Emily Brontë

Charlotte meanwhile writes in good, even in high spirits to her friend: "I think I am never unhappy, my present life is so delightful, so congenial, compared to that of a governess. My time, constantly occupied, passes too rapidly. Hitherto both Emily and I have had good health, and therefore we have been able to work well. There is one individual of whom I have not yet spoken—Monsieur Héger, the husband of Madame. He is professor of rhetoric—a man of power as to mind, but very choleric and irritable as to temperament—a little, black, ugly being, with a face that varies in expression; sometimes he borrows the lineaments of an insane tom cat, sometimes those of a delirious hyena, occasionally—but very seldom—he discards these perilous attractions and assumes an air not a hundred times removed from what you would call mild and gentleman-like. He is very angry with me just at present, because I have written a translation which he chose to stigmatise as 'peu correct.' He did not tell me so, but wrote the words on the margin of my book, and asked, in brief, stern phrase, how it happened that my compositions were always better than my translations? adding that the thing seemed to him inexplicable."

The reader will already have recognised in the black, ugly, choleric little professor of rhetoric, the one absolutely natural hero of a woman's novel, the beloved and whimsical figure of the immortal Monsieur Paul Emanuel.

"He and Emily," adds Charlotte, "don't draw well together at all. Emily works like a horse, and she has had great difficulties to contend with, far greater than I have had."

Emily did indeed work hard. She was there to work, and not till she had learned a certain amount would her conscience permit her to return to Haworth. It was for dear liberty that she worked. She began German, a favourite study in after years, and of some purpose, since the style of Hofmann left its impression on the author of 'Wuthering Heights.' She worked hard at music; and in half a year the stumbling schoolgirl became a brilliant and proficient musician. Her playing is said to have been singularly accurate, vivid, and full of fire. French, too, both in grammar and in literature, was a constant study.

Monsieur Héger recognised the fact that in dealing with the Brontës he had not to make the customary allowances for a schoolgirl's undeveloped inexperience. These were women of mature and remarkable intelligence. The method he adopted in teaching them was rather that of a University professor than such as usually is used in a pensionnat. He would choose some masterpiece of French style, some passage of eloquence or portraiture, read it to them with a brief lecture on its distinctive qualities, pointing out what was exaggerated, what apt, what false, what subtle in the author's conception or his mode of expressing it. They were then dismissed to make a similar composition, without the aid of grammar or dictionary, availing themselves as far as possible of the nuances of style and the peculiarities of method of the writer chosen as the model of the hour. In this way the girls became intimately acquainted with the literary technique of the best French masters. To Charlotte the lessons were of incalculable value, perfecting in her that clear and accurate style which makes her best work never wearisome, never old-fashioned. But the very thought of imitating any one, especially of imitating any French writer, was repulsive to Emily, "rustic all through, moorish, wild and knotty as a root of heath."[7] When Monsieur Héger had explained his plan to them, "Emily spoke first; and said that she saw no good to be derived from it; and that by adopting it they would lose all originality of thought and expression. She would have entered into an argument on the subject, but for this Monsieur Héger had no time. Charlotte then spoke; she also doubted the success of the plan; but she would follow out Monsieur Héger's advice, because she was bound to obey him while she was his pupil."[8] Charlotte soon found a keen enjoyment in this species of literary composition, yet Emily's devoir was the best. They are, alas, no longer to be seen, no longer in the keeping of so courteous and proud a guardian as Mrs. Gaskell had to deal with; but she and Monsieur Héger both have expressed their opinions that in genius, imagination, power and force of language, Emily was the superior of the two sisters.

So great was the personality of this energetic, silent, brooding, ill-dressed young Englishwoman, that all who knew her recognised in her the genius they were slow to perceive in her more sociable and vehement sister. Madame Héger, the worldly, cold-mannered, surveillante of Villette, avowed the singular force of a nature most antipathetic to her own. Yet Emily had no companions; the only person of whom we hear, in even the most negative terms of friendliness, is one of the teachers, a certain Mademoiselle Marie, "talented and original, but of repulsive and arbitrary manners, which have made the whole school, except Emily and myself, her bitter enemies." No less arbitrary and repulsive seemed poor Emily herself, a sprig of purple heath at discord with those bright, smooth geraniums and lobelias; Emily, of whom every surviving friend extols the never-failing, quiet unselfishness, the genial spirit ready to help, the timid but faithful affection. She was so completely hors de son assiette that even her virtues were misplaced.

