The World Within (43 page)

But was it a message from God? She doesn’t think so. She’s inclined to agree with those who think the eruption was caused by all that rain earlier in the summer. In other words, extraordinary as it was, it was a natural phenomenon.

She can’t help feeling just a tiny bit disappointed that the mudslide didn’t herald the end of the world. It would have been so exciting to witness it, so satisfying to know once and for all exactly what was to happen. And there was something comforting in the idea of dying at the same time as everyone else — better than having to leave knowing that the world would be going on without you.

But even that — dying on your own — doesn’t seem as frightening now. She hasn’t been able to shake off the notion that the earth almost claimed her. But if it had, would it have been such a bad thing? To be swept up in the cataclysmic eruption and buried out there on the moor with the wind and the rain and the sun, her body dissolving into the soil, her spirit staying and haunting forever the place she loves best …

It would truly be a homecoming, her heart finally at rest in the earth.

But she wasn’t swept away — the earth spared her. Like the thorns at that isolated farmhouse, Top Withens, she has been bent by the fierce force of the wind, but not broken.

She remembers how bereft she felt in here, alone on the day of the storm, and how she called out to Elizabeth. It was not her beloved sister who answered, or Mama, as in the old ballad, but out of the heart of the storm the earth itself arose, coming, not to comfort her, but to energize her with its song. For witnessing that great power of nature and coming within a hairsbreadth of death has shaken her awake and made her aware that the same vital force that flowed through the moor and changed it utterly also flows through her.

The earth has granted her more time and she resolves not to waste another moment. How silly she’s been, squandering so much time moping about, being unhappy because she couldn’t have what she wanted, when she could have been experiencing so much. From now on when she walks on the moors, she will be alert, attentive to every detail; she will lay herself open to all the changing moods of the natural world.

Dear, dear nature — even at its most threatening it’s not something to be feared, as Papa believes, but something to celebrate.

Normally she sings quietly into her hymnbook, but today the chorus seems to express exactly how she feels — not grateful to have been spared the wrath of God, but glad to be alive. “Rejoice! Rejoice!” the congregation sings and Emily, for once, joins in with gusto.

That night, unable to sleep because she’s in such a state of simmering excitement, Emily throws open the window and the freshness of the breeze blowing down from the moors fills her lungs and floods her veins. She stares up at the stars and the full, round moon.

What would it have been like if, instead of experiencing the storm on Crow Hill when she did, in the daytime, it had been now, in the middle of the night?

She can just imagine it — being out there in the middle of that vast dark space in the moonlight, and then the storm coming: the sky alive with lightning, the heather bending as the wind rushes over it, everything vital and in motion, including the very earth itself …

All at once she’s impelled to relight her candle and, seizing a piece of paper and a pencil from her writing desk, she begins to scribble, trying to recapture exactly how it felt to be caught up in the midst of the storm and the tumult of the landslide that day.

When she’s done, she looks at what she’s written. It’s not like anything she’s ever written before. She can see that it’s not perfect yet and needs some polishing. But nevertheless, here it is — a poem, vital and true.

She feels enormously satisfied. She feels as if she could do anything, as if she’s as potent and fearless as her heroine Augusta Geraldine Almeda. And those gifts she has been granted — the power of her own imagination and her ability to experience that amazing, fearful connection with the natural world — will endure and can be relied on in a way that people can’t. She can go forward, secure in the knowledge that, as long as she has herself, she will survive.

There will be more poems, she’s sure. And maybe more stories too, stories that she creates by herself, for herself, in which she explores her own deepest passions.

She reads through her poem once more. Then she picks up the pencil and signs her name at the bottom: Emily Jane Brontë.

To Imagination

When weary with the long day’s care,

And earthly change from pain to pain,

And lost, and ready to despair,

Thy kind voice calls me back again

O my true friend, I am not lone

While thou canst speak with such a tone!

So hopeless is the world without,

The world within I doubly prize;

Thy world where guile and hate and doubt

And cold suspicion never rise;

Where thou and I and Liberty

Have undisputed sovereignty.

What matters it that all around

Danger and grief and darkness lie,

If but within our bosom’s bound

We hold a bright unsullied sky,

Warm with ten thousand mingled rays

Of suns that know no winter days?

Reason indeed may oft complain

For Nature’s sad reality,

And tell the suffering heart how vain

Its cherished dreams must always be;

And Truth may rudely trample down

The flowers of Fancy newly blown.

But thou art ever there to bring

The hovering visions back and breathe

New glories o’er the blighted spring

And call a lovelier life from death,

And whisper with a voice divine

Of real worlds as bright as thine.

I trust not to thy phantom bliss,

Yet still in evening’s quiet hour

With never-failing thankfulness

I welcome thee, benignant power,

Sure solacer of human cares

And brighter hope when hope despairs.

— Emily Brontë

I am aware that in presuming to write about the Brontës, and Emily in particular, I am treading on dangerous ground, so highly are they revered by generations of avid readers.

But I must point out that
The World Within
is a work of fiction, not a historical account of this period in the Brontës’ lives. Many of the events depicted in these pages did happen, but not always in the order or at the time I’ve chosen to put them. Other events are invented.

I have taken these liberties partly because there is frustratingly little in the historical record to inform us about the inner world of that enigmatic person, Emily Brontë. We know more about Charlotte because some of her letters and early writings have survived, but no trace of the Gondal stories has been found — the only existing material written by Emily consists of a few documents, her poems, and, of course,
Wuthering Heights
.

For a novelist such a state of affairs is not necessarily to be regretted. I did not set out to write an accurate history, but to explore my version, my vision of Emily Brontë. As such, this is, appropriately I feel, a work of the imagination, and I apologize to any reader who is disappointed because my Emily is not theirs.

Having said that, for factual information about the family, I have made extensive use of Juliet Barker’s rigorously detailed biography:
The Brontës
.

Of the two attempts I know of to piece together the Gondal saga from Emily’s poems, I have relied on the Appendix of
The Brontës: Charlotte and Emily
by Laura L. Hinkley.

And I have been utterly inspired by Stevie Davies’s brilliant interpretations of Emily and her writing in
Emily Brontë: The Artist as a Free Woman
;
Emily Brontë: Heretic
; and “Emily Brontë & The Vikings.”

I am indebted to Ann Dinsdale, Collections Manager of the Brontë Parsonage Musuem, for suggesting relevant material and for her patience in answering numerous queries.

Of the many friends who have helped me in the writing of this book, I would particularly like to thank Anne Farmer, for giving me a refuge from workmen; Melissa Laird, for deepening my understanding of what it means to love a dog; and Sarah Hymas and Elizabeth Burns, for their insights into the writing process.

I am more than grateful to my editors, Cheryl Klein and Emily Clement, for their commitment to this project.

And finally, my greatest thanks to Sheila Wynn and to my agent, Lindsey Fraser. Without their unfailing support and encouragement, I would never have succeeded in completing this book!

Jane Eagland
lives in Lancashire, England, only thirty miles from Haworth, where the Brontës lived. Like theirs, the views from her windows are of moors and hills.

As a child, Jane wasn’t sure whether to become a long-distance lorry driver or a percussionist, but she loved reading and when she grew up she decided to teach high school English instead. And then, rather late in life, she gave that up to become a writer. Her first novel,
Wildthorn
, received the Lambda Literary Award.

For more information about Jane and her books, visit: www.janeeagland.com.