The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë (32 page)

“Please do not berate yourself, Miss Brontë. You were acting on information you believed to be true, just as you did with regard to the Ainleys. You spoke what was in your heart, and only good can come from speaking the truth.”

“I have always thought so, until now,” said I, with a rueful smile.

A small pause ensued. He eyed me uncertainly, then glanced over his shoulder at the heath beyond and said, “I was about to take a walk, Miss Brontë. May I inquire—are you free at present? Would you care to join me?”

I had never—not once—taken a walk with Mr. Nicholls; a day ago, I would not have even considered such a thing. To my surprise, I heard myself say: “Where are you headed?”

“Any place my feet take me. It is a beautiful day, and I can think of no better place to enjoy it than out on the moors.”

I hesitated. “I could not agree more. I would be pleased to accompany you, sir.”

With a hint of a smile, Mr. Nicholls opened the gate and stood aside to let me pass before him.

T
he day was warm and fair. Mr. Nicholls and I followed the pebbly path leading away from the gate, as it descended amongst the wild pasture fields, passing by the bleating flocks of grey moorland sheep and their little mossy-faced lambs. The soft breeze was from the west; it came over the hills, sweet with scents of heath and rush; the sky was of stainless blue; the air was filled with the buzzing of insects and the intermittent twittering of birds.

Despite the beauty of the day, it felt awkward, at first, to be walking alongside Mr. Nicholls. After all the years of distance between us, and my own long-cherished animosity towards him, it was difficult to know how to begin a conversation. I was afraid of saying the wrong thing, which might lead us once more into dangerous waters; he seemed equally tentative; and for some time, we walked in uncomfortable silence. As we left the fields and set out across the purple wilderness of heath, however, I drew courage and said, “Sir: I wish to again express the distress I felt, when I learned of your past sufferings at the hands of Miss Malone. Is it true that you were forced to leave Trinity College on her account?”

“It is. I returned home and became a school-teacher for the next two years, while fighting to clear my name.”

“You were a school-teacher?” said I in surprise. “So was I.”

“I know. Your father said. From all accounts, I liked the occupation far more than you did, Miss Brontë but it was never my true aim. When, at last, Miss Malone saw the error of her ways and recanted, I was reinstated at the university.”

“Thank goodness for that. I hope the institution accepted your complete innocence in the matter, sir, and issued an apology?”

“They did. They promised me as well that the incident would be permanently expunged from my record and never mentioned again. It is the reason, however, that it took me seven years to graduate from Trinity with my Divinity degree, instead of the usual five.”

“Oh—I see. I knew, when you came to Haworth, that you were twenty-seven and newly ordained, but I just assumed that you had started university later than most.”

“No.”

“What brought you to England, Mr. Nicholls, after you graduated?”

“Curacies in the Church of Ireland are few and far between these days. I was obliged to cross the Irish Sea to seek my fortune.”

“It must have been difficult to leave your native country, sir, and your family.”

“It was; but it turned out well enough, I think.” He glanced at me with a little smile as we walked. “Enough on that subject, however. I’d much rather talk about you, Miss Brontë. Your father said that you attended school yourself.”

“Yes—three times, in fact.”

“He told me about the first school you attended—that you suffered great privations, and about what happened to your sisters Maria and Elizabeth. Ever since I’ve known about it, I’ve wanted to say how very sorry I am for your loss.”

“Thank you, Mr. Nicholls.”

“I lost a sister myself at a very young age.”

“Did you? I am sorry. What was her name? How old was she?”

“She was called Susan. She was four years old when she got sick and died. She was such a bright-eyed, bonny lass, full of life and sparkle. I was only seven at the time, and I was very angry. I couldn’t understand how the Lord could take my perfect, lovely sister away from me.”

“I had just turned nine when my own sisters died,” said I, glancing up at him with sympathy and an unexpected feeling of connection, with the discovery that we shared this same sad history. “It would be hard to lose a beloved sibling at any age, I imagine, but I think it is particularly hard on the very young. In some ways, I never got over it.”

“I feel the same. It was the loss of Susan, I think, that eventually led me to the clergy: I was struggling to gain a better comprehension of God and our place in the world, and I wanted to be able to provide comfort and solace to those who suffered as I did.”

“We are fortunate in Haworth that you chose that calling, sir, and that your path led you to us.”

