The Lost Child

IV. THE FAMILY

The creaking of the door announces the late-morning arrival of her dear sister, who she knows will be bearing a discreetly lacquered tray upon which a bowl of broth will be carefully balanced. A full submission to nourishment will be demanded of her before she is left alone to linger through another feverish day. She opens her eyes and attempts to lift her head from the damp pillow, but the weight is too much. She unseals her lips and moistens them with the tip of her tongue, and then moves her mouth in an attempt to form words, but no words emerge. Through the slender window she can see the naked branches of the oak tree beating frantically in the keen morning wind. The funereal December light illuminates this macabre dance. Heavy limbs, like her own, but she never danced. I never danced. Not once, although Papa never forbade it. Five girls and not one of us a dancer. Branwell frequently danced in the streets of the village when befuddled with drink. The rascal son who danced, but not the girls.

She watches attentively as Charlotte sets down the tray on the chair next to the narrow bed. Her clothes make a tremendous noise. Silk on cotton. Cotton on silk. Once again her sister is occupying too much space in the room. Dear, dear Charlotte. Please, no more of this. But she must be considerate to her sister, for she understands that it was her own guilty preoccupation with the worlds of the Grange and the Heights that occasioned a distance to grow between them. Please, Charlotte. Forgive my selfishness. An arm begins gently to burrow beneath one shoulder and tunnel its way across her back. A free hand cradles her head, and in one unhurried motion her bones are levered up and forward. She can feel Charlotte calmly stuffing a dry pillow behind her, and then her sister releases her, and — lo and behold — she is balanced upright. Charlotte’s are affectionate brown eyes, although around their perimeter they are now decorated with the furrows of age. When her sister smiles, pages of the calendar turn. Poor Charlotte: her one true love released her, and no one was there to catch her as she fell.

Her sister places the tray in her lap and then waits, silently willing her to eat but unsure if the invalid will be able to manoeuvre the delicate spoon to her own lips. Dear Charlotte. How long ago was it? A year? Two years? Walking quietly into the Black Bull to rescue Branwell and overhearing her brother and his quarrelsome friends speaking uncharitably of “the plump one.” Her brother’s wolfish smile and mocking laughter continued even as his vulgar friends fell speechless. Poor gin-soaked Branwell, seemingly determined to ride at speed towards ruin, who later that night leaned heavily against her, merriment spilling unhinged from meaning, as she led him by the arm up a moonlit Church Lane and back in the direction of the Parsonage.

Charlotte guides the spoon into her sister’s mouth. At the foot of the bed the maid is unfolding an extra blanket to assist against the day’s raw chill. The busy woman works swiftly, aware that her presence in the room is an intrusion best kept to a minimum. The door is partially ajar, and as Charlotte redips the spoon into the broth, they both can hear Papa preparing tomorrow’s sermon in his study. She is her tall, gangling father’s child, unlike Charlotte, who takes after the mother whom neither sister can fully recall. The numbness of loss followed them out of childhood and pursued them into adulthood. Again Charlotte proffers the spoon, but she now turns away and looks at the wall. Anne will be in the kitchen either sewing or reading her Bible by the hearth, and waiting for her eldest sister to return and report on the condition of their poor Emily. And then perhaps later one of them will convey to Papa the news that there has been no restoration of health, but only after he has finished committing his sermon to memory. Only then may Papa be disturbed.

Again she turns her head and rejects the spoon and its watery contents. The maid removes the tray from her lap while Charlotte takes a lace napkin and dabs prudently at the corners of her mouth. A deft expression of caring. She can now see that the morning light is already fading and the afternoon is preparing to set in misty and cold. Beyond the swaying tree, beyond the church, are the wild moors that call to her to rise from this confinement and race purposefully into the December wind and observe the landscape in its winter colours. I must go. Let me go. But the blundering sound of the maid edging her way out of the room breaks the spell. She is now released from the moors and delivered back to a place where a shadow cavorts on the wall as the tree continues to sway.

