by Cynthia Hand
Jane just stared at her. “Helen says she cannot go any farther,” she said hoarsely. “She must rest.”
Charlotte did not have the energy to point out that Helen was deceased and incorporeal and therefore could not rest more than she was already doing. But Charlotte’s legs ached, and she could barely keep her eyes open. So she nodded, and the tragic little group stopped next to the familiar (yes, it was definitely the same one; she saw that now) moss-darkened granite crag and sat for a moment in the marshy grass.
How had they come to such a desolate place? Things had gone well enough, the first day. After fleeing Thornfield they’d walked until they’d reached a road, where a carriage had just happened to be passing by. They’d waved to it, and the driver had stopped. They’d asked where he was going, and he’d named a town not far from Haworth, where Charlotte had told Alexander to meet them. Haworth was Charlotte’s home, sort of, even though she hadn’t spent much time there, and it was safe, and Father and Bran would be there. The carriage driver said he’d take them for thirty shillings. Between them, Charlotte and Jane had been able to scrape together but twenty. On that meager amount, the driver had taken them as far as Whitcross, which was not a town but merely a place where four roads met at a crossroads. But it was reasonably close to Haworth, and Charlotte had assumed they could easily walk the rest of the way. And it would be quicker, she’d suggested, to go straight across the moors instead of taking the long way by road.
And so here they were. Lost and cold and in peril.
“Helen also says she’s hungry,” Jane reported.
Charlotte’s stomach gurgled. She was no stranger to hunger—nor was Jane, she knew—but this hunger was beyond anything she’d ever experienced before. They had not eaten anything save a handful of questionable berries in the two days since they’d left Thornfield Hall. The first day, the hunger had been a sharp, persistent presence in her stomach. Now it had reached a state of floaty light-headed emptiness.
And like we said before, there was not a town in sight.
“I’m sorry we’re lost,” Charlotte said. “I have never had the keenest sense of direction.”
“It’s all right,” murmured Jane. “At least I’m in possession of my own body. That’s something. There are worse things than being lost.”
Like starving to death, Charlotte thought. Or dying of exposure. Both of which seemed like a distinct possibility in the near future. This was why Charlotte had always considered herself an indoors type of girl.
Just then they all distinctly heard the faraway tolling of a bell. Charlotte and Jane both sat up.
“Helen says, ‘What was that?’” said Jane.
“A church bell!” Charlotte gasped. “Could you tell what direction it was coming from?”
“This way.” Jane took the lead this time, slogging through the heather in the direction of the sound. But after a moment the tolling stopped, and the only noise they could hear was the persistent voice of the wind, and still they could see no town.
“Blast!” said Charlotte. “We can’t be far from Haworth.”
“Helen says her feet hurt,” said Jane.
Charlotte had a blister on her big toe. She was pretty sure Helen didn’t have a blister on her big toe. She sighed. It was getting dark. Soon it would be very dark, and even colder than it was now. And from the looks of the growing bank of dark clouds overhead, it was going to rain.
She felt a drop on her face. Then another on the crown of her head. They’d gone off without their bonnets. She didn’t even have the carpetbag with the broken handle. She closed her eyes and tilted her head up as the rain started to come down in earnest, willing herself to just breathe and try not to think of the very real danger they were in. She imagined Mr. Blackwood on a horse. Looking for them. Worried. Calling their names. Maybe he’d arrived at Haworth already. If so, he would have found them missing, and he’d be searching for them. Perhaps any moment now he’d find them.
But Mr. Blackwood wasn’t here. She swallowed down a lump in her throat. This was, she realized, the kind of transforming experience that the great writers always wrote about. This might very well be the depths of despair. It must be documented.
That’s when she realized that she’d left her notebook behind as well. This was the keenest loss of all. But then, she couldn’t have written anything down, even if she’d had her notebook. She was still missing her glasses. And there wasn’t enough feeling in her cold fingers to hold a pen.
“I’m sorry, Charlotte,” she heard Jane say in a quavering voice.
She opened her eyes. Jane was standing in front of her, her hair and the entire upper part of her dress soaked with rain, her expression a picture of the same utter dejection that Charlotte had just been feeling. It was hard to tell, what with the rain, but Jane may have even been crying.
“Why are you sorry?” Charlotte asked. “I’m the one who got us lost.”
“But this is all my fault,” Jane said. “You wouldn’t even be out here if it weren’t for me. And now we could die.”
“We’re not going to die.” But Charlotte’s teeth were starting to chatter with cold.
“I’ve seen three ghosts out here already,” Jane said. “All of them died not far from this very spot.”
“Can you ask them the way to Haworth?” Charlotte closed the distance between Jane and herself and took Jane’s chilly hand in hers. They tried to smile bravely at each other.
“Helen says being dead isn’t really so bad.”
“Helen,” said Charlotte gently, “is not being terribly helpful.”
Jane frowned. “Helen also says there’s a light right behind you.”
Charlotte spun around. The sky was darkening fast, night falling, but Jane was right—against a faraway hillside, like a welcoming star, there was a light, shining dim but distant through the rain. Or at least she thought she saw it. She couldn’t see too well.
