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CHAPTER 2

Haworth, 1904

1

He spotted the book lying on top of the others in the dusty shop at the corner of St Ann's Square.

He was there to buy some supplies for his study; pencils, notebooks and scrolls of parchment and such, something he rather did himself than to send out the servants to do it for him. After all, there weren't that many shops in town that he liked to visit and he regarded this as a pleasant event in the week. Alexander Byron was a not man who was for example, much interested in fine clothing, though he took great care to look respectful enough in public, and he wasn't the type of gentleman who supported costly hobbies like hunting or fishing or wine collecting in dusty underground cellars to attract him to the more expensive shops. However, he did like to read. Every week on Saturday he took a stroll to the nearby flea-market when the weather was good, and bought at least two or three musty books, which could be novels or cyclopaedia or even poem collections of obscure authors, as long as he was interested, or as long as he thought he could make one of his two sons happy, he would buy them. His sons were Alexander's pride and joy, and he liked to believe that his passion for novels could be passed on to them like a fervent hunter would like to pass on his most treasured riffle. This week however, he purchased a second-hand copy of poems by Emily Bronte, which had been recently republished in 1901. It was for his wife Barbara, who he knew would be tremendously pleased with it. Barbara was the granddaughter of Thomas Newby, the young and unknown publisher who accepted the manuscripts of the two writing Bronte sisters for publication in 1847. One of the novels was Wuthering Heights, and it was this single book that had established the entire Newby's family fortune. Alexander career also had much to do with the success of Thomas Newby. Without the financial aid of his father-in law, he would never have been able to set up his own business in publishing. The small fortune that he had made over the years was undoubtedly, the result of his hard work and good judgment, and he reminded and congratulated himself frequently on that. However, he could not shake off that feeling that haunted all men who were truly modest in nature; that his achievements were merely the result of luck, and that he had built his entire venture on the tragedies that befell on Emily Bronte's wretched characters. Alexander wasn't superstitious, but he was wise enough to know that the good fortune that wrapped his family and business alike in a blanket of bliss and prosperity could not last forever. If Fate could give so much credit to a simple factory worker's son from Yorksire, that same fate could twist and bend to return as a ruthless dept-collector to knock on your door at the most unexpected times.

Barbara was with child again. She was in her seventh month and was becoming more and more restrained in her daily activities. Taking care of the garden, which was one of her favourite pastimes, tired her immensely, while venturing into the kitchen was considered dangerous by husband and servants alike. The result was that Barbara was pretty much condemned to be doing nothing but a bit of needlework, an activity she rather disliked, because she had really bad eyesight. Alexander though maybe he should start reading to her in the early evenings, so she wouldn't become too bored in the last remaining months. Barbara had always carried a fondness for the writings of the Brontes; her passion for the Brontes was evoked early in her life by her family's history. She could lecture about Emily, Ann and Charlotte like they were her own sisters, understanding each of their characters by merely studying their work. Over the years, her knowledge about that talented but tragic family had grown as much as her fondness of them had deepened in her heart.

Alexander had also purchased something for his eldest son Henry, who was twelve and had an interest in everything that had to do with the army. Henry collected toy soldiers from the tender age of six, and used to play entire battles with them on the nursery floor, recreating Napoleon's fall at Waterloo or playing the conquering party in his own imagined conflict. Alexander was accustomed to purchase history books for Henry, each of which the boy received with much appreciation and immediately started reading most enthusiastically. In Alexander's eyes, Henry was a good boy; smart, charming, diligent and talented. He was the type of son a father never needed to worry about.

Unlike Henry, Alexander's second son, William, was a source of constant concern to him. William had been severely ill for almost two years, suffering of the same disease from which the Bronte sisters had suffered. Alexander had feared for the boy's life, while his wife had been utterly devastated. Tuberculosis was still, despite of the accumulated knowledge about its source and the improvements in public hygiene, a very dangerous disease, and those who contracted it and were not fortunate enough to be able to afford the type of care that he himself had bestowed on his beloved son, were certain to perish from it. There had been times during William's long illness, that Alexander sat down by the boy's bedside, watching him struggle for every breath he took and observing how the disease made the flesh and muscles disappear from his child's bones, how it flushed the complexion of his skin with a hectic glow caused by high fevers, that he had secretly prayed to the Lord to be merciful and end the suffering of his poor boy by granting him peace.

