Romancing Miss Bronte (8 page)

“I will not,” Charlotte said flatly. It made her heart ache to see him like this. “You’ll just spend it on drink.”

He glared at her, his breathing quickening. His jaw tightened; then suddenly he drew back his fist and slammed it into the wall next to her head. Charlotte flinched, and Branwell bellowed in pain.

“Charlotte!” Emily cried. She thought he had struck her and came racing into the hall.

She found Charlotte on her knees, with Branwell writhing in pain. He was sitting on the floor with his head between his knees clutching his fist and trying not to cry.

“I’ve broken it, damn it,” he wailed. “It’s my writing hand!”

“Let me see it,” Charlotte insisted.

“I’ll go get a cold cloth,” Anne said, and she ran downstairs.

Emily stood over them, hands on hips, unmoved. “Writing hand, my eye,” she sniffed. “You can write with both hands, brother.”

He threw her such a pathetic look that she softened, grudgingly, and knelt beside her sister. “What a stupid thing to do, Branwell.”

“Show me your hand,” Charlotte repeated. He held it out for her to examine. The knuckles were bloodied and beginning to swell. When she tried to get him to open his fist he flinched, then said in a low, plaintive voice, “Please, Tally, if you love me at all, you’ll help me get a little money from Papa. He’ll give it to you.”

“Are you in debt again?”

“Just a little … to the Old Cock. The proprietor’s a good sort, and I promised I’d pay him this week.”

Anne came running up the stairs with a cloth and a bowl of snow, and the three sisters knelt on the floor, nursing their injured brother. This subdued him; this was what he needed most, a little sympathy and understanding.

He seemed quite pathetic when he looked up and said, “Charlotte, I would never touch a hair on your head. I would never hurt any of you. You all know that, don’t you?” He began to weep.

He sat on the floor sobbing while they looked on. It was raw, hopeless misery, and there was nothing any of them could do.

Anne wrapped her arms around him and drew him to her. Her own eyes were brimming with tears, and with a throaty whisper she said, “Every night, in Papa’s study, and before we go to sleep at night, and in the morning, we get down on our knees and beseech God to guide you out of this insanity … but it falls to you, Branwell, if you can only believe. You
must
believe. Christ Jesus will give you the power to overcome your temptations. You can put all this behind you.”

Branwell broke away from her embrace and wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “Annie, don’t talk like that. You know how I abhor it.”

“My dear brother,” Anne went on, “now more than ever you need our Lord. Turn to Him. He’ll lift you out of your despair.”

“You poor deluded creature. You believe all that rubbish, don’t you?” He struggled to his feet. “Well then, I see I can’t get any help from you.”

Without another word, he plodded down the stairs.

The girls watched from the window as he made his way down the lane toward the Black Bull Inn.

“I suppose he’ll find someone to buy him a drink,” Anne said with a shade of bitterness.

“He always does.”

“Or he’ll go to the druggist. He has enough for a few grains of opium.”

“I thought he’d struck you,” Emily murmured.

Charlotte turned and saw her sister’s eyes, steeled in anger.

“He would never hurt any of us.”

Anne put her arm around Emily. “Don’t be angry with him. He’s not himself. He’s not the same brother anymore.”

“You know, I felt badly at first, that we didn’t include him in our publishing scheme,” Emily said.

“You mustn’t feel badly,” Anne replied. “You know he would never consent to pay to publish his poetry. He’s far too proud. That’s the one thing Papa has always counseled him against. Papa thinks it’s just money thrown away.”

“And Branwell could not have kept our secret,” Charlotte observed. “He would have blabbed to everyone.”

“It’s all right,” Emily said, taking a deep breath. “I don’t feel guilty about it anymore.”

In the end, the reality was this: their brother had abandoned them years ago. He had become a part of the grand world reserved for the greater sex: the boxing clubs, the literary and musical societies and Masonic orders, the political campaigns and alehouses. He traveled freely and acted without restraint. The sisters had briefly ventured beyond the home, but now they had returned to domestic confines, to the private world of kitchen and parlor. They were on their own.

They watched until he was out of sight. Then they each took their glasses and very carefully poured the remaining port back into the bottle. Emily plugged it with the cork, and Anne shoveled ashes onto the flames to extinguish the fire.

