The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte (24 page)

Of course, none of that helped Charlotte to resolve her dilemma. She had tried, ceaselessly, to persuade her father to change his mind, but he was adamant and called the whole matter ‘degrading'. Then there was the fact that nothing which she said or did could dispel the dark cloud of anger and despair which hung over Nicholls. She felt absolutely torn between father and lover, and so she did what she normally did when she was in any state of emotional turmoil or indecision – she went on her travels.

In April she stayed with Mrs Gaskell, in Manchester, and took the opportunity to propagate the story of Nicholls' ‘proposal', just as she had during her visit to the Smiths a couple of months before. From Manchester she went to Ellen.

She returned to the Parsonage somewhat refreshed but, hardly surprisingly, she found that nothing there had improved during her long absence – in fact, if anything, the situation appeared to have worsened. Nicholls seemed now to have no intention of trying to appease her father, and was rude and abrupt with him in public. Charlotte described it as ‘a dismal state of things'.

Nicholls now obtained a curacy at Kirk Smeaton, near Pontefract, which, although also in Yorkshire, was some fifty miles from Haworth. He left on 27 May 1853, and Charlotte told Ellen she was desolate: ‘he is gone – gone – and there's an end of it.' However, even as she wrote, she knew that she had no intention of allowing his departure to be an end of anything.

Unknown to her father, Charlotte corresponded with Nicholls after he resigned, and also met him on the several secret visits that he made to Haworth during that summer of 1853. He would not take up his new post until the August, and so he had decided to stay with his friend Grant, who was the incumbent of the next parish to Haworth. The rumours which Martha heard of his having been seen about the village were therefore true.

‘My bone cleaveth to my skin, and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.'

Job 19:20

C
hristmas 1853 came, and it was another miserable one, especially as Madam did not go away. She just moped about the Parsonage, and seemed to have no interest in anything except being as bad-tempered as she was able. To tell the truth, I came very close to putting in my notice at that time, but I bit my tongue and went off home for what was left of Christmas contenting myself with thinking about what a cheerless time she was having stuck in that big cold old house with naught but 2 old people for company – both ill and crochety – and her father not speaking to her either. It is a terrible thing to say, but I was so pleased at the prospect that I almost sang my way down the lane.

As it had turned out, things had been so arranged that I did not have to go back to work until 2 days after Christmas Day, and I went in bent upon being full of cheer, and rubbing it in about what a happy time I had had, to what I thought would be a sick-at-heart Madam. To my great surprise though, she was as full of cheer and smiles as I had meant to be, and greeted me as if I was her best friend. She said she could hardly wait to tell somebody, and then went on to tell me that her father was no longer against her seeing Mr Nicholls, and that he was coming back to Haworth as soon as possible.

Even after such a long time, as I write this the thoughts that I had then come flooding back as if it was but yesterday. At first I just could not take it in and thought it was a joke. Then, to my surprise, I was not angry and miserable that I was to lose Mr Nicholls, but rather my spirits were raised higher than for a long time at the thought of having him back, because I remembered his words that though things might be difficult for us for a time I should trust him and that naught would ever come between us.

Within just a week or so I saw him again! He turned up at the Parsonage all smiles and almost as if nothing had happened. She had warned us when he would be coming, and all morning I was aflutter with every sound on the path. When, at long last, he did arrive I had to hold myself back from running out and throwing myself into his arms. I heard them talking in the passage and then, with a big smile all over her ugly face, Madam was leading him down to see her father. I stood by the kitchen door with the others, just looking, but when he saw us he gave us a big wink over Madam's head. Well I say he gave it to
us,
but I knew that it was meant only for me and I could have kissed him for it.

He left that same day, but he came back a few times over the next couple of months, although I was never able to say more than a few words to him, and then only when others were about. Then, almost before we knew what was what, he and her were betrothed and Father said that he was coming back to his old job. All in all, I could not have been more happy, but there was a great disappointment in store for me. All along I had thought that he would come back to stay in our house, but now Father said that that was not to be – he was going to live at the Parsonage even before they were wed.

At first I could have wept, because I knew that with him under Madam's eye all the while there would be very few meetings between us. However, I soon overcame my feelings and comforted myself with the thought that I would probably
see
more of him if he was living under the same roof as me.

I knew that he did not love her – very much the other way, in fact – so I was sure that he had his own good reasons for going into it, and I trusted his promise that nothing would ever come between us. In the meanwhile, though, he was back and the wedding was arranged and that, of course, caused a great deal of talk in the village about it all.

Not one person thought of it as a love match, rather that Mr Nicholls was just after her money and his job back. In fact there was so much gossip that it would not have been possible for some of it not to have got back to Mr Nicholls and her, and it was him who first told me that a little of it had come to his ears.

It was taking terrible chances I know, but I had told him that I would like us to keep on meeting for as long as we could, and he had said that that was what he wanted as well. The only trouble was that folk now took far more notice of him, and also the nights were much lighter, so it was not possible to meet out of doors – and that only left the Church and the School, and even then it was not easy.

We managed to meet about once a week, and it was at one of those times that Mr Nicholls told me that he had heard that the villagers were saying that he was only after her money. Oddly enough, that did not seem to bother him at all though. In fact he seemed quite pleased, and said he would rather they thought that than that he was in love with her, because then he would have felt that they reckoned him for an idiot. As it was, he thought that with Haworth folk being what they were they would tend to look up to him for it and be on his side.

Of course, Madam got to know about the talk as well – there never seemed to be
anything
that she did not get wind of – but she
was
put out.

