Emily Bronte (Robinson 1883)/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
BRANWELL'S FALL.
As the spring grew upon the moors, dappling them with fresh verdant shoots, clearing the sky overhead, loosening the winds to rush across them; as the beautiful season grew ripe in Haworth, every one of its days made clearer to the two anxious women waiting there in what shape their blurred foreboding would come true at last. They seldom spoke of Branwell now.
It was a hard and anxious time, ever expectant of an evil just at hand. Minor troubles, too, gathered round this shapeless boded grief: Mr. Brontë was growing blind; Charlotte, ever nervous, feared the same fate, and could do but little sewing with her weak, cherished eyesight. Anne's letters told of health worn out by constant, agonising suspicion. It was Emily, that strong bearer of burdens, on whom the largest share of work was laid.
Charlotte grew really weak as the summer came. Her sensitive, vehement nature felt anxiety as a physical pain. She was constantly with her father; her spirit sank with his, as month by month his sight grew sensibly weaker. The old man, to whom his own importance was so dear, suffered keenly, indeed, from the fear of actual blindness, and more from the horror of dependence, than from the dread of pain or privation. "He fears he will be nothing in the parish," says sorrowful Charlotte. And as her father, never impatient, never peevish, became more deeply cast down and anxious, she, too, became nervous and fearful; she, too, dejected.
At last, when June came and brought no brightness to that grey old house, with the invisible shadow ever hovering above it, Charlotte was persuaded to seek rest and change in the home of her friend near Leeds.
Anne was home now; she had come back ill, miserable. She had suspicions that made her feel herself degraded, pure soul, concerning her brother's relation with her employer's wife. Many letters had passed between them, through her hands too. Too often had she heard her unthinking little pupils threaten their mother into more than customary indulgence, saying: "Unless you do as we wish, we shall tell papa about Mr. Brontë." The poor girl felt herself an involuntary accomplice to that treachery, that deceit.
To lie down at night under the roof, to break by day the bread of the good, sick, bedridden man, whose honour, she could not but fear, was in jeopardy from her own brother, such dire strain was too great for that frail, dejected nature. And yet to say openly to herself that Branwell had committed this disgrace—it was impossible. Rather must her suspicions be the morbid promptings of a diseased mind. She was wicked to have felt them. Poor, gentle Anne, sweet, "prim, little body," such scenes, such unhallowed vicinities of lust, were not for you. At last sickness came and set her free. She went home.
Home, with its constant labour, pure air of good works; home, with its sickness and love, its dread for others and noble sacrifice of self; how welcome was it to her wounded spirit! And yet this infinitely lighter torment was wearing Charlotte out. They persuaded her to go away, and, when she had yielded, strove to keep her away.
Emily writes to Ellen in July:—
"Dear Miss Nussey If you have set your heart on Charlotte staying another week, she has our united consent. I, for one, will take everything easy on Sunday. I am glad she is enjoying herself; let her make the most of the next seven days to return stout and hearty. Love to her and you from Anne and myself, and tell her all are well at home.—Yours,
"Emily Brontë."
Charlotte stayed the extra week, benefiting largely thereby. She started for home, and enjoyed her journey, for she travelled with a French gentleman, and talked again with delight the sweet language which had left such lingering echoes in her memory, which forbade her to feel quite contented any more in her secluded Yorkshire home. Slight as it was, the little excitement did her good; feeling brave and ready to face and fight with a legion of shadows, she reached the gate of her own home, went in. Branwell was there.
He had been sent home a day or two before, apparently for a holiday. He must have known that some discovery had been made at last; he must have felt he never would return. Anne, too, must have had some misgivings; yet the worst was not known yet. Emily, at least, could not guess it. Not for long this truce with open disgrace. The very day of Charlotte's return a letter had come for Branwell from his employer. All had been found out. This letter commanded Branwell never to see again the mother of the children under his care, never set foot in her home, never write or speak to her. Branwell, who loved her passionately, had in that moment no thought for the shame, the black disgrace, he had brought on his father's house. He stormed, raved, swore he could not live without her; cried out against her next for staying with her husband. Then prayed the sick man might die soon; they would yet be happy. Ah, he would never see her again!