There was always one thing she could do, one thing as natural as breath to Emily—determined labour. In that merciful engrossment she could forget her heart-sick weariness and the jarring strangeness of things; every lesson conquered was another step taken on the long road home. And the days allowed ample space for work, although it was supported upon a somewhat slender diet.

Counting boarders and externes, Madame Héger's school numbered over a hundred pupils. These were divided into three classes; the second, in which the Brontës were, containing sixty students. In the last row, side by side, absorbed and quiet, sat Emily and Charlotte. Soon after rising, the pensionnaires were given their light Belgian breakfast of coffee and rolls. Then from nine to twelve they studied. Three mistresses and seven professors were engaged to take the different classes. At twelve a lunch of bread and fruit; then a turn in the green alley, Charlotte and Emily always walking together. From one till two fancy-work; from two till four, lessons again. Then dinner: the one solid meal of the day. From five till six the hour was free, Emily's musing-hour. From six till seven the terrible lecture pieuse, hateful to the Brontës' Protestant spirit. At eight a supper of rolls and water; then prayers, and to bed.

The room they slept in was a long school-dormitory. After all they could not get the luxury, so much desired, of a separate room. But their two beds were alone together at the further end, veiled in white curtains; discreet and retired as themselves. Here, after the day's hard work, they slept. In sleep, one is no longer an exile.

But often Emily did not sleep. The old well-known pain, wakefulness, longing, was again beginning to relax her very heartstrings. "The same suffering and conflict ensued, heightened by the strong recoil of her upright heretic and English spirit from the gentle Jesuitry of the foreign and Romish system. Once more she seemed sinking, but this time she rallied through the mere force of resolution: with inward remorse and shame she looked back on her former failure, and resolved to conquer, but the victory cost her dear. She was never happy till she carried her hard-won knowledge back to the remote English village, the old parsonage house and desolate Yorkshire hills."[9]

But not yet, not yet, this happiness! The opportunity that had been so hardly won must not be thrown away before the utmost had been made of it. And she was not utterly alone. Charlotte was there. The success that she had in her work must have helped a little to make her foreign home tolerable to her. Soon she knew enough of music to give lessons to the younger pupils. Then German, costing her and Charlotte an extra ten francs the month, as also much severe study and struggle. Charlotte writes in the summer: "Emily is making rapid progress in French, German, music and drawing. Monsieur and Madame Héger begin to recognise the valuable parts of her character under her singularities."

It was doubtful, even, whether they would come home in September. Madame Héger made a proposal to her two English pupils for them to stay on, without paying, but without salary, for half a year. She would dismiss her English teacher, whose place Charlotte would take. Emily was to teach music to the younger pupils. The proposal was kind and would be of advantage to the sisters.

Charlotte declared herself inclined to accept it. "I have been happy in Brussels," she averred. And Emily, though she, indeed, was not happy, acknowledged the benefit to be derived from a longer term of study. Six months, after all, was rather short to gain a thorough knowledge of French, with Italian and German, when you add to these acquirements music and drawing, which Emily worked at with a will. Besides, she could not fail again, could not go back to Haworth leaving Charlotte behind; neither could she spoil Charlotte's future by persuading her to reject Madame Héger's terms. So both sisters agreed to stay in Brussels. They were not utterly friendless there; two Miss Taylors, schoolfellows and dear friends of Charlotte's, were at school at the Château de Kokleberg, just outside the barriers. Readers of 'Shirley' know them as Rose and Jessie Yorke. The Brontës met them often, nearly every week, at some cousins of the Taylors, who lived in the town. But this diversion, pleasant to Charlotte, was merely an added annoyance to Emily. She would sit stiff and silent, unable to say a word, longing to be somewhere at her ease. Mrs. Jenkins, too, had begun with asking them to spend their Sundays with her; but Emily never said a word, and Charlotte, though sometimes she got excited and spoke well and vehemently, never ventured on an opinion till she had gradually wheeled round in her chair with her back to the person she addressed. They were so shy, so rustic, Mrs. Jenkins gave over inviting them, feeling that they did not like to refuse, and found it no pleasure to come. Charlotte, indeed, still had the Taylors, their cousins, and the family of a doctor living in the town, whose daughter was a pupil and friend of hers. Charlotte, too, had Madame Héger and her admired professor of rhetoric; but Emily had no friend except her sister.