Those grim moments happened to Alexander about a year ago and fortunately, William's conditions had much improved since then. The illness had taken a terrible toll on the boy's physique; William was short for age and he was frightfully frail of posture, his eyes lay sunken in his paled little face, and his cheeks were hollow with a constant blush of feverish crimson. However, the boy did no longer need to struggle to fill his damaged lungs with air, and there was once again life in his sky-blue eyes, which filled the hearts of his parents with regained hope. Alexander Byron knew that the recovery of his youngest was nothing less than a miracle, a sign of the benevolence of Fate towards his family. That was why he savoured the moment, this particular beautiful day in early September, when everything that mattered most to him in the world seemed to be blessed. There had not been many days like this in the past two years, but Alexander hoped fiercely that more would follow.

"How much would you charge for that book, Mr Thomas?" Nodding at the leather-bound book in the window display.

He thought of purchasing it for William so the boy could start practicing his writings in it. William was now eight years old, but had missed a great deal of education due to his illness. Alexander had tried to educate his son himself, for most of the private teachers he had hired for Henry were reluctant to teach William anything in fear to contract the disease. Also, William was most of the time too tired or too ill to attend his father's lessons, and it was only recently that Alexander had started teaching him again.

Mr Thomas, the old shopkeeper, who was about Alexander's age and knew him very well, and was prepared to make a gentle offer.

"These come from the warehouse and are a bit old. I can sell this one to you for four shillings."

"I thought you said they were old?" Smiled his customer.

"Yes, but they are not out of fashion, are they? You're not buying second- hand novels or old textbooks here, my friend. Good quality blank sheets of paper to be filled with the creation of one's own mind. That will never go out of fashion. Much unlike those sensational two shilling pocketbooks they sell these days, or those God-awful science fiction news letters."

"Oh they are absolutely terrible." Alexander agreed, nodding his head.

"Yes indeed they are. Makes you wonder when the crowd started to lose their appreciation for good literature. They will absolutely read everything nowadays, wouldn't they? Even when it's down-right horrible and written by pea-brained desk-clerks spilling their dribble on paper like mindless, drooling sheepdogs."

"Still, four shillings."

"Didn't you hear what I said about how good the quality of the paper is? And what about the cover? It's bound in high quality leather, sir!"

"It may be so, but it's still a bit preposterous to charge me more for a book without a single word in it than I would have to pay for a six hundred pages long novel."

Mr Thomas cocked a grey eyebrow at him, but he wasn't irritated by the man's awkward persistence to haggle with his merchandize, it was in fact these kind of little squabbles that he was only able to have with Mr Byron, that made him one of his favourite costumers.

"How much do want to pay for it then?"

"Two shillings."

"Sir! You must be dreaming with your eyes wide open! Three and half seems more appropriate."

"Three shillings, and not a penny more."

"Hmmm. Only if you buy a couple pencils with it." Mr Thomas looked a little pained. "Otherwise I'll be losing money on this instead of earning any."

Alexander handed the shopkeeper the six pencils that he had selected, together with two pots of red ink.

"Consider that as a bonus." He said, and nodded toward the window. "I would like the one with the auburn cover, please."

It was Mr Thomas custom to grumble about how much money Alexander was robbing from him by his ruthless bargaining. It was part of the strange weekly ritual that both men seemed to enjoy. Mr Thomas didn't really mind that Alexander tried to lower his prices, and Alexander on his turn, didn't actually mind paying the four shillings for his son's book. When everything was neatly packed in paper bags, Mr Thomas handed him the small change, which was coincidently, exactly a shilling.

"Leave the small coins. I wouldn't know where to put them right now." Alexander said, leaving the store with the bag under his arm. "A good day to you, Mr Thomas." He saluted.

"I'll come by next week and see if you've finally civilized your prices."

"Never!" Mr Thomas shouted, a wide grin spreading across his face. "Have a good week, Mr Byron!"

On his way home, Alexander unconsciously whistled a nursery rhyme that he used to sing to his boys when they were younger. The warm afternoon sun beat down on his rimmed hat while the birds in the gardens returned his melody with a large amount of cheerful twittering.

