Anne, in whom the fibre of indignation was less strong, followed less sternly in her sister's wake.
"She had," says Charlotte in her 'Memoir,' "in the course of her life been called upon to contemplate, near at hand and for a long time, the terrible effects of talents misused and faculties abused; hers was naturally a sensitive, reserved and dejected nature; what she saw went very deeply into her mind; it did her harm."
The spectacle of this harm, coming undeserved to so dear, frail and innocent a creature, absorbed all Charlotte's pity. There was none left for Branwell.
But there was one woman's heart strong enough in its compassion to bear the daily disgusts, weaknesses, sins of Branwell's life, and yet persist in aid and affection. Night after night, when Mr. Brontë was in bed, when Anne and Charlotte had gone upstairs to their room, Emily still sat up, waiting. She often had very long to wait in the silent house before the staggering tread, the muttered oath, the fumbling hand at the door, bade her rouse herself from her sad thoughts and rise to let in the prodigal, and lead him in safety to his rest. But she never wearied in her kindness. In that silent home, it was the silent Emily who had ever a cheering word for Branwell; it was Emily who still remembered that he was her brother, without that remembrance freezing her heart to numbness. She still hoped to win him back by love; and the very force and sincerity of his guilty passion (an additional horror and sin in her sisters' eyes) was a claim on Emily, ever sympathetic to violent feeling. Thus it was she who, more than the others, became familiarised with the agony, and doubts, and shame of that tormented soul; and if, in her little knowledge of the world, she imagined such wrested passions to be natural, it is not upon her, of a certainty, that the blame of her pity shall be laid.
As the time went on and Branwell grew worse and wilder, it was well for the lonely watcher that she was strong. At last he grew ill, and would be content to go to bed early and lie there half-stupefied with opium and drink. One such night, their father and Branwell being in bed, the sisters came upstairs to sleep. Emily had gone on first into the little passage room where she still slept, when Charlotte, passing Branwell's partly-opened door, saw a strange bright flare inside.
"Oh, Emily!" she cried, "the house is on fire!"
Emily came out, her fingers at her lips. She had remembered her father's great horror of fire; it was the one dread of a brave man; he would have no muslin curtains, no light dresses in his house. She came out silently and saw the flame; then, very white and determined, dashed from her room downstairs into the passage, where every night full pails of water stood. One in each hand she came upstairs. Anne, Charlotte, the young servant, shrinking against the wall, huddled together in amazed horror—Emily went straight on and entered the blazing room. In a short while the bright light ceased to flare. Fortunately the flame had not reached the woodwork: drunken Branwell, turning in his bed, must have upset the light on to his sheets, for they and the bed were all on fire, and he unconscious in the midst when Emily went in, even as Jane Eyre found Mr. Rochester. But it was with no reasonable, thankful human creature with whom Emily had to deal. After a few long moments, those still standing in the passage saw her stagger out, white, with singed clothes, half-carrying in her arms, half-dragging, her besotted brother. She placed him in her bed, and took away the light; then assuring the hysterical girls that there could be no further danger, she bade them go and rest—but where she slept herself that night no one remembers now.
It must be very soon after this that Branwell began to sleep in his father's room. The old man, courageous enough, and conceiving that his presence might be some slight restraint on the drunken furies of his unhappy son, persisted in this arrangement, though often enough the girls begged him to relinquish it, knowing well enough what risk of life he ran. Not infrequently Branwell would declare that either he or his father should be dead before the morning; and well might it happen that in his insensate delirium he should murder the blind old man.
"The sisters often listened for the report of a pistol in the dead of the night, till watchful eye and hearkening ear grew heavy and dull with the perpetual strain upon their nerves. In the mornings young Brontë would saunter out, saying with a drunkard's incontinence of speech, 'The poor old man and I have had a terrible night of it. He does his best—the poor old man!—but it's all over with me'" (whimpering) "'it's her fault, her fault.'"[20]
And in such fatal progress two years went on, bringing the suffering in that house ever lower, ever deeper, sinking it day by day from bad to worse.