“I didn’t speak of it till you were ready,” Emily stated. “Such matters get bruised and crushed in the telling. I do not discuss my Master with anyone but you — and him, of course.”
I appreciated her sensitivity; I had been concerned that she would have seen my reluctance to share the news of Davy with her as disloyal secrecy. I was curious about the status of her “relationship” with this Master; she hadn’t mentioned him in some time. “Do you hear from your Master these days?”
The Dickinsons had brought on a hired girl, Nancy, whom Emily trusted to mail her letters now — so I did not know to whom she wrote. This suited us both. Emily didn’t have to wait for my Monday visit to send a letter — she could be voluminous with her correspondence when the mood struck her. I, never comfortable with my role as “spy,” had less awkward responsibility. But I took my promise to Mrs. Austin seriously, so I paid careful attention to whatever Emily chose to reveal about her latest passions.
“He is my SHEPHERD, my MENTOR; he counsels me,” Emily replied without answering my actual question. “It is a raising of the spirit merely to write him. Sometimes I do, just to feel we are in touch — and then I don’t mail the letter.” She collected some used papers that were strewn about her rug and fed them to her busy little stove.
I felt relieved by this news. The letters were obviously becoming less frequent. Mrs. Austin could be reassured. Perhaps Emily’s interest was transforming from ardent lover to ardent student, far more appropriate roles for the recluse and the married minister to play. As a muse, the Master was not the threat he could be as a man.
Emily was cheerful today, with the maples’ October brilliance lighting her white walls. There were some bowls of blooming narcissus on her windowsills; I leaned to breathe the scent.
“Miranda, tell me, do you and your beau exchange many sentimental letters?”
“Not really,” I replied. “We see each other so often now that we don’t write anymore. Last summer, it seemed more important to really get to know each other. Our letters were more like autobiographies, I think.”
“Well, that’s not my STYLE of letter!” She was impatient at this. “A letter should convey feeling, not DATA. Here is MY sort of love letter.” She handed me what was evidently a draft, for I saw many crossings out on the penciled pages. And I read the salutation and winced.
Master.
If you saw a bullet hit a Bird — and he told you he was’nt shot — you might weep at his courtesy, but you would certainly doubt his word.
One drop more from the gash that stains your Daisy’s bosom — then would you believe? Thomas’ faith in Anatomy, was stronger than his faith in faith. God made me — [Sir] Master — I did’nt be — myself. I don’t know how it was done. He built the heart in me — Bye and bye it outgrew me — and like the little mother — with the big child — I got tired holding him. I heard of a thing called “Redemption” — which rested men and women. You remember I asked you for it — you gave me something else. I forgot the Redemption [in the Redeemed — I did’nt tell you for a long time, but I knew you had altered me — I] and was tired — no more . . .
I couldn’t bear not knowing how the letter would end, so I skipped down to the last two lines.
No Rose, yet felt myself a’bloom,
No Bird — yet rode in Ether.
I felt embarrassed by the letter’s beginning, but those last two lines perfectly captured my own feelings of being in love with Davy. Here among the clichés and the affectations, I heard a clear voice and crystalline truth. Encouraged, I went back to the middle of the letter:
I want to see you more — Sir — than all I wish for in this world — and the wish — altered a little — will be my only one — for the skies.
Could you come to New England — [this summer — could] would you come to Amherst — Would you like to come — Master?
[Would it do harm — yet we both fear God — ] Would Daisy disappoint you — no — she would’nt — Sir — it were comfort forever — just to look in your face, while you looked in mine — then I could play in the woods till Dark — till you take me where Sundown cannot find us — and the true keep coming — till the town is full. [Will you tell me if you will?]
This worried me. She was inviting him to see her. What could I say? “Emily, tell me. What is your purpose in writing this letter?”
“Why, the same purpose that inspires any letter of SENTIMENT. This . . . individual, this personage, wants to understand me. He is INTERESTED in me, in my thoughts. I want him to KNOW me.”
