And Emily wrote Wuthering Heights.

They had found their destiny—­at Haworth.

* * * * *

Every conceivable theory has been offered to account for the novels that came so swiftly and incredibly from these three sisters.  It has been said that they wrote them merely to pay their debts when they found that poems did not pay.  It would be truer to say that they wrote them because it was their destiny to write them, and because their hour had come, and that they published them with the dimmest hope of a return.

Before they knew where they were, Charlotte found herself involved in what she thought was a businesslike and masculine correspondence with publishing firms.

The Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, appeared first, and nothing happened. The Professor travelled among publishers, and nothing happened.  Then, towards the end of the fourth year there came Jane Eyre, and Charlotte was famous.

But not Emily. Wuthering Heights appeared also, and nothing happened.  It was bound in the same volume with Anne’s humble tale.  Its lightning should have scorched and consumed Agnes Grey, but nothing happened.  Ellis and Acton Bell remained equals in obscurity, recognized only by their association with the tremendous Currer.  When it came to publishing The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and association became confusion, Charlotte and Anne went up to London to prove their separate identity.  Emily stayed at Haworth, superbly indifferent to the proceedings.  She was unseen, undreamed of, unrealized, and in all her life she made no sign.

But, in a spirit of reckless adventure, Charlotte and Anne walked the seven miles to Keighley on a Friday evening in a thunderstorm, and took the night train up.  On the Saturday morning they appeared in the office at Cornhill to the amazement of Mr. George Smith and Mr. Williams.  With childlike innocence and secrecy they hid in the Chapter Coffee-house in Paternoster Row, and called themselves the Misses Brown.  When entertainment was offered them, they expressed a wish to hear Dr. Croly preach.  They did not hear him; they only heard The Barber of Seville at Covent Garden.  They tried, with a delicious solemnity, to give the whole thing an air of business, but it was really a breathless, infantile escapade of three days.  Three days out of four years.

* * * * *

And in those four years poor Branwell’s destiny found him also.  After many minor falls and penitences and relapses, he seemed at length to have settled down.  He had been tutor for two and a half years with the Robinsons at Thorp Green, in the house where Anne was a governess.  He was happy at first; an ominous happiness.  Then Anne began to be aware of something.