The World Within (12 page)

As soon as they are tucked up in bed together, Emily wriggles as close to Charlotte as she can get. “Oh, Charles, it’s so good to have you back. I’ve missed you so much.”

Charlotte smiles at her. “I’ve missed you too, mine bonnie,” she says, using one of Tabby’s expressions.

“Have you? Have you really?”

“Of course.”

“And are you really quite well?”

“
Yes!
I told you. Honestly, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Charlotte seems to be telling the truth. Emily allows herself to relax.

Her sister continues, “But Papa …” She turns an anxious face to Emily. “He doesn’t seem to have recovered as much as I would have expected in the time I’ve been away.”

Emily doesn’t know what to say. She’d like to pour out all her fears about Papa, but it doesn’t seem fair to burden Charlotte the minute she’s returned. She settles for saying, “At least he hasn’t got any worse,” and then she deliberately changes the subject.

“But tell me about Roe Head. Is it really as pleasant as you say?”

“Oh yes. It’s nothing like Cowan Bridge. We didn’t need to worry at all.”

Emily scans Charlotte’s face. Again, she doesn’t seem to be hiding the truth.

“So who do you share a bed with?”

“Ellen.”

Emily’s not pleased to hear this, not after all the glowing things Charlotte has said about this new friend.

“What’s she really like?”

“I told you. She’s a gentle girl, very generous and —”

Emily snorts and Charlotte looks nonplussed. “What’s the matter?”

“You make her sound so perfect. As if she’s not a human being at all.”

“You’re right. And she isn’t perfect, of course. I don’t think” — Charlotte hesitates but then goes on — “I don’t think Ellen has much imagination. Do you know, I can’t bear to hear her read aloud.” Charlotte laughs guiltily.

Emily feels a secret stab of satisfaction. Her sister’s not completely besotted with this Ellen, then.

“But,” and now Charlotte is completely serious, “she has been so kind to me, Emily. You wouldn’t believe it.”

Something in her voice causes Emily to wonder — she remembers what Charlotte said earlier. “And the other girls? Are they as nice?”

Charlotte doesn’t answer.

After a while Emily puts her hand on her sister’s arm. “Charles?”

Charlotte sighs. “They don’t mean anything. And it’s probably my fault for being too sensitive.”

Emily, envisaging horrors, whispers, “What do they do?”

“They don’t really do anything … but I hear them talking about me and laughing.”

“Laughing?”

Reluctantly Charlotte says, “When I arrived, they thought it was terribly funny that I knew so little that Miss Wooler was going to put me in the bottom of the junior class —”

“But that’s ridiculous. Papa has taught us such a lot of things.”

Charlotte says drily, “It turns out they aren’t the right sorts of things.”

“Right for what?”

“For being a governess. Things like grammar. Geography.”

“But you’ve won those prizes … and that medal.”

“Yes, well …”

Emily sees all at once how terribly hard Charlotte must have worked to fight her way from the bottom of the school to the top. No wonder she looks tired.

“So then don’t the girls admire you for achieving so much?”

Charlotte shrugs. “I don’t think they care much about study. Of course, most of them have wealthy fathers so they’re not going to have to earn their living and they don’t seem to understand why I work so hard. They find me amusing.”

“Oh, Charlotte, they don’t.”

“They do, I’m afraid. They laugh at the way I speak and the fact that I can’t see properly so I can’t catch a ball and they imitate the way I hold the book close to my nose and, oh, lots of things …”

To Emily, the humiliations Charlotte speaks of so calmly sound terrible. It’s obvious what she must do. “Never mind. You’re home now. And once you tell Papa the truth about it —”

“Papa mustn’t know.” Charlotte glares at Emily. “You’re not to say anything.”

“But the girls —”

Charlotte shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter about the other girls.”

“But —”

“Emily! Listen to me.” She looks Emily in the eye. “What do you think it would do to Papa if I said I wanted to give up? He’s counting on my being able to be a governess, to support myself if I should need to. I can’t let him down. And anyway” — she takes Emily’s hand and squeezes it — “there are lots of things about the school that are excellent and I like it, truly I do. So, you see, it’s no good going on about it. I’m going back and that’s that.”

Emily is silenced. Just for a moment there, her heart had lifted with a marvelous hope — Charlotte would stay at home; she’d have her back for good; everything would be back to normal. But now … she sighs. She doesn’t believe that Charlotte can really like the school, but she has a point about Papa. They must do all they can to avoid adding to his worries and risking his getting ill again.

She nudges Charlotte. “You could wear spectacles.”

It’s ridiculous of her sister not to. At least she’d be able to play the piano, which would be some compensation for the bullying she has to endure.

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because I am ugly enough as it is.”

“Don’t be silly. You’re not ugly.”

“I am. Mary said so.”

Emily winces. “I thought she was your friend.”

“She is. And she’s not afraid to speak her mind. That’s one of the things I like about her. And she doesn’t laugh at me and nor does Ellen. They’re not like the others.”

Emily can see it now — the relief of having these two friends when Charlotte is forced to live among such a spiteful set of girls.

She almost warms to them … almost, but not quite.

“… and at Roe Head the cooks don’t boil the vegetables for hours like Tabby does.”

Emily grits her teeth. It is probably nicer to have vegetables that haven’t turned to a gluey mush, but she wishes Charlotte would stop going on about that blessed school. She’s only been home a week, but already she’s getting on Emily’s nerves.

