Free The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte by James Tully Page B

did not pay my wages, yet I was expected to seek leave of them before I did anything for their poor brother, who was only a year younger than her and older than the other two.
    It was then that my real hatred of her was born, and I vowed to myself that one day I would get my own back.
    My other memory is about the penny change that I had after getting the Gin. The next time I saw Father he asked me if all had gone well with the Gin, and then for the penny. I told him of what had befallen me with Miss Charlotte – which did not please him one whit – but try as I would I could not remember what I had done with the penny, and I could not find it. I looked everywhere, but it never did come to light and I do not know to this day whether or not Father believed that I really had lost it and not spent it, although I have always hoped that he did. On my next pay-day, I offered him a penny out of the little that by then I was allowed to keep, but he would not take it.
    As it happened, Master Branwell never did ask me to run any more errands, which was probably just as well for I had made up my mind that if he did I would, and to the Devil with Miss Do-As-I-Say. In fact, he hardly seemed to speak to anyone in the Parsonage, but just got worse. One day I peeped at a half-finished letter which Miss Charlotte was writing to her friend Miss Nussey. She had written that Master Branwell was ‘the same in conduct as ever; his constitution seems shattered’, and that just about summed it up. All he seemed to do was drink whatever came to hand, and Father told Mother that he placed no limit upon who he would try to beg money from – but usually without much luck.
    In the end, although he had gone farther and farther afield for his drinking, he could get no credit at public houses, and Father said that even his best friends tended to avoid him when he was at his worst. I heard him ranting to Miss Emily that their father now gave him hardly anything, but I did not know how hard pressed he had become until much later, when Mr Nicholls trusted me fully and felt able to tell me most things.
    It would seem that he just did not know which way to turn for a penny, because even the money that he was expecting from Dr Crosby was already promised to Mrs Sugden and Mr Nicholson. It must have seemed to him that his only hope lay in Mr Nicholls, for it was to him that he turned, but in a manner that was far more ugly than before.
    Had he but known it – or perhaps he did – he could hardly have chosen a better time to up his demands, for by then Miss Emily and Mr Nicholls had become lovers in the fullest way.
    Looking back, I see now how different Miss Emily became at about that time, and it is apparent to me that her first going with a man had been a wonderful happening for her, and one that changed her life. Mr Nicholls has told me that there was nothing she would not do for him after that first time together, and he took great advantage of that. Yet again he forbade her to mention their relationship to anyone, especially her sisters, and that would seem to have been another reason for her strange silence that folk noticed. She did not even go to London with her sisters when, in the Summer of 1848, they went to see Miss Charlotte’s publisher. I had often wondered why she did not go, for
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would have leaped at the chance, but Mr Nicholls has told me that he was against it because he thought that a constant watch should be kept upon Master Branwell.
    Knowing much more now of Mr Nicholls’ true nature, I am able to see how trapped and angry he must have felt after Master Branwell had been to see him with his threats, and he has told me that he was not only angry with Master Branwell but with himself for being so foolish as to let matters come to such a pass.
    According to him, his dalliance with Miss Emily had gone much further than he had really wanted it to, and things had been made much more difficult by the writing