She shaped a demure smile, folded her hands in her lap, and waited. There was no escape.
“Then this letter is a failure,” I told her. “This person won’t know you from your letter because it isn’t you speaking. There is none of your precision, your dignity. You wander about and play peekaboo, as if you are younger and sillier than I. You don’t do yourself justice!”
I expected a hurricane wilder than that of Barbados in reply, but Emily was merely thoughtful.
“I haven’t sent it yet; I know it still needs work. I am used to communicating with only MYSELF. Other people are much harder to talk to.”
Perhaps it would all end here. Perhaps she would decide she didn’t want to see him face-to-face.
“Just one more thing, Miranda — do you think I sound too OLD?”
I assured her that if anything, she sounded not old enough. Then we took our tea as if this were an ordinary day. Emily had made an extra loaf of apricot bread for Davy.
“Tell him it won second prize at the agricultural fair of 1856,” Emily recounted. “Then they put me on the committee for 1857, and every other entry was apricot bread. That was the end of my wielding a judge’s GAVEL!”
Where had our autumn gone? The clear days twisted and spiraled past us; they had vanished like the maple leaves. Time rushed toward us and sped away, as fleeting as the valley landscape seen from the train.
By now, Davy and I had our traditions together; we had our own secret language. When we separated in front of others, he said only, “I intend . . .” But when we were alone, he said it properly, looking in my eyes and kissing me: “I intend to be a part of your life.”
I said his name as often as I could, finding excuses to bring it into conversations. Gradually, as we piled up the days of joy, we established a private anthology of shared references. The Connecticut River was the “Tiber.” A sanctimonious classmate was “Galahad.” Davy’s closest friend, also from Exeter, was John Miles — but to us, David’s best friend must be “Jonathan.”
Davy brought me little presents of Daphne’s laurel, our own private symbol. One, an antique bronze spray, Father pronounced too valuable for me to accept — so Davy was keeping it for me. We were making an anthology of classical references to laurel, and I was learning calligraphy and illuminating the capitals.
I found I had extended my awareness and insight into others by loving Davy. Now I could interpret Kate’s sigh as she dusted her closed piano. Now I felt Mr. Shouse’s silent pleasure when a student lingered with questions. Even the little pupils in the elementary schools I visited as part of my independent study awoke a protective tenderness in me that was new and that I attributed to having opened my heart to Davy.
The days continued to accumulate. When Thanksgiving came, Davy visited a classmate in Boston. Since Kate wasn’t traveling, Aunt Helen, Father, and I went to Springfield in our carriage. We brought the dinner with us; the turkey was an easy passenger, but Father claimed the tureen of gravy rode all the way on his lap. We found Kate looking very badly — her olive skin greenish and her usually sparkling eyes dull. She kept her small house polished and orderly — but she did not have the energy for her music. I knew nothing about what to expect from Kate’s condition, but she was a constant worry to me.
December, and the first snows began to fall. Our family gave an eggnog party in the temple before the college closed; Davy helped us hang the garlands of evergreens. He was amused b
y the Amherst standards of austerity for Christmas ornaments. He told me Lake Forest was very relaxed Presbyterian, and everything but Lake Michigan got decorated. He teased Aunt Helen into conceding that “a proper Christmas tree” did not mean a slack Trinitarian — so the three of us planned a surprise for Father and the party guests.
Davy had somehow brought back from Boston on the cars, packed in wooden boxes like exotic fruit, handblown glass in jewel colors: prisms and snowflakes, chains of flowers and stars. At Thanksgiving, he had found a firm that imported the Austrian ornaments; he had been planning this treat all along. He and his best friend, Jonathan, carried the boxes to Amity Street and hid them in the barn. Sam, our stableman, cut a stunning blue spruce and installed it on the stage a few days before the party. Father departed to take the cars for an overnight in Northampton. The coast was clear!
