Page:Emily Bronte (Robinson 1883).djvu/131

Rh 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