Juliet Gael

by Romancing Miss Bronte (v5)

  Anne and Emily exchanged a look.

  “There weren’t any letters from Mrs. Robinson.”

  “The ones he carried around in his pocket.”

  “They weren’t from her. They were all from Dr. Crosby. The Robinsons’ family doctor.”

  “They were very kind letters. But they repeatedly urged him to forget the lady—”

  “She was no lady.”

  “Well, whatever she was, she seems to have left poor Branwell high and dry, without a word all these years. It seems that all the news he ever got from Thorp Green came from this gentleman.”

  Charlotte thought of the desperate letters she had written to Heger and wondered what he had done with them. His letters to her were locked away in a japanned box at the bottom of her dresser; she could not bear to destroy them, although she never took them out anymore. After all these years, the slightest evocation of his memory still elicited a dull, aching sadness.

  “Well, I suppose we should burn them, all the same,” Charlotte said quietly.

  Emily and Anne nodded.

  Anne rose. “Where are they, Emmy? I’ll fetch them.”

  When she came back downstairs, she untied the packet and one by one, slowly and with great care, fed each letter to the fire. The flames shot up around the edges and ate up the words until nothing was left but curled gray ashes that settled lightly upon the black dust. Then Anne picked up the poker and stirred the red-hot coals so that not even a feathered trace remained.

  Emily rose and bid them good night. She nudged the dogs with her toe, and they stretched and followed her to the front door. She waited in the cold draft of the doorway while the dogs sniffed the hawthorn bushes. The icy wind felt like knives in her chest, and she muffled her cough with her shawl.

  Their bedroom was cold, and Charlotte was quick to finish brushing her hair and scurry to bed.

  She withdrew the brass warming pan, set it on the floor, and crawled between the sheets. “I’m very worried about her,” she told Anne. “She seems so tired. And her cough sounds frightful.”

  Anne sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on long woolen socks. “But you mustn’t allude to it—she gets very annoyed.”

  Anne fished behind her pillow for her nightcap and pulled it down over her ears, then crawled in next to her sister.

  “I’m sure it’s only an inflammation.”

  “The cold is always hard on us. You have a cough. Papa has a cough.”

  “We just need to stay inside and keep warm.”

  Charlotte raised herself on an elbow, cupped her hand around the candle on their bedside table, and blew out the flame.

  “How is she taking his death?”

  “Much as you would expect. Quite serenely.”

  There was a silence, and then Charlotte said, “Sometimes she frightens me, with the way she holds so lightly to life. She sees too much romance in death.”

  “She has her strange ideas, as do we all.”

  The thought of losing Emily terrified Charlotte. Without Emily, the light would go out of her world, although she could not say as much to the sister who lay beside her.

  A sudden gust of wind wailed down the chimney like something alive and grieving, causing them to burrow down beneath the covers and cling to each other for warmth. They were quiet for a long moment, listening to the mournful wind.

  “Good night, Genius Annie,” Charlotte said sleepily.

  “Good night, Genius Tally,” Anne replied.

  Genii they had all once been, named in a flight of imagination by their brother when they were children and believed anything to be possible, when they ruled supreme over their imaginary kingdoms, and life could be created or destroyed with the stroke of a pen.

  They all pressed on with their work; Emily and Charlotte were finally well advanced in their next novels. As winter approached, the east wind blew wild and keen over the frozen hills, bringing a cold that chilled the stone flags and spread from the glass panes of the windows. Emily’s cough worsened, but any questions about her health met only with flashes of annoyance from her intense gray eyes.

  “Why do you worry yourself about my health?” she would say, looking up from a book with a slightly contemptuous air. “One’s health is such a wearisome subject.”

  “You’re not eating,” Charlotte lamented.

  “None of us have an appetite. None of us are in robust health. We never have been. We are all quite used to these little annoyances.”

  “But your cough sounds quite serious, dearest.”

  “It’s nothing I can’t bear—and I would bear it with pleasure if you’d stop pestering me.”

