Emily's Ghost

by Denise Giardina

  The Mozart was a triumph of technical proficiency. Caroline considered she had won the right to be escorted to the lecture hall upon the arm of William Weightman. A petulant Sarah Sugden walked beside but had little to say on the way to the Keighley Mechanics Institute. She was so cross that she had begun to think a man who refused to keep a phaeton was not worth pursuing, no matter how attractive otherwise.

  Charlotte Brontë, who lagged behind with her sisters, was in an equally foul mood. When at last she did speak, she was forced to keep her voice low, for the elder Durys were close behind.

  “Whatever were you thinking,” she whispered crossly to Emily, “to speak so to Sarah Sugden?”

  “She was rude,” Emily replied.

  “Is it a reason to be rude back?”

  “An eye for an eye,” Emily said. “In some cases. I think no harm was done. Sarah Sugden is impervious to insults from the likes of me.”

  Anne said, “I thought Emily was funny, though I dared not laugh.”

  “And what,” Charlotte demanded, “must Mr. Weightman have thought?”

  “He would have laughed as well,” Emily maintained, “although he also did not dare.”

  Charlotte shook her head in despair. “No, no. Look at him.” She nodded ahead to Weightman, who was engaged in animated conversation with Caroline Dury. “We have been entertained in her house; she has been the gracious hostess while we sat like lumps, or”—she glanced at Emily—“not. Then there was the piano. Is there a more accomplished pianist in the district than Caroline Dury?”

  “I find she can make any piece boring,” Emily said.

  “Bah,” Charlotte said. “She never misses a note, even on the most difficult runs. And she has a full piano to play upon, not just a cottage piano. However her father affords it, I do not know. As for me, I can-not play at all. I cannot see the notes unless my nose is right up against a sheet of music.”

  “You have other talents,” Anne said.

  Charlotte would not be placated. “No, no, it is hopeless. I do not doubt they will be married by the end of this summer. I must give up Mr. Weightman.”

  Emily wanted to say, How can you give up what you never had in the first place? But of course she did not say it. Instead she grabbed Charlotte’s arm, and Anne’s as she strode between them, and pulled them closer. Despite Charlotte’s silliness over the curate, she saw the difference between her sisters and the others. That was how she thought of the Durys and Sarah Sugden. The others. She found it amazing that Weightman could be so patient with drawing room conversation, and move so easily between one world and the other.

  At the Mechanics Institute, Weightman escorted Caroline and Sarah to a place of honor on the front row. The Brontës followed and were grateful when Weightman motioned for them to sit at the front as well. Even Charlotte put aside the disappointments of the afternoon to hear what Weightman had to say, and to see his face as well as she could in her nearsighted way. Charlotte wanted knowledge more than she wanted a man, as did her sisters.

  Nor did Weightman disappoint. Upon his introduction, he launched into a spirited discussion of Sophocles and the play Antigone. Weightman explained to his audience, many of whom had no knowledge of the subject, the workings of Greek theater and the gifts it had bestowed upon dramatic productions down to the present day. Because there remained a whiff of the disreputable surrounding the stage, an added frisson attended the subject addressed by a handsome young man in clerical garb. The ladies, in particular, were enthralled.

  As the lecture continued, it was also apparent that some of the gentlemen were scandalized. Though the Mechanics Institute was a progressive organization providing educational courses for the workingmen of the district, the audiences for the evening lectures drew from the most prosperous levels of the town, including mill owners. The subject matter of Antigone, as Weightman presented it, was a young woman who rebelled against recognized authority by breaking the law. Nor, it seemed, as one prosperous burgher whispered to another, was she ashamed of it. Quite the opposite.

  Weightman read several scenes from the play. A discussion with Patrick Brontë before the lecture had convinced him it would not be a good idea to solicit female help in reading the parts. There was not a father in the district who would be pleased to see his daughter standing upon a stage with an unmarried man and reading lines from a play in full view of her neighbors. Patrick had shaken his head in private at Weightman’s even suggesting it. That boy, he thought, shall get himself in trouble yet. But he thought it fondly, and with a smile upon his face.

