Emily Brontë
But looking on her quiet, uncomplaining eyes, you would not have guessed
so much.
"Emily and Anne are pretty well," says Charlotte, on the ninth of
October, "though Anne is always delicate and Emily has a cold and cough
at present."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 30: 'Pictures of the Past.']
CHAPTER XVIII.
EMILY'S DEATH.
Already by the 29th of October of this melancholy year of 1848 Emily's
cough and cold had made such progress as to alarm her careful elder
sister. Before Branwell's death she had been, to all appearance, the one
strong member of a delicate family. By the side of fragile Anne
(already, did they but know it, advanced in tubercular consumption), of
shattered Branwell, of Charlotte, ever nervous and ailing, this tall,
muscular Emily had appeared a tower of strength. Working early and late,
seldom tired and never complaining, finding her best relaxation in long,
rough walks on the moors, she seemed unlikely to give them any poignant
anxiety. But the seeds of phthisis lay deep down beneath this fair show
of life and strength; the shock of sorrow which she experienced for her
brother's death developed them with alarming rapidity.
The weariness of absence had always proved too much for Emily's
strength. Away from home we have seen how she pined and sickened. Exile
made her thin and wan, menaced the very springs of life. And now she
must endure an inevitable and unending absence, an exile from which
there could be no return. The strain was too tight, the wrench too
sharp: Emily could not bear it and live. In such a loss as hers,
bereaved of a helpless sufferer, the mourning of those who remain is
embittered and quickened a hundred times a day when the blank minutes
come round for which the customary duties are missing, when the
unwelcome leisure hangs round the weary soul like a shapeless and
encumbering garment. It was Emily who had chiefly devoted herself to
Branwell. He being dead, the motive of her life seemed gone.
Had she been stronger, had she been more careful of herself at the
beginning of her illness, she would doubtless have recovered, and we
shall never know the difference in our literature which a little
precaution might have made. But Emily was accustomed to consider herself
hardy; she was so used to wait upon others that to lie down and be
waited on would have appeared to her ignominious and absurd. Both her
independence and her unselfishness made her very chary of giving
trouble. It is, moreover, extremely probable that she never realised the
extent of her own illness; consumption is seldom a malady that despairs;
attacking the body it leaves the spirit free, the spirit which cannot
realise a danger by which it is not injured. A little later on when it
was Anne's turn to suffer, she is choosing her spring bonnet four days
before her death. Which of us does not remember some such pathetic tale
of the heart-wringing, vain confidence of those far gone in phthisis,
who bear on their faces the marks of death for all eyes but their own to
read?
To those who look on, there is no worse agony than to watch the brave
bearing of these others unconscious of the sudden grave at their feet.
Charlotte and Anne looked on and trembled. On the 29th of October,
Charlotte, still delicate from the bilious fever which had prostrated
her on the day of Branwell's death, writes these words already full of
foreboding:
"I feel much more uneasy about my sister than myself just
now. Emily's cold and cough are very obstinate. I fear she
has pain in her chest, and I sometimes catch a shortness in
her breathing when she has moved at all quickly. She looks
very thin and pale. Her reserved nature occasions me great
uneasiness of mind. It is useless to question her; you get
no answer. It is still more useless to recommend remedies;
they are never adopted."[31]
It was, in fact, an acute inflammation of the lungs which this
unfortunate sufferer was trying to subdue by force of courage. To
persons of strong will it is difficult to realise that their disease is
not in their own control. To be ill, is with them an act of
acquiescence; they have consented to the demands of their feeble body.
When necessity demands the sacrifice, it seems to them so easy to deny
themselves the rest, the indulgence. They set their will against their
weakness and mean to conquer. They will not give up.
Emily would not give up. She felt herself doubly necessary to the
household in this hour of trial. Charlotte was still very weak and
ailing. Anne, her dear little sister, was unusually delicate and frail.
Even her father had not quite escaped. That she, Emily, who had always
been relied upon for strength and courage and endurance, should show
herself unworthy of the trust when she was most sorely needed; that she,
so inclined to take all duties on herself, so necessary to the daily
management of the house, should throw up her charge in this moment of
trial, cast away her arms in the moment of battle, and give her
fellow-sufferers the extra burden of her weakness; such a thing was
impossible to her.
So the vain struggle went on. She would resign no one of her duties, and
it was not till within the last weeks of her life that she would so much
as suffer the servant to rise before her in the morning and take the
early work. She would not endure to hear of remedies; declaring that she
was not ill, that she would soon be well, in the pathetic self-delusion
of high-spirited weakness. And Charlotte and Anne, for whose sake she
made this sacrifice, suffered terribly thereby. Willingly, thankfully
would they have taken all her duties upon them; they burned to be up and
doing. But--seeing how weak she was--they dare not cross her; they had
to sit still and endure to see her labour for their comfort with
faltering and death-cold hands.