  And bear it she would. It had always been in her nature to bear up, to refuse any appearance of weakness. She would no more seek sympathy than she would go begging in the streets, and she would certainly not keep to her bed and play the invalid. She still rose punctually at seven, dressed, and made her way to the kitchen, where she sat before the fire to put up her hair. One morning as she wound a knot at the back of her head, the comb slipped from her grasp and fell into the grate. Seeing that Emily was too weak to get out of her chair, Martha rushed in with a poker to sweep it out of the fire, but by then the teeth had burned away.

  “I’ll fetch ye another comb, miss. Don’t ye budge,” Martha said, scurrying out before Emily could sound her opposition.

  Tabby rose from her chair to stir the porridge on the stove. “Ye shouldn’t be up,” she scolded. “Ye should be in yer bed sippin’ bran tea, with a warmin’ pan under yer feet.”

  “Have you ever known me to lie in bed all day?”

  “I’ve never known ye so pitiful thin,” Tabby answered, “lookin’ like a skeleton.”

  When Martha came down with another comb, they watched while she coiled her hair and secured it in the back with her comb. They could see how much that small effort took out of her; her breath came short and quick.

  Tabby shook her head in bewilderment and muttered, “Ye’re a strange one.” She ladled a little of the porridge into a bowl and set it in front of Emily.

  “Now, ye’ll eat some o’ that if ye want to get yer strength back.”

  Emily stared at it with a kind of bewilderment.

  “I threw in a few currants and a little honey,” Tabby said gruffly, “although I don’t know why I troubled, seein’ as how ye got no interest in feedin’ anything ’cept that dog o’ yers.”

  Tabby deliberated over the bent head, Emily the porridge.

  Then the old servant turned back to her chores, flashing a look to Martha to leave her be.

  Emily swallowed only a few spoonfuls and then set the bowl on the floor for Keeper, who had been poised and alert at her side. But Tabby felt herself the victor and bragged to Charlotte that morning that she’d coerced Miss Emily into eating three spoonfuls of porridge, although in truth it had been only two.

  Charlotte quickly took the cheering news to her father. He shook his head gloomily. “The disease works like this. Don’t be fooled.”

  “How can you be so sure it’s consumption?”

  “I’ve seen it before.”

  Charlotte preferred her own foolishness to his bleak pessimism, and the women saw this small success as a sign of improvement. Their steps were a little lighter that morning and smiles broke out in the kitchen, all for a few bites of porridge.

  Emily’s fierce stoicism was a thing of wonder to Charlotte, and she danced tenderly around her sister, fearful of ruffling her feathers and trying valiantly to keep her own fears from showing too keenly on her face.

  The only interference Emily welcomed was the flood of books that continued to arrive at the parsonage, gifts from Charlotte’s sympathetic publisher, who wrote discreetly that they hoped the books would offer a distraction for Ellis Bell while he recovered from his cold.

  In her own letters to Mr. Williams, Charlotte poured out her despair. When Mr. Williams wrote recommending homeopathy for Ellis Bell, Charlotte showed Emily the letter.

  �
�That’s very good and kind of him,” Emily said with halting breath. “Do tell him … that Ellis Bell is most grateful for his advice. But … your dear Mr. Williams is quite delusional. Homeopathy is just more quackery.”

  “Well, perhaps Ellis would consent to see a doctor.”

  “Ellis will not have a doctor near him.” She glanced up from the book she was reading, her eyes flashing a sober warning. “Certainly not … that repulsive Wheelhouse.”

  “We’ll send for Dr. Teale from Leeds.”

  “Absolutely not. And should you go … behind my back and send for him anyway, Ellis … will refuse to see him and the poor fool will slog all the way here in the snow for nothing … and undoubtedly charge Father an exorbitant fee for his trouble.”

  To have body or mind exposed was inconceivable to Emily, and Charlotte sometimes thought there was more than rational skepticism behind her resistance, that it must be grounded in some irrational fear. But it did no good to try to penetrate her thoughts or comprehend her strange ways.

  “For my sake, please?”

  Emily’s eyes remained on her book.

  “I cannot bear to see you so ill.”

