Nelly could not think where Fanny and Maria had got to and here was Mr. Dickens, come all the way from London, and needing conversation.
“Shall I ring for some tea, Mr. Dickens? It’s almost eleven. I’m sure my sisters will be here any moment,” she said, trying gamely to play the role of the gracious hostess in the unprepossessing surroundings of the boarding house’s front parlour. They had only arrived the day before yesterday and she was not at all sure that either the landlady or her maid of all work would respond to a bell, although there was a small brass one sitting on the mantel.
“There is no hurry, child. No great hurry. I suggested to your mother we might all drive into the country for a picnic lunch.”
“That would be lovely. Such a beautiful day,” she said, not indicating that her mother had already told her of this plan before she had hurried back to the theatre to see if the manager and, more importantly, his helpful wife might not join them and so provide a second chaperone for the girls. The previous evening, the manager had been effusively grateful when he had been introduced to the writer after the curtain, so the couple seemed likely to agree. Nelly already had her bonnet and gloves at the ready on the hall table.
“Oh, quite beautiful. Indeed.” Mr. Dickens leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. She smiled back and pondered what to say next; this was just the sort of situation in which she relied on her older sisters to take the lead; Fanny was always so clever and Maria had got on famously with Mr. Dickens when they were performing his new play together in Manchester, and had clearly impressed him. Indeed, Nelly secretly suspected it was largely thanks to Maria’s captivating talents that the great man had bothered to stop in Doncaster to watch them all perform at the Theatre Royal on his way south from a walking holiday in Cumbria.
For her own part, she had thoroughly enjoyed the performances in Manchester the previous month and found Mr. Dickens easy enough to talk to when there was theatre business to be done, the discussions of blocking and voice and lighting and costumes that she had known all of her life. Indeed, the whole experience had been joyful and friendly; she had only a minor role in the main event but did appear in the little farce that closed the evening in which Mr. Dickens himself played an old man ridiculously in love with his young ward. Nelly played the ward and found her co-star not the least bit grand, despite his fame; there was much chatting and easy laughter during rehearsals and after the performance. Now, however, that he appeared not as a colleague with work at hand but as a gentleman paying a courtesy call, she felt much less sure of herself.
“I hope you enjoyed last night’s performance,” she tried again.
He laughed.
“I enjoyed your performance.”
“Oh, but Maria is really far more gifted than I. Her singing was so lovely; I do envy her her voice,” Nelly said, trying to stick with the topic that she supposed interested him the most.
“Your sister is a remarkable performer, but I don’t think you need envy her in any regard,” he replied.
He sat there, saying nothing, smiling benignly at her. The silence lengthened, but it did not seem to bother him for he just kept smiling. Nelly was thinking hard about what to say next when her mother came into the room. “Oh, there you are,” Mrs. Ternan said to Nelly with some annoyance. “I thought you had gone with your sisters.” She then remembered herself. “Mr. Dickens. How do you do. So kind of you…”
“I didn’t know where they were, Mother,” Nelly replied over top of Mrs. Ternan’s belated niceties.
“It’s my fault, Mrs. Ternan,” Mr. Dickens said, advancing to take her hand. “I sent her sisters off to the High Street to fetch us a picnic before Miss Ellen had appeared. You must forgive me; in my eagerness to depart on our excursion, I decided we should not waste any time.”
Nelly felt caught out and wondered why he hadn’t told her Fanny and Maria were off shopping but supposed she hadn’t actually asked him.
“Well, no harm done,” said Mrs. Ternan, reclaiming her composure. “Mr. and Mrs. Eliot have agreed to accompany us.”
“Have they? How kind of them,” Mr. Dickens replied.
“Very kind. Mr. Eliot knows the environs well and has suggested the best route to be taken to reach Conisbrough Castle.”
“He will prove invaluable then. What a good thing that I have rented two carriages.”
