Heathcliff's Tale (2 page)

‘He has been shown the door, this odious Mr Newby, has he not?' came the female voice, more strident now and, so it seemed to me, emanating from the upper floor of the simple dwelling. ‘Lock the door behind him, Tabby, for the love of God!
And come to help me—fetch the next bundle of papers—'

With a shove in the small of my back quite surprising from one so ill-endowed as this old housekeeper, I found myself propelled into the sitting-room. The door that shut behind me was an inner door, not the forbidding oak which would have closed against me if Tabby had obeyed her orders, yet this door, as I immediately ascertained, boasted a key of its own; and this I turned in the lock, much to the discomfiture of the old woman outside. ‘Mr Newby—don't fasten the door, sir—Miss Charlotte will be down directly. Warm yourself at the fire, Mr Newby, but unlock the door, I beg you!'

Tabby's cries, dear Uncle, were in vain. I may not have succeeded in my father's eyes, finding the law examinations most unworthy and unfair in their expectations, but I flatter myself that I am quick to grasp an opportunity when one arises. This opportunity, you must undoubtedly agree, saved a situation here which I have no doubt will prove of the greatest import to you. For, while expressing my grateful awareness that no kinsman of a Newby would relish their relative falling ill after a good soaking, I am also cognisant of the fact that there are hopes of a large sum of money to be made from this sought manuscript—though why and what it contains I knew nothing of whatsoever on my arrival at the Parsonage.

In the event, I wasted no time in surveying the cheerful room, taking care to warm myself as best I might as I did so. The chairs, I noted, were unlikely to conceal manuscripts or hidden papers, as their springs seemed broken, and the cretonne covers in which they had long been clad were too threadbare to hold a burgeoning bundle of any kind. A dog
basket, promising at first with its rumpled cushion and wickerwork surround, turned out to contain only a bone or two and a knitted garment, much chewed and spat on. As the room was now silent, Tabby having I suppose gone upstairs to confer with her mistress on the subject of the stranger locked in the sitting-room, I took advantage of the blaze from the lighted coals in the grate and knelt on the hearth a moment. And it was here, under a rug fashioned from rags and scraps of material, that I saw a hump, which I took at first for a bag of further ingredients for such rag rugs as ladies of uncertain means are taught to make. The bag, when pulled out onto the boards, turned out to be stuffed not with cotton or chintz, but with paper—with pages, in fact—and you will forgive me, dear Uncle, if I say that a shout of triumph, smothered, naturally, was succeeded by a groan on my observing that further pages smouldered just a few inches from my face, that is in the fire.

I am not known for courage in times such as this—but for the sake of the eminent publishing firm of Thomas Cautley Newby I acted with a daring and precision as astonishing to myself, dear Uncle, as it would have been to you. I stretched out my arm, picked up the tongs, and, despite the dreadful proximity of the hot coals, extracted the pages that flickered merrily there.

At this moment, the handle of the sitting-room door turned several times, impatiently, and a voice, a man's voice, gruff and irritable in the extreme, called out ‘Tabby! Is that you, Tabby, in there? Miss Charlotte shall have more tea, as she asks, I presume? And the potatoes are overdone again—Tabby, where the devil are you?'

The strangest fact to report here is the total silence and peace which descended on the Parsonage shortly after this outburst. I heard a woman, either Tabby or the ‘Miss Charlotte' from upstairs, come along the hall, and the door, which must have been the door to the kitchen, close behind her just as she spoke in a comforting tone to the man. I awaited the furious arrival of Tabby or Miss Charlotte. But no one came; the clock ticked; a dog scratched at the door once and then, snuffling, went away.

I cannot give an idea of the time I spent in solitary seclusion in the sitting-room at Haworth on that New Year's Eve. I am told that literary pursuits—reading, in short—can alter time and provide an illusion of hours or seconds passing, depending on the tale which proceeds to unfurl.

I had only the charred and singed pages just rescued from the well-blacked and polished grate, in my two hands. The bag with other fragments lay at my feet. And when I was at last disturbed I had not consumed as much as that domestic blaze had been about to do. But I cannot vouchsafe, dear Uncle, so rapt was my attention, the length of time I passed in the landscape described in those pages, in the sitting-room of Haworth Parsonage that night. I was plunged half-a-century back, and I read the account of Mr Lockwood on his visit to these parts as if he wrote solely for your loyal nephew, Henry Newby.