Rather than discouraging their efforts, the turmoil at home galvanized the sisters, throwing them back on their imaginary worlds and driving
them into the fortress of their own company. The very quietude that had chased Branwell from his home was, in reality, a ceaseless activity of the mind. In the evenings when the only sounds to be heard were the clock ticking on the stairs and the wind whistling in the chimney, they worked by the light of their candles, breaking silence only to exchange pages and offer advice, some of which was taken, some not. Their habit of pacing round and round the dining table helped to loosen their imaginations as well as their limbs. When visions came to them they would settle back down a their writing desks, pick up their pencils, and get on with telling their tales.

The first copies of
Poems
by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell—a slender volume bound in green cloth—arrived at the parsonage one morning early in May. The parcel, addressed to C. Brontë, Esquire, had been opened—the brown wrapping paper torn and the books loosely tied back up with string. If the culprit had been their brother, he showed no signs of being wise to their little undertaking. Nevertheless, it was a baffling incident, and they thought it best to hide the volumes in case Branwell got hold of one of them and recognized their poetry, which he was sure to do. So even in their own home their small claim to glory was concealed from public view, stored away beneath a stack of chemises in a drawer or locked in a small trunk, places where women were apt to conceal the secrets in their lives.

For all his failings, Patrick Brontë’s son was greatly loved in the village. His boisterous presence always enlivened any company, and he never condescended to the lower sorts. So that summer when the news reached Haworth that Lydia Robinson’s husband had finally died, Branwell became the object of great excitement and speculation. The poor fellow was beside himself with anticipation. On many an afternoon he stumbled down to the Bull and collapsed into his favorite chair, where he hoped to find a sympathetic ear—there being none to find at home.

“My legs have turned to jelly,” he’d cry out with a weak laugh. “And look,” he’d say, holding out a trembling hand for all to see, “look at that.
Damn, look at the state I’m in.” Then he’d lift his glass with that same shaking hand and sink his mouth into the froth.

“Hasn’t slept or eaten a bite for days,” William Thomas murmured to the wheelwright as he mopped up a spill on his mahogany countertop. “Waitin’ to hear his fate.”

“Ye think she’ll marry him?”

The innkeeper only shrugged philosophically.

On other days he came down to the Bull with a bounce in his step, brimming with optimism: “I’ll hear from her today. I know it. Feel it in my bones. My fortune’s about to change, gentlemen.” He’d run a hand through his limp red curls and groan, “And damn it, it’s about time, isn’t it? I’m overdue on that score. But I don’t have long to wait now. I wager you a year from now I’ll be master of Thorp Green!” He’d raise his glass in a toast to his own future, and his eyes would flash brightly; William the innkeeper thought he looked a little mad. “When I think of how my poor lady suffered all those years with that eunuch of a husband. She was so starved for affection. Now, what does that say about the man? Does he think a woman like her can be neglected without consequence? It was damn criminal. If she turned to me for consolation, he only had himself to blame.” His face would soften. “She was my muse. Ah, William”—or John or Hartley, whoever was there to listen and nod—“if you’d seen the effect my poetry had on her.” Then a rapturous smile would bleed across his haggard face. “Good God, what a sweet woman she was. It broke her heart to have to part from me. But I’ll hear from her now, and things will all be put right soon enough.”

If he had an attentive audience, he would dig into his jacket pocket. “See that?” he would say as he unclenched his fist to reveal a pale ring of woven hair. “I had it made from a lock of her hair. I’d wear it, but I’m afraid I’ll lose it.” He would touch the pale trinket to his lips and slip it back into his pocket with the bundle of her letters.

Tabby remarked on the matter one day while Charlotte was at the kitchen table, going over the household accounts.

“So the young master’s goin’ to be married soon to ’is lady, I ’ear.”

“Is it true, miss?” Martha asked in wide-eyed wonder. “Will ’e be livin’ the life of a gentleman in a big house?”

“You hear wrong, both of you,” Charlotte replied sourly.

“But my father says that now that Mr. Robinson is dead there’s nothin’ to stop—”

“Martha, your father only repeats what Branwell tells him, and he’s got his head in the clouds right now.”