  So Weightman read the parts of both Creon and Antigone, careful to let his audience know who was speaking. But the message could not be clearer.

  “‘You dared to disobey the law?’” Weightman recited as Creon.

  And he answered with Antigone’s defiant response: “Yes, I did. Because it’s your law, not the law of God. You are merely a man, mortal, like me, and laws that you enact cannot overturn ancient moralities or common human decency. I would rather suffer the disapproval and punishment of men, than dishonor such ancient truths.”

  Weightman spoke with such passionate intensity that some of the ladies of more delicate constitution let out tiny gasps. Emily Brontë sat up straight and took a deep breath. Such sentiments were similar to the ones expressed by the heroes and, yes, heroines she wrote about when she and Anne created stories set in their fictional land of Gondal. At that moment, she felt herself inspired to storm some great height.

  When Weightman was done, the lecture hall filled with thunderous applause and an undercurrent of talk. Women who stood and nervously posed inquiries about one point or the other dominated the question-and-answer session that followed. Now and then a skeptical gentleman would rise and challenge the speaker. One such inquiry came from a prosperous-looking man Emily recognized as the owner of the Bridgehouse Mill.

  “This play seems to approve of sedition against the government. Would you agree?”

  Weightman looked not at all flustered. “I would,” he said.

  The gentleman was not done. “Would you further explain,” he demanded, growing a bit red in the face. “Does the play approve of sedition? Or do you agree with sedition?”

  Weightman did not turn a hair. “I agree that the play approves of sedition.” He continued, still in a calm and pleasant tone of voice, “I believe, however, the play only approves when governmental authority tramples on human decencies.”

  There was a pattering of gloved female applause.

  A bit later, Mr. Dury rose to ask, in a friendly way, “Mr. Weightman, do you think Sophocles a talented playwright in his depiction of women? Does there in reality exist a woman, save for a common harridan, who would speak so to a man in authority?”

  Weightman’s eyes met Emily’s. She felt a sudden clutching in the pit of her stomach. Then Weightman said, “Yes. I have known fine women capable of this.”

  “Extraordinary!” Charlotte whispered. “Where on earth could he have met such a woman? Do you think he means Agnes Walton back home in Appleby?”

  Anne reached out and gave Emily’s arm a quick squeeze. Of course Anne knew.

  As they waited for Weightman, who upon the dismissal of the crowd was mobbed by a group of well-wishers, mostly women whose reluctant husbands dragged behind, Caroline and Sarah discussed the lecture.

  Sarah was in a sulky mood. “I thought the sister Ismene was far more admirable than Antigone. She was sensible.”

  “I would prefer to have Ismene for a friend than Antigone,” Caroline Dury agreed. “But the play is about Antigone, after all. Plays are about singular people, not normal, likeable people.”

  “That is true,” Sarah agreed.

  The Brontës stood aside and listened, Emily with her arms folded, eyes downcast and a smile upon her face. The wait required patience, for Weightman had been waylaid by a line of women. But at last Mr. Dury dragged him away by pointing out that a long and difficult walk lay ahead of the Haworth party. Carolin
e and Sarah were deposited with Mrs. Dury back at the parsonage, where they would speculate on the strangeness of the journey Mr. Dury and Mr. Weightman must endure. Then the two clergymen began the trek back up to Haworth with their charges.

  The night was cold but bright with moonlight, so it was easy enough to find the way. Except for Charlotte, who still refused to rely upon her spectacles. Fortunately, even as the party descended the front steps of the Keighley parsonage, Emily stood close and spoke in Weightman’s ear.

  “Why don’t you escort Charlotte?” Emily whispered. “She would so enjoy your company. And between us, Mr. Dury and I can carry Anne along quite well.”

  That was the way they proceeded. Charlotte, who knew nothing of the plot, accepted Weightman’s arm with joy. Whither thou goest, I will go, she thought, keeping her eyeglasses firmly in her pocket. And Anne, with a companion on either side, scarcely felt the stress of the steep ascent. At first the way was smooth, broad, and level. As the party left the outskirts of Keighley, the road began to rise precipitously. Houses were fewer and farther between, and then rare. But the roadway was still wide and even enough for a cart or coach. The party could walk five abreast with ease, concentrating more on conversation than on their footing.