“Helen says we should go toward the light,” Jane said.
They dragged their exhausted limbs slowly in that general direction. To get to the light they had to go through a bog. Charlotte kept tripping and falling in the mud, but Jane was always there to help her up. Together they struggled through the marshy ground and onto what turned out to be a road. A road! And the road led to a gate, and the gate led to a house, and at the door of the house Charlotte’s legs stopped working and she sank down at the wet doorstep. She felt Jane’s body come down beside her. Inside the house they heard voices.
“Well, I will admit it’s nice to be home,” said one, a girl’s voice. “Even if it’s only for a little while.”
“How long do you think we’ll get to stay?” said another, much younger girl’s voice.
“The house will have to be sold,” said the first. “We’ll probably have until then.”
Their voices were familiar. Charlotte had the mad thought that those sweet voices belonged to her sisters, Emily and Anne, which of course was impossible, as her sisters were still at Lowood. They were angels’ voices, she decided.
“We should knock,” croaked Jane.
But they were too exhausted.
“You knock, Helen,” Charlotte said. But no knock sounded.
So for the moment they lay on the doorstep next to each other, getting more and more drenched by the rain, until there were sudden footsteps on the path that led up to the door, followed by a muffled exclamation of surprise. And when Charlotte opened her eyes again, Bran’s face was looming over hers.
She hadn’t expected an angel to look like Bran.
“Charlie!” Bran cried. “And . . . Jane—Miss Eyre! What are you doing home?”
She gave a strangled laugh. They were still alive, apparently. And home. All this time wandering aimlessly and now she’d landed on her own front doorstep. She laughed again, then groaned.
“Em! Annie!” Bran called. “Come quick!”
The next few minutes went by in a blur. Emily and Anne—yes, her sisters were here—came running and helpe
d Bran half carry, half drag both Jane and Charlotte into the house and in front of the parlor fire. Then Bran retreated to the kitchen while Charlotte’s sisters retrieved fresh and dry clothes for the unfortunate pair. There was a thin soup spooned into their mouths. Blankets were wrapped around them. A spot of brandy administered. And after a while Charlotte found that she had recovered enough to talk.
“What are you doing here?” she asked Emily and Anne first off. She had a sinking feeling in her stomach that had nothing to do with hunger. Emily and Anne should be at Lowood. There was no reason for them to be here at Haworth unless . . .
“Father has died,” Annie said gently.
“It was very sudden,” said Emily. “His heart.”
“He was buried yesterday. We would have sent for you, of course,” said Bran, “but you weren’t at Lowood, and I didn’t know where to find you. You were supposed to go back to school, Charlie, after I left you at the train station. Why did you not go back?” He pressed his lips together in a way that reminded Charlotte of her father’s scowl. Which made her chest hurt. She and Father had never been particularly close—he’d been a distant, almost cold figure for much of her life. But still, he’d been her father. And now he was gone.
“I was diverted,” she said to Bran.
“Never mind,” he said, patting her hand. “You’re here now, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I’m here now. And you’re here. In charge of everything.”
He nodded bravely. He seemed to have accepted this sudden change in his life’s calling. A parson. The man who’d see to the religious needs of the community. She wouldn’t have believed him capable of such a thing. But in a mere week since they’d parted ways at the train station, her brother seemed to have changed. He was sixteen now—he’d had his birthday, which she’d also missed. But he was looking and acting like he was twenty, at the least. Somehow, in the time since she’d last seen him, her brother had grown up.
“Have you heard from Mr. Blackwood?” she asked him.
“Mr. Blackwood?” Bran’s expression tightened slightly like the mention of Mr. Blackwood still brought up embarrassing recollections of his time in the Society. “No. Should I have heard from Mr. Blackwood?”
“He distracted Mr. Rochester so that Jane and I could make our escape,” Charlotte explained. “He said he would meet us here.”
“No, I have not seen him,” Bran said.
A shiver made its way down Charlotte’s spine, like a remnant from the cold she’d suffered on the moors. “Well. He should be here soon, then. We can expect him any time now.”
A week passed, but Mr. Blackwood didn’t arrive. The first few days Charlotte jumped at every footfall she heard outside, sure that he had finally come, but it never turned out to be the illustrious Mr. Blackwood. And slowly it began to dawn on her that something had gone wrong, to delay him so. Something had happened.
“Mr. Blackwood can handle himself,” Bran kept telling her, but Charlotte still worried.
“He probably returned to London to report to the Society,” Jane said as they were walking out in the garden.
“But he said he’d come find us,” Charlotte argued. “He said, and I quote, ‘I will find you.’”
Jane shrugged. She’d been a bit on edge these last few days. They all had. The entire company—Bran and Charlotte, Emily and Annie, Jane and even Helen, apparently, from what Jane reported—were all feeling a sense of impending doom. They were, at the very least, in for a change. The house at Haworth was going to have to be sold, as the sisters had been discussing the night Charlotte and Jane arrived. Their father had left them no inheritance to speak of. Just the parsonage, which Bran would be taking over.
