Volume Ii Part 7 (2/2)

'I should have sent you ”Morley Hall” ere now, but I am unable to finish it at present, from agony to which the grave would be far preferable. Mr. ---- is _dead_, and he has left his widow in a dreadful state of health.... Through the will, she is left quite powerless. The executing trustees' (the princ.i.p.al one of whom, as we have seen, was the very lady whose hopeless love for him he was deploring) 'detest me, and one declares that, if he sees me, he will shoot me.

'These things I do not care about, but I do care for the life of the one who suffers even more than I do....

'You, though not much older than myself, have known life. I now know it, with a vengeance--for four nights I have not slept--for three days I have not tasted food--and, when I think of the state of her I love best on earth, I could wish that my head was as cold and stupid as the medallion which lies in your studio.

'I write very egotistically, but it is because my mind is crowded with one set of thoughts, and I long for one sentence from a friend.

'What shall I _do_? I know not--I am too hard to die, and too wretched to live. My wretchedness is not about castles in the air, but about stern realities; my hardihood lies in bodily vigour; but, dear sir, my mind sees only a dreary future, which I as little wish to enter on as could a martyr to be bound to a stake.

'I sincerely trust that you are quite well, and hope that this wretched scrawl will not make me appear to you a worthless fool, or a thorough bore.

'Believe me, yours most sincerely,

'P. B. BRONTe.'

With this letter was enclosed a pen-and-ink sketch of Branwell bound to the stake, his wrists chained together, and surrounded by flames and smoke. The rigidity of the muscles, the fixed expression of the face, and the manifest beginning of pain are well portrayed.

Underneath the drawing, in a constrained hand, is written, 'Myself.'

Again he writes to Leyland a letter in which he dwells on his unavailing grief, and vividly points out its effects upon him. He says, alluding to the lady of his distracted thoughts, 'Well, my dear sir, I have got my finis.h.i.+ng stroke at last, and I feel stunned into marble by the blow.

'I have this morning received a long, kind, and faithful letter from the medical gentleman who attended ---- in his last illness, and who has since had an interview with one whom I can never forget.

'He knows me _well_, and pities my case most sincerely.... It's hard work for me, dear sir; I would bear it, but my health is so bad that the body seems as if it could not bear the mental shock.... My appet.i.te is lost, my nights are dreadful, and having nothing to do makes me dwell on past scenes,--on her own self--her own voice--her person--her thoughts--till I could be glad if G.o.d would take me. In the next world I could not be worse than I am in this.'

On June the 17th, Charlotte writes:

'Branwell declares that he neither can nor will do anything for himself; good situations have been offered him, for which, by a fortnight's work, he might have qualified himself, but he will do nothing except drink and make us all wretched.'[31]

[31] Gaskell's 'Life of Charlotte Bronte,' chap. xiv.

It would seem that the sisters were unaware of the depth of his present misery, and in part misunderstood the disturbed condition of their brother's mind at this juncture. But Branwell, although suffering great mental prostration under the infliction of any sudden and unexpected disappointment, was possessed of considerable recuperative power; and, after a period of brooding melancholy over his woes, he appeared to take renewed interest in the events that were pa.s.sing around him. This seems to have been the case even under his late circ.u.mstances; there was, in the depth of his own heart, a woe from which he endeavoured to escape by engaging in the pursuits and pleasures of his friends.

On the 3rd of July, having, to all appearance, somewhat recovered from this disappointment, Branwell wrote to his friend the sculptor:

'DEAR SIR,

'John Brown told me that you had a relievo of my very wretched self, framed in your studio.

'If it be a _duplicate_, I should like the carrier to bring it to Haworth; not that I care a fig for it, save from regard for its maker,--but my sisters ask me to try to obtain it; and I write in obedience to them.

'I earnestly trust that you are heartier than I am, and I promise to send you ”Morley Hall” as soon as dreary days and nights will give me leave to do so.

'Believe me,

'Yours most sincerely,

'P. B. BRONTe.'

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