The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte by James Tully Page B

writes that she was very much of the opinion that all would be well if only Mr Nicholls could be urged, or forced, to marry Miss Emily and thus give her the will to live.
    Miss Anne did not think, from what Miss Emily had told her, that Mr Nicholls could be coaxed, and she admits that she knew that she was not the one to talk to him to try to force his hand. Seemingly she had tried to steel herself to speak to him, but it did not work. That does not surprise me at all, because we all knew that she was not very good at that kind of thing.
    It would seem that she worried over the business for weeks, and all the time Miss Emily was becoming weaker before her eyes. In the end she could bear it no longer and made up her mind that there was nothing else for it but to tell Miss Charlotte. She did not want to do so, and she knew that it was the very last thing that Miss Emily would have wished, but she could think of nothing else. There would have been no holding her father had she gone to him and told him that Miss Emily was with child by Mr Nicholls, and so it was to her elder sister that she went and told the whole of what Miss Emily had told her.
    To my mind, in the normal way of things Miss Charlotte would have been the best person to deal with the matter. The trouble was that very little was normal in that family, but nevertheless out it all poured.
    Miss Anne told of how Mr Nicholls had done away with Master Branwell, and that Miss Emily knew of it, and of how Mr Nicholls and Miss Emily had become lovers, and now she fancied that she was expecting but Mr Nicholls would not marry her.
    I can just see Miss Charlotte’s face as she listened, almost without believing, to what Miss Anne had to say. Quiet, shy Miss Emily carrying on with their father’s assistant, and under her very nose at that! So
that
was who she had been seen with up on the moors, and then it would have come to her why Mr Nicholls had never made any more advances to
her
. He himself told me, much, much later, that, years on, Miss Charlotte had admitted to him that after she had got over the man in Belgium she would have been very pleased to have had an approach from him. Indeed, as he had noticed, she had made her feelings clear, albeit in a careful way, but he had made no move because by then his eyes were firmly on Miss Emily.
    Time and time again I have wondered whether Miss Emily really
was
with child, or whether it was simply that what had ailed her at first had upset her monthly showing – as has sometimes happened with me. We shall never know now but, as Miss Anne wrote, Miss Charlotte did not care either way. The mere notion that her sister thought that she
might
be was enough to show her how far things had gone between them, and she was
so
angry with them both. Knowing that Master Branwell had been done to death seems not to have bothered her at all – indeed she burst out to Miss Anne that she was
glad
he was dead. All that seemed to have been on her mind was what in the world could be done about the present mess.
    Miss Anne tells us that she was quite taken aback to see that Miss Charlotte, who was usually so level-headed at such times, seemed to find it hard to think straight. I can but hazard a guess about how she felt, but knowing her as well as I came to, I feel sure that her main feeling was one of jealousy.
    As far as I know, she had had nothing to do with a man in that way ever since she came back from Belgium. I recall Miss Emily telling me that she often heard Miss Charlotte tossing and turning in her bed, and now I can understand why. Mr Nicholls is a man who attracts the attentions of women, and her thoughts of him, so near yet seemingly not noticing her, must have cost her many a sleepless night, and now she knew that, all that time, her sister had been enjoying the love that
she
needed so badly. Now Miss Anne was expecting her to help bring about their marriage – she would have seen them both dead first!
    No, Miss