After some discussion, it was agreed that Mrs. Eliot would join Mr. Dickens, Nelly and Maria in one barouche while Mrs. Ternan and Fanny would sit with Mr. Eliot in the other. Nelly felt badly for Fanny that she was not to share the honour of the famous writer’s company at such close quarters as her younger sisters, but she supposed her mother, who had been sent into a flurry of calculations and preparations by the suggestion of a drive into the country, was right and that it would not have been proper for the three girls to ride unaccompanied with Mr. Dickens. It was an impression confirmed when Mr. Eliot winked broadly at Mr. Dickens as he helped his wife up, saying, “You’re a lucky devil, Dickens.” At first, she thought he was jokingly boasting about the company of his own wife whose arm he was holding as he said these words, but then, to her shame, Nelly saw him nod knowingly in her own direction.
It was not that such a disagreeable remark shocked her; the theatres were filled with gentlemen who presumed and her mother was filled with useful advice about how best to deflect their little remarks or their unwelcome glances, but it did surprise her in Mr. Eliot, who had seemed so deferential to Mr. Dickens the previous evening. Now he all but elbowed him in the ribs as though the two men were old friends out on the town. Mrs. Eliot laughed raucously. Nelly blushed for them both, but as their carriage moved forward, Mr. Dickens talked so amiably about the Yorkshire countryside and so knowledgeably about the history of the ruined castle they were about to visit that the awkward moment quickly passed.
Two hours later, she found herself edging her way up the narrow spiral staircase of the castle’s keep, glad she had worn stout shoes for the outing. Sir Walter Scott had set some of the action of Ivanhoe at Conisbrough and Mr. Dickens was delighted by the literary connection. After they had picnicked on the grounds beneath the castle with its huge cylindrical keep looming over them, Mr. Dickens had led the party up the earthworks that would have once formed the castle’s moat and into the ruins proper, recreating for them as they walked the miraculous appearance of Aethelstane of “Coningsburgh” at his own funeral. Mr. Dickens fairly pranced about from crumbling wall to ruined tower, calling on them to imagine what the place must have looked like in the twelfth century, its mighty portcullis opening to receive the funeral procession of solemn knights and weeping ladies who believed the heir to the Saxon throne had died in battle.
However, once they arrived at the entrance to the keep and looked inside, their eyes adjusting to an interior lit only by the occasional shaft of sunlight coming through narrow slits in its walls, the party was divided.
“I am not going up that,” Mrs. Eliot declared frankly as she peered disapprovingly at the steep staircase of worn steps and missing stones.
“Looks unsafe,” agreed her husband.
“But just imagine the view if you did manage it,” Mr. Dickens encouraged.
In the end, Mrs. Ternan reluctantly agreed that she and the Eliots would stay below while Mr. Dickens accompanied Nelly and her sisters, who were all eager to try the stairs. So, they departed with a reassuring promise they would turn back if it became dangerous.
They climbed a piece, what felt like a storey if not two, but it was hard to tell on the narrow spiral and the going was slow. They picked their way gingerly up each step with Mr. Dickens taking the lead, urging them on and warning the sisters of any rough footing ahead. Eventually, they emerged in a large chamber with the remains of a huge stone hearth, which he knowingly declared to have been the great hall. Peering out its few narrow windows, they could catch tantalizing glimpses of the surrounding countryside, but when they approached the next flight of stairs hoping to go higher for yet better views, they found the first steps had entirely crumbled away. Mr. Dickens nimbly scrambled up the remains, all but hoisting himself up the tight walls of the staircase to reach a step that was intact. From there he peered up and around, promising, “It gets better from here. I can give you each a hand up.”
Maria demurred and hung back while Nelly stepped forward. In the middle of the three, Fanny put out a hand to restrain her younger sister but by the time she did so, Nelly had caught Mr. Dickens’ hand and, despite her long skirt, vaulted herself up to where he stood.
“Nelly…” Fanny protested, but Mr. Dickens overrode her, saying, “Nothing to fear; we will just see how far we can climb. We’ll stop if there are any more gaps.” And with that Nelly and Mr. Dickens disappeared from sight.