  Emily turned a page.

  “I could not bear to lose you.” Charlotte’s voice faltered.

  “Oh, hush. Must you be so morose?”

  “Perhaps if you saw the sister I see, you would be inclined to treat her a little less harshly.”

  Emily’s breath was now coming in short, uneasy pants. “You see me … as you would like me to be.”

  “I see what you might become. An author who is just coming into her own—a woman who has just started to exert her extraordinary powers—”

  “Come now, after I’m gone …” She paused to catch her breath. “Do you honestly think … anyone will ever notice … this obscure life of mine?”

  “You have written a powerful novel.”

  “Which everyone … views … with horror.”

  “What of your poems?”

  “My little rhymes.” She coughed, a hoarse, racking sound. “Sold all of two copies.”

  “You could be a great essayist. Like the American Mr. Emerson.”

  “I shall gladly … leave … essays to Mr. Emerson and his ilk.”

  “Please, Emmy. Just a simple visit from a doctor. A good one from Leeds or Manchester. If he confirms it’s nothing serious, then I promise I shall leave you in peace.

  Emily’s expression hardened. “No doctor.”

  “Must you always be so unyielding?” Charlotte cried.

  “My fate is … in God’s hands. I am … content to leave it there.”

  Then, suddenly softening when she saw the anguish in her sister’s eyes, she said simply, “I’m not going to die.”

  Charlotte believed her.

  One day when Martha was doing the washing, she came across a handkerchief coated with dried bloody phlegm. With a wooden stick she fished it out of the tub of boiling water, dropped it onto the washboard, and ran to find Charlotte. It was indeed Emily’s—her initials were embroidered in faded thread in the corner.

  “Ye need to tell the master,” Tabby said.

  “No. He worries endlessly about our health as it is. And still, it may prove to be only an inflammation.”

  “But ye need to find a way to help the girl, miss, since she won’t help herself.”

  “I know that, Tabby,” Charlotte snapped. “She forces me to neglect her, and I cannot bear it.”

  Tabby shook her head pitifully. “Always been a stubborn child. She was never so ’appy as when we was all scolding ’er at once, and ’er defying us. Always liked to bait us. She knew she’d win. She knew she’d get ’er way.”

  At this, Charlotte’s face clouded, and she sat down on a stool in the laundry room and broke into tears.

  Finally, deceptively, Charlotte resorted to consultations by correspondence. She sat down and wrote a detailed account of Emily’s symptoms: the shallow panting, the sharp, stabbing pains in the side, the flesh wasting away before their eyes. If it was consumption, might she still be saved? Was there any hope? Were there cures that might be pressed upon an unwilling patient? The physicians in London and Leeds sent back their replies, full of weighty words that signified authority and knowledge, much of it as difficult to decipher as an oracle’s utterings. One sent a prescription for a serum, which Charlotte quickly obtained from the chemist and left in a vial on Emily’s bedside table, along with a note indicating instructions for its dosage. The vial, unopened, was shuffled around from bedroom to kitchen table to mantel, where it sat until Martha got tired of dusting around it and stored it away in their medicine chest.

  Even as she grew steadily worse, Emily refused to alter her daily routine; she bore up without a word of complaint, and so the illness swept her along. The harder she fought it, the more quickly it advanced on her. She answered the burning pain in her side not with a gasp and a sharp cry, but with the stiffening of her jaw while she swept the hallway or cleared the dishes from the table. She pushed herself to the limit while the disease gnawed at her insides and spat her out. As the diarrhea worsened, she had to make her way on feeble legs a dozen times a day through rain and snow to the privy in the backyard. Once the wind was so fierce that it knocked her down and Martha found her sprawled helpless on the frozen ground. Sometimes the privy door froze shut, and she would have to stand in the cutting wind, shaking with fever, while one of her sisters pried it open. There was not one indignity that could strip away her supreme command of her spirit. As her body failed, her harsh indifference became a thing of wonder. Charlotte watched her for a sign of panic or despair, but Emily’s cool eyes never betrayed so much as a flash of weakness.