Charlotte speaks soothingly, but with a tone of fearful imploration elegantly threading its way through her sentences. Her sister wishes to know if her constitution remains obstinately weak, or does she detect any renewal of strength? I am stricken and sinking fast. My hands tremble, and there is little feeling in my lower limbs. Would it help to make complaint and declare with resignation that I am permanently out of health? Charlotte persists. Perhaps she might welcome a visit from tenderhearted Anne? Surely only the most desperate would interpret the spectre of my pale, thin figure as being suggestive of a return to natural exuberance. Emily stares at her somewhat overdressed sister, who is now perched solicitously on the edge of the chair with a familiar gloom in her aspect. The plump one. No, that will not do, Branwell. Drunkenness is one vice, cruelty another. Her brother stopped abruptly by the tall wall, leant his head against the cold stone, and emptied his stomach down towards his boots. Please, Branwell. Papa keeps a respectable house. He stood straight and gracelessly wiped his mouth with the tail of his coat, and then moved off boldly as though resolved to prove that he was now able to walk without assistance. She followed, watchfully maintaining a dignified distance, enough to create the illusion of independence. However, she remained close enough that she might intervene with haste should her stumbling brother scuff his freshly stained boots against a protruding cobble and lose his footing.

Charlotte repeats the question. Anne? Graceful Anne, forever suffering from a troublesome cough or a malady beyond known remedies. Wise Anne. She has no memory of denying Anne access to her room. The full grip of the sickness has occasioned days and nights to swim away from her and be lost, but she would never agitate to keep dear Anne at a distance. Perhaps Charlotte has misinterpreted some half sentence mumbled in the depths of delirium and relayed this careless utterance below? She stares at Charlotte’s round, tired face and then closes her eyes and lets her brother’s name form on her lips and tumble out into the world. Her sister takes her hand and almost inaudibly reminds her that he has gone, but where she refuses to say. To Leeds or to Halifax perhaps? To London again? This unkind paucity of information is now Charlotte’s way, and a small surge of despondency begins to crest within her. Surely, after all these years, Charlotte cannot still be holding bitterness in her heart because she refused to return with her to the Continent. Or is it simpler than this? Perhaps the evidence of this emaciated object has frightened her sister and made a leaden weight of her tongue? Where is Anne? Is she basking in the warmth of a lively fire by the hearth? She feels Charlotte squeeze her hand with an unexpected urgency and then release it. And now her suddenly voiceless sister sits back in the plain wooden chair and anxiously knits her own hands together. Her sister seized her with some violence, and the perplexing memory of Charlotte’s impulsive gesture can still be felt as a warm imprint.

* * *

Really, had they ever delighted in a close intimacy? Truly close? Six years ago they left Yorkshire and journeyed south to London before continuing on to Belgium. Two moderately impetuous maiden sisters travelling together, submitting themselves to a heroic adventure in the hope of acquiring an improved proficiency in the French language. They fully understood they were neither attractive nor fashionable, but they had been raised to eschew the approval of others. Papa had reluctantly given his blessing, and he hoped that they would watch over each other and safely deliver themselves back to his doorstep. After all, what could he do? Perhaps journeying was in the girls’ blood? His own pilgrimage had taken him from the Ireland of his birth to Cambridge, where he had studied with anxious intensity as a shy and stammering commoner. His transformation from Patrick Brunty to Patrick Brontë fooled no one, and his attempts to scour the Irish brogue from his tongue and his halfhearted endeavour to dress above his station provoked ill-suppressed laughter. His priggish mien grew more intense and silent as he became aware that to his contemporaries he was an object of entertainment, and the handful of undergraduates he regarded as potential intimates soon began to avoid the ignominy of being seen in his orbit. The final stage of his own adventure saw him migrate north to Yorkshire, where he felt no inclination to impress any among his flock, and where he maintained an aloof and zealously gauged distance from the people of Haworth.

