Free Romancing Miss Bronte by Juliet Gael

it to you.”
    “Are you in debt again?”
    “Just a little … to the Old Cock. The proprietor’s a good sort, and I promised I’d pay him this week.”
    Anne came running up the stairs with a cloth and a bowl of snow, and the three sisters knelt on the floor, nursing their injured brother. This subdued him; this was what he needed most, a little sympathy and understanding.
    He seemed quite pathetic when he looked up and said, “Charlotte, I would never touch a hair on your head. I would never hurt any of you. You all know that, don’t you?” He began to weep.
    He sat on the floor sobbing while they looked on. It was raw, hopeless misery, and there was nothing any of them could do.
    Anne wrapped her arms around him and drew him to her. Her own eyes were brimming with tears, and with a throaty whisper she said, “Every night, in Papa’s study, and before we go to sleep at night, and in the morning, we get down on our knees and beseech God to guide you out of this insanity … but it falls to you, Branwell, if you can only believe. You
must
believe. Christ Jesus will give you the power to overcome your temptations. You can put all this behind you.”
    Branwell broke away from her embrace and wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “Annie, don’t talk like that. You know how I abhor it.”
    “My dear brother,” Anne went on, “now more than ever you need our Lord. Turn to Him. He’ll lift you out of your despair.”
    “You poor deluded creature. You believe all that rubbish, don’t you?” He struggled to his feet. “Well then, I see I can’t get any help from you.”
    Without another word, he plodded down the stairs.
    The girls watched from the window as he made his way down the lane toward the Black Bull Inn.
    “I suppose he’ll find someone to buy him a drink,” Anne said with a shade of bitterness.
    “He always does.”
    “Or he’ll go to the druggist. He has enough for a few grains of opium.”
    “I thought he’d struck you,” Emily murmured.
    Charlotte turned and saw her sister’s eyes, steeled in anger.
    “He would never hurt any of us.”
    Anne put her arm around Emily. “Don’t be angry with him. He’s not himself. He’s not the same brother anymore.”
    “You know, I felt badly at first, that we didn’t include him in our publishing scheme,” Emily said.
    “You mustn’t feel badly,” Anne replied. “You know he would never consent to pay to publish his poetry. He’s far too proud. That’s the one thing Papa has always counseled him against. Papa thinks it’s just money thrown away.”
    “And Branwell could not have kept our secret,” Charlotte observed. “He would have blabbed to everyone.”
    “It’s all right,” Emily said, taking a deep breath. “I don’t feel guilty about it anymore.”
    In the end, the reality was this: their brother had abandoned them years ago. He had become a part of the grand world reserved for the greater sex: the boxing clubs, the literary and musical societies and Masonic orders, the political campaigns and alehouses. He traveled freely and acted without restraint. The sisters had briefly ventured beyond the home, but now they had returned to domestic confines, to the private world of kitchen and parlor. They were on their own.
    They watched until he was out of sight. Then they each took their glasses and very carefully poured the remaining port back into the bottle. Emily plugged it with the cork, and Anne shoveled ashes onto the flames to extinguish the fire.
    Rather than discouraging their efforts, the turmoil at home galvanized the sisters, throwing them back on their imaginary worlds and drivingthem into the fortress of their own company. The very quietude that had chased Branwell from his home was, in reality, a ceaseless activity of the mind. In the evenings when the only sounds to be heard were the clock ticking on the stairs and the wind whistling in the chimney, they worked by the light of their candles, breaking silence