2

The long afternoon seemed to drag on and on forever, and Henry could hardly keep his mind to the assignment given to him by his teacher; fourteen pages of difficult mathematical problems from which he had solved five after a one hour long sit in the tranquil drawing-room. Well, he only solved four of them actually, because he was still working on the fifth, and he had been distracted from it for quite a while, his eyes gazing through the large window.

He was sitting at the great writing-desk with his feet swinging from the chair. He kicked at the wooden legs, bored and bearing a growing grudge toward Mr Collins. It was such beautiful weather outside. He could have gone to the lake for a swim. He could have been lying on his naked belly in the grass by now with the sun painting red blotches on his freckled skin, while little bugs tickled between his toes. He could have had a wonderful time with his friends today, if it wasn't for his withered old prune of a teacher, who had thought he needed to practice more on his divisions.

Henry slumbered down, his chin resting on his arms. Outside in the back garden, he could see Mrs Galloway, who was their cook, picking ripe fruit from the strawberry patches nearby the greenhouse, collecting them in her apron. He even would have rather been doing that, than to sit here by his own trying to solve these tedious sums. Divide 2475947730 by 3484? The tail of calculations alone occupied half of the entire length of the sheet, and Mr Collins wanted him to put everything down in neat handwriting too. What a total waste of time this was! Henry could honestly not think of a situation in which he needed to be competent to divide such a silly number by 3484. What came in such large quantities anyway? Certainly not money. Henry knew that this family was quite rich, but not even his father had ever earned 2475847730 shillings or even pennies in his life-time. The boy was almost certain of that. Pebbles then? Dandelions perhaps? 2475847730 grains of sand? And if so, why would anybody in his right mind want to divide 2475587730 grains of dirt by 3484? Besides, suppose he was going to become a publisher like his father, then he would never had to calculate anything himself really, because he would hire a clerk to do it for him. He knew his dad paid Mr Pears to do the bookkeeping, so it wasn't that they couldn't afford it. Hell, he probably could hire Mr Collins himself when he was old enough to be in charge of his dad's business, let the old crazy goat sweat on the numbers, make him really work for his money for a change.

Henry sighed deeply, puffing a lock of his floppy dark hair out his large, brown eyes. He tapped with his pencil on the desk, unconsciously keeping himself to the rhythm of the swinging pendulum inside the grandfather's clock. Henry wandered how long his mother was still going to be upstairs with his little brother. William had been all whining and irritating again. He had heard him cry in bed last night, their bedrooms being only separated by a thin wall. The boys used to share the same room together, but after Will had become ill and started coughing blood on his pillows, Henry was quickly moved out, something which he had really resented because their shared bedroom had been very spacious and had two build-in closets in which all their toys were kept. He was allowed to move a trunk full of his favourite belongings with him; his army of lead soldiers, the Noah's ark with the tin animals (a present for Christmas which he was supposed to share with his little brother, but what he preferred to keep for himself), his sailing boat with the navy blue stripes and a random collection of battered stuffed teddy-bears. But the rest had to stay behind because there was simple not enough storage in his new bedroom, which was the vacant room next door. He hated that room. It was much smaller, and when he first moved in, there was this stench lingering inside for days that could not be aired out by throwing all the windows open, like his mother had opted. It was only after Mr Shaw, the caretaker, lifted some of the floorboards and found underneath the source of that awful smell, which was a nest of dead, rotting mice that it finally disappeared. Henry had seen the decay on the little creatures, white, wriggling maggots turning their insides into liquid black goo that burst through slits in their dull fur. He had been having nightmares about them for weeks afterwards.

Frankly, Henry didn't thought that it was quite fair that he was the one who had to leave. He wasn't the one who got sick. Why didn't they move William to that smelly dead-rodents-room? He was carrying all those nasty little germs around, spreading disease to everybody else! Mr Collins had explained very clearly to Henry, why he shouldn't get too near to his younger, consumption-struck brother. It appeared that tiny little creatures, which Mr Collins called germs or bacilli, were what made William ill and cough up so much blood, and these almost invisible critters were quite capable to get from someone sick to someone who was healthy.