She peered into the churning waters of the tempest-tossed English Channel and realized that with this moonlit voyage she was now roaming beyond her dear father’s imagination. The waves lashed the sturdy vessel, and she clung with wet hands to the rail and reeled back and forth, allowing herself to be baptized by the haze of briny spray. Charlotte was held securely in the clench of seasickness, and lay below deck, turning restlessly on her bunk, but she understood there was little she could do to alleviate her sister’s turmoil. Charlotte had dropped and declined hurriedly, but Emily knew that this affliction would soon be resolved after a short, hard conflict that, at this stage, would benefit little from the consolation of human empathy. Above her the black sky was choked with stars, the same glorious constellation that jolted her sensibility on her late-night walks behind the Parsonage. She greeted her familiar heavenly companions and ignored the cry of yet another crew member who urged the long-legged woman to leave the deck. Ma’am, please. It will be safer for a lady down below. No doubt, no doubt. She offered the terrified young man an upwardly tilted chin and the faintest trace of a smile, before familiarizing him with her willowy back. She was travelling home tonight in the company of a forbidding wind. Young man, if it will bring you peace, then you must take shelter. Again she lifted her head to the skies. Let those who need shelter seek it out. She whispered, Go, seek it out.

Through the bleary windows of the carriage the sisters could see little but flat, ill-manicured land swimming out in all directions, and only the occasional scruffy village disrupted the monotony. After some time the villages began to embrace one another and form a town, and suddenly the town began to grow into a city. Brussels revealed itself without the fanfare of London’s vociferous certitude. A continental city, melancholic in appearance, apologetic in tone, it remorsefully busied itself as though afraid to be discovered slacking. Her sister retained a pallid countenance from the exertions of the crossing, and once again she closed her heavily lidded eyes and allowed her head to loll sideways against the glass. Then Charlotte blinked furiously, as though embarrassed to have been caught in a moment of weakness, and she watched as her debilitated sister adjusted her slumped posture and readdressed her attention to the spectacle of the somewhat overcast city they had now entered.

Like a prison, she wrote. Dear Anne, Monsieur Heger’s school is like a prison with its high stone walls and heavy press of silence. I feel an iron weight constantly anchoring me to the earth. He simply wishes me to imitate the style of others, thus obscuring my own vision. I am twenty-four years of age and see no reason to stoop before the tyranny of this senseless man. In this school of learning I learn nothing except how to retreat into myself and survey the world about me with apathy. I am stimulated by little except the unwelcome aroma of one tedious day exhaling into the next, and time carries me forward against my will. She informed her fragile sister that her French had improved considerably, so much so that she was able to think and even dream in the language, but Monsieur Heger was almost certainly not the cause of her advancement. She characterized him as a young man who exuded an elaborate sincerity that was ruined by his determination to grin and display his polished teeth. She read constantly, and having made a selection from the books in the small library at the back of the single classroom, she would bustle back to the tiny quarters that she shared with her travelling companion and once again indulge herself. A freshly rejuvenated Charlotte regularly volunteered for extra lessons with the master, and Emily therefore often enjoyed sole occupation of their room and was able to fully embrace her moody solitude. Occasionally she would venture forth and stroll in the gardens, where she risked encountering her captivated sister listening attentively to whatever it was her master was saying to her, the pair of them oblivious to her ghostly presence. At such moments, she made it her business to seek out the shadow of a broad tree that might enable her to linger unobserved. Poor Charlotte, who gazed upon the professor with ill-disguised ardour, was abandoning the modest dignity of an inner life for the farce of a fluttering heartbeat. In Brussels.

On Sundays they travelled out into the city and visited with a family with whom their father had connections, the origins of which were buried beneath any clear understanding on the part of either sister. However, after a half-dozen Sundays, the visits began to corrode into an obligation, which Charlotte tried desperately to make light of by taking control of the conversational territory. While riding the carriage towards their destination, her sister regularly compiled a list of topics to be discussed, and she rehearsed the order in which the subjects were to be raised. On encountering this insipid continental family, whose cakes and teas they both found unspeakable, it was Charlotte alone who made the effort to rescue the afternoon from catastrophe, while Emily retreated into an implacable silence that hinted at shyness, although her lustreless eyes invariably betrayed boredom, and her general demeanour indicated that she cared little for anyone else’s opinions.

