The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë (31 page)

“So may he, regardless of any action I take. The Ainleys’ infant was not baptised. The parents had fulfilled their secular duty in registering the child’s birth with the district registrar, but they failed in their
divine
duty to have the religious rite performed.”

“Oh! I suppose I should have expected such a self-serving, hard-headed, righteous response from
you
!” I cried, my blood boiling. “You are not a minister, Mr. Nicholls—you are a machine! An unthinking automaton, that performs its job without an ounce of thought or sympathy for the people for whom it labours!”

“Miss Brontë—” he began, alarmed.

“My heart bleeds for the Ainleys, but you! You feel nothing for their plight. You cast them off as a matter of
principle
!” I shook my head, my mind veering off to another arena in which
he had also given offence. “This ‘casting off’ of those who do not meet your high standards seems to be a habit with you, Mr. Nicholls. How you can live with yourself, sir, is a mystery to me—for you callously cast off women who do not serve your purpose in the same indiscriminate manner!”

Mr. Nicholls now stared at me in stunned consternation. “I beg your pardon? Women?”

“
Women
are mere objects to you, sir, to be discarded when you are finished with them!”

“Why do you say that?”

“Did you not imagine, sir, when I met Miss Bridget Malone all those years ago, that she would tell me everything that happened between the two of you, back in Ireland?” I shot back.

Mr. Nicholls went deadly pale; for a moment he seemed incapable of speech; then he said quietly, “What did Miss Malone say?”

“She told me the whole story: how you led her on and promised to marry her, then coldly dropped her when her father refused her a dowry.”

“She said that?”

“She did! What a cad you are, Mr. Nicholls. An insufferable cad! Miss Malone’s admission did not surprise me at all, however, for I have been subjected to your views with regard to womankind in general, and single women in particular, on many occasions before—and since. May I be the first to inform you, sir, that not all unmarried women are husband-hunting old maids, however deeply that false impression may be ingrained in your brain, and in the brains of your colleagues! Many of us are quite satisfied not to marry. We would not trade our valued independence for a life of bondage and servitude to a self-centred fool like yourself, no matter how destitute our fortunes! The fact that we are obliged to put up with your narrow-minded smugness as our curate is hard enough! Which brings me back to my original point: the Ainleys. They are church-goers, sir! They have always spoken so highly of you—yet you have let them down in the hour of their greatest need! How hard
would it be for you to say a few prayers over their poor child’s grave?” With that, I stomped away without a backwards glance, yanked open the parsonage door, and slammed it behind me.

I immediately went up to see my father, intending to express my opinion with regard to the Ainleys’ plight; but papa still looked so weak and feeble, and his cough sounded so terrible, that I did not have the heart to distress him further.

That evening, I poured out my heart to my sisters. Emily was aghast at Mr. Nicholls’s callous handling of the Ainleys’ predicament. Anne, ever devout, was filled with conflicting emotions; in the end, despite all arguments put forth by Emily and myself, she declared that Mr. Nicholls had only acted according to the teachings of the church, and that his decision had been right and proper.

“You should not have criticised Mr. Nicholls so harshly,” insisted Anne.

“I spoke my mind, and I am not sorry for it. I can never forgive Mr. Nicholls.”

The next morning, as I left the house on my way to the village, I saw a small group of mourners gathered at the far end of the churchyard. On a second look, I recognised them as Mr. and Mrs. Ainley and their eight children, along with a few of their neighbours; they were all standing over a grave. When one of the mourners changed his position slightly, I saw that the officiant reciting the funereal prayers was Mr. Nicholls himself.

My heart gave a little leap. Clearly, my outburst the day before had produced a good result. Mr. Nicholls had listened and taken heed! Despite his other faults, it spoke well of him that he was not too proud to admit that he had made a mistake, and to rectify it. I hastened over to join the little group, just in time to hear Mr. Nicholls pronounce the final words over little Albert Ainley’s casket. Upon finishing, Mr. Nicholls looked up; noticing me, he glanced away, his countenance clouding over with an expression so bitter, and so wrathful, that it took me by surprise. Was all that anger directed at me? I wondered in dismay.