  The journey was an astonishing one for the Reverend Theodore Dury. In his years in the district, he had only known the Brontës of the parlor, the painfully shy young women who scarcely opened their mouths. On this walk, he became acquainted with a different species of Brontë. Dury liked Patrick Brontë in fact, he did not mind the trip to Haworth because it would give him a chance to breakfast with Patrick on the morrow and discuss business of the vicarage. He knew Patrick to be fond of his daughters, as any father should be. But he had never understood what seemed to him the inordinate pride Brontë took in his girls. Such drab little mice, Theodore Dury would have said, rather dull than accomplished.

  But the Brontë sisters on the walk home were so far the opposite of that picture that he was shocked for a different reason. Scarcely was the town left behind when the Brontës began pelting Weightman with such pointed questions about his lecture that they caused Dury’s head to spin. Nor did the sisters seem content to simply listen to and accept Weightman’s answers. They challenged him.

  Certainly Ismene was weak, Anne declared. And yet was not Antigone cruel to her? Indeed, agreed Charlotte, though Antigone was brave, was she not also too proud? Was that part of her downfall? And yet, Emily chimed in, would pride not be necessary when one takes such a great risk? How else sustain oneself in the face of certain death, if not with pride?

  Weightman joined in as easily, Dury thought, as if he were talking with a group of clerics. Which surprised the Reverend Dury and made him uneasy. It would be more appropriate if Weightman maintained a paternal air with the young women. The Reverend Dury should be the center of the conversation, the young women retiring. But the roles were reversed, the Brontës carrying on a vigorous conversation with Weightman while Dury trudged along in shy silence.

  “Did not Sophocles write other plays?” Charlotte asked.

  And to Dury’s astonishment, Weightman began to explain the story of how Oedipus was told by an oracle that he would kill his father and marry his mother.

  “Mr. Weightman,” Dury admonished, “do you think that a fitting topic for young ladies?”

  “Oedipus Rex was one of the key texts in my studies in classical drama at Durham,” Weightman replied.

  “But these innocent young ladies are not at Durham,” Dury reminded.

  “They should be,” Weightman said. Dury was taken aback. This was not the polite and charming young curate of the drawing room, but an oddly rebellious one. He decided to mention this to Patrick Brontë when they spoke in the morning.

  And to his continuing amazement, Emily Brontë proclaimed, “I should like to read some more of those plays. Perhaps I could try to read them in the original Greek. I have already done some Latin translations on my own, Horace and Virgil. It is difficult with no instruction, but I make progress.”

  “I have a Greek lexicon. You may borrow it if you like,” Weightman offered.

  “Father has one as well,” Emily said. “Though I never paid proper attention to it. Now I shall. But may I borrow a play from you? And which play do you recommend?”

  “The Greeks have given us more strong women figures besides Antigone, which you might enjoy,” Weightman said. He considered a moment, and then said, “For tragedy, I recommend Euripides. Medea perhaps.”

  Emily said, “Horace mentions Medea in his Ars Poetica.”

  “But—” Dury sputtered. “But—” He could not bring himself to finish his protest, to inform Emily Brontë that Medea was about a woman who killed her own children.

  Weightman went on as if he hadn’t heard Dury. “But you might want to start with a comedy by Aristophanes. I think you would like Lysistrata very much.”

  When he sensed Emily was about to speak, Dury said, “Do not ask what it is about,” before she could in fact ask. Dury felt his face turning red with embarrassment as he remembered that Lysistrata featured a group of women who agreed to deny their husbands the pleasures of the bed until they stopped fighting a war. “Really, Mr. Weightman,” he said, “I question the appropriateness of a young woman translating that play.”

  “I suspect, then, that I shall do it,” Emily said at once.

  Dury was speechless. Charlotte, sensing his discomfort, said, “You must never mind Emily, Mr. Dury. She will always take an unlikely course.”