For days Branwell’s mood swung between elation and despair, until finally the long-anticipated message arrived. It had been a busy day at the parsonage, with tradesmen stopping by and the parish clerk taking tea in the kitchen. Martha was slow to get the door when the bell rang, so Charlotte answered it herself. It was young Johnny who ran messages for the owner of the Black Bull.

“There’s a gentleman down waitin’ for Mr. Branwell,” he said, out of breath and bright with excitement.

“Did he give you a card?” Charlotte asked.

“No, miss, but he says he’s come with a message from a lady, and that Branwell would know what it’s about.”

They were startled by a shout, and Charlotte looked around to see Branwell hovering on the stairs at the back of the hall.

“It’s Lydia!” he cried gleefully. He came bounding down the stairs in his stockings and grabbed his coat from the hook.

“Oh, my shoes!” he shouted. “My shoes! Where are my shoes! Oh, what the deuce, shoes be damned! Come on, Johnny, my boy, take me to the man,” he said. He dashed past the boy, raced across the small garden, and vaulted over the low stone wall into the cemetery.

“Wait, Branwell!” the boy cried as he clambered over the wall after him.

“Hurry up then,” Branwell shouted back as he sprinted through the cemetery. When he reached the lane beside the church, he hopped onto one of the flat box graves, spread his arms to the heavens, and sent up a resounding “Hallelujah!” Then he leapt off and ran shoeless down the stone stairs toward the Black Bull Inn.

Charlotte found her father hunched over his desk with his head in his hands.

“I suppose you heard,” she said.

He nodded his head.

Charlotte began to tidy up his desk. “I don’t know whether to give any credence to the story or not,” she said. “Branwell seems to think she’ll marry him and then he won’t have a worry in the world.” She arranged his pipe on the pipe rack. He had dropped a scattering of tobacco on his desk, and she carefully scooped it back into the tin.

“God help me,” Patrick muttered, “my heart has hardened toward that woman. She’s ruined him.” He lifted his clouded eyes to Charlotte. “You cannot know, daughter, what it’s like for a father to stand by and watch a beloved child sucked into the power of someone like that. He won’t listen to me. I have no control over him. We can only turn to God and beseech His aid. Come, Charlotte. Let’s pray. Kneel down with me and pray. Let us pray for him to be delivered from this harlot.”

Everyone at the Black Bull knew something was wrong that afternoon. Branwell closed himself in the back room with the visitor, but after the visitor had gone, Branwell did not emerge. Hartley Merrall was upstairs meeting with the other mill owners about the wool comber’s strike, and when he came downstairs they asked him to look in on Branwell. Hartley found him on the floor curled up in a ball, bleating like a lamb.

Hartley got him to his feet and said he’d take him home. A powerful storm had moved in, with sharp gusts of wind and rain, and he had difficulty getting Branwell up the lane. Arthur, who was standing at the schoolroom door, saw them coming and ran to help.

“What happened?” Arthur asked as he slung Branwell’s limp arm over his shoulder.

“Poor fellow’s had a shock.”

“It’s not drink?”

“Hasn’t had a drop.” He shot a glance at Arthur. “Might’ve been a fit. Had ’em since he was a boy.”

“What kind of fit?”

“Falls down an’ goes all stiff. I seen him break a tooth once. Awful frightening to watch. Like the devil’s got him.”

“It’s epilepsy. And it’s neither of the devil nor is it divine,” Arthur replied sharply.

“Well, us folks here don’t call it anything. Out of politeness for the family.”

“Very good,” Arthur answered, a shade more gently.

They were nearing the gate to the parsonage when Arthur said, “I think it might be wise to take him around the back of the house to the kitchen, so as not to distress Mr. Brontë.”

Hartley caught the look in Arthur’s eye. “Yes, quite. Good idea.”

Dripping with rain, they found Martha in the backyard scurrying to bring in the laundry. She let out a cry of distress at the sight of Branwell slumped between the two men, but Arthur quieted her down quickly enough.

“Hush, Martha. He’s not hurt. Go get your mistress and do it quietly, do you hear?”

Dripping with rain, they waited in the scullery with the dogs anxiously whining at their feet until Charlotte appeared. She was too humiliated to offer Arthur anything but a curt nod of thanks.

“Leave me alone,” Branwell mumbled, his face in the pillow. Charlotte was trying to get him out of his wet jacket. He refused to cooperate and rolled to the wall.