Always Emily (2 page)

“I came home for holidays.” She patted Emily's leg. “And you will, too. You'll be home for Christmas.”

“Four months!” Emily's voice was high and anxious. “How will I stand it?”

“I've told you time and time again—school is not a punishment. Father is a fine teacher, but at Roe Head School I learned things I never could have at the parsonage.”

Emily's expression spoke eloquently of her doubts.

“Don't scowl at me like that, Emily. I've learned languages and geography and grammar. Your education has been too eccentric. If you're to earn a living, you must know the academic subjects as well as music, deportment, and the rest.” Charlotte's words slipped glibly off her tongue from long repetition.

“I don't care about earning my living,” Emily exclaimed. “No one wants me to work except you!”

“Look at me, Emily,” Charlotte commanded. When Emily continued to stare out the window, Charlotte reached over and grabbed her sister's chin. “You're seventeen now, and we must face the facts of our situation. Father is our only
bulwark against destitution. When he dies, we lose our income and our home. We must be prepared to support ourselves.”

Emily batted Charlotte's hand away. “Your concern for the future keeps you imprisoned in the present. Why lock yourself up in a school when Father's healthy as an ox? You worry for nothing.”

Charlotte's hand clenched and unclenched. “How can you forget his illness this past spring? We might have lost him then!” Her wide brown eyes filled with tears as she remembered those days nursing their father. It was then she'd formulated a plan to save the family. She would return to school, but as a teacher. Rather than a full salary, her recompense would include tuition for Emily. It was the perfect plan. Except for one thing. Emily.

“I have no interest in teaching or governessing.” Emily spoke with deliberation. Charlotte had tried to arrange everything without consulting Emily, who would not soon forgive her sister for it.

“Would you prefer marriage?” Charlotte asked. “Because that's your only alternative.” A snort was Emily's only response. Charlotte leaned back against the dusty cushion and closed her eyes. Melodrama was exhausting.

After another mile or so, Emily spoke in a softer voice. “What is this school like? Will I hate it?”

Charlotte opened her eyes and smiled. “You may like it very much. I made good friends there. You've met my friend Ellen. She's lovely, don't you agree?”

Emily tugged at the fingers of her darned gloves, picking at the ragged seams. “I suppose so.”

“The days are filled with learning,” Charlotte continued. “It's very well organized.”

Emily's eyes filled with malice; she asked, “And how much writing did you do while you were there? Did the Adventures of Angria continue at Roe Head or did they shrivel wasted on the vine?”

Charlotte was silent.

“I seem to remember you writing frantically when you came home,” Emily said.

“Miss Wooler, the headmistress, says we must bend our inclination to our duty. If necessary, I'll sacrifice my writing to earn security for my family,” Charlotte muttered.

“Selflessness is your specialty, not mine,” Emily retorted. “What if I am not willing to surrender my dreams?”

Charlotte glared at Emily, who had the grace to look abashed.

With her facility for logic that alternately impressed and infuriated Charlotte, Emily leapt to another argument. “If I have to go to school, why do I have to change the way I look?” Emily ran her fingers across her scalp and bits of crimped hair broke off in her hands. “Look what your hairdressing did! I look absurd with curls.”

Charlotte privately agreed Emily's fair coloring and light eyes were better suited to a less labored hairdressing, but she hastened to reassure her sister. “No, it's fashionable.” She
wrapped one of her dark ringlets around her finger. “I'm trying to spare you the mistakes I made. When I arrived at school, everyone made fun of my clothes and hair.”

“What do I care about what people think?” Emily snapped her fingers with a loud snap, a habit Charlotte deplored because she couldn't do it.

“You're not in Haworth anymore,” Charlotte said. “I'm trying to keep you from being lonely like I was at first.”

Emily shot a glance at her sister. With an unfamiliar pang of guilt, she reached out and took Charlotte's hand. “You're trying to help me and I'm acting the shrew.” After a moment, she added, “I'm out of my element and it's putting me out of sorts. Tell me more about the school so I know what to expect.”

“The students take long walks, weather permitting. You'll like that.”

“Weather permitting? I walk in any weather. The more wuthering the better.” Stormy weather on the moors was called a wuthering and it was one of Emily's favorite words.

“We walk often enough,” Charlotte said firmly. “Miss Wooler says it builds strong bodies and spurs the appetite. The food is quite good—and unlike home, we don't have to do the washing up.”

Emily looked sidelong at Charlotte. “It's not like . . . Cowan Bridge?” This was the question she had avoided asking ever since school had become inevitable. Two of their sisters had died at Cowan Bridge from cold and neglect.

“Of course not!” Charlotte contemplated her sister with pity. No wonder Emily was so obstinate about school; how could she have not seen it? “Cowan Bridge was an awful place. Father would never make that mistake again.” Her voice contained a speck of blame for their father's carelessness. “And I'll be there with you. There's nothing to fear.”

“You and I will share a room, won't we?” Emily asked.

Charlotte had dreaded this question. “You hate sharing a room with me!”

“But it would be a familiar irritation,” Emily said.

“I'm to be a teacher, so I'll have my own room,” Charlotte said, looking at Emily warily. “You'll be in the dormitory.”

