Christmas at Moor House that December was the very picture of good cheer. The bustle in the house, the long-awaited homecoming of Diana and Mary, and the additional joy of family – a joy that was, for the first time, hers – made that Christmas the first in the long chain of Christmases past in which she truly felt in her heart some of the spirit that the holiday was meant to usher in. And yet – in spite of the gleaming house, the new furnishings, the companionship of her family, the happy warmth within and the desolate waste of snowy moor without – there was something that gnawed at her, something that intruded with an announcing pang every time she chanced to forget it. It sat, cold and aching in that place in her heart which it inhabited, and, like a sudden Spring frost will nip new flowers in the bud, it snuffed every tiny hope she had of reviving, of moving onward, of tasting happiness once more. When she retired to bed on Christmas night, it was not to lie reflecting on the events of the day – her cousins' arrival, the spirit of love and togetherness that had presided at the table, the blissful evening spent by the fireside in conversation with minds that could both appreciate and instruct hers – but to follow, tugged by forces impossible to resist, a quite different subject. Somewhere, perhaps in some far corner of Europe, he was retiring to bed, laying himself down as she was doing. Was he lying awake and thinking of her? Was he, like she, gazing into the dark and seeing, not blankness, but a beloved face gazing back at him? Was he even now pressing to his heart hands that had once clasped hers, as if to hold back the sorrow that threatened to rush forth at any moment and overwhelm him?
Lying alone, in the eerie half-light that filled her room – a reflection of the snow without – the specter of endless Christmases yet to come rose up bleak and terrible before her. Next year, would she do as she had done now? Closing the door of her chamber upon the warmth still emanating from the parlor below, upon the holly and evergreen-festooned hallways, whose bright berries and shining leaves struck her as gaudy and garish, would she, with slow, weary steps, shrug out of her festive attire, pull on her nightdress, and stand at the window to stare out at the vast snow-covered moorland? And would she then see, not the blanketed, wintering heath, but something quite different: a narrow, ice-covered lane, a fallen horse, and before her – almost at her feet – a man rising from the ground, stumbling, lifting his piercing eyes to hers, pressing her small frame to his, accepting her assistance?
And what of the next year? And the next? And what of all the days upon days in between? What of the winter that was encroaching upon her, creeping in too soon, leaving dust in place of blooms, emptiness in place of fulfillment? She, who had so nearly grasped it: that fleeting, high-summer of bliss; where would she be ten years hence? Would the hollowed-out shell of her heart be enough to sustain her? Would she have the strength still to resist the call of the wild wind, the frozen, smothered earth that, this night, spoke more deeply, more urgently to her than the warmth and life within?
Home, family, even wealth: a year since, if offered to her, she would have clung to them with a tenacious embrace and never slackened her hold. But now…
Midnight fell over Yorkshire. In a cottage on the moor outside the tiny village of Morton, the last embers of Christmas Eve fires glowed and went out. In the upstairs corner room, a solitary white-clad form knelt by her bed, head bowed as if in prayer. But in that peaceful scene, on that night when her heart should have been singing with thanksgiving, it wept, and the anguished, desperate words of a soul strained with longing for another broke from her lips, no more than a whisper in the silent house:
Oh, my Darling! If only. If only.