Nevertheless it was settled they should stay. The grandes vacances began on the 15th of August, and, as the journey to Yorkshire cost so much, and as they were anxious to work, the Brontë girls spent their holidays in Rue d'Isabelle. Besides themselves only six or eight boarders remained. All their friends were away holiday-making; but they worked hard, preparing their lessons for the masters who, holidayless as they, had stayed behind in white, dusty, blazing, airless Brussels, to give lectures to the scanty class at Madame Héger's pensionnat.

So the dreary six weeks passed away. In October the term began again, the pupils came back, new pupils were admitted, Monsieur Héger was more gesticulatory, vehement, commanding than usual, and Madame, in her quiet way, was no less occupied. Life and youth filled the empty rooms. The Brontë girls, sad enough indeed, for their friend Martha Taylor had died suddenly at the Château de Kokleberg, were, notwithstanding, able to feel themselves in a more natural position for women of their age. Charlotte, henceforth, by Monsieur Héger's orders, "Mademoiselle Charlotte," was the new English teacher; Emily the assistant music-mistress. But, in the middle of October, in the first flush of their employment, came a sudden recall to Haworth. Miss Branwell was very ill. Immediately the two girls, who owed so much to her, who, but for her bounty, could never have been so far away in time of need, decided to go home. They broke their determination to Monsieur and Madame Héger, who, sufficiently generous to place the girls' duty before their own convenience, upheld them in their course. They hastily packed up their things, took places viâ Antwerp to London, and prepared to start. At the last moment, the trunks packed, in the early morning the postman came. He brought another letter from Haworth. Their aunt was dead.

So much the greater need that they should hasten home. Their father, left without his companion of twenty years, to keep his house, to read to him at night, to discuss with him on equal terms, their father would be lonely and distressed. Henceforth one of his daughters must stay with him. Anne was in an excellent situation; must they ask her to give it up? And what now of the school, the school at Burlington? There was much to take counsel over and consider; they must hurry home. So, knowing the worst, their future hanging out of shape and loose before their eyes, they set out on their dreary journey knowing not whether or when they might return.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Had a position been chosen for this strange creature for the express purpose of driving him several steps to the bad, this must have been it. The line was only just opened. The station was a rude wooden hut, and there was no village near at hand. Alone in the wilds of Yorkshire, with few books, little to do, no prospects, and wretched pay, with no society congenial to his better taste, but plenty of wild, rollicking, hard-headed, half-educated manufacturers, who would welcome him to their houses, and drink with him as often as he chose to come, what was this morbid man, who couldn't bear to be alone, to do?"[10]

What Branwell always did, in fine, was that which was easiest to him to do. He drank himself violent, when he did not drink himself maudlin. He left the porter at the station to keep the books, and would go off for days "on the drink" with his friends and fellow-carousers. About this time Mr. Grundy, then an engineer at Halifax, fell in with the poor, half-demented, lonely creature, and for a while things went a little better.

Drink and riot had not embellished the tawny-maned, laughing, handsome darling of Haworth. Here is his portrait as at this time he appeared to his friend:

"He was insignificantly small—one of his life's trials. He had a mass of red hair, which he wore brushed high off his forehead—to help his height, I fancy—a great, bumpy, intellectual forehead, nearly half the size of the whole facial contour; small ferrety eyes, deep-sunk and still further hidden by the never-removed spectacles; prominent nose, but weak lower features. He had a downcast look, which never varied, save for a rapid momentary glance at long intervals. Small and thin of person, he was the reverse of attractive at first sight."