Late on Sunday night, the two sisters would prop themselves up in their uncomfortable beds and read their grammars. She oftentimes stole a look at Charlotte and silently apologized for her behaviour. She understood that her well-practised hostility made it impossible for Charlotte to engage in elegant repartee with their hosts, and the deathly quiet return journey in the lumbering carriage would be interrupted only by Charlotte gathering herself and then meekly scolding her headstrong sister. As daylight began to fade and their passage home continued, she would glance briefly at a discomfited Charlotte but say nothing, which seemed to temporarily satisfy her older sister, who, for some reason, always appeared to be transfixed by the cheerless views of the streets of Brussels through the begrimed windows of their carriage.

She stood in the cooling shadow of a spreading beech tree, her back to the pitted bark, her toes steadfastly gripping the soles of her shoes, which, in turn, marked the grass. The master was once again displaying himself in an immaculately tailored suit of clothes, and encouraging the overly studious gazing of the young woman who sat obediently next to him. It was unmistakable, to all but the besotted, that his allure was undermined by his inability to move beyond his charm. He stood and took his leave, playfully lacing his way through a line of trunks and ambling towards the elegantly carved door. He threw a quick, final glance in the direction of the bench, a look calculated to cast himself in a kindly light, before nimbly mounting the three steps and disappearing into the house where his wife would no doubt be waiting patiently for him. She watched Charlotte lift the plain envelope to her face with both hands and then smell its scent. This man was operating upon her with a fully conscious determination. Once again her sister drew the perfumed air to her and allowed it to overwhelm her senses. A fragrance meaning what exactly? From her concealed location, she witnessed poor Charlotte drift.

It was the week before Christmas, and they were squeezed together in the back of a post-chaise that haltingly picked its way across the solemn moors in the direction of Haworth. This was the season when the desolate light of day simply expired and was quickly swallowed up by a sudden tide of blackness. It had been a tiresome journey, and her troubled sister had travelled with a sorrowful, closed heart that she knew would refuse any sentiments of sympathy. To offer solace would be to irritate, and so she had resigned herself to watching the dispiriting drama of Charlotte’s further relinquishing governance over her emotions. Driving rain began to lash down and beat an impatient cadence on the roof of the flimsy box, but mercifully it was now possible to see the beacon light of a solitary candle sputtering in an upstairs window of a far-off inn, and the horses begin to trip with renewed verve. Charlotte, however, remained consumed by her deep melancholy. Her sister’s petals had closed in upon themselves. She was returning to Papa as less than that which she had been.

The girls were back home, and on their first afternoon Papa extended an invitation for them to take tea with him. The house was empty, for according to Papa, Anne’s teaching duties would delay her return until Christmas Eve. She assumed that Branwell was out frolicking with his friends, but they would not speak of the brother and the son, for the strain of doing so would cause Papa pain and embarrassment in equal measure. The son had become an object of scorn in the village; he was no longer a carefree young man with an untidy mop of red hair and a convivial face that radiated optimistic goodwill to all. Papa’s son was a drunk who appeared intent on punishing himself for having squandered his talents and abandoned any ambition, and Anne’s letters had been charged with an anxiety that Branwell might soon be found residing beneath the church flagstones. Apparently, when their brother was not swilling gin or begging threepenny packets of opium pills, he had taken to charging about the countryside in a filthy cart pulled by a wild horse in a manner that implied he knew of no other world beside that of the farm.

