The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë (38 page)

In spring, an event occurred which made it impossible for me to harbour any further doubts as to the nature and truth of Mr. Nicholls’s regard for me.

It was Whitsunday, the 15th of May. At services, I ventured to stop to the sacrament. Papa was ill, at home. As I sat in our family pew, I realised with a pang of regret that this would probably be the last time Mr. Nicholls would conduct a service in this church, the last time he would be a member of this parish. Mr. Nicholls seemed keenly aware of this fact as well, for as he stood before the congregation, and his eyes briefly found mine, an expression of grief crossed his countenance; he struggled against it—faltered—and then lost command over himself. For a long moment, he stood white, shaking, and voiceless before my eyes and in the sight of all the communicants. Joseph Redman, the parish clerk, spoke some words to him in a low tone. Mr. Nicholls made a great, rallying effort; with tears in his eyes, and with the greatest difficulty, he whispered and faltered his way through the service.

Oh! What a great heat of misery enveloped me at that moment! I never saw a battle more sternly fought with feelings and emotions than Mr. Nicholls fought with his. All at once, I felt many eyes turned in my direction; all assembled seemed to guess at the meaning behind his grief. Women began sobbing
around me; I felt the tide of the congregation change as one in Mr. Nicholls’s favour, and I could not check my own tears from spilling down my cheeks.

All the negative feeling which had built up against Mr. Nicholls in the preceding months seemed to vanish in the last week of his residency. The congregation presented him with a handsome, inscribed gold fob-watch at a public meeting held in his honour—a meeting from which papa remained conspicuously absent. I felt as if a great tide was sweeping life’s events down an inexorable and painful path, over which I had no control. Mr. Nicholls was to go, it was all my fault, and I was powerless to stop it.

On Mr. Nicholls’s last night in Haworth, he called at the parsonage to say good-bye, and to render into papa’s hands the deeds of the National School. Martha and two workers were busy with spring cleaning in the dining-room, where I normally would have been sitting, so I knew he could not find me there, even if he had wished to. I waited in the kitchen, unwilling to go into the study to speak to him in papa’s presence; indeed, until the very last moment, I thought it perhaps best that he not see me. When I heard the front door close, however, I went to the front window. I perceived Mr. Nicholls leaning against the garden gate in a paroxysm of anguish—sobbing as I have never before seen a person sob. My heart turned over; a great sob caught in my own throat, and sudden tears sprang to my eyes.

I took courage and rushed out, trembling and miserable. I went straight to him. For some moments we both stood in silence, overcome with grief. I could not think what to say. I did not wish for Mr. Nicholls to leave, but as things stood—it would be unfair to give him false hope—neither could I ask him to stay.

“I am so sorry,” I finally whispered. “I shall miss you.”

He lifted his eyes to mine—eyes which even now, ravaged as they were with grief, brimmed over with undisguised affection. “I wish—” he began; but he could proceed no further.

Tears coursed down my cheeks. I saw, in his look, a plea for
such encouragement as I could not then give him. “Be well,” was all I could manage.

“And you,” he replied. He quickly passed through the gate and walked away.

It was only early the next morning, after a miserable night, that I realised I had never asked Mr. Nicholls where he was going.

I
n a panic, I dressed at dawn and rushed next door to Mr. Nicholls’s lodging-house. The sexton answered the door in his night-shirt and cap, wiping sleep from his eyes. “Mr. Nicholls left before sunrise. We’ll not be seeing him ony more, an’ more’s th’ pity.”

I found Mr. Brown’s remark most interesting, considering the fact that just five months previously, he’d wanted to shoot the gentleman. “Do you know where he went?” I asked.

“Th’ south o’ England for a few weeks, he said. Then he’ll be seeking a new curacy somewheres, I suppose.”

“You suppose? Do you mean to say that Mr. Nicholls left without the security of another position?”

“He did. But I woudn’a worry abaat Mr. Nicholls, ma’am. He’ll land on his feet somewheres. He’s been given fine references, an’ he’ll be an asset t’ ony community. An’ ye can rest yer mind: for all his pain, he never gave a hint t’ onyone why he was leaving, an’ never breathed a single word against ye or yer father.”

“Didn’t he?” said I, as a little pain clutched at my heart.

“No. Indeed, when I pressed th’ matter, he insisted ’at there
never was ony quarrel betwixt Mr. Brontë an’ hisself, ’at they parted as friends, an’ he left solely on his own account—an’ he expressed only th’ highest praises concerning ye, Miss Brontë.”