So Emily and Anne were going to be sent back to Lowood. Charlotte couldn’t bear the thought of returning, so she’d secured herself a teaching position in the town, which came with a tiny little room attached to the schoolhouse. It wasn’t a very glamorous job. But it was something.
“I suppose I should search for another position as governess,” Jane said now as they plodded along the garden path. She shuddered. “One that doesn’t require references.”
“For what it’s worth I thought you were an excellent governess,” Charlotte said.
Jane didn’t answer. She was looking off into a patch of dead rosebushes, but she was seeing something else. Thornfield Hall, perhaps. Helen was still clearly hanging about Jane, but the true ghost that seemed to haunt Charlotte’s friend was Mr. Rochester.
Breaking up is hard to do.
Charlotte kicked at a loose stone on the path. She hated the idea of Jane going off to another job somewhere and never seeing her again. She would have loved it if they could have all stayed on at Haworth—Emily and Annie and Bran and Jane—and played a happy family.
But it was not to be. “I’ll only stay another week, two at most,” Jane was saying now. “And then I’ll be off to find a new adventure in child-rearing. Hooray.”
“Hooray,” Charlotte agreed faintly.
Behind them, a voice cleared gruffly. Jane and Charlotte turned to see Bran standing there. Charlotte lifted her glasses. (We know, we know, her tortoiseshell glasses were lost in the scuffle at Thornfield Hall, but Charlotte had discovered a spare, slightly-more-worn pair of spectacles in her dresser drawer in her room at Haworth.) So at this moment she could see her brother perfectly well.
He was dressed in some of Father’s nicer clothes, although the pants fit him poorly. And he’d attempted to tame his wild mane of red hair with a comb and some water. He pushed his glasses up on his nose.
“Hello, Charlie. Miss Eyre.” He gave an awkward little bow.
“Uh, hello, Bran,” said Charlotte. “What are you doing?”
He shifted from foot to foot. “I was wondering . . . if it wouldn’t be too much trouble . . . if you’d be so kind . . . as to give me a private audience for a moment?”
“Huh?” Charlotte didn’t get it.
“With Miss Eyre.” Bran’s face was getting paler and paler. His freckles stood out horribly. “There is something I wish to speak to her regarding.”
It was silent for several heartbeats, as both Charlotte and Jane were genuinely confused as to what Bran could possibly want. Then Charlotte said, “All right, whatever you say, dear,” and tromped off toward the house, leaving Jane and Bran alone in the garden. Well, mostly alone. She stopped after she’d gone a few paces and tried to listen in on their conversation. But the wind was blowing—as it always seemed to be blowing in this part of England—and she could only make out a few words. Parsonage—he definitely said the word parsonage. Lowly parson. Duty. Family. And . . . love?
That’s when Jane came charging up the path, shaking her head. Bran trailed behind her, his voice pleading. “At least say you’ll think about it.”
“No!” Jane burst out. “I will not marry you, Mr. Brontë! I cannot believe you would have the gall to ask me! Not after everything that’s happened!”
“But don’t you see it would solve so many problems,” he panted. “Jane! If we were to marry, you could stay on at Haworth. You’d have a place here. You’d have a family. If you don’t marry me, where will you go?”
She stopped walking so fast he nearly crashed into her. She spun around and stuck her finger right in his face. “Do you love me?” she practically screamed.
“Well . . . no.” His face had gone from pale to bright red. “But what’s love got to do with it, in this day and age? Our marriage could be like an arrangement between friends. If you like we could live like brother and sister. . . .”
Jane got a frenzied look in her eyes. “Well, that’s just the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me. At least since the last idiot who followed it up with trying to kill me!” Then she literally screamed and pushed him away from her. She turned and fled back down the path and into the house. Charlotte heard the door slam, and then another slightly muffled scream of rage.
Charlotte discovered that her mouth was hanging op
en. She shut it. Turned to her stunned, woefully foolish younger brother, who was just staring after where Jane had gone.
“Well, that didn’t go very well, did it?” She managed a sympathetic smile.
“She does not want to marry me,” he remarked.
“Clearly. And that’s hardly surprising. Considering what she’s been through.”
His flush grew deeper. “Oh, I know,” he said sharply. “I’m strange-looking, and I’m clumsy, and I make a mess of everything. But I was trying to do her a kindness. She has no one to turn to. I thought . . .”
“I know. I heard what you thought.” Charlotte walked over and stuck her arm through his, turning him to move away from the house. “It was very thoughtful of you, Bran. But a little thoughtless as well.”
“I’m sorry,” he bleated.
“Don’t tell me. Tell her. But give her time to cool off first,” she added quickly as they heard another bellow of rage from the house, this time followed by a crash of some kind.
They walked for a while without speaking. Gradually Bran’s face returned to its regular color. He pushed his glasses up on his nose.
“I’m a fool,” he said with a rueful laugh.
“Yes. But I think you’re going to be a wonderful parson,” she said.
His eyes brightened. “You really believe so?”
She laughed. “I believe so. I believe it with all of my heart.”