They could not, it turned out, go far; within another turn of the staircase, they found its roof had fallen in and they were facing an insurmountable wall of rubble. They turned and picked their way back into the room where Maria and Fanny were waiting, eager to get out of the cold castle and back downstairs into the September sunshine.
As her sisters pushed on, Mr. Dickens, so bold in climbing up the stairs, now hung back, taking the steps very slowly and continually turning back to Nelly, who was following him, to offer his hand.
“Careful,” he said. “Down is always more tricky than up.”
Soon, Fanny and Maria were out of sight around the next turn and Mr. Dickens stopped altogether. He just stood there for a moment, then he took a big breath and turned back to her.
“Nelly,” he said emphatically, as though reassuring himself he had got the name right. “…I hope I may call you Nelly.”
“Of course, Mr. Dickens.”
“And you must call me Charles.”
“I couldn’t possibly, Mr. Dickens.”
“Why not?”
“It would not be right.”
“Pray, what could possibly be wrong if I have invited you to call me thus?” He sounded a trifle put out and Nelly hurried to explain her thoughts, although she found it odd to be having such a conversation in the confines of the castle’s crumbling staircase. “You are too great a man for me to take such a liberty, Mr. Dickens. It would be too familiar of me.”
“Nonsense. I want you to think of me as a friend, some intimate with whom you may dispense with unnecessary formalities.”
Nelly found her heart beating a little faster at the notion that such a man as this should take such a friendly tone with her and thought hard how to respond correctly: “I would be honoured to consider you thus,” she said. “My sisters and mother and I are a small family—I think you know my father died when I was just a girl—and your friendship would be a most welcome addition to our little circle.”
Mr. Dickens, for that is how she would continue to think of him for some time, looked slightly discomfited by that.
“I am so glad…” he said.
“I am sorry, I have been hasty in my enthusiasms. I did not wish to burden your friendship with my family with undue expectations.”
“No, no. Not at all, Nelly. It’s just I had hoped…well, I am still a young man. This may sound odd to you, but inside I feel I am but a boy.”
In the gloom of the staircase, she looked at him in puzzlement: it was hard for her to see any boy in a man of his achievement and wealth, a writer known throughout the Empire, a father and husband who lived in some palace in London that could house his wife, his sister-in-law, his many children and all the servants it must take to care for such a ménage. Such a personage seemed very far removed from both her meagre theatrical engagements and her youth. “A boy?” she repeated.
“A boy.” He looked at her fondly, and reaching up to her on the step behind him, he took her hand in his. “Your boy,” he said and leant toward her, craning his neck upwards to get his mouth level with hers.
Her dawning horror must have shown plainly in her face for, before his lips reached any closer to hers, he stopped and recoiled with an expression of pain as shocked and pure as if she had just bit his hand.
To make matters worse, someone was coming. They could hear heavy breathing and the rustle of skirts from below, and Mrs. Ternan’s head now appeared in view as she struggled her way up the stairs. Evidentially she was not best pleased with how far behind her sisters Nelly had fallen. As she saw the pair above her, she stopped only long enough to catch her breath before saying pointedly, “I hope there is no misunderstanding, Mr. Dickens.”
“None at all. None at all,” he said as he turned from Nelly to resume his descent, but his face remained dark.
On the way home, Fanny took her turn sitting with Mrs. Eliot and Mr. Dickens while Nelly and Maria rode back to town with her mother and Mr. Eliot in silence. By the time they reached their lodgings, it was the hour to change and get ready for their evening’s performances, for they still had several nights to run in their Doncaster engagement. At their door, Mrs. Ternan, as if to compensate for any lack of civility shown by their earlier encounter, thanked Mr. Dickens most warmly for his generosity in planning their outing and, not wishing to presume he would be attending the theatre again that night, asked whether he would be staying in Doncaster much longer before he returned to London.
“Not long,” he replied. “I’m for the overnight train.”