  By the time the tuberculosis had reached its latter stages, they had grown accustomed to the strange ritual of acting as if nothing were wrong with her. At dinner and tea, they orchestrated their conversations around the sound of her deep, hollow cough, which tore at their hearts. They looked on as she went about the few daily chores she could still perform, although she had become so emaciated that her wool shawl seemed like a crushing burden on her frail shoulders. She still rose and dressed every day, fed the dogs, and sat in the rocking chair sewing on buttons or darning socks. When she became too weak to sew, she read. When she could no longer hold up a book, Charlotte or Anne read to her. Keeper never left her side and padded anxiously behind wherever she went, with the kind of mute and mysterious comprehension of death that only animals possess.

  Few people outside the parsonage and its regular visitors were aware of Emily’s condition. Arthur had not laid eyes on her in months, and it was on Keeper’s account that he was admitted to the heart of the home and saw with his own eyes that she was dying.

  It was a wintry afternoon rendered even more miserable by a sharp wind and stinging sleet. Arthur had just come from a deathbed and was plodding up the snow-covered lane to find John Brown and give him instructions for yet another name to be engraved on the Sugden family tombstone. It wasn’t the deaths that disturbed him so much, but the misery of the living, and he was pondering God’s baffling will when he heard Keeper’s bark—a relentless yelp that warned of strangers. With a good hold on his hat, he lifted his head and squinted through the driving sleet. A horse-drawn wagon had pulled up beside the chipping shed, and when Arthur approached he found that the drivers had stepped inside to take shelter from the wind. They stood glowering at him with their gloved hands thrust deep into the pockets of their heavy coats, stamping their sheepskin boots, their caps pulled down over their ears, their faces red and raw from the icy wind. Arthur could see that they were waiting for John, and he figured they were out of temper at not being able to make their delivery and get on their way. He had not even noticed their dogs until he heard the growling coming from the beneath the wagon. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Keeper stalk across the lane; then Martha came running out of the back kitchen crying his name. Within a flash the three dogs were at one another, a fury of viciou
s snarls and growls in a flurry of fur and snow. With bared teeth they went for the eyes, the neck, and the chest, and Arthur could see that old Keeper was no match for the two of them, tough and weathered though he was.

  “Hey there!” he shouted to the carriers. “Hey! Call off your dogs!” But they only watched from the shed, grinning from ear to ear like they were proud of how their dogs could draw blood. Martha had advanced into the lane, flapping her apron and shouting at Keeper to come away, and Charlotte was calling from the yard, but they knew there was nothing they could do. Arthur was so sickened by the men and their cruelty, and seeing the women helpless and the old dog being mauled, that he fairly lost his temper. He threw down his prayer book and let loose a string of curses at the carriers that quite shocked them all. He grabbed the feed bucket from the back of the wagon and marched into the fray. He knew he’d get bitten, and he only hoped he could distract the other dogs long enough to draw Keeper away. Arthur managed to beat off one of the dogs, but Keeper—his eyes swimming with blood—was fighting blind and had his teeth sunk well into the black jowls of the other. It was only when Arthur crept close enough to catch the old dog’s attention that Keeper recognized a voice of authority and loosened his grip a little. By then the carriers had come out of the shed and stepped in to give him a hand. Arthur took Keeper by the collar and escorted him, bloodied and limping, back to the parsonage.

  Arthur was given a hero’s welcome in the kitchen, although the bulk of sympathy went to the old dog. Martha and Tabby and Charlotte worried over them, fussing about with pans of boiling water and clean rags. Arthur had a bad gash in his hand, but he was more concerned about a cut in Keeper’s chest that wouldn’t stop bleeding. Arthur knelt down on the floor with the dog and got him to lie still while he sponged away enough of the blood to find the wound.

  “Here it is. Nothing so big that it won’t heal. If he can keep it clean with his tongue, it’ll be all right.”

  Keeper lifted his swollen head and licked the curate’s hand.

  “Well, now.” Arthur smiled, patting the dog gently. “I’ll take that as ample payment for my troubles.”