Yet this insignificant, sunken-eyed slip of humanity had a spell for those who heard him speak. There was no subject, moral, intellectual, or philosophic too remote or too profound for him to measure it at a moment's notice, with the ever-ready, fallacious plumb-line of his brilliant vanity. He would talk for hours: be eloquent, convincing, almost noble; and afterwards accompany his audience to the nearest public-house.

"At times we would drive over in a gig to Haworth (twelve miles) and visit his people. He was there at his best, and would be eloquent and amusing, although sometimes he would burst into tears when returning, and swear that he meant to amend. I believe, however, that he was half mad and could not control himself."[11]

So must his friends in kindness think. Mad; if haunting, morbid dreads and fancies conjured up by poisonous drugs and never to be laid; if a will laid prostrate under the yoke of unclean habits; if a constitution prone to nervous derangement and blighted by early excess; if such things forcing him by imperceptible daily pressure to choose the things he loathed, to be the thing he feared, to act a part abhorrent to his soul; if such estranging and falsification of a man's true self may count as lunacy, the luckless, worthless boy was mad.

It must have galled him, going home, to be welcomed so kindly, hoped so much from, by those who had forgiven amply, and did not dream how heavy a mortgage had since been laid upon their pardon; to have talked to the prim, pretty old lady who denied herself every day to save an inheritance for him; to watch pious, gentle Anne into whose dreams the sins she prayed against had never entered; worst of all, the sight of his respectable, well-preserved father, honoured by all the parish, successful, placed by his own stern, continued, will high beyond the onslaughts of temptation, yet with a temperament singularly akin to that morbid, passionate son's.

So he would weep going home; weep for his falling off, and perhaps more sincerely for the short life of his contrition. Then the long evenings alone with his thoughts in that lonely place would make him afraid of repentance, afraid of God, himself, night, all. He would drink.

He had fits of as contrary pride. "He was proud of his name, his strength and his abilities." Proud of his name! He wrote a poem on it, "Brontë," an eulogy of Nelson, which won the patronising approbation of Leigh Hunt, Miss Martineau and others, to whom, at his special request, it was submitted. Had he ever heard of his dozen aunts and uncles, the Pruntys of Ahaderg? Or if not, with what sensations must the Vicar of Haworth have listened to this blazoning forth and triumphing over the glories of his ancient name?

Branwell had fits of passion, too, the repetition of his father's vagaries. "I have seen him drive his doubled fist through the panels of a door—it seemed to soothe him." The rough side of his nature got full play, and perhaps won him some respect denied to his cleverness, in the society amongst which he was chiefly thrown. For a little time the companionship of Mr. Grundy served to rescue him from utter abandonment to license. But, in the midst of this improvement, the crash came. As he had sown, he reaped.

Those long absences, drinking at the houses of his friends, had been turned to account by the one other inhabitant of the station at Luddendenfoot. The luggage porter was left to keep the books, and, following his master's example, he sought his own enjoyment before his employers' gain. He must have made a pretty penny out of those escapades of Branwell's, for some months after the Vicar of Haworth had obtained his son's appointment, when the books received their customary examination, serious defalcations were discovered. An inquiry was instituted, which brought to light Branwell's peculiar method of managing the station. The lad himself was not suspected of actual theft; but so continued, so glaring had been his negligence, so hopeless the cause, that he was summarily dismissed the company's service, and sent home in dire disgrace to Haworth.

He came home not only in disgrace, but ill. Never strong, his constitution was deranged and broken by his excesses; yet, strangely enough, consumption, which carried off so prematurely the more highly-gifted, the more strongly-principled daughters of the house, consumption, which might have been originally produced by the vicious life this youth had led, laid no claim upon him. His mother's character and her disease descended to her daughters only. Branwell inherited his father's violent temper, strong passions and nervous weakness without the strength of will and moral fibre that made his father remarkable. Probably this brilliant, weak, shallow, selfish lad reproduced accurately enough the characteristics of some former Prunty; for Patrick Branwell was as distinctly an Irishman as if his childhood had been spent in his grandfather's cabin at Ahaderg.

