Volume Ii Part 9 (1/2)

Mr. Grundy's account of this interview is inconsistent in itself. Of course, if his friend had really been so far gone as he represents, it is incredible that Mr. Bronte would have been privy to his son's visit to the inn. It is quite clear that Mr. Grundy's recollection of the interview, and of Branwell's appearance, at this distance of time, with Mrs. Gaskell's account before him, has received a new significance. I incline to the belief that the truth of the matter is this: that, in the spirit of his letters to Leyland, Branwell acted a part, and imposed this ruse upon his friend to gratify the peculiar humour that was then upon him, an episode which the latter, with his erroneous impression as to the date, has been led to depict in somewhat lurid colours. It is most probable, indeed, that, like Hamlet, he 'put an antic disposition on.' Something confirmatory of this view will appear in the next chapter. Among his friends, as I know, Branwell would now and then a.s.sume an indignant, and sometimes a furious mood, and put on airs of wild abstraction from which he suddenly recovered, and was again calm and natural, smiling, indeed, at his successful impersonation of pa.s.sions he scarcely felt at the time. The absence of further correspondence between Branwell and Mr.

Grundy, and the fact that the Skipton and Bradford railway, for hich that gentleman was resident engineer, was fully opened more than a year before Branwell's death, seem to indicate that further intercourse ceased between the two at this date. It would not, perhaps, have been necessary to trouble the reader with these explanations, had not Mr. Grundy's narrative of his last evening with Branwell appeared to receive some sort of confirmation through its republication by Miss Robinson, in her picture of the brother of Emily Bronte shortly before his end.

Again Branwell wrote to Leyland:

'DEAR SIR,

'I had a letter written, and intended to have been forwarded to you a few days after I last left the ensnaring town of Halifax.

'That letter, from being kept so long in my pocket-book, has gone out of date, so I have burnt it, and now send a short note as a precursor to an awfully lengthy one.

'I have much to say to you with which you would probably be sadly bored; but, as it will be only asking for advice, I hope you will feel as a cat does when her hair is stroked down towards her tail.

She _purrs_ then; but she _spits_ when it is stroked upwards.

'I wish Mr. ---- of ---- would send me my bill of what I owe him, and the moment that I receive my outlaid cash, or any sum that may fall into my hands, I shall settle it.

'That settlement, I have some reason to hope, will be shortly.

'But can a few pounds make a fellow's soul like a calm bowl of creamed milk?

'If it can, I should like to drink that bowl dry.

'I shall write more at length (Deo Volente) on matters of much importance to me, but of little to yourself.

'Yours in the bonds,

'SANCTUS PATRICIUS BRANWELLIUS BRONTeIO.'

With the foregoing letter, Branwell enclosed a page containing three spirited sketches. The first is a scene in which the sculptor and Branwell are the princ.i.p.al actors. They are seated on stools, facing one another, each holding a wine gla.s.s, and, between them on the ground, is a decanter. Behind the sculptor is placed the mutilated statue of Theseus. A copy of Cowper's 'Anatomy' is open at the t.i.tle-page; and, leaning over it, is a figure of Admodeus, Setebos, or some other winged imp, taking sight at the two. The second sketch is of Branwell himself, represented as a rec.u.mbent statue, resting on a slab, under which are the following mournful lines:--

'Thy soul is flown, And clay alone Has nought to do with joy or care; So if the light of light be gone, There come no sorrows crowding on, And powerless lies DESPAIR.'

The third drawing is a landscape, having in the foreground a head-stone, with a skull and crossbones in the semi-circular head. On the stone are carved the words, HIC JACET. Distant peaked hills bound the view. Two pines are to the right of the picture, and the crescent moon, which represents a human profile, is accommodated with a pipe.

Underneath it is inscribed the sentence:

'MARTINI LUIGI IMPLORA ETERNA QUIETE!'

The following letter, written to Leyland a little later, shows again the stormy perturbations of Branwell's mind. He still clings to the fond imagination that he is the object of the lady's unwavering devotion; and, with the incoherency of the monomania with which he continues to be afflicted, he solemnly declares to the sculptor that he had said to no one what he is then saying to him; while, in truth, he was telling the story of his disappointed hopes to all who would hear the recital. The theme is that of a wild, eager, and unavailing love--whose joys and sorrows he tells in vivid words--which he believes to be returned with equal energy and pa.s.sion.

'MY DEAR SIR,

'I am going to write a scrawl, for the querulous egotism of which I must entreat your mercy; but, when I look _upon_ my past, present, and future, and then _into_ my own self, I find much, however unpleasant, that yearns for utterance.

'This last week an honest and kindly friend has warned me that concealed hopes about one lady should be given up, let the effort to do so cost what it may. He is the ----, and was commanded by ----, M.P. for ----, to return me, unopened, a letter which I addressed to ----, and which the Lady was not permitted to see.

She too, surrounded by powerful persons who hate me like h.e.l.l, has sunk into religious melancholy, believes that her weight of sorrow is G.o.d's punishment, and hopelessly resigns herself to her doom.

G.o.d only knows what it does cost, and will, hereafter, cost me, to tear from my heart and remembrance the thousand recollections that rush upon me at the thought of four years gone by. Like ideas of sunlight to a man who has lost his sight, they must be bright phantoms not to be realized again.

'I had reason to hope that ere very long I should be the husband of a Lady whom I loved best in the world, and with whom, in more than competence, I might live at leisure to try to make myself a name in the world of posterity, without being pestered by the small but countless botherments, which, like mosquitoes, sting us in the world of work-day toil. That hope and herself are _gone_--_she_ to wither into patiently pining decline,--_it_ to make room for drudgery, falling on one now ill-fitted to bear it.