She thought Charlotte’s holiday was going to be so wonderful. But her sister is forever beginning sentences with “Ellen says” and “Mary wouldn’t agree with that,” as if her friends, like ghostly presences, have come home with her and taken up residence in the house. And she can’t stop talking about Miss Wooler, the headmistress.

If Charlotte is to be believed, this lady, who dresses in white robes and wears her hair in a plaited coronet — Branwell rolls his eyes at Emily when they hear this — is the most cultivated woman in the whole of Yorkshire.

“Miss Wooler’s not just passionate about the subjects she teaches,” Charlotte now declares admiringly. “She makes a point of getting to know every one of her pupils. She —”

She breaks off as Papa looks in on them, saying, as he always does, “Don’t stay up too late, now.”

They listen to his footsteps going up the stairs, stopping on the first landing as he winds the clock, and then continuing up to his bedroom.

Outside the light is fading from the sky, so it probably
is
time they were going to bed.

But Charlotte says, “Why don’t we do the walking ritual?”

“What are you talking about?” Branwell asks.

“What we do at school before we go to bed.” Charlotte explains that every evening, for the period before bedtime, Miss Wooler has the girls stroll in pairs up and down the schoolroom, conversing as they go, and she takes part in this, walking with a different pupil each time and asking them about themselves.

“What!” Emily yelps. “That’s intolerable. What right has she got to pry like that? Don’t you dread your turn?”

“No, not at all.” Charlotte looks surprised. “I don’t know how she does it, but Miss Wooler has a way of drawing you out. She seems genuinely interested in what you have to say.”

Emily can’t think of anything worse. She wouldn’t want someone like the headmistress, a stranger, to know anything about her. But Charlotte, shy Charlotte, seems to enjoy revealing herself to Miss Wooler. What has she been saying? Emily certainly hopes she hasn’t been blabbing about their family.

“So, shall we try it?” Charlotte looks expectantly at them.

Emily snorts derisively. “Why would we want to do that?”

“It’s fun. You’ll see.” She seizes Branwell by the arm and urges him to get up. “You two pair up and follow us,” she orders Emily and Anne, setting off with Branwell at a stately pace.

Anne obediently offers her hand to Emily. Grudgingly, Emily links arms with her little sister and they start walking. The parlor is small, so they’re forced to go round and round the table.

Scowling, Emily directs a silent curse at Charlotte’s back. This is ridiculous. At least Papa and Aunt and Tabby are all safely in bed and can’t witness their making fools of themselves. She pulls a face at Anne, who giggles.

Charlotte frowns over her shoulder at them. “You’ve got to talk to each other.”

She turns back to Branwell and they continue hotly debating an article in
Blackwood’s Magazine.

Emily sighs. Branwell was right — school has made Charlotte crazed, as Tabby would say. But since it feels stupid to walk round the table in silence, they might as well have a go. She starts talking to Anne about the Byron poem they were reading earlier, asking her sister what she most admired about it.

After a while she forgets the oddity of what they’re doing and finds herself enjoying it — it’s restful in the twilight and when Anne asks her what
she
thought about the poem, she discovers that the rhythm of walking seems to help her thoughts to flow.

Perhaps it’s not such a stupid idea after all. But she’ll never admit that to Charlotte.

“… and Kirklees Park is beautiful. You can’t imagine how delightful it is to roam about in the shade of the forest. And there are deer, you know.”

Emily scowls. Why does Charlotte keep talking? Why doesn’t she look at where she is and see how grand the moors are? Surely she can’t think that a park is anything like as impressive. Perhaps, without spectacles, she’s too blind to see the splendor in front of her.

Emily only feels a little bit guilty for having this mean thought.

Here they are — it’s the last day of Charlotte’s holiday, the sun is shining, and they’re on their way to a place she and Anne have named The Meeting of the Waters, their favorite spot, and all Charlotte keeps going on about is the scenery around Roe Head. To hear her you’d think it was the next best thing to paradise.

When they come to the wide stream Emily splashes across without a thought, followed by Anne, and they laugh as Grasper frisks beside them. But then Emily realizes that Charlotte isn’t with them. She looks back. Their sister is still on the bank, staring nervously at the tumbling water.

“Come on, Charlotte,” she calls. “It’s quite safe.”

But Charlotte won’t come. Sighing, Emily begins to gather some stepping-stones for her, placing them carefully in the water. Anne helps, and then, hopping across to show how easy it is, she leads Charlotte back with her.

Watching Charlotte teeter from one stone to the next, with a look on her face as if she’s enduring the most terrible ordeal, Emily has to resist the temptation to push her in. For heaven’s sake, it’s not as if it’s very deep. The worst that could happen is wet boots.

Finally they reach a point where they can overlook their destination.

“… and Miss Wooler admires the paintings of Gainsborough, but she says —”

“Look,” says Emily, gesturing dramatically and cutting Charlotte off in midflow. “Isn’t it splendid?”

In front of them the ground falls away abruptly into a deep cleft and off to the left a flow of spring water is tumbling down the hillside, frothing and sparkling in the sunshine.

But rather than admiring the falls, Charlotte is peering down past her feet. “Have we got to go down there?” she says, with a quaver in her voice. “Isn’t it rather steep?”

Emily grits her teeth. Charlotte isn’t very brave, but she wasn’t so niminy-piminy before she went to school. Putting on a patience she doesn’t feel, she says, “It is a little, but we’ll help you. You won’t come to any harm.”