Sam brought in the boxes from the barn, and he and Aunt Helen and Davy and I went to work — wearing scarves and mittens and overcoats, breathing steam. By midnight we had created a constellation, a lacy radiance — a child’s glittering dream of a Christmas tree. We stood back to marvel, tired and proud, and drank Aunt Helen’s hot mulled wine.
“Now look — here is the spirit of Christmas!” Davy climbed the stepladder one more time with a little gold box. He opened it and fastened an exquisite gold angel to the topmost spray of the spruce. He looked down at us, smiling. “Can you see who she is?”
The angel had a windblown silk robe and silver wings. She had golden skin and short gilded curls. She was me! When Davy came down the ladder, I kissed him — right there in front of Aunt Helen and Sam.
Father, who had an unerring eye for a work of art, saw the tree upon his return and added twenty guests to the party. We started the braziers up a day ahead; the temple was warm for our friends. I wore my modish green silk costume from Kate’s wedding and a laurel wreath for Davy — a message in our secret language. Father’s students circled and bumbled around me like the moths at the lanterns in Barbados; Davy enjoyed seeing me as the center of attention. They teased me about my victor’s crown of laurel. “Miss Chase has won the race! She wins first prize!”
I gave Davy a secret smile from within the circle of students and never told what it was that I had won this December night.
Then it was New Year’s. It was 1860 now; Davy found it deeply significant that we were starting a new decade together. He held up his champagne glass to me, the amber bubbles rising quickly, excited by possibility.
“The ’60s will be our years, Miranda!” he declared. “We met in 1859; we’ll be married in ’63, when I graduate. Then we’ll have that year in Greece for our wedding trip. We’ll see Athens and Delphi and Marathon. Would you like some time in Princeton after that? You could continue your education there as well.”
His silver eyes were bright as he gazed into our imagined future. I sipped my champagne, heady with love.
“I’d like to study there with Harper,” he continued, mapping it all out. “Then we’ll decide whether I’ll teach or write, and we’ll start our family.”
Our future is right here in front of us, I thought. We are living it now. I basked in the certainty of Davy’s planning. He drew me close to him.
“Miranda, darling, just think — we’ve begun our life together, right now in 1860!”
The big exciting storms swept down the valley again this year. When I called on Emily between blizzards, I found her cheerful and busy with the manuscripts we had organized. She sat at her desk, and I settled into my chair near her.
“I never could have done it alone,” she told me graciously. “No one should be asked to put a GALAXY in alphabetical order!”
I rubbed my hands together to warm them. “Are your poems easier now?” I asked.
Emily stared into the fire, watching the flames devour her cast-off papers. “I read the other day that it takes an entire TON of mimosa to make an ounce of a certain French perfume, Miranda. Then I thought, That’s how I write my poetry!”
“So are those papers that you’re burning what’s left after you’ve extracted the poem?”
“Yes, these words are the CHAFF. But they’ve been used to the full. Sometimes I write a good phrase in a poor letter, and then I cannibalize it. I use it again in a poem or another letter. Sometimes I try out a good line in two or three different places. Nothing GOLD is ever wasted!”
She smiled at me. “My PRACTICE is paying off. After my years of dutiful scales and exercises, I now have some skills to show!”
Her mention of skills made me remember a detail about her from one of our first meetings. Since then, a townsperson — I couldn’t remember who — had brought up Emily’s proficiency in a certain instrument. “Someone told me you used to play the real piano very nicely.”
“Someone spoke correctly,” she replied smugly. “I had lessons for years, for my Father’s APPROVAL. It used to give him great pleasure to hear me. Bach is Father’s favorite, which I understand. Bach is all duty. Bach is a REGIMEN — and so is Father.”
“Is that why you stopped playing?”
“No, there were other composers for me. But I came to see all music as another face of MALE DOMINANCE. When I played the piano, Mozart or Haydn or Liszt was standing there at my shoulder, telling me what to think, what to do next. So I stopped OBEYING them. I don’t TAKE ORDERS anymore.”