He came home to find his sisters all away. Anne in her situation as governess. Emily and Charlotte in Rue d'Isabelle. No one, therefore, to be a check upon his habits, save the neat old lady, growing weaker day by day, who spent nearly all her time in her bedroom to avoid the paven floors of the basement; and the father, who did not care for company, took his meals alone for fear of indigestion, and found it necessary to spend the succeeding time in perfect quiet. The greater part of the day was, therefore, at Branwell's uncontrolled, unsupervised disposal.

To do him justice, he does seem to have made so much effort after a new place of work as was involved in writing letters to his friend Grundy, and probably to others, suing for employment. But his offence had been too glaring to be condoned. Mr. Grundy seems to have advised the hapless young man to take shelter in the Church, where the influence of his father and his mother's relatives might help him along; but, as Branwell said, he had not a single qualification, "save, perhaps hypocrisy." Parson's sons rarely have a great idea of the Church. The energy, self-denial, and endurance which a clergyman ought to possess were certainly not in Branwell's line. Besides, how could he take his degree? Montgomery, it seems, recommended him to make trial of literature. "All very well, but I have little conceit of myself and great desire for activity. You say that you write with feelings similar to those with which you last left me; keep them no longer. I trust I am somewhat changed, or I should not be worth a thought; and though nothing could ever give me your buoyant spirits and an outward man corresponding therewith, I may, in dress and appearance, emulate something like ordinary decency. And now, wherever coming years may lead—Greenland's snows or sands of Afric—I trust, etc. 9th June, 1842."[12]

It is doubtful, judging from Branwell's letters and his verses, whether anything much better than his father's 'Cottage in the Wood' would have resulted from his following the advice of James Montgomery. Fluent ease, often on the verge of twaddle, with here and there a bright, felicitous touch, with here and there a smack of the conventional hymn-book and pulpit twang—such weak and characterless effusions are all that is left of the passion-ridden pseudo-genius of Haworth. Real genius is perhaps seldom of such showy temperament.

Poor Branwell! it needed greater strength than his to retrieve that first false step into ruin. He cannot help himself, and can find no one to help him; he appeals again to Mr. Grundy (in a letter which must, from internal evidence, have been written about this time, although a different and impossible year is printed at its heading):—

Alas, no helping hand rescued the sinking wretch from the quicksands of idle sensuality which slowly engulfed him! Yet, at this time, there might have been hope, had he been kept from evil. Deliver himself he could not. His "great desire for activity" seems to have had to be in abeyance for some months, for on the 25th of October he is still at Haworth. He then writes to Mr. Grundy again. The letter brings us up to the time when—in the cheerless morning—Charlotte and Emily set out on their journey homewards; it reveals to us how much real undeserved suffering must have been going on side by side with Branwell's purposeless miseries in the grey old parsonage at Haworth. The good methodical old maiden aunt—who for twenty years had given the best of her heart to this gay affectionate nephew of hers—had come down to the edge of the grave, having waited long enough to see the hopeless fallacy of all her dreams for him, all her affection. Branwell, who was really tender-hearted, must have been sobered then.

He writes to Mr. Grundy in a sincere and manly strain:—

But not till three days later the end came. By that time Anne was home to tend the woman who had taken her, a little child, into her love and always kept her there. Anne had ever lived gladly with Miss Branwell; her more dejected spirit did not resent the occasional oppressions, the little tyrannies, which revolted Charlotte and silenced Emily. And, at the last, all the constant self-sacrifice of those twenty years, spent for their sake in a strange and hated country, would shine out, and yet more endear the sufferer to those who had to lose her.

On the 29th of October Branwell again writes to his friend:—

Miss Branwell was dead. All was over: she was buried on a Tuesday morning, before Charlotte and Emily, having travelled night and day, got home. They found Mr. Brontë and Anne sitting together, quietly mourning the customary presence to be known no more. Branwell was not there. It was the first time he would see his sisters since his great disgrace; he could not wait at home to welcome them.

Miss Branwell's will had to be made known. The little property that she had saved out of her frugal income was all left to her three nieces. Branwell had been her darling, the only son, called by her name; but his disgrace had wounded her too deeply. He was not even mentioned in her will.