But they would not speak of the son. The maid had spent the afternoon baking, and she generously laid out the cakes and poured the tea. Emily could hear an excited Keeper barking and agitating for her company, for according to Papa, he had truly languished during her absence. However, the dog need worry no more, for she had no intention of returning to Brussels after this Christmas break, and Keeper would once again have her by his side. She glanced at her sister, who had no experience with the art of dissembling, and whose brown eyes brimmed constantly with tears. Regretfully, she accepted that the blame for this pitiful display could not be entirely borne by Monsieur Heger, for she had come to believe that, prior to their departure, her sister’s condition was such that her poor heart was ready to be cleaved by any man wielding interest. A bewildered Papa smiled at his daughters, and took his tea in silence.

Her bed felt strangely uneven, and the room was cold, but after the frustrations of the Continent she was relieved to have returned to the Parsonage. The rigours of travel had incited her hair to curl uncooperatively into an unruly, tangled ball, and the whole knotted mess nested uncomfortably on her head as though unfamiliar with the scrutiny of a comb. A sideways glance in any looking glass simply confirmed her irregular features; the sharply angled nose and the unappealing protrusion of her mouth were distinctions she had learned to live with, but she would always quickly avert her eyes. Through the slither of window, she stared at the brooding black sky and promised herself that never again would she range beyond this world. Her confidence had been much improved by exposure to the mediocre abilities of the dull girls at Monsieur Heger’s school, but now she was home and able to issue out for a walk on the moors whenever she wished. Her poor sister would shortly discover that she must make her return journey alone, and risk having her heart truly shattered by the triumph of her own foolish urgings over the reality of her mentor’s situation. Emily drew a strand of corkscrewed hair away from her eyes and continued to stare into the darkness, knowing that she would not sleep until she heard dear Branwell staggering up Church Lane. However, while she waited, she once again climbed the short, steep staircase of her imagination, and again she found herself dreaming of the boy who came from the moors, and she listened to the sound of pebble-dashed soil drumming hard against the lid of a plain coffin, and she turned over and curled up in her mind and began to search for her boy.

* * *

And now she hears her sister quietly rise to her feet and begin to sidle her way out of the room. Poor Charlotte. Her second year in Brussels poisoned her fortitude, and she returned home with eyes that flashed in all directions without ever alighting upon a single object, and an agitated disposition that refused to be drawn into any conversation on the wretched subject of her professor. She wrote increasingly imploring letters, but the master’s wife eventually answered, and then there were no more letters and Charlotte finally released this man whom she had foolishly captured in her thoughts. Indeed, her sister did allow herself to grow plump, but time eventually took her in hand and by degrees soothed the pain of her loss. However, while Charlotte gradually recovered her equilibrium, Emily continued to wander in her mind out onto the moors, where she pulled the landscape gloriously tight around her like a worn green blanket and hid herself away. When she returned to this world, she took charge of the maintenance of the Parsonage, while her eldest sister looked on in puzzled amusement that Emily might find contentment in cooking and cleaning. Once she had finished performing the household obligations of a servant, however, she would again balance her portable desk upon her knees and exchange the sterile pleasure of this life for the soaring joy of her heather-clad world.

She hears Charlotte cautiously close in the door behind her and then begin to walk softly back in the direction of the kitchen, where she will report to Anne on their sister’s unchanged situation. Oh, Anne, poor Emily remains unreachable, and to question her is to risk introducing great uneasiness in her pale, thin body. Anne will nod uneasily as Charlotte continues. At regular intervals her obstinate cough becomes trapped in her throat and causes her breath to rattle, but our dear invalid claims the situation is entirely tolerable and wishes to be a burden to none. Knowing that they have little choice but to pray and wait, Anne will put down her sewing and begin to replenish the smouldering embers.

