The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë (33 page)

Branwell had, for most of his life, rejected the comforts of his religion, and refused to repent of his many sins; this had caused papa and all our family untold heartbreak. In this, his darkest hour—to our relief—Branwell at last gave himself up to repentance: for two full days, he talked with compunction of nothing but his misspent life, his wasted youth, and his shame.

“In all my past life, I have done nothing either great or good,” mused he with deep regret, as I took my turn at his bed
side, “nothing to deserve the affection that my dearest family has shown me.” Seizing my hand, he cried, “Charlotte, if only I could make amends, I would; but if love and gratitude could be measured by the beats of a dying heart, you would know that mine beats only for you, our father, and my sisters. You have been my only happiness.”

As we all gathered around Branwell’s bedside on that Sunday morning, the 24th of September, it was with painful, mournful joy that I heard him praying softly; and to the last prayer which my father offered up, Branwell added “Amen.” How unusual that word appeared from my brother’s lips—and yet what comfort it gave us all to hear it! I can only hope it brought a similar measure of comfort to my dying brother; for twenty minutes later, he was gone.

Till the last hour comes, we never know how much we can forgive, pity, and regret a near relation. Many, after the circumstances we had endured, might regard our brother’s death as a mercy, rather than a chastisement; at times, my sisters and I considered it as such. However, when I saw my brother draw his last breath—the first time I had yet seen a death take place before my eyes—when I saw his features begin to calm, succeeding the last dread agony, I felt a sense of loss that would not be assuaged by any amount of weeping.

I wept for the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely, dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and shining light; I wept for the brother that I had once loved with all my heart, and would never see again. All my brother’s errors, all his vices, felt nothing to me in that moment; every wrong he had done seemed to vanish; his sufferings only were remembered. I prayed that there was peace and forgiveness for him in heaven.

Papa was acutely distressed for days; he kept crying out, “My son! My son!” His physical strength did not fail him, however, and in time he recovered his mental composure.

It rained on the day of Branwell’s funeral. Autumn set in with
a vengeance; we all caught colds, and in the ensuing weeks, we sat muffled at the fireside, shrinking before the frigid east wind that blew wild and keen over our moors and hills.

Emily’s cold turned into a persistent cough, which worsened day by day, soon accompanied by pain in her chest and side, and a shortness in breathing. A stoic in illness, Emily neither sought nor accepted sympathy; but she wasted away before our eyes, becoming increasingly thin and pale. Weighed down with unspeakable dread, I implored Emily time and time again to allow me to call a physician, but she would have none of it.

“I will have no poisoning doctor,” she insisted obstinately, “trying to drug me with quackery and remedies that will only make me sicker. I will rally on my own.”

But Emily did not rally.

She declined.

The details of Emily’s illness are deep-branded in my memory: the deep, tight cough, which echoed throughout the house, day and night; the rapid, panting breathing after the least exertion; the intermittent fever; the trembling hand; the dwindling appetite; the hollow, wasted aspect of her frame and countenance; all the signs of consumption. As I watched her stubbornly toil every day to complete her ordinary household chores, even when it was clear that she was unfit to do them, I nearly went mad with worry. The tie of sister is no uncommon bond, and my sister was as dear to me as life itself; I could not bear the thought of losing her. For three months, I sought counsel from all sides; I suggested remedies; I strove to take Emily’s burden from her, and encourage her to rest; all these efforts my sister met with annoyance and refusal.

There was, in Emily, a simple and primitive streak. Like the gipsies and the hill-folk she so resembled, and the wild creatures she so dearly loved and championed, she tenaciously clung to her natural habitat and instinctive ways. She handled her illness, I thought, as would a sick animal: she would rather retreat into a corner with which she was familiar, to recover or not, than to be prodded and handled by strangers or strange meth
ods. Emily had always been a law unto herself, and a heroine in keeping to her law. She did not wish to die; but she had a superstitious belief in natural forces, and to those forces she now committed her life.