"Day by day," says Charlotte, "day by day when I saw with what a front
she met suffering, I looked on her with a wonder of anguish and love. I
have seen nothing like it; but, indeed, I have never seen her parallel
in anything. Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood
alone. The awful point was that, while full of ruth for others, on
herself she had no pity; the spirit was inexorable to the flesh; from
the trembling hand, the unnerved limbs, the fading eyes, the same
service was exacted as they had rendered in health. To stand by and
witness this, and not dare to remonstrate, was a pain no words can
render."
The time went on. Anxious to try what influence some friend, not of
their own household, might exert upon this wayward sister, Charlotte
thought of inviting Miss Nussey to Haworth. Emily had ever been glad to
welcome her. But when the time came it was found that the least
disturbance of the day's routine would only make Emily's burden heavier.
And that scheme, too, was relinquished.
Another month had gone. Emily, paler and thinner, but none less
resolute, fulfilled her duties with customary exactness, and insisted on
her perfect health with defiant fortitude. On the 23rd of November,
Charlotte writes again:--
"I told you Emily was ill in my last letter. She has not
rallied yet. She is _very_ ill. I believe if you were to see
her your impression would be that there is no hope. A more
hollow, wasted, pallid aspect I have not beheld. The deep,
tight cough continues; the breathing after the least
exertion is a rapid pant; and these symptoms are accompanied
by pains in the chest and side. Her pulse, the only time she
allowed it to be felt, was found to beat 115 per minute. In
this state she resolutely refuses to see a doctor; she will
give no explanation of her feelings; she will scarcely allow
her feelings to be alluded to."
"No poisoning doctor" should come near her, Emily declared with the
irritability of her disease. It was an insult to her will, her resolute
endeavours. She was not, would not, be ill, and could therefore need no
cure. Perhaps she felt, deep in her heart, the conviction that her
complaint was mortal; that a delay in the sentence was all that care and
skill could give; for she had seen Maria and Elizabeth fade and die, and
only lately the physicians had not saved her brother.
But Charlotte, naturally, did not feel the same. Unknown to Emily, she
wrote to a great London doctor drawing up a statement of the case and
symptoms as minute and careful as she could give. But either this
diagnosis by guesswork was too imperfect, or the physician saw that
there was no hope; for his opinion was expressed too obscurely to be of
any use. He sent a bottle of medicine, but Emily would not take it.
December came, and still the wondering, anxious sisters knew not what to
think. By this time Mr. Bronte also had perceived the danger of Emily's
state, and he was very anxious. Yet she still denied that she was ill
with anything more grave than a passing weakness; and the pain in her
side and chest appeared to diminish. Sometimes the little household was
tempted to take her at her word, and believe that soon, with the spring,
she would recover; and then, hearing her cough, listening to the gasping
breath with which she climbed the short staircase, looking on the
extreme emaciation of her form, the wasted hands, the hollow eyes, their
hearts would suddenly fail. Life was a daily contradiction of hope and
fear.
The days drew on towards Christmas; it was already the middle of
December, and still Emily was about the house, able to wait upon
herself, to sew for the others, to take an active share in the duties of
the day. She always fed the dogs herself. One Monday evening, it must
have been about the 14th of December, she rose as usual to give the
creatures their supper. She got up, walking slowly, holding out in her
thin hands an apronful of broken meat and bread. But when she reached
the flagged passage the cold took her; she staggered on the uneven
pavement and fell against the wall. Her sisters, who had been sadly
following her, unseen, came forwards much alarmed and begged her to
desist; but, smiling wanly, she went on and gave Floss and Keeper their
last supper from her hands.
The next morning she was worse. Before her waking, her watching sisters
heard the low, unconscious moaning that tells of suffering continued
even in sleep; and they feared for what the coming year might hold in
store. Of the nearness of the end they did not dream. Charlotte had
been out over the moors, searching every glen and hollow for a sprig of
heather, however pale and dry, to take to her moor-loving sister. But
Emily looked on the flower laid on her pillow with indifferent eyes. She
was already estranged and alienate from life.
Nevertheless she persisted in rising, dressing herself alone, and doing
everything for herself. A fire had been lit in the room, and Emily sat
on the hearth to comb her hair. She was thinner than ever now--the tall,
loose-jointed "slinky" girl--her hair in its plenteous dark abundance
was all of her that was not marked by the branding finger of death. She
sat on the hearth combing her long brown hair. But soon the comb slipped
from her feeble grasp into the cinders. She, the intrepid, active Emily,
watched it burn and smoulder, too weak to lift it, while the nauseous,
hateful odour of burnt bone rose into her face. At last the servant came
in: "Martha," she said, "my comb's down there; I was too weak to stoop
and pick it up."
I have seen that old, broken comb, with a large piece burned out of it;
and have thought it, I own, more pathetic than the bones of the eleven
thousand virgins at Cologne, or the time-blackened Holy Face of Lucca.
Sad, chance confession of human weakness; mournful counterpart of that