Charlotte will not report to Papa, who has shown no desire to present himself at the bedside of his ailing daughter. Half the family gone, but still, he refuses to bestir himself and offer his fading Emily the comfort of his company. His stern demeanour and distant sentiments appear to be entirely unaffected by the predicament of his poor child. They used to be close, especially after Charlotte’s return to Belgium in search of love, for this departure left father and daughter alone in the Parsonage. Each morning he would set a mark at the end of the garden in the direction of the church spire, and then give his lanky girl instruction in how to shoot a pistol. Keeper cowered in fear, and Emily brandished the weapon with a presumption that almost made her father forget the accident of one son. Standing tall, his whiskers brushed back scrupulously against his cheeks, his eyes bright and glassy behind his thin wire spectacles, Papa would warily move her elbow into the correct position, and she would concentrate hard and then scatter the crows. Of course, she always hit the mark. How well you have done, my dear Emily. She would smile, and then momentarily retreat to the kitchen and continue baking bread or ironing clothes, and simply wait until Papa had reset the mark, and reloaded, and was once again ready for her to resume practise. As she bounded from the kitchen in her unalluring clothes, she would cry out, Papa, are you prepared? Are you? It is now wrong of him to hide away and edge furtively into her room at the dead of night when he imagines that she is asleep. Or has she been dreaming this? Tonight she will lie awake with her head snug in the clammy nest of the pillow and wait for the whispering of Papa’s stocking feet. She used to listen for the sound of Branwell’s drunken braying, which heralded the pageant of his disorderly arrival, but now she waits for stealthy Papa with her eyes open, and she dreams of a swift recuperation to accustomed vigour, and she hopes that Papa might revive her like a sudden burst of moorland air.

* * *

And again she remembers: between father and son a gap widened by expectation and disappointment. The one feeding the other. Papa had sent Branwell to London to study art with the finest instructors in the kingdom, but the reports filtering back intimated that his heir was wasting his gifts and gratifying himself in the taverns of the capital. When Branwell finally returned, the two proud men looked upon each other and knew instantly that the time for conversation had passed them by somewhere on the road between Haworth and London. In truth, the experiment had been doomed from the beginning, for even as he silently packed his trunk in the simple room at the back of the Parsonage, the stubborn son understood that his disinterest in the rigours of study meant that he might soon be introducing failure into the world of his father. Poor Branwell, who chose now to make a sanctuary of the Black Bull. When the terse letter from the man in the next village arrived on Papa’s desk, claiming that his son was carrying on an adulterous affair with the man’s wife, Papa made it clear to Branwell that there would be no further sympathy or help, which served only to further stoke the fires of resentment between them.

The daily evidence of their brother’s decline caused both Charlotte and Anne to grow increasingly ill at ease. The young man’s beard was bedraggled, his clothes were unkempt, and Keeper growled each time Branwell slipped in and out of the kitchen door on his way to or from his tavern. Eventually an exasperated Charlotte and Anne abandoned their brother to Emily, who seemed unembarrassed by the task of caring for the failed artist, and each evening she was content to escort him upstairs and in the direction of his room before easing him out of his boots and making sure that his head was properly supported by a stout cushion. She knew full well that Branwell would have wasted hours in the public bar, inflaming his spirit with alcohol, advocating on the least popular side of all debates, and making a raucous pact with dissension whenever his fatigued colleagues proposed an honourable resolution to his illogical stances. Of course, his maddening obstinacy was informed by his knowledge that no matter how preposterous a position he adopted, irrespective of how brutally detached from reason he became, at the end of the evening, a gentle and compassionate hand would always appear by his side to conduct him to safety. Sleep, sweet Prince. Put aside your torment. And then, when she returned to her room, she would whisper, Papa, grant him some air. But in the morning, once again, there would be two men under a single roof and only enough oxygen for one man.