For three weeks after Mr. Nicholls left, I was ill and restless. The stress from the previous months took its toll on papa, and the very thing which I had most feared occurred: he suffered a stroke which rendered him, for a few days, completely blind. I tended to him; he rallied; but he did not completely regain his sight, and his dependence on me and on his new curate (Mr. de Renzy, a man ill suited to the job) again increased.

Then a letter came from Mr. Nicholls.

“Mr. Grant were jist here,” said Martha, handing me an envelope. “He says this letter be enclosed i’ a missive to him, an’ I mun promise t’ deliver it quietly t’ ye, when yer father weren’t i’ th’ house.”

I took the letter and thanked her; as soon as she quitted the room, I opened it.

I read the letter once; twice; a third time; each time, with marked astonishment. Oh! How familiar did the anguished words seem! Years ago, I had written countless such letters myself to Monsieur Héger, filled with a similar force of feeling, and a similar agony of hope and despair. Here, I thought, was a spectacle of emotion that mirrored my own! Mr. Nicholls appeared to me very differently now, on the page.

It seemed incredible to me that the reserved curate I had known for eight years—the man who had so quietly and steadfastly gone about his duties, masking his feelings behind a façade of iron masculinity and proper, socially correct politeness—was the same man who had written this impassioned letter, who had proposed to me with such emotion, and who had broken down in front of the entire congregation and again at the parsonage gate. Clearly, I thought, still waters did run deep.

I responded the same day, apprising Mr. Nicholls that I would welcome a correspondence with him, but it would be best if he continued to send his letters via Mr. Grant.

Two weeks later, Ellen came to visit. For the first time in our long history, we quarrelled. Ellen seemed determined, in everything she said, to verbally undermine Mr. Nicholls.

“You are lucky to be rid of him,” asserted she one morning over coffee.

“Lucky? Why do you say so? You used to sing Mr. Nicholls’s praises. What has caused this sudden change of heart?”

“He was so gloomy when I was here a few months ago. I cannot abide a gloomy person.”

“He had reason to be gloomy.”

“He should have risen above his unhappiness, and not infected others with it. But there are other reasons why I have changed my mind about him. He does not suit you, Charlotte. He is a curate—you have long insisted that you would
never
marry a member of the clergy—and he is
Irish
. Even your own father says the Irish are a very slack, ill-mannered, and negligent people!”

“Mr. Nicholls is hardly slack or ill-mannered, Nell—quite the reverse, in fact.”

“But
his family
will be. Think of it: had you married him, you would be obliged to visit his poor, illiterate relations back in Ireland.”

“I am certain I could survive a visit to Mr. Nicholls’s Irish relatives without permanent scarring.”

“You joke—but I am serious. You said you would never marry, Charlotte. ‘We will be old maids together, and live very happily on our own,’ you said.”

I stared at her. “Your primary objection, then, is not so much to the man himself—but to the idea of me marrying at all?”

“It would be inconsistent with your very nature for you to marry now.”

“Inconsistent? Why would it be inconsistent, Ellen? When you entertained the notion of Mr. Vincent’s proposal all those years ago, I strongly urged you to accept him. I wanted you to be happy, if you could find happiness with him. Yet now you begrudge me the same opportunity!”

“
You
are the one who refused Mr. Nicholls’s proposal, not I! Are you saying that you wish you had accepted him?”

“No! I do not know
what
I want. But—”

“I am only trying to reassure you that you made the right decision. I could not abide it if you married now, Charlotte. I
would hardly ever see you. If we are to be old maids, we must bear our position, and endure it to the end.”

“Endure it? Oh, this is too much, Ellen! I thought you were my friend! Yet you wish to doom me to eternal spinsterhood, just so that I will be more
available
to you? This is unacceptable. You are no better than my father!”

The discord between us reached such a pitch, that Ellen left the next morning, a full week earlier than intended, and all correspondence between us abruptly ceased for a time.

Miserable, and fed up with papa’s company, I left papa in Martha and Tabby’s care and took every opportunity to go from home. I left for Scotland with Joe Taylor and his wife in August, but that journey was curtailed by their sick infant, and we ended up in the nearby spa town of Ilkley instead. I returned to Ilkley again to meet Miss Wooler for several days; despite the disparity in our ages, we had maintained a friendship that I greatly valued.