CHAPTER IX.

It would certainly be of advantage to their school, that cherished dream now so likely to come true, that the girls should be able to teach German, and that one of them at least should speak French with fluency and well. Monsieur Héger wrote to Mr. Brontë when Charlotte and Emily left, pointing out how much more stable and enduring their advantages would become, could they continue for another year at Brussels. "In a year," he says, "each of your daughters would be completely provided against the future; each of them was acquiring at the same time instruction and the science to instruct. Mademoiselle Emily has been learning the piano, receiving lessons from the best master that we have in Brussels, and already she had little pupils of her own; she was therefore losing at the same time a remainder of ignorance, and one, more embarrassing still, of timidity. Mademoiselle Charlotte was beginning to give lessons in French, and was acquiring that assurance and aplomb so necessary to a teacher. One year more, at the most, and the work had been completed, and completed well."

Emily, as we know, refused the lure. Once at Haworth, she was not to be induced, by offer of any advantages, to quit her native heath. On the other hand, Charlotte desired nothing better. Hers was a nature very capable of affection, of gratitude, of sentiment. It would have been a sore wrench to her to break so suddenly with her busy, quiet life in the old mansion, Rue d'Isabelle. Almost imperceptibly she had become fast friends with the place. Mary Taylor had left, it is true, and bright, engaging Martha slept there, too sound to hear her, in the Protestant cemetery. But in foreign, heretic, distant Brussels there were calling memories for the downright, plain little Yorkshire woman. She could not choose but hear. The blackavised, tender-hearted, fiery professor, for whom she felt the reverent, eager friendship that intellectual girls often give to a man much older than they; the doctor's family; even Madame Beck; even the Belgian schoolgirls—she should like to see them all again. She did not perhaps realise how different a place Brussels would seem without her sister. And it would certainly be an advantage for the school that she should know German. For these, and many reasons, Charlotte decided to renounce a salary of £50 a year offered her in England, and to accept that of £16 which she would earn in Brussels.

Thus it was determined that at the end of the Christmas holidays the three sisters were again to be divided. But first they were nearly three months together.

Branwell was at home. Even yet at Haworth that was a pleasure and not a burden. His sisters never saw him at his worst; his vehement repentance brought conviction to their hearts. They still hoped for his future, still said to each other that men were different from women, and that such strong passions betokened a nature which, if once directed right, would be passionately right. They did not feel the miserable flabbiness of his moral fibre; did not know that the weak slip down when they try to stand, and cannot march erect. They were both too tender and too harsh with their brother, because they could not recognise what a mere, poor creature was this erring genius of theirs.

Thus, when the first shock was over, the reunited family was most contented. Lightly, naturally, as an autumn leaf, the old aunt had fallen out of the household, her long duties over; and they—though they loved and mourned her—they were freer for her departure. There was no restraint now on their actions, their opinions; they were mistresses in their own home. It was a happy Christmas, though not free from burden. The sisters, parted for so long, had much experience to exchange, many plans to make. They had to revisit their old haunts on the moors, white now with snow. There were walks to the library at Keighley for such books as had been added during their absence. Ellen came to Haworth. Then, at the end of January 1843, Anne went back to her duties, and Charlotte set off alone for Brussels.

Emily was left behind with Branwell; but not for long. It must have been about this time that the ill-fated young man obtained a place as tutor in the house where Anne was governess. It appeared a most fortunate connection; the family was well known for its respectable position, came of a stock eminent in good works, and the sisters might well believe that, under Anne's gentle influence and such favouring auspices, their brother would be led into the way of the just.