Even the roughest stone wears smooth and eventually offers no resistance. Branwell’s final illness was swift, and he lingered only a week, during which time he became a smaller, frailer version of himself; suddenly he was a man who was too tired to dress or even leave his bed. His entourage from the Black Bull deserted him, and each sister took turn to sit vigil on his final journey around the face of the grandfather clock that stood on the staircase of the Parsonage. Papa turned the key in the lock on the door to his study. On the Sunday that he lost his thirty-one-year-old son, Papa managed to preach a long sermon without making any reference to his bereavement. His three daughters, their rigid and disconsolate bodies enveloped in black, occupied the family pew, and they could clearly see Papa’s trembling hands as he clung to his text. The early-morning tolling of the bells had already alerted the village to the news that the fleeting conflict was at an end, but a stranger entering the church would never have suspected that the man with such disciplined posture, whose confident words rolled forth and filled every available corner of the stone edifice, had suffered a loss. A stranger would never have guessed the clergyman’s plight unless, of course, he noticed the quivering hands.

And then it was time to conceal the red-haired son. She watched a now-impoverished Papa mumble his words and strive to hold down the pages of his leather-bound Bible. The sky continued to weep its drops of ice, and she could feel them in her palpitating chest. It occurred to her that her dear brother was perhaps attempting to wrest her with him. Papa fell silent and took the rainfall in the face, and then he decided not to wait. He turned and walked the short distance to the Parsonage door and closed it shut behind him. The three bareheaded sisters linked arms, her haggard figure in the middle, and they waited for the men to complete their work and repair the unsettled earth. Soon after, the sisters found themselves alone under the low, bruised sky, and Charlotte and Anne now realized that they were holding Emily upright.

* * *

The truth is, since she took to her bed, she has lost sight of Papa. All that remains is the image of a sodden crestfallen man of God struggling to wrestle his Bible from the clutches of the wind before abruptly disappearing into the Parsonage. Poor Papa, over the years his losses have steadily multiplied. A wife, then two daughters, and now a son. Three surviving children occupy the house while he hides in his room. Once upon a time he would slip an arm around her waist and with the gentlest of touches raise her chin so that she was looking directly down the barrel of the pistol. Take aim. Now squeeze. Now rock with the blast, my dear. Don’t fight it. The cold metal in her hands and Papa’s warm arm laced tightly around her cumbersome, free-hanging skirt. She would take dead aim and scatter the crows. And then, after an hour of skipping between her duties in the kitchen and taking instruction, Papa would bestow upon her the briefest of smiles before reclaiming his weapon. But what was she supposed to do with this knowledge? You have a son. I cannot be your son.

Another day. The feeble morning sun spills through the window. Her austere, frost-kissed world is coming to life without her, but a calm of increased grace begins to console her mind. She closes her eyes and dreams of the boy who came from the moors, but she cannot see him. The boy who went back to the moors. She sees herself bounding tirelessly across the dry bracken and wispy grass in search of him, and she now enters a valley and finds herself running alongside a fast-flowing stream with long, unladylike strides and shouting to Keeper to concentrate and stay close. Keeper! She looks up at the sky, longing to vault from one cloud to the next; then she whistles loudly to attract the attention of her loyal wild creature. Keeper! She turns and stumbles, and now she sinks clumsily to one knee, her thin body racked with a seizure of coughing. Keeper nuzzles up to her side and continues to bark, but the boy has gone. She reassures her disquieted dog that all is well, for she knows that she will find the boy. A life reduced to one small window. This one view. The noise of her sister knocking gently on the door shakes her from her daydream. Again Papa has failed to visit. But dear Papa, it would be so much easier if you would just come to me and allow me to uncouple myself from you and go in peace. She listens as Charlotte pushes open the door and calmly closes it behind her. In a moment she will open her eyes and attempt to raise her head from the pillow. Please, Papa.