A strange scene in the quiet parlour of a country vicarage, this anguish of guilty love, these revulsions from shameful ecstasy to shameful despair. Branwell raved on, delirious, agonised; and the blind father listened, sick at heart, maybe self-reproachful; and the gentle sister listened, shuddering, as if she saw hell lying open at her feet. Emily listened, too, indignant at the treachery, horrified at the shame; yet with an immense pity in her fierce and loving breast.
To this scene Charlotte entered.
Charlotte, with her vehement sense of right; Charlotte, with her sturdy indignation; when she, at last understood the whole guilty corrupted passion that had wrecked two homes, she turned away with something in her heart suddenly stiffened, dead. It was her passionate love for this shameful, erring brother, once as dear to her as her own soul. Yet she was very patient. She writes to a friend quietly and without too much disdain:—
"We have had sad work with Branwell. He thought of nothing but stunning or drowning his agony of mind" (in what fashion, the reader knows ere now) "no one in this house could have rest, and at last we have been obliged to send him from home for a week, with some one to look after him. He has written to me this morning, expressing some sense of contrition .... but as long as he remains at home, I scarce dare hope for peace in the house. We must all, I fear, prepare for a season of distress and disquietude." [1]
A weary and a hopeless time. Branwell came back, better in body, but in nowise holier in mind. His one hope was that his enemy might die, die soon, and that things might be as they had been before. No thought of repentance. What money he had, he spent in gin or opium, anything to deaden recollection. A woman still lives at Haworth, who used to help in the housework at the "Black Bull." She still remembers how, in the early morning, pale, red-eyed, he would come into the passage of the inn, with his beautiful bow and sweep of the lifted hat, with his courteous smile and ready "Good morning, Anne!" Then he would turn to the bar, and feeling in his pockets for what small moneys he might have—sixpence, eightpence, tenpence, as the case might be—he would order so much gin and sit there drinking till it was all gone, then still sit there silent; or sometimes he would passionately speak of the woman he loved, of her beauty, sweetness, of how he longed to see her again; he loved to speak of her even to a dog; he would talk of her by the hour to his dog. Yet—lest we pity this real despair—let us glance at one of this man's letters. How could such vulgar weakness, such corrupt and loathsome sentimentality, such maudlin Micawber-penitence, yet feel so much! No easy task to judge of a misery too perverse for pity, too sincere for absolute contempt.
It is again to Mr. Grundy that he writes:
"Since I last shook hands with you in Halifax, two summers ago, my life, till lately, has been one of apparent happiness and indulgence. You will ask—'Why does he complain then?' I can only reply by showing the undercurrent of distress which bore my bark to a pool, despite the surface-waves of life that seemed floating me to peace. In a letter begun in the spring of 1843" (sic; 1845?) "and never finished owing to incessant attacks of illness, I tried to tell you that I was tutor to the son of a wealthy gentleman whose wife is sister to the wife of ———, an M.P., and the cousin of Lord ———. This lady (though her husband detested me) showed me a degree of kindness which, when I was deeply grieved one day at her husband's conduct, ripened into declarations of more than ordinary feeling. My admiration of her mental and personal attractions, my knowledge of her unselfish sincerity, her sweet temper, and unwearied care for others, with but unrequited return where most should have been given . . . . although she is seventeen years my senior, all combined to an attachment on my part, and led to reciprocations which I had little looked for. Three months since I received a furious letter from my employer, threatening to shoot me if I returned from my vacation which I was passing at home; and letters from her lady's-maid and physician informed me of the outbreak, only checked by her firm courage and resolution that whatever harm came to her none should come to me. . . . . I have lain for nine long weeks, utterly shattered in body and broken down in mind. The probability of her becoming free to give me herself and estate never rose to drive away the prospect of her decline under her present grief. I dreaded, too, the wreck of my mind and body, which—God knows—during a short life have been most severely tried. Eleven continuous nights of sleepless horror reduced me to almost blindness, and being taken into Wales to recover, the sweet scenery, the sea, the sound of music caused me fits of unspeakable distress. You will say: 'What a fool!' But if you knew the many causes that I have for sorrow, which I cannot even hint at here, you would perhaps pity as well as blame. At the kind request of Mr. Macaulay and Mr. Baines, I have striven to arouse my mind by writing something worthy of being read, but I really cannot do so. Of course you will despise the writer of all this. I can only answer that the writer does the same and would not wish to live, if he did not hope that work and change may yet restore him.