“You wouldn’t have said so yesterday, I fear; but I’m glad you think so now.” There was a teasing lilt to his voice. It was the first time I had ever heard him speak thus to me—with gentle amusement, leaving his usual sense of gravity and seriousness behind—and it caught me off guard. I found myself smiling, and responded in an equally teasing tone:

“Am I safe in believing, sir, that you hold no rancour towards me on that score?”

“Perfectly safe.”

“I am glad of it.”

We were treading the wild track of the glen now. We descended the ravine to the stream, which, swelled with past spring rains, poured along plentiful and clear, catching golden gleams from the sun, and sapphire tints from the firmament. Leaving the track, we trod a soft, mossy fine and emerald green turf,
minutely sprinkled with tiny white and yellow star-like blossoms. The hills above, meantime, shut us quite in.

“Shall we rest here?” asked Mr. Nicholls, as we reached the first stragglers of the battalion of rocks, guarding a sort of pass, beyond which came the rushing sound of a nearby waterfall.

I nodded and took a seat on one of the large stones. Mr. Nicholls sat on a rock a few feet away and removed his hat. For the first time, I was struck by how handsome he was, sitting there with the breeze stirring his thick, dark hair and kissing his brow, and his countenance glowing pleasantly in the afternoon light.

“Wouldn’t it be grand, Miss Brontë, if we could wipe the slate clean and start afresh, as if we had only just met?”

“It would,” I agreed. I thought—although I did not speak it aloud—that there was one memory I should like to obliterate from Mr. Nicholls’s mind for ever: the false, salacious words he had overheard my brother pronounce, about my attachment to a certain person in Belgium; but I dared not bring that up. Instead, I added: “With that in mind, I would be most appreciative if you would endeavour to forget the stinging remarks I made yesterday.”

Mr. Nicholls looked at me. “Does that mean—in your view—I might be worthy of calling myself a Christian, after all?”

“You might indeed, sir.”

“And a minister?”

“Yes.”

“You do not consider me an automaton?”

My lips twitched. “No. You do hold some very rigid views, sir, which I will never agree with—but it means you have principles and you stick to them. This only makes you a thinking man, not a machine.”

“A thinking man—
that
I can live with—but not, I hope, an insufferable cad?”

“No; at least, not to my present knowledge.” I laughed.

Mr. Nicholls joined in my laughter: a deep, loud, joyous sound that seemed to spring forth from his very centre. Then,
unexpectedly, a slight blush crept across his countenance; his smile faded and his glance wandered away, fixing itself on some distant point along the stream. “Speaking of wiping the slate clean, Miss Brontë: there’s something I should very much like to take back—a remark I made not long after we first met, which has greatly troubled me, and which I think gave you pain.”

“Oh?” I replied with enforced casualness, fairly certain I knew the very remark to which he referred. “What remark was that, sir?”

“Perhaps you do not recall it. I sincerely hope as much; but I cannot forget. It was three years ago, the day Branwell and Anne came home from Thorp Green, and Mr. Grant and I came to tea. We’d been aggrandising ourselves, and disparaging women in a most disgraceful manner, and you forcefully—and rightly—spoke your mind. I was too young and foolish, then, to understand how insensitively we’d behaved, and as you left the room—I truly thought you were out of earshot—I said something that brings me regret and shame every time I’ve thought about it since.” In a low voice, he said, “I called you an angry old maid.”

I stared at him. “An
angry
old maid?”

“So you
had
forgotten it?”

“No! Mr. Nicholls,
no,
I had not forgotten it,” said I, unable to conceal my astonishment. “Your words were emblazoned in my mind, and I admit, they caused me many painful hours, but—
angry
? Are you quite certain that is what you called me? An
angry
old maid?”

“Oh! Pray, don’t keep repeating it,” cried he, blushing to the roots of his dark hair as he turned back to meet my gaze. “I saw the look that crossed your face when I uttered those words; such a black, angry, mortified and anguished expression I have never witnessed, before or since. I shudder to recall it, and to think that I was the cause of it—and to think that
this
blunder might have been part of the reason you have so disliked me all these years.”

My thoughts continued in a whirl; I had a brief impulse to
contradict him on this point, if only to ease his conscience; but we were speaking truths now, and every word of it was true.

“I am convinced—
now,
” he went on, “that you’re entirely comfortable with your unmarried status. Perhaps this wasn’t so at the time. In any case, my choice of words was clearly most insulting, and I regret them.”