Emily straightened up and glared at Charlotte. “I have to share a room with strangers?”

Charlotte took a deep breath and delivered the worst news. “You'll share a bed with another student.”

Emily's face was like stone.

“But in the winter, it's handy for the warmth,” Charlotte hurried on. “And it's fun to have someone to whisper secrets with in the dark.”

“My secrets are my own,” Emily said flatly.

The carriage slowed and turned onto a gravel drive. Emily abandoned Charlotte and studied the school as the carriage crunched up the incline. The building was large—three stories—and surrounded by giant oak and cedar trees.

“You didn't say it was so big,” Emily whispered.

“Truly, Emily, it's a good school,” Charlotte answered. “You could be happy here. If only you'll try.”

The carriage shuddered to a stop. The driver hopped down from his perch atop the roof and opened the door. Charlotte, stiff from the ride, awkwardly climbed down. Emily jumped to the ground without using the step.

Staring up at the imposing wooden doors, Emily muttered, “I won't last a week.”

“Nonsense,” Charlotte said, her cheerful tone ringing ominously false. “Give it a month. By then you will have settled in and you won't want to be anywhere else.”

As if they had a heft and weight, Emily pushed away her fears with a wave of her hand. “A month then, Charlotte.” But in the privacy of her mind, Emily added, “After then, with or without you, I'm going home.”

How few would believe that from sources purely
imaginary such happiness could be derived
.

C
harlotte closed her eyes and imagined the next scene in her story.

“Miss Brontë?” A hand touched Charlotte's arm.

Charlotte started. Her breath came quick and short. For a moment, she was suspended between two worlds: Angria, the imagined land of handsome dukes and passionate queens, and the tedium of her life at Roe Head School. She had to blink to see the classroom clearly. Her students, half a dozen young ladies ranging from the age of eleven to sixteen, stared at her curiously. Angria retreated back into her imagination with the inexorability of the tide.

“Miss Brontë? I asked you twice to check my answers.” The simpering girl in front of her was typical of all her students: middle class, of limited intellect, and utterly dull. This
student was always the first to finish her work—an assignment Charlotte had carefully planned with the hope of occupying the girls for the remainder of the class.

“Give it to me, Miss Lister,” Charlotte said, recovering herself. Holding the paper to her nose, the only way Charlotte's weak eyes could make out the cramped handwriting, she scanned the composition. The girls exchanged glances and tittered as they always did. “Sit down and rewrite the conclusion. Haste is wasteful if you cannot write to good effect.”

With a sullen expression on her face, Miss Lister tilted her head and asked loudly, “Miss Brontë, are you feeling ill? You look flushed.”

“Don't be impertinent,” Charlotte retorted. “I assure you I am perfectly well.” She caught a glimpse of the clock. Half an hour remained before tea. She pulled out her grading ledger and inserted a clean piece of paper over her neat columns of her students' scores.

Tilting the ledger so her students couldn't see what she was doing, she dipped her pen in the ink and began to write. The story flowed onto the paper as easily as rain falling to the earth. Only when she reached the moment when the duke declared his love did her hand falter. Desperately, she tried to imagine what he would have said if he had not been interrupted. Oh, the tiresome Miss Lister! Because of her ill-timed interference, Charlotte might never be able to re-create that moment of passionate bliss.

The clock struck four o'clock and with relief she dismissed the class with a clap of her hands.

As soon as they were gone, Charlotte retreated upstairs to her tiny dormitory room. As a teacher, she had the small luxury of sharing neither her room nor a bed, a fact Emily still resented. But this precious solitude was the only thing making Roe Head bearable.

Sitting at the rickety table that served as her desk, she pulled out her story and tried to write the ending again. But the romance was gone. Instead of the heat of the duke's embrace, Charlotte felt a cold emptiness. The loss was overwhelming. She pushed the paper aside and massaged her skull with her fingers, loosening her dark hair from her tight bun.

“What am I going to do?” she whispered. Writing about the duke brought an unseemly warmth to her cheeks and an ache deep inside herself. Her writing, her infernal internal world, was a temptation she should not, must not succumb to. She must put aside the duke and return to her duty. Her future was not to be a great literary light. She was doomed to teach other people's children until she grew old and withered. “But must I sit from day to day, chained to this dreary life, missing any chance for love and adventure?”

Tap, tap
.

Charlotte tried to ignore the hesitant knock on the door.

Tap, tap
.

“Who is it?” Charlotte called out, not concealing her irritation.

The door opened slowly and one of the younger students warily poked her head inside. “Miss Brontë, you are wanted by Miss Wooler.” The student's eyes widened as she took in Charlotte's disheveled appearance.

Miss Wooler was the headmistress at Roe Head. Charlotte quickly shoved her papers inside her folder. She stood up, smoothed her hair, and adjusted her skirts. “What does she want?”

The girl shook her head. “I don't know, Miss Brontë.” She hesitated, then said in a hushed tone, “I think something might have happened to your sister.”

In an instant, Charlotte forgot Angria and pushed past the student to run down the hall to Miss Wooler's office. She didn't breathe; she only ran. Who knew what might have happened to Emily? Lovely, reckless Emily, who thought she was invulnerable. “Let her be alive,” Charlotte chanted under her breath.