"Apologising sincerely for what seems like whining egotism, and hardly daring to hint about days when, in your company, I could sometimes sink the thoughts which 'remind me of departed days,' I fear 'departed never to return,' I remain, &c." [2]
Unhappy Branwell! some consolation he derives in his utmost sorrow from the fact that the lady of his love can employ her own lady's-maid and physician to write letters to her exiled lover. It is clear that his pride is gratified by this irregular association with a lord. He can afford to wait, stupefied with drink and drugs, till that happy time shall come when he can step forward and claim "herself and estate," henceforward Branwell Brontë, Esq., J.P., and a person of position in the county. Such paradisal future dawns above this present purgatory of pains and confusion.
That phrase concerning "herself and estate" is peculiarly apocalyptic. It sheds a quite new light upon a fact which, in Mrs. Gaskell's time, was regarded as a proof that some remains of conscience still stirred within this miserable fellow. Some months after his dismissal, towards the end of this unhappy year of 1845, he met this lady at Harrogate by appointment. It is said that she proposed a flight together, ready to forfeit all her grandeur. It was Branwell who advised patience, and a little longer waiting. Maybe, though she herself was dear, "although seventeen years my senior," "herself and estate" was estimably dearer.
And yet he was in earnest, yet it was a question of life and death, of heaven or hell, with him. If he could not have her, he would have nothing. He would ruin himself and all he could. Most like, in this rage of vain despair, some passionate baby that shrieks, and hits, and tears, convulsed because it may not have the moon.
Small wonder that Charlotte's coldness, aggravated by continual outrage on Branwell's part, gradually became contempt and silence. In proportion as she had exulted in this brother, hoped all for him, did she now shrink from him, bitterly chill at heart.
"I begin to fear," she says, the once ambitious sister, "that he has rendered himself incapable of filling any respectable station in life." She cannot ask Ellen to come to see her, because he is in the house. " And while he is here, you shall not come. I am more confirmed in that resolution the more I see of him. I wish I could say one word to you in his favour, but I cannot. I will hold my tongue."[3]
For some while she hoped that the crisis would pass, and that then—no matter how humbly, the more obscurely the better—he would at least earn honest bread away from home. Such was not his intention. He professed to be too ill to leave Haworth; and ill, no doubt, he was from continual eating of opium, and daily drinking of drams. He stuck to his comfortable quarters, to the "Black Bull" just across the churchyard, heedless of what discomfort he gave to others. "Branwell offers no prospect of hope," says Charlotte, again. "How can we be more comfortable so long as Branwell stays at home and degenerates instead of improving? It has been intimated that he would be received again where he was formerly stationed if he would behave more steadily, but he refuses to make the effort. He will not work, and at home he is a drain on every resource, an impediment to all happiness. But there's no use in complaining———"
Small use indeed; yet once more she forced herself to make the hopeless effort, after some more than customary outbreak of the man who was drinking himself into madness and ruin. She writes in the March of 1846 to her friend and comforter, Ellen:—
"I went into the room where Branwell was, to speak to him, about an hour after I got home; it was very forced work to address him. I might have spared myself the trouble, as he took no notice, and made no reply; he was stupefied. My fears were not vain. I hear that he got a sovereign while I have been away, under pretence of paying a pressing debt; he went immediately and changed it at a public-house, and has employed it as was to be expected . . . . . concluded her account by saying that he was a 'hopeless being.' It is too true. In his present state it is scarcely possible to stay in the room where he is."[4]
It must be about that time that she for ever gave up expostulation or complaint in this matter. "I will hold my tongue," she had said, and she kept her word. For more than two years she held an utter silence to him; living under the same roof, witnessing day by day his ever-deepening degradation, no syllable crossed her lips to him. Since she could not (for the sake of those she loved and might comfort) refuse the loathsome daily touch and presence of sin, she endured it, but would have no fellowship therewith. She had no right over it, it none over her. She looked on speechless; that man was dead to her.