I paid my respects to Mr. and Mrs. Ainley, who told me how grateful they had been when Mr. Nicholls stopped to see them early that morning, to say he had changed his mind about their infant’s final disposition, if they would keep to a small mourning party. It did my heart good to see that at least a portion of their suffering had been relieved. When I looked up again, determined to brave Mr. Nicholls’s foul mood and offer my thanks, he was gone.

Half an hour later, I had just left the cobbler’s shop, where I was measured for a new pair of shoes, when I ran into Sylvia Malone, coming out of the post-office.

“Good-afternoon, Miss Malone,” I said, greeting her with a smile.

“Miss Brontë!” An odd look crossed Sylvia’s countenance; her features soon composed themselves, and she walked up to me with a firm step and a smile. “How are you? It seems a great while since I last saw you.”

“It does indeed.” I had not observed Sylvia at church in several weeks; but then, she was not a regular attendant. “I hope you and your family are well.”

“We are.” Sylvia went on to give me a brief account of various events that had occurred in her life since last we met, and I shared such news as I was willing to impart about my own family. I was about to say good-bye, when—the incident with Mr. Nicholls being fresh in my mind—it occurred to me to ask: “What news have you heard from your cousin, Miss Bridget? Has she a new beau?”

“Indeed she has, Miss Brontë. I received a letter from her just a few weeks past. It seems she’s engaged to be married.”

“Engaged? How nice. I hope he is a good fellow?”

“I couldn’t rightly say, having never met him; but he has money, apparently. He’s in trade, she said, like my uncle—and Bridget seems happy enough.”

“Then I am happy for her.”

Sylvia hesitated, then said, “Bridget told me something else in her letter, Miss Brontë. She said I could tell you if I want, if
you didn’t know already. But—it happened so long ago, perhaps you’ve forgotten all about it.”

“Forgotten about what?”

“Do you recall all that bile my cousin spewed against Mr. Nicholls when she was here, three years ago? Her telling of how he courted her and then abandoned her, and that?”

“I do recall it.”

“Well, it seems that Bridget was not entirely truthful.”

I stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“Now that Bridget’s engaged, and about to be married in the church, she said she feels the need to bare her soul of any misdeeds she may have committed in the past. She said she’s ashamed to admit it now, but everything she told you against Mr. Nicholls didn’t really happen.”

“Didn’t happen?”

“No. Mr. Nicholls did nothing wrong at all, it seems. The only wrong was done by Bridget herself. Mr. Nicholls
did
often call at their house, as she said, but it was to see her brother, not her. Mr. Nicholls was so tall and good-looking and kind, that Bridget fell in love with him from afar. One day, she revealed her feelings to him, but he admitted he did not return those feelings. He gave her no hope whatsoever. This so enraged her, that she spitefully told her brother some lies about Mr. Nicholls, insisting that he had taken certain unwanted liberties with her person—nothing unlawful, mind you, for she was already of age—but enough to result in Mr. Nicholls’s dismissal for a time from Trinity College while he fought the charges, and apparently causing him untold grief.”

I stood frozen to the spot. How to explain what I felt on hearing this admission: astonishment! Horror! Mortification! Chagrin!

“Bridget knows that her behaviour then was wicked. She felt sorry for it afterwards, and she took it all back two years later. When Bridget saw Mr. Nicholls in Keighley, she was taken by surprise. So afraid was she that he’d speak out against her, and make me think less of her, that she told me that story to poison
my mind against him. If you ask me, she is just too, too horrid, Miss Brontë, and I suppose I ought to be ashamed to call her cousin; but thank goodness it doesn’t seem to have done Mr. Nicholls any permanent harm. I was so sure you would have forgotten all about it by now, that I almost didn’t tell you.”

“I am glad you did.”

“I must go now; I have a new young man myself, and he is expecting me. Good day, Miss Brontë!”

“Good day, Miss Malone.”

As I watched Sylvia dash away down the street, every fibre of my being seemed to cry out with silent shame and alarm. This new information put Mr. Nicholls into a very different light, indeed! It put an end to the very basis of the negative opinion I had cherished, for nearly three long years, with regard to his worth.