Then Emily was alone in the grey house, save for her secluded father and old Tabby, now over seventy. She was not unhappy. No life could be freer than her own; it was she that disposed, she too that performed most of the household work. She always got up first in the morning and did the roughest part of the day's labour before frail old Tabby came down; since kindness and thought for others were part of the nature of this unsocial, rugged woman. She did the household ironing and most of the cookery. She made the bread; and her bread was famous in Haworth for its lightness and excellence. As she kneaded the dough, she would glance now and then at an open book propped up before her. It was her German lesson. But not always did she study out of books; those who worked with her in that kitchen, young girls called in to help in stress of business, remember how she would keep a scrap of paper, a pencil, at her side, and how, when the moment came that she could pause in her cooking or her ironing, she would jot down some impatient thought and then resume her work. With these girls she was always friendly and hearty—"pleasant, sometimes quite jovial like a boy," "so genial and kind, a little masculine," say my informants; but of strangers she was exceedingly timid, and if the butcher's boy or the baker's man came to the kitchen door she would be off like a bird into the hall or the parlour till she heard their hob-nails clumping down the path. No easy getting sight of that rare bird. Therefore, it may be, the Haworth people thought more of her powers than of those of Anne or Charlotte, who might be seen at school any Sunday. They say: "A deal o' folk thout her th' clever'st o' them a', hasumiver shoo wur so timid, shoo cudn't frame to let it aat."

For amusements she had her pets and the garden. She always fed the animals herself: the old cat; Flossy, Anne's favourite spaniel; Keeper, the fierce bulldog, her own constant, dear companion, whose portrait, drawn by her spirited hand, is still extant. And the creatures on the moor were all, in a sense, her pets and familiar with her. The intense devotion of this silent woman to all manner of dumb creatures has something pathetic, inexplicable, almost deranged. "She never showed regard to any human creature; all her love was reserved for animals," said some shallow jumper at conclusions to Mrs. Gaskell. Regard and help and staunch friendliness to all in need was ever characteristic of Emily Brontë; yet between her nature and that of the fierce, loving, faithful Keeper, that of the wild moor-fowl, of robins that die in confinement, of quick-running hares, of cloud-sweeping, tempest-boding sea-mews, there was a natural likeness.

The silent-growing flowers were also her friends. The little garden, open to all the winds that course over Lees Moor and Stillingworth Moor to the blowy summit of Haworth Street—that little garden whose only bulwark against the storm was the gravestones outside the railing, the stunted thorns and currant-bushes within—was nevertheless the home of many sweet and hardy flowers, creeping up under the house and close to the shelter of the bushes. So the days went swiftly enough in tending her house, her garden, her dumb creatures. In the evenings she would sit on the hearthrug in the lonely parlour, one arm thrown round Keeper's tawny neck, studying a book. For it was necessary to study. After the next Christmas holidays the sisters hoped to reduce to practice their long-cherished vision of keeping school together. Letters from Brussels showed Emily that Charlotte was troubled, excited, full of vague disquiet. She would be glad, then, to be home, to use the instrument it had cost so much pains to perfect. A costly instrument, indeed, wrought with love, anguish, lonely fears, vanquished passion; but in that time no one guessed that, not the school-teacher's German, not the fluent French acquired abroad, was the real result of this terrible firing, but a novel to be called 'Villette.'

Emily then, "Mine bonnie love," as Charlotte used to call her, cannot have been quite certain of this dear sister's happiness; and as time went on Anne's letters, too, began to give disquieting tidings. Not that her health was breaking down; it was, as usual, Branwell whose conduct distressed his sisters. He had altered so strangely; one day in the wildest spirits, the next moping in despair, giving himself mysterious airs of importance, expressing himself more than satisfied with his situation, smiling oddly, then, perhaps, the next moment all remorse and gloom. Anne could not understand what ailed him, but feared some evil.

At home, moreover, troubles slowly increased. Old Tabby grew very ill and could do no work; the girl Hannah left; Emily had all the business of investing the little property belonging to the three sisters since Miss Branwell's death; worse still, old Mr. Brontë's health began to flag, his sight to fail. Worst of all—in that darkness, despair, loneliness—the old man, so Emily feared, acquired the habit of drinking, though not to excess, yet more than his abstemious past allowed. Doubtless she exaggerated her fears, with Branwell always present in her thoughts. But Emily grew afraid, alone at Haworth, responsible, knowing herself deficient in that controlling influence so characteristic of her elder sister. Her burden of doubt was more than she could bear. She decided to write to Charlotte.

On the 2nd of January, 1844, Charlotte arrived at Haworth.

On the 23rd of the month she wrote to her friend:—