  Finding his voice at last, Dury said, “Mr. Weightman, how do you propose to address my concern?”

  “Of course, I shall mention it to her father,” Weightman said.

  Emily did not reply. She resented being spoken about as though she were not present, but knew that Patrick Brontë had never denied his daughters reading material.

  The conversation took other directions, all pleasant ones to the Brontë sisters. Silver moonlight showed the undulating swells of moorland, here and there broken by jumbled boulders or jagged white streaks of unmelted snow. The outline of Haworth loomed above them, not an impoverished mill town but a castle astride a promontory. Emily imagined her Gondal heroine, Alexandrina Zenobia, slipping past the castle guard to meet her lover on the moors. They passed the dark hulk of the Ebor textile mill with its distant hissing of steam and running water. The dungeon where Alexandrina Zenobia was held before she made her escape.

  Anne asked Mr. Dury the question that had become a secret code as the sisters sorted out the good clergy, in their view, from the bad.

  “What do you think,” Anne asked, “of the possibility of universal salvation?”

  “Universal—what? Universal salvation? You mean that everyone would go to Heaven?”

  “Yes,” Anne said.

  “Preposterous!” Dury cried. “Why bother to be a good Christian?”

  “Is that the reason one is a good Christian?” asked Emily. “To get to heaven? But is that not selfish?”

  Dury continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “Murderers and lechers and pagans in Heaven? I think not! I have my doubts if Catholics shall be there!”

  “Heaven would be too crowded,” Charlotte said.

  Dury missed the mockery in her voice. “Precisely,” he said. “And how would it be Heaven if one were cheek to jowl with riffraff?”

  Charlotte coughed, said “How indeed?” and added Dury to her list of ridiculous curates.

  Emily glanced at Weightman. She could not see his face in the dark, but she fancied she knew him well enough to think his silence meant he was biting his tongue. Emily took a deep breath of the night air. She was exhilarated by the way words rang loud as hammer blows in the cold air.

  “I don’t want to go to Heaven at all!” she cried. “I want to come back here. To the moors.”

  “Come back?” Dury was shocked again.

  “Yes,” she said. If not for her support of Anne, Emily would have turned in a circle waving
her arms over her head, crying, Here! Here! Here! and then run off into the dark. She was forced to imagine doing it. “It sounds so terribly boring, Heaven. Only the good people there, and sitting around all eternity contemplating their tedious goodness. I think they should soon be cross-eyed from the effort.”

  “Dear Miss Emily,” Dury said carefully. “Do you wish to sound a Hindoo? You are a good English clergyman’s daughter.”

  “Ah yes!” Emily cried. She felt herself drunk with energy. “But I am Irish, you see. And so I am wild.”

  “Hush!” It was Charlotte’s turn to grow alarmed. “Our mother was English and our father—”

  “Is Irish,” Emily finished, refusing to be cowed.

  “He does not speak of it often,” Charlotte said. She glanced at Weightman. She considered her Irishness, like her spectacles, something not to be pointed out.

  “Papa speaks of it to me,” Emily said. “He is not ashamed of it.”

  Weightman broke his silence. “Perhaps, Miss Emily, there is something Irish about your idea of Heaven. The Celtic church fathers thought Heaven was close as earth, and only a thin border between.”

  Emily nearly stopped walking. She forced herself to continue for Anne’s sake. “Indeed?”

  “Indeed. And the highest spots, like mountaintops, are where Heaven and earth meet. Your moors could be such places.”

  “They are,” Emily said. “Heaven shall be what we need. That is all. Of one thing I am most certain—I require moors for my Heaven. And animals.”

  The Reverend Theodore Dury said not another word on the way to the parsonage. He had heard enough heresy on the walk to Haworth to fire several pyres in the old days. Two points he resolved. One was to speak to Patrick Brontë on the morrow, to ask whether he ought to more closely monitor the ideas his daughters were exposed to. The other was to sit his own daughter Caroline down in their Keighley parlor and urge her to set her sights elsewhere than the Reverend William Weightman.