"It is a very serious disease." Mr Collins said on one long tedious afternoon in which both pupil and teacher had very little motivation to continue with the scheduled lessons. Mr Collins preferred to wander with his mind to other topics to pass the time.

"Consumption used to kill people, you see." He said. "It still does. The Tubercle bacilli destroy their lungs, drowning them in fluids, leaving their victims to choke to death in own blood. Can you imagine how that feels like, young Mr Byron? Hmm? To open your mouth and gasp for air and still to be unable to breathe?"

Henry recalled how he had seen Will lying in his own bed at the other side of their bedroom late at night, making terrible wheezing noises like his lungs were punctured and frantically swallowing air like a comical fish on dry land.

"It must be horrible, sir." He said, worries stirring inside his young heart.

"Horrible? Yes indeed it is! Absolutely horrendous! Pure torture! A frightening and truly ghastly way to die! I've attended autopsies on people who had died from TB when I was a medical student. When the surgeon cut through the bones and had separated the ribcage to reveal the inner organs, a stench would well up from the corpse that made half of the students unwell. The lungs were swollen twice the size of normal. They were so filled with blood that they looked black and when the surgeon pocked in it, it would ooze with puss. That's what is inside your brother's lungs right now. That's what is eating away his health."

"But sir." And Henry had to swallow hard only to be able to speak in a small voice. "If the consumption is such a horrible disease, and people could die from it, and it's contagious, then -" Henry hesitated. He didn't know if he should really be asking his teacher this. He didn't even know for sure that he wanted to know the answer.

"Yes, yes? What? Hmm? What do you want to know, young Mr Byron?" Collins urged, tilting his thick spectacles with a bony finger while gazing down upon his pupil impatiently.

Henry swallowed again, gathering back some of his courage that had skidded down to his toes. "What if my mother or my father goes to see Will? Wouldn't they get infected by the germs when they sit next to him, and become ill too?"

Mr Collins had up until that moment been in an almost intoxicated state as he had feverously described the horrors of the disease in his rather distasteful antidotes, secretly enjoying the fear he recognized his young pupil's eyes, but now he suddenly changed of tune and manner, scraping his throat loudly.

"Your brother is doing well. He receives excellent medical care and I see no reason to believe that he'll not, in time, completely recover."

"Yes, but he's still ill, right? He still carries around those horrible germs? You told me I shouldn't be getting anywhere near him, and mother said that it is better for me not to go see Will until Dr Fendman tells us that it is all right again."

Not that I'm jumping out of my chair right now because I'm so eager too, he thought bitterly. You have to be dog-barking mad to want to enter that infective ferment-pit of killer-microbes on your own. Henry had noticed that the air in Will's bedroom (It was Will's bedroom now, wasn't it? Even if his weak and sickly younger brother was going be to well again, Henry was never going to get his old room back from his parents, that's for certain.) had become revoltingly damp because Dr Fendman had ordered the windows to be kept closed to avoid drafts. There was also this sour smell, a stench of old sweat and decay that had soaked into the bed-sheets and remained in that room like a stagnant cloud of black smoke lingering above the factories on windless days. It smelled of sickness and death in there, and Henry would think twice before entering that room again.

Mr Collins had then explained that it was his parent's own choice to keep William home with them and even bestow the care of their sick child on their own shoulders instead of handing it over to the staff. He also told Henry that he thought that his parents were very brave, and extraordinary noble people, admiring the way that they jeopardised their own health to take care of their tubercular son. "If it was up to me, I would have sent the boy away to a proper sanatorium, somewhere in the Alpine mountains of Switzerland perhaps, where the air is clean." He added light-heartedly.

Although his teacher had not provided an answer to his question, but rather had yackety-yaked around it like he was juggling hot lumps of coal, Henry knew enough. In the weeks and months that followed, he kept counts of his parent's visits to Will's bedroom. His mother would look at his younger brother at least four times a day; bringing breakfast, lunch, tea and supper to the boy. His father would come up in the evening as soon as he arrived home from work, spending a great deal of time with his younger brother, and before Henry's own bedtime, both of his parents would go up to kiss William goodnight. Each of his mother's visits lasted longer than half an hour, and his father spent regularly a good hour or so inside the boy's room. Together, his sibling occupied more than four hours of both his parent's daily time. That was far more than they ever spent on Henry, and he felt a tinge of green jealousy stirring that could only grow like weed. However, that was not the heart of the matter. The thing that truly disturbed him, was that for four hours a day, both his parents were subjected to those lethal bacilli Mr Collins had warned him about in his nightmare tales of festering, oozing, liquefied lungs and choking, gasping, and dying victims.