Never in all of Emily’s life had she lingered over any task that lay before her, and she did not linger now. She sank rapidly. She made haste to leave us. Yet, while physically she perished, mentally she grew stronger than we had yet known her. Day by day, when I saw with what a front she met suffering, I looked on her with an anguish of wonder and love. I have seen nothing like it; but, indeed, I have never seen her parallel in anything.

On the evening of the 18th of December I saw Emily issue from the warm kitchen into the cold, damp hall, on her way to feed the dogs. Suddenly she staggered, nearly colliding with the wall as she struggled to keep hold of her apronful of broken meat and bread. Anne and I cried out in alarm and rushed to help her.

“I am fine,” insisted Emily, brushing us aside as she went about her task, giving Flossy and Keeper their supper from her hands. It was the last time she would ever feed them.

Owing to the harsh onset of winter, and the fact that Emily’s little bedroom had no fire-place, she had a few weeks previously moved into the room that Branwell had long since vacated after his misadventure with the candle. That night, as I passed by said chamber, I observed Emily crouched before the hearth, this time feeding something very different: she was placing pages from a thin stack into the roaring blaze.

Curious, I entered the room. The fire-place was suffused with a thick layer of feathery ash. I glanced at the few pages left in Emily’s grasp, and recognised the handwriting thereon as her own. These last sheets she quickly added to the fire and stirred it, watching as they burst into flame. “What are you burning?” I asked, in sudden alarm.

“Nothing of import.”

“If it is something you wrote, it would be important to me. What is it?”

“Just my old Gondal writings, and my book.”

“Your book? No! What book?” Desperately, I tried to grab the poker from Emily’s grasp, to rescue from the fire what little remained of her offering, but she held on to the tool with surprising tenacity. As I watched helplessly, the last of the curling pages withered into ashy oblivion. “What book?” I repeated quietly, although I already guessed the terrible answer. “Surely—not the one you have been working on these past two years?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Emily!” The cry of woe was wrenched from the depths of my very soul. Tears sprang forth at the thought of losing such a precious document, and I sank down upon her bed, feeling faint. “You never even let us read it, Emily! It is hard enough that you never shared so many of your Gondal stories—and now they are gone—
gone
! But your new book! Why did you burn your new book?”

“I was not satisfied with it. I saw what people thought of my work when I
was
satisfied. I could not bear to have them scrutinise something so unformed and incomplete, after I am dead.”

“Emily,” said I, with more hope than conviction—eerily echoing the anguished words I had once spoken to my sister Maria—“you are
not
going to die.”

Emily sighed and sank down into her chair, the poker dropping to the floor with a clatter. “I do not wish to, believe me; but that is for God to decide.”

The next morning, I rose at dawn, bundled up in my cloak and gloves, and strode out across the moors, weeping in despair, all the while searching in every little hollow and sheltered cranny for a lingering spray of heather to take in to Emily. Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; and heather was her favourite flower in all the world. There were times when she had spent entire days lying about and day-dreaming in the heath; surely the sight of that familiar bloom would bring her pleasure, I thought.

At last, with a cry of joy, I found what I was seeking: one
wee, hardy spray, withered yet still recognisable. I ran all the way back to the parsonage, my heart pounding, for that small, resilient piece of heather seemed to me a symbol of hope, of life expectant, of promise renewed. I flew inside the house and up the stairs, where I found Emily in her bedroom, already up and dressed and sitting by the hearth, her long brown hair hanging loosely about her shoulders as she stared into the fire. The acrid odour of burning bone filled the room.

“Charlotte,” said she listlessly, as I entered, “my comb is down there. It fell from my hand. I was too weak to stoop and pick it up.”

Alarmed, I hastily retrieved the comb from the embers. A large piece of it was melted out. Tears filled my eyes; I thought that damaged comb the saddest, most heart-breaking sight I had ever witnessed; but I only said, “Never mind, Emily. You can have my comb, or if you like, I will buy you another.” Then, wiping my eyes, I said, “Look what I have found for you,” and I offered her the tiny sprig of heather.

To my grief and distress, Emily only glanced at it with dim, indifferent eyes and said, “What is that?”