Anne, in whom the fibre of indignation was less strong, followed less sternly in her sister's wake.
"She had," says Charlotte in her 'Memoir,' "in the course of her life been called upon to contemplate, near at hand and for a long time, the terrible effects of talents misused and faculties abused; hers was naturally a sensitive, reserved and dejected nature; what she saw went very deeply into her mind; it did her harm."
The spectacle of this harm, coming undeserved to so dear, frail and innocent a creature, absorbed all Charlotte's pity. There was none left for Branwell.
But there was one woman's heart strong enough in its compassion to bear the daily disgusts, weaknesses, sins of Branwell's life, and yet persist in aid and affection. Night after night, when Mr. Brontë was in bed, when Anne and Charlotte had gone upstairs to their room, Emily still sat up, waiting. She often had very long to wait in the silent house before the staggering tread, the muttered oath, the fumbling hand at the door, bade her rouse herself from her sad thoughts and rise to let in the prodigal, and lead him in safety to his rest. But she never wearied in her kindness. In that silent home, it was the silent Emily who had ever a cheering word for Branwell; it was Emily who still remembered that he was her brother, without that remembrance freezing her heart to numbness. She still hoped to win him back by love; and the very force and sincerity of his guilty passion (an additional horror and sin in her sisters' eyes) was a claim on Emily, ever sympathetic to violent feeling. Thus it was she who, more than the others, became familiarised with the agony, and doubts, and shame of that tormented soul; and if, in her little knowledge of the world, she imagined such wrested passions to be natural, it is not upon her, of a certainty, that the blame of her pity shall be laid.
As the time went on and Branwell grew worse and wilder, it was well for the lonely watcher that she was strong. At last he grew ill, and would be content to go to bed early and lie there half-stupefied with opium and drink. One such night, their father and Branwell being in bed, the sisters came upstairs to sleep. Emily had gone on first into the little passage room where she still slept, when Charlotte, passing Branwell's partly-opened door, saw a strange bright flare inside.
"Oh, Emily!" she cried, " the house is on fire!"
Emily came out, her fingers at her lips. She had remembered her father's great horror of fire; it was the one dread of a brave man; he would have no muslin curtains, no light dresses in his house. She came out silently and saw the flame; then, very white and determined, dashed from her room downstairs into the passage, where every night full pails of water stood. One in each hand she came upstairs. Anne, Charlotte, the young servant, shrinking against the wall, huddled together in amazed horror Emily went straight on and entered the blazing room. In a short while the bright light ceased to flare. Fortunately the flame had not reached the woodwork: drunken Branwell, turning in his bed, must have upset the light on to his sheets, for they and the bed were all on fire, and he unconscious in the midst when Emily went in, even as Jane Eyre found Mr. Rochester. But it was with no reasonable, thankful human creature with whom Emily had to deal. After a few long moments, those still standing in the passage saw her stagger out, white, with singed clothes, half-carrying in her arms, half-dragging, her besotted brother. She placed him in her bed, and took away the light; then assuring the hysterical girls that there could be no further danger, she bade them go and rest—but where she slept herself that night no one remembers now.
It must be very soon after this that Branwell began to sleep in his father's room. The old man, courageous enough, and conceiving that his presence might be some slight restraint on the drunken furies of his unhappy son, persisted in this arrangement, though often enough the girls begged him to relinquish it, knowing well enough what risk of life he ran. Not infrequently Branwell would declare that either he or his father should be dead before the morning; and well might it happen that in his insensate delirium he should murder the blind old man.
"The sisters often listened for the report of a pistol in the dead of the night, till watchful eye and hearkening ear grew heavy and dull with the perpetual strain upon their nerves. In the mornings young Brontë would saunter out, saying with a drunkard's incontinence of speech, 'The poor old man and I have had a terrible night of it. He does his best—the poor old man!—but it's all over with me'" (whimpering) "'it's her fault, her fault.'"[5]
And in such fatal progress two years went on, bringing the suffering in that house ever lower, ever deeper, sinking it day by day from bad to worse.