the longest time. Emily pressed the back of her hand against her mouth; she could taste the blood like a spice. She was so short of breath that she thought her heart might stop. But after a time she breathed more easily. As she lay among the heather, she turned to her left, to face someone she could not see, and said, “I’m dying, Willie.”

  I know, he said.

  “We would have had small time together.”

  Yes, there. But large time here.

  Emily shut her eyes and tears slipped down her cheeks. “If you had not turned your back upon me, here upon the moors—”

  Of course he did not answer.

  When Emily had sobbed herself out, she stood and began the long walk back to Haworth.

  John Brown had just finished digging a new grave, spade in hand, when he met Emily Brontë coming down from the moors. She strode without care for what obstacles might be in her path, her hair loose and flying about her face, which was set in an expression of ecstasy such as the sexton had never seen. Though he noted the cuts and dried blood on her left hand and arm, and the stains on the sleeve of her dress. He removed his cap and nodded but she did not see him, and went by without acknowledgment.

  John Brown returned the shovel to the shed beside his house in Church Lane and went inside to get his supper. As he sat down at table, he said to Mrs. Brown, “I saw Emily Brontë coming down off the moor just now.”

  “And what’s odd about that?” his wife asked, her voice bored.

  “It was, well—she looked as though she’d seen God Almighty.”

  Mrs. Brown shook her head at such nonsense and shoveled a sausage from her skillet onto her husband’s plate.

  17

  Once more the Brontë children returned home. Charlotte, obsessed with Monsieur Heger, proceeded to write her beloved letter after adoring letter. Monsieur refused to answer. Anne and Branwell followed Charlotte back to Haworth, for Branwell had been caught in bed with the wife of his employer, silly and vain Mrs. Robinson, and Anne resigned her post out of shame. Charlotte did not empathize with her brother. Branwell had adulterously soiled the name of a married woman (although one Charlotte considered of low character) while Charlotte’s love was unrequited, and so noble and chaste. Besides, Branwell, determining he could not live without his love, set out to drink himself to death in the best tradition of art and romance. Charlotte set out meanwhile to produce some of the great works of English literature and encourage the same effort in her sisters.

  The arrival of Patrick’s new curate caused a stir in the parsonage as well. The Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls followed an inadequate substitute for William Weightman, the Reverend James Smith. Mr. Smith, unlike his beloved predecessor, had neglected his pastoral duties and flirted with the local ladies in a way that fit Charlotte’s imagined view of Mr. Weightman. Patrick Brontë was forced upon several occasions to remonstrate with the man. Then James Smith abruptly absconded to Canada, to the puzzlement and delight of all.

  So Arthur Bell Nicholls proved a relief. Had he followed immediately after Mr. Weightman, he would have been considered a disappointment. Mr. Nicholls was boring and lacking in charm; he was dogmatic, and prone to lecture the villagers about what he considered their bad habits and theological errors. But he discharged his duties faithfully and carried a great deal of the burden for Patrick.

  Emily Brontë hated Mr. Nicholls because he was not William Weightman. Now she must see him every day, in his clerical garb
, going into the church or the Sunday school where he had even taken over Weightman’s desk. A presumptuous impostor. Nor could Patrick Brontë claim to love the new man. But he was grateful to him for his service.

  Charlotte ignored Mr. Nicholls at first. He was Irish, after all, and she was uncomfortable with her own marginal (she insisted upon its marginality) Irishness. No need for a constant reminder, no need for that accent which seemed to draw out an answering brogue from her father after all these years. Still, Mr. Nicholls seemed useful and harmless. Charlotte was polite to him.

  All three sisters decided to attempt novels, where they had before only composed poetry. Emily would say little about her work at first except to disclose that she wrote a story of love and hate set upon the moors. Her sisters decided that love, at least, would make a fine subject. Anne worked on Agnes Grey, based upon her years as a governess and an imagined courtship with Mr. Easton. Charlotte would produce The Professor, much of it set in Brussels. But that novel, though quickly written, received no good response from publishers, to Charlotte’s chagrin. She tried to be brave about her failure, to think what she should do next.

  Emily suggested, during a walk upon the moors, “Anne and I have set our love stories here in Yorkshire. Perhaps you might do the same.”

  Charlotte said somewhat testily, “Do you dictate what I should write?”

  “No. One cannot do that.” Emily was amazed at her own patience. “I suggest you might find your greatest success close to home, that is all. And,” she added, “you might write about Monsieur at a greater remove.”

  Emily braced herself for her sister’s explosion, but it did not come. Finally Charlotte said, “You do not suggest that I not write about him at all.”