I will never be able to erase that terrible day from my mind. Emily weakened steadily. Refusing all help, she faltered downstairs, where she sat on the sofa and struggled to pick up her sewing; but her breathing became so laboured, that Anne and I grew increasingly alarmed. At one o’clock, Emily finally whispered: “If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now.” I sent for him; the doctor came; but it was too late. An hour later—with faithful Keeper lying at the side of her dying-bed, and Anne and I, weeping, holding both her hands—Emily was torn, conscious, panting, and reluctant, out of a happy life.

Emily—the light of my existence, now extinguished forever—was taken in her prime. She was only thirty years old.

To lose Emily was akin to losing a part of myself. Her death, particularly coming so hard on the heels of Branwell’s, was such a heart-breaking blow to all in our household that we were
stunned into inaction for many days. Keeper kept a vigil at her bedroom door, where he howled piteously. Anne, Martha, and Tabby sat in the kitchen and wept. Papa, broken-down with grief, said to me almost hourly, “Charlotte, you must bear up; I shall sink if you fail me.”

In fact, I did fail him; I became so ill that for a week I could barely rise from my bed. Some one had to remain strong, I knew, to try to cheer the rest; but I knew not where this strength would come from.

That strength, as it turned out, came from Mr. Nicholls.

Our curate was the first person to call at the house to offer his condolences, less than an hour after Emily’s death. Over the previous months, I had seen in Mr. Nicholls’s eyes the concern and sympathy with which he had observed the rapid decline of both my brother and my sister. He now stepped in with kindness, consideration, and proficiency when he was most needed: he offered to assist with the arrangements for Emily’s funeral service, and to perform the ceremony. Papa, too overcome with grief to consider any other option, accepted gratefully.

On the appointed day, with a hard December frost covering the ground and a keen east wind cutting cruelly through the churchyard, Mr. Nicholls and papa led our small, mournful procession from house to church. My now-diminished family and I sat in our pew with Keeper lying at our feet, while Mr. Nicholls spoke to the sizeable congregation in his strong, clear Irish voice from the pulpit.

After he read the burial prayers, and Emily’s coffin was laid to rest in the family vault beneath the church, we all gathered outside, our neighbours paying their respects with gentle honesty and sympathy, despite the frigid temperatures and biting wind. When most of the villagers had gone, I went up to Mr. Nicholls with gratitude in my heart, and offered him my gloved hand.

“Thank you, sir, for all you have done, and for all you said on my sister’s behalf. Your words meant a great deal to me, and I know they brought comfort to my grieving family.”

Mr. Nicholls took my hand and squeezed it warmly, letting it go with apparent reluctance. “I was honoured to do what little I could; but you are the true strength in your family, Miss Brontë. You are their rock and their foundation. You will be their comfort now, and they are most fortunate to have you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Nicholls.” As I turned back to join my grieving sister and father, fresh tears stung my eyes. I vowed that somehow, in the days to come, I would rise to earn Mr. Nicholls’s faith in me. In that hour of desperate need, however, I felt I could not go on without the comfort of a friend.

I wrote to Ellen. Ellen came after Christmas and stayed for a fortnight. I sent a coach to meet her train at Keighley; no sooner had she stepped across our threshold, than we fell into each other’s arms.

“I am so sorry, Charlotte. I loved Emily dearly.”

“I know.”

“At least we can be thankful that her suffering is over.”

I nodded, unable to reply.

Ellen was the picture of serenity and consolation; the constancy of her kind heart was a great blessing to me. A few days after her arrival, we were sitting round the fire in the dining-room with Anne, our mutual companionship all we needed to celebrate the last day of the year. Ellen sat in Emily’s old chair, the firelight gleaming on her brown curls as she worked away at some embroidery; Anne and I sat side by side on the sofa, reading the newspapers. I noticed a sudden, small smile steal over Anne’s gentle face.

“Why do you smile, Anne?” I asked.

“Only because I see that the
Leeds Intelligencer
has inserted one of my poems,” replied Anne happily. As soon as she said it, Anne caught her breath and looked at me, alarmed by what she had given away in speaking thus.