One evening, after I had cleared all up after supper in the Parsonage and was walking down the lane to our house, I came upon her in the Churchyard fussing about with some flowers. It was lovely weather, and I had felt that I just had to get out for a few minutes, but I had nowhere to go really so I was quite content to stop a while when she called over to me.

We sat together on the wall, and she went chattering on about this and that, and asking me questions about my family and some of the villagers. Then she got on about the wedding and to my surprise she said she was unhappy as some of her so-called friends did not seem to wish her well. She said that one in particular had saddened her very much and, although she did not name her, I soon put 2 and 2 together that it was Miss Nussey. Then I could not believe my ears when she went on to ask
me
what I thought about it! Quizzingly, she said that from some of the things I had said to her in the past, and from bits she had heard, she did not think I liked Mr Nicholls very much – and then I had a job not to burst out laughing when she said that if I knew him better I would be bound to like him!

Well, for a moment I was nonplussed – it had all come upon me so quickly that I did not know what to say to her. As it was, I pretended to be thinking on what she had said, and all the while she watched me with her face all bunched up in that way she had.

In the end I said I was sure she was right, and made haste to explain that anything I had said to her in the past about Mr Nicholls had only been the passing on of what had been said to me and what I thought she should know.

She seemed well pleased at that, but once again she asked me what I thought about the wedding. This time, though, I had had time to get my answer ready, and I told her what I thought she wanted to hear. I said that they seemed very suited, and that with Mr Nicholls being a clergyman and all, just like her father, I had no doubt but that they would be very happy. To my surprise, though, that did not seem to please her as much as I had thought it would. Her lips pursed, and I could see that she had her own doubts and had not been duped by Mr Nicholls as much as he thought she had.

I was at our house a few evenings later when Father came in and said there was quite a to-do going on up at the Parsonage, and asked me if I knew aught about it. Well, there were so
many
happenings there at that time that I did not rightly know which one he was talking about, so I said as much and then he went on to tell us. He said that Mr Brontë had told him that he was bent upon safeguarding what he called his ‘wilful daughter' from Mr Nicholls, in spite of herself, and as best he could, and so he had listened carefully when some of her friends had spoken to him on the quiet about a way to stop Mr Nicholls from getting his hands on her money. Mr Brontë had then spoken to her about it, but she would have none of it and so he was getting the friends to speak to her themselves.

Well, I had never heard of such a thing. As far as I knew, once you were wed everything of yours passed to your husband, and what did that matter if you loved and trusted him? Mind you, I had never quite thought it fair that it should be the Law, but that was how things were and it had never bothered me overmuch. I must say though that her standing went up in my eyes, and I thought that if she had said that she would have naught to do with it I must have misjudged how she felt about Mr Nicholls. Anyway, I told Father that I would keep my eyes and ears open and the matter passed off.

As it happened, I learned naught more about it, and I did not dare to speak to Mr Nicholls about it for I knew that he would be very vexed if he did not know already, and then it would probably have come out that Father had been speaking out of turn and
he
would be in trouble. So I just let it be.

Whether or not it had anything to do with it I do not know, but Madam went off on her travels again around the end of April. She said she was going to see some of her friends to tell them about the wedding, but I did not see why that could not have been done by letter rather than gadding around the country leaving her father and Mr Nicholls at loggerheads – and I thought she just wanted to get away from all the arguments. Mind you,
I
was pleased to see her go and so, I think, was Mr Nicholls – although he did not say as much.

I must say it was wonderful for me and him to have the Parsonage almost to ourselves at times. Of course, we had to be careful, but the girls were only allowed upstairs when I said so, and Miss Aykroyd did not know half of what was going on around her.

Then, and quite quickly it seemed, she was back again and did not I know it! She was in a bad temper from the minute she walked in the door, and it just seemed to get worse with every day that passed. All her friendliness to me had gone out of the window, and there were times when I could have hit her. Just because Mr Nicholls was now staying at the Parsonage everything had to be done differently and just right so that she could show off to him, and she ran us ragged with her sharp tongue. Well, that is to say that she
tried
it on with me, but I was having none of it. I just listened, bit my tongue, forced a smile – and then did what
I
wanted. My days of being frightened of
her,
or of losing my job, were long gone and I think Madam knew it.

I had noticed that she had been a bit snappy with Mr Nicholls as well when she thought that no one was in earshot, but one morning they had a row such as I had never heard. They had gone into the sitting room a few moments before, and I had heard the door shut to behind them.

Well, that got me going straightaway, but I could do naught about it except to wonder what they were up to. Then I heard Mr Nicholls' voice raised so high in anger that I went into the hallway to see what the matter was, and shortly after he flung out of the room shouting something at her over his shoulder.

The next thing I knew he had rushed out of the Parsonage, leaving the door wide open, and was stamping down the path. I asked the girl who was cleaning the passage what had been going on, and she told me that him and her had had a right set-to, but she did not really know what about except that it seemed to be something to do with money. She did say, though, that he had a face like thunder when he passed her.

For a time after that work was a real misery because there was such an awful air about the Parsonage. Nobody seemed to be speaking to anyone else, Mr Nicholls took what little food he had on his own, and even I could not get a pleasant word or a smile out of him whenever we had a few moments together. With him in such a mood, and others about nearly all the time, I was not able to find out what the row had been about. All I had to go on was that it had been something to do with money, and the only thing I could think of was that it was somehow connected with what Father said Mr Brontë had told him.

Mr Nicholls never stepped outside the Parsonage for days. He kept to his room and put it about that he was ill, but I knew for a fact that he was not and I wondered for how long he would be able to bear being cooped up in such lovely weather.