Dear Charlotte, do you remember when Papa deserted us for Liverpool and returned with the boy? The strange boy with blazing eyes who had lost his place in the world. Papa wrapped him in his cloak and brought him to us, do you remember? She feels her sister smoothing her brow and petitioning her to submit to the sombre inhospitality of the wintry day and attempt to rest. She knows that her sister has long ago forgiven her for abandoning her to heartache. The poor wild child was standing before us. When dear Charlotte returned from Brussels, she grew to accept that her younger sister was now dwelling in another place, and she asked Emily, Who are these unfathomable people with whom you spend your waking hours? But Emily would only smile distractedly, as she smiles now. She looks up into Charlotte’s worried face. Papa has little time for us, you do know this, don’t you? As far as Papa is concerned, there was only the boy, and now he is gone, so what is Papa to do? Retreat to his room and mourn? He unwrapped the boy from his cloak like a gift he wished to share, and now the boy is gone. Her sister lowers her voice. Please, Emily, you are confused. Your Mr. Earnshaw is another man. He is not Papa. Do you remember? Like a gift he wished to share. Her eldest sister continues to caress her brow, and Emily turns slightly and gazes at her and wishes that somehow she had been able to arrest poor Charlotte’s descent into despondency, but she was too busy pursuing the boy on the moors, and her passion rendered her incapable of offering comfort to anyone. Even reticent Anne scolded her for her indifference, but surely her sisters understood that she could never behave with wilful disdain towards either one of them. But dear Charlotte, Papa’s boy lived with a ferocity that frightened the gods themselves, you know this, don’t you? He deserved to be loved and protected, but it was the wickedness of the world that corrupted him. Papa’s boy was too beautiful for this world, you do know this, don’t you? You believe me, don’t you?

* * *

It is early afternoon, and her eyes remain closed. Her dear sister has shared with her the hushed news that she reclines now on the black horsehair sofa in the more agreeable dining room. She can sense the presence of a quietly sobbing Charlotte continuing to sit vigil by her side, and she is obliged. Sadly, the eagerly anticipated gift of warmth has failed to materialize, and an icy draught pierces the room, for in her distress Charlotte has neglected to summon the maid to lay a new fire in the grate. However, it is too late, for she is overwhelmed and can fight no more. Charlotte, I have waited for Papa, but now I must leave. Too tired to raise her head, in her mind she whispers, like smoke, out through the window and onto her cherished moors. In the distance she is able to discern the silhouetted figures of three men on the horizon who appear to have just completed the digging of a hole in the earth. But for what or for whom? A dog, perhaps? She stands a safe distance off and clasps her bonnet to her head before the gust can strip it from her face. The fresh, dry air is healthier at this level and a pleasing substitute for the absent rustle of leaves. She was once forced to beat obedience into her dog, who loved her, but it was so, so exhausting, both the beating and the love. Now the three men lean against their tools and stare down into the chasm they have rent, and they wait. Having turned on her heels, she moves off slowly to the small stone farmhouse that is Top Withens and sits exhausted on a crumbling wall. What better place than this to commit a soul into the bosom of eternity? A beautifully bleak aspect and the steady flow of a beck, trickling unseen, in the valley below. Supported by stone and earth, she is ready now. She stands and pulls the hair from her eyes and begins to move down in the direction of home. She passes a craggy pillar with moss creeping up its foot; it marks the place where the pathway branches off to the right and back in the direction of the moors, which are now shrouded behind a thin veil of mist. She watchfully steps over the bare outcrops of rock that at this point litter the shallow earth that is too ravaged to nourish even the most stunted of trees. Wait, I’m coming. As the chapel bells begin to peal in the distance, she is blessed by the steady weeping of rain, which occasions a momentary smile to decorate her thin lips. She raises her eyes and sees Papa and Charlotte and Anne walking towards her at a lugubrious pace, the sisters flanked on either side of Papa as though ready to help him maintain his balance should he falter. She watches their leaden approach, and then she raises a hand in greeting. May I join you? They refuse to lift up their bereaved heads as they trudge past, leaving her rooted to the earth. She turns and follows them with her eyes as they walk towards the three men, who wait in silence. The rain begins to surge and swirl, and it saturates her bonnet. The first man moves urgently as he notices the approach of the father and his daughters, and he digs into a mound of freshly turned soil and carefully balances the stony dirt on the face of his shovel, before jettisoning it into the breach. She hears the noise of the debris thundering against the wooden box. She lifts her weak, gloved hands and covers her ears. She lives now in two worlds. She understands.