Anne had insisted, from the start, that there must be more to Bridget Malone’s story than first appeared—but it had never occurred to me that she had entirely invented it. The look on Bridget’s face as she had told her tale, and her tearful tone of voice and manner, had evoked every sympathy from me. It had all been a performance, I now realised, to my utter dismay: a performance which that young lady had perfected on many previous occasions, apparently with far greater detriment to Mr. Nicholls than the loss of my good opinion.

Oh! How imprudently I had acted! How foolish I had been, to accept the word of some one of whom I knew so little! Bridget Malone had been the acquaintance of but a few hours, whereas I had known Mr. Nicholls, at the time of the telling, for many months. Since then, I had seen every evidence of Mr. Nicholls’s good nature; I had witnessed all manner of good deeds that he had done; yet I had ignored them all. Based on my injured pride over something he had once said to me, and my distaste for his stricter religious principles, I had thought the worst of him, blindly accepting the words of a spurious, recalcitrant stranger. All that time, Mr. Nicholls had been blameless! Entirely blameless!

I went over, in my mind, all the angry accusations that I had hurled at him the day before. What I had said about the Ainleys, although stridently worded, had at least been based on truth, and Mr. Nicholls had found it in his heart to address it. My diatribe on spinsters was also based on fact; I had heard him utter those views many times; but what I had said with regard to Bridget Malone—oh! How I wished I could take those words back!

I turned up the lane, determined to knock on the sexton’s door, ask for Mr. Nicholls, and offer an apology; to my surprise, I saw that gentleman up ahead, just passing through the far gate leading out to the meadows and moors.

“Mr. Nicholls!” I called out. He paused and turned. He did not have the dogs with him; no doubt he had avoided stopping at the parsonage, in case he might encounter me. With thundering heart, I hurried up to where he stood. “May I speak with you a moment, sir?”

He had the same bitter, angry expression on his countenance that I had observed earlier at the graveyard. Still, he looked down at me steadily and said in a low tone, “Of course.”

“I wish to apologise, sir, for something I said yesterday.”

“You need not apologise, Miss Brontë. It pained me to hear what you said, I admit, but I thank you for your honesty. I lay awake all night pondering it, and—” (after a slight hesitation)—“with regard to the
Ainleys
—I came to see that I might be allowed to make an exception to the rules of the church in this one case, because they had faithfully baptised all eight of their other children, and would have done so again had illness not befallen the family. I told them, however, that I should not be inclined to be so lenient in the future, towards them or any other parishioner.”

Oh! What an infuriating man! I thought, my ire rising again, as my fledgling respect for him instantly fled. “I see. I should have realised that your actions did not signify a permanent change of heart, sir. Your beliefs are indeed far too ingrained for such radical alteration.”

He scowled. “Perhaps they are. Good day, Miss Brontë.” He was about to turn back towards the gate, but paused when I called out:

“Wait. Please wait, sir.” I took a deep breath, silently chastising myself for losing my temper, and steeling myself not to be swayed from my task. “I am sorry. I am generally a very reticent person, I assure you; yet for some reason, with you, I seem to speak my mind. Please know, sir, that I am grateful for what you did for the Ainleys, and I regret the
way
I spoke to you on that subject; but that is not the main reason for my chagrin. I wish to apologise for another accusation that I so callously—and incorrectly—vocalised. You see, I have just spoken to Miss Sylvia Malone.”

“Have you?”

“Yes. Her cousin Bridget wrote to her recently from Ireland, with certain revelations about—about the truth in your past association with her. I understand now that everything Miss Bridget Malone told us was a lie—that your behaviour was irreproachable, sir, and that all blame in that affair belongs to the young lady herself.”

Relief washed over Mr. Nicholls’s face. “I am so glad to hear that you know the truth, Miss Brontë. Despite all the troubles I endured at Miss Malone’s hand, I was stunned to hear that she would stoop to spinning an entirely new lie about me, for her cousin’s and your benefit. To think that all these years, you have thought me guilty of such behaviour! I had no idea, and the notion grieves me more than I can say.”

“It grieves me to think that I believed it, sir. I should never have taken her word on the subject. I truly regret my choice of words yesterday. I called you a name—oh! I blush to think of it now.”