I could contain myself no longer. I burst out laughing.

Mr. Nicholls stared at me, completely baffled. “My confession amuses you?”

I nodded, tears of laughter filling my eyes, so overcome with mirth that, for a good long while, I was incapable of speech. Mr. Nicholls, seeing me thus engaged, became similarly infected, and in great bemusement joined in my laughter without understanding its cause.

“I am sorry, sir,” said I, taking off my spectacles and drying my eyes with my handkerchief, when at last I caught my breath and was able to speak. “I am not laughing at
you,
or in any way denigrating your confession. I am laughing at myself, and my own folly.”

“Your own folly? What do you mean?”

Could I tell him? My cheeks burned as I imagined pronouncing aloud the thoughts that rang within my head:
It was not the term “old maid” that gave me such offence. It was the word which preceded it. I did not know that you said “angry.” I heard “ugly.” I thought you called me an ugly old maid.

“Suffice it to say, Mr. Nicholls, that I heard you incorrectly. Perhaps it was your accent; perhaps it was my own misconception, predisposed as I was to hear only ill from you, and about myself; but I thought you said something else.
What
I thought is not important; I am pleased, however, to hear that it was no worse than what you have just expressed. Believe me when I say that you are entirely forgiven, and please do not feel any further remorse on that account.”

“You’re truly no longer angry with me?” said he uncertainly. “You’re not offended by what I said?”

“I am not; and had I known your
actual phraseology,
I should
not have been so angry in the first place. There are other things you said then, and since, which I could quibble with—but you have admitted that you behaved insensitively that day, sir, and that is enough for me. Now let us drop the subject, shall we, and never refer to it again.”

Some time later, when Mr. Nicholls and I returned from our wanderings and stood in parting at the door to the parsonage, he said with a smile, “Thank you for accompanying me to-day. I enjoyed it.”

“So did I.” Over the course of the past two hours, I had learned more about Mr. Nicholls than I had in the entire three years of our acquaintance combined. Despite our differences, I now knew that we had a few things in common. He had made a very satisfactory apology, besides. As I returned his smile and said good-bye, I realised that I might not mind taking other such walks with him in the future.

That thought, however—and any possibility of pursuing it—was cut short with terrible finality by the string of events which engulfed my family in the ensuing weeks and months to come.

Branwell’s constitution had been failing quickly all summer. Indeed, his health had worsened steadily over the previous eighteen months, but he had so often been drunk, or ill from the effects of that intoxication, that we did not truly perceive how dangerously feeble he had become. Branwell’s fainting fits, and the
delirium tremens
from which he had been suffering, combined with the bouts of influenza which had afflicted our entire household, had served to mask the symptoms of the more prevailing, ravaging disease which had taken hold of his abused physical frame: consumption.

That September, my brother was confined to his bed for three weeks. He only struggled to his feet twice: once, to stagger into the village; and again, when I brought him a message from Francis Grundy, his friend from his days working on the railway at Luddenden Foot. Mr. Grundy was in town unexpectedly,
and hoped Branwell would meet him for dinner in a private room he had reserved at the Black Bull.

“It cannot be Grundy,” cried Branwell in alarm as, with great effort, he rose trembling from his bed and pulled on a shirt over his emaciated frame. His sunken eyes glared with the light of madness, and his mass of red, unkempt hair, which he had not allowed us to cut for months, floated wildly around his great, gaunt forehead. “Grundy has written me off. He would never come to see me. It must be a call from the Devil! Satan is trying to get his grip on me!”

“Branwell, be still,” said I, in a soothing tone. “It is no message from Satan. It is your friend, Mr. Grundy, who only wants to have dinner with you—but you are unwell. I will tell him so, and bid him come to the house. Go back to bed.” I gently took his arm, but he roughly shoved me off of him.

“Get out of the way! I must go and face him myself!” exclaimed he, and somehow he summoned the strength to do it.

I did not find out until later that Branwell had stolen a carving knife from the kitchen and hidden it in his sleeve, prepared to stab his “otherworldly visitor” at first sight. Thankfully, when Branwell entered the dining-room where Mr. Grundy awaited, the latter’s voice and manner brought Branwell home to himself, and he dropped into a chair in tears.

On the 22nd of September, a most propitious change came over my brother: a change which, I am told, frequently precedes death. His demeanour, his language, his sentiments were all singularly altered and softened, and the calm of better feelings filled his mind.