grandeur. It was Branwell who advised patience, and a little longer waiting. Maybe, though she herself was dear, "although seventeen years my senior," "herself and estate" was estimably dearer.
And yet he was in earnest, yet it was a question of life and death, of heaven or hell, with him. If he could not have her, he would have nothing. He would ruin himself and all he could. Most like, in this rage of vain despair, some passionate baby that shrieks, and hits, and tears, convulsed because it may not have the moon.
Small wonder that Charlotte's coldness, aggravated by continual outrage on Branwell's part, gradually became contempt and silence. In proportion as she had exulted in this brother, hoped all for him, did she now shrink from him, bitterly chill at heart.
"I begin to fear," she says, the once ambitious sister, "that he has rendered himself incapable of filling any respectable station in life." She cannot ask Ellen to come to see her, because he is in the house. " And while he is here, you shall not come. I am more confirmed in that resolution the more I see of him. I wish I could say one word to you in his favour, but I cannot. I will hold my tongue."[1]
For some while she hoped that the crisis would pass, and that then—no matter how humbly, the more obscurely the better—he would at least earn honest bread away from home. Such was not his intention. He professed to be too ill to leave Haworth; and ill, no doubt, he was from continual eating of opium, and daily drinking of drams. He stuck to his comfortable quarters, to the "Black Bull" just across the churchyard, heedless of what discomfort he gave to others. "Branwell offers no prospect of hope," says Charlotte, again. "How
- ↑ Mrs. Gaskell.