I continued to correspond with Mr. Nicholls. By now, he had taken a curacy with the Reverend Thomas Cator at Kirk Smeaton, about fifty miles away near Pontefract, still in the West Riding of Yorkshire. In early September, he requested leave to visit me. I replied that he could, but—although I felt miserable in the deception—I insisted that we keep his visit a secret from papa.

Not wishing the eyes and ears of the neighbourhood to gain appraisal of our rendezvous, we decided that I should call at Oxenhope vicarage, where Mr. Nicholls would be staying with the Grants. (Mr. Grant, despite his long-ago assertion of disinterest in the fairer sex, had six years previously married a lovely woman, Sarah Ann Turner, with whom he appeared very happy.)

The day of our meeting it poured down rain. When I arrived at Oxenhope vicarage (filled with guilt that I had lied to papa, and drenched to the bone after my long walk), the housekeeper graciously took my wet cloak, bonnet, gloves, and umbrella and showed me into the parlour, where Mr. Nicholls and Mr. and Mrs. Grant instantly rose to receive me. The look
in Mr. Nicholls’s eyes was so filled with nervous apprehension, that it instilled in me a similar anxiety. A few words of greeting were exchanged; Mr. Nicholls apologised profusely that I had been obliged to walk out in such bad weather. I was ushered to a chair by the hearth, where I warmed myself by the glowing fire. A maid brought tea and refreshments.

Mr. Nicholls inquired as to my health, and that of my father. I briefly mentioned papa’s recent stroke and difficult recovery, which seemed to fill him with alarm. “He is much better now,” I added reassuringly, “but I fear his sight will never again be as good as it was.”

“I am sorry. I do hope he improves.”

“Thank you.” An awkward silence fell. “Mr. Nicholls: I hope you are enjoying your new position?”

“I am, thank you.”

“Isn’t it wonderful,” observed Mrs. Grant, as she sipped her tea, “that Mr. Nicholls was able to find something so close by?”

“Indeed,” said I, although in fact, I thought fifty miles a very great distance away.

Another silence fell. Mr. Nicholls blurted, “I read
Villette.”

“Did you?”
Villette
had come out eight months before. The fact that Mr. Nicholls had never had an opportunity to mention it—considering that he had read both
Jane Eyre
and
Shirley
in two days, immediately after receiving them—was a poignant reminder of the gap that had grown between us.

“I loved it. The school was well described,” said Mr. Nicholls with a hint of his former enthusiasm. “The country—you used another name, but—was it meant to be Belgium?”

Unaccountably, I felt myself blush. “It was.”

“I was a little puzzled about the ending. What did you mean when—” He broke off and turned to Mr. and Mrs. Grant. “Have you read Miss Brontë’s new novel?”

“I am afraid not,” admitted Mrs. Grant.

“I am not fond of novels,” interjected Mr. Grant with a frown. “But see here, Nicholls: how’s the fishing up at Kirk Smeaton? Have you had any luck tickling the trout?”

A long discussion followed about fishing, after which Mr. Grant said, “Are the Dissenters as annoyingly vocal at Kirk Smeaton as they are in this community?”

“They are,” replied Mr. Nicholls. “Last week I was obliged to spend a full half-hour arguing with a gentleman about the merits of the true church, and defending compulsory church rates.”

“Where will it end?” exclaimed Mr. Grant, shaking his head. “Ladies: did you know they actually
considered
opening the universities to non-Anglicans?”

“Appalling!” said Mr. Nicholls.

“What earthly good would a university be to a Dissenter?” cried Mr. Grant. “Without a thorough knowledge of Greek and Latin, he wouldn’t survive two days!”

Every one laughed except me. All at once my appetite was gone. The chit-chat continued for an hour or more. Mr. and Mrs. Grant made no move to leave the room, and as it was still raining hard, there was no opportunity for Mr. Nicholls and me to walk outside, or to have a single moment in which to converse in private. At length I said my good-byes, no less conflicted in mind with regard to my feelings for Mr. Nicholls than I had been when I arrived. In my concern that our meeting should remain undiscovered, I allowed Mr. Nicholls to walk me only as far as the gate which led to the flagged field path heading back to Haworth.

“I fear I shall not have the opportunity to return for some months, as I just started in my new position,” explained Mr. Nicholls regretfully, his voice nearly drowned out by the loud drumming of the rain on our umbrellas.