I compared this bristling independence with her fawning letters to “Master” — but I did so silently, reacting like a weathervane to Emily’s changing directions. I didn’t want to debate the pleasure music brought me, so I changed course, leading Emily around to a topic we could both agree on. I wanted to like Emily today.
“Emily, I must tell you, I finished Wuthering Heights. I read till two this morning. I believe it’s the finest novel ever written. Nothing comes even close!”
“Dear Miranda, English Emily is the SUN in the constellation of Brontës. She is the finest writer of the three, and she carried the heaviest burdens. She is my HEROINE.” Emily warmed to her drama. “She was always ill, always poor, always dealing with her mad parson father, her drunken brother, her idle sisters. There she was, without friends, isolated in that stark parsonage on the HOWLING MOORS — and the whole family coughing their lungs out, day and night.”
“What a picture, Emily.” I wondered if the reality was as dramatic as Emily’s description of it. But this being a writer’s biography, I thought that Emily would adhere closely to the facts. “How could she write?”
“Truly, one marvels at her fortitude. They say she cooked and washed and nursed all day and then wrote all night. No wonder she died young! I do think of her, when I enjoy my leisure and my privacy here in The Homestead. I owe it to Emily Brontë to USE my good fortune.”
I was glad to hear my friend acknowledge this debt. Amherst Emily was not given to feeling obligated and not long on gratitude.
Emily walked to her bookshelf and plucked out a slender leather volume tooled in green. “Today I will lend you her poems, Miranda. I wish they made a fatter volume! Would you like to read me some now? I have been able to lose myself in so few books this week, with the sun GLARING on the snow. My eyes are two daggers of pain!” So we passed an hour, with poor, brave Emily Brontë as our company.
When I began the tedious process of buckling and wrapping myself against the cold, Emily became wistful. “Stay one more moment, Miranda; I won’t hear your laugh for a week.”
I paused, wondering why Emily would want to keep me.
“Will this detain you?” she asked, a little shyly. “I have DISTILLED another ton of mimosa! Do you remember that draft of a letter to Master that you attacked so cruelly? See if you can be a little gentler with the poem it became.”
She handed me a paper; she had certainly condensed the letter, from three pages to three verses.
A Wounded Deer — leaps highest —
I’ve heard the Hunter tell —
’Tis but the Ecstasy of death —
And then
the Brake is still!
The Smitten Rock that gushes!
The trampled Steel that springs!
A Cheek is always redder
Just where the Hectic stings!
Mirth is the Mail of Anguish —
In which it Cautious Arm,
Lest anybody spy the blood
And “you’re hurt” exclaim!
“It’s stronger than the letter by far,” I approved. “This time it sounds like you! Your wounded deer has much more dignity than that bleeding bird, I think.” I studied the poem again. “But you really should restrain your punctuation, Emily. All those peppered exclamation marks make your poem look somewhat hysterical.”
She snatched the poem back with a chilly stare at my presumption. Just because she accepted criticism on one letter once did not give me a poetry editor’s privilege. I was not her chosen “surgeon”; I had better step back into my assigned humility.
The snows continued; February glittered and gleamed. Davy and I were given a glorious unbroken fortnight of skating on the Connecticut River, frozen a historic two-feet thick. The weather curtailed my visits to the outlying school districts for my independent study, so we had even more time available to spend together. We skated after school through all the brilliant afternoons, and then by firelight and moonlight at night. Kind Aunt Helen relaxed her rules for this rare event.
Davy and I glided together upstream and down, mile after smooth white mile — our arms entwined, our bodies joined in rhythm, our breath fused in an intimate cloud. Our matching, repeating motions were languorous and thrilling. When we moved beyond the other groups of skaters, I kissed Davy’s lips, pressing the cold apart to reach the inner warmth — until I was faint from his sweetness.
Late one afternoon, just as we were heading for the sociable bonfire onshore, there was a sharp sound like a rifle shot and then a long, hollow boom.
Afternoons with Emily Page 23