Recently, Henry caught himself more and more watching over his mother when she was sitting in the conservatory in late the afternoon, busy trying to knit a minute doll-sized jumper for the new baby sister or brother that was currently growing inside her round belly. She wasn't any good at it; she frequently dropped a stitch and her clumsy, fluttering hands always became entangled with the yarn till she ended up with an endless row of impossible knots. It was very hard to say, if that what Henry noticed was something that only had captured his attention after Mr Collins told him the things about his brother's illness, or that it was something that had only started recently, and was becoming steadily worse. Henry fiercely hoped that it was the first explanation, for he knew that people could cough for a large number of perfectly reasonable reasons. Like when the rising smoke from the newly lit hearth came into your lungs or when you had a normal cold. It didn't have to be what he thought and feared it to be. However, two days before, he found specks of blood on one of his mother's handkerchiefs, thoughtlessly left behind by her in her wicked chair as she left and scuttled up the stairs to see at another of his ill little brother's loud whims.

It could have been Will's of course. He thought hopefully. Now that his mind had dug up the memory of those dried crusts of blood on white linen, he could hardly keep him mind to his chords any longer. Gathering his papers, he made a sloppy pile, jumped off his chair, and stretched his legs while he shot a glance at the grandfather's clock.

It was half passed four. His mother had been upstairs with Will for more than an hour now. Through the window, he could see Mrs Galloway wave at an approaching figure. She had her apron loaded with strawberries and a couple of the plump fruits rolled off and fell on the ground. A tall, large man with wide shoulders, his face half hidden under the shadow cast by the rim of his black hat, entered the back garden through the porch that lay sunken in the ivy covered walls surrounding the large property. He was carrying a paper bag under his arm, and waved back at Mrs Galloway, his thin lips spreading into a pleasant smile. His eyes caught sight of Henry standing behind the window, and he waved cheerfully at him as well.

Henry waved back, but his hand moved with much difficulty as though it had been attached to the arm of a stone statue. He tried to be happy with his father's return from town, and with that the promise of the almost inevitable present he had brought for him from the Saturday flea-market, which always turned out to be an old and mouldy history book. Though a child like him had never much need for one of those, he still pretended to be pleased when he received them. He knew from his friends that their fathers took them fishing or hunting on Saturdays, or they would gather their boys for a game of cricket on the lawn or went out with the whole family for a picnic by the river. Henry would rather have that his father spent more time with him like that, but unfortunately, the dull textbooks were the only things that he received, which (he believed) brought with them a modest amount of fatherly consideration. Anything else went to William, his unfortunate and helpless little brother, who sucked up all of his parents' affection like a needy little leech.

At least I'm going to be the one who gets to greet him first, Henry thought.

His father usually threw his coat on the hook in the hall, then went in search of his oldest to surprise him with another volume of dusty world history. But today, instead of doing so, Alexander ran up the stairs without even shrugging off his coat or taking off his hat, taking with him the brown paper bag from which Henry had hoped to receive his small weekly parcel of affection from him. The boy remained in the hall, standing nearby the foot of the staircase, unnoticed and practically invisible, and watched how his father reached the landing and knocked at the door. There came the voice of his mother who answered, after which his he disappeared inside his younger brother's bedroom.

Henry would never understand what came over him that day, nor would he ever forget that moment when the exact feeling rose inside him for the first time like a stinking bell of trapped air from a swamp. From the fear he had experienced, and from the repulse he felt for the disease that in his mind could so easily take away his parents from him. From the stern belief that he had been left out by them once again because of William, came something he had never felt before toward his younger brother. It was a strange aching that was sharp and dull at the same time. A shameful, secret wish for his sibling's demise. It was a fierce, burning resentment. It was green envy wrapped in rage.

It was hatred.

TBC

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