1802—I am just back from a visit to my former landlord at Wuthering Heights, Mr Heathcliff, and I am sorely distressed at the change in him since my visit in the autumn of last year. In September I saw a vigorous man, older and wiser perhaps than I had known him in those days of which Mrs Dean, the excellent housekeeper, tells to such chilling effect. Now, there would be no question of my lodging at The Heights, as I had hoped to do: my landlord is weak and unable to bear the presence of a stranger for more than an hour at a time. ‘You will find accommodation at Thrushcross Grange, Mr Lockwood', Mr Heathcliff informed me, and even in his deteriorated condition it was possible to detect a scornful glint in his eye as he spoke. ‘Nelly Dean is there. She will put you up and feed you with some amusing tales, I do not doubt, not least the account of the deaths of so many you must have felt you knew as your own family, Mr Lockwood, so garrulously did our housekeeper regale you with their exploits.'

I hung my head, not wishing to admit that an insatiable curiosity had indeed drawn me north once more to the bleak moorland and deep valleys of The Heights and Gimmerton Vale. Before I could look up, however, it
was clear that the sick man, propping himself further on his pillows, had decided to entertain me as Nelly Dean had once done: he had a tale to tell, and—uncharitable though my conclusions may have been—I could not refrain from reflecting that Mr Heathcliff had in all probability decided to make a last testament, finding it easier to confide in an outsider than to anyone closer to the wicked life he had led.

‘I saw young Miss Cathy', I put in, ‘and I was glad to note she was in excellent health. When I last found myself in these parts, she had the kindness to invite me to her marriage with—with your son—'

‘Linton is dead', said Heathcliff. As I could not help from noticing, colour crept into his cheeks as he spoke, and a sparkle in his eye suggested all was not yet finished with him. An awful thought even came to me that this man, considered mad, or a devil (for all that he owns The Heights and much of the surrounding countryside) might leap from his bed and take his fist to me if I had the folly of speaking in his presence. Accordingly I fell silent; and after a brief pause, my landlord—as I was to discover, Heathcliff was now also proprietor of Thrushcross Grange—continued with his speech.

‘Yes, Linton was as lily-livered—as feeble-minded also—as the family whose name he bore. Linton Heathcliff, indeed! The knave was all Linton, his mother to the core, a whining, complaining ninny pampered by the wretched Isabella with no thought for his coming manhood: a girl in breeches, a pompous, pretentious fool!'

‘But when did he die?' I dared to ask, for Heathcliff seemed now to have sunk into a black mood recognisable from my past visits to The Heights. ‘Miss Cathy—I mean to say, Mrs Heathcliff—must have been distressed in the extreme by so terrible a happening shortly after her marriage—'

‘Don't count on it!' Heathcliff replied with a chuckle. He reached for a cigar, lying on the table next to his bed, and lit it, this followed by much coughing and spluttering. ‘She's training up young Hareton, son of the late and unlamented Hindley Earnshaw, to be her next suitor. He has to learn to read first, before he can sign any marriage lines with the widow Catherine Heathcliff. But he makes progress, I am happy to announce'.

I decided to say as little as possible in reply to this. Heathcliff's motive for informing me of the coming marriage of young Cathy would doubtless be revealed and soon, for, as I remembered, no one liked to boast more than this man. He had come from nowhere, and no one knew so much as his name when old Joseph Earnshaw rescued a lost and abandoned child in the streets of Liverpool some thirty-seven years ago. Regarded by Edgar Linton, the gentle-natured squire of The Grange as little more than a ploughboy or stable lad—and with a touch of the Lascar, as Nelly's employer Mr Linton had sometimes liked to add—Heathcliff had now made a considerable fortune. His mortgaging of The Heights to old Joseph Earnshaw's son Hindley, had been little short of a stroke of genius, for the drunken gambler soon lost all he possessed to his former servant and foster-brother. That Heathcliff encouraged the union of Hindley's son to young Cathy, must promise something beneficial to Heathcliff, ill and resigned to his coming end though he might be.

‘So your daughter-in-law Cathy—' I said, and stopped on seeing a look that was more pain and anger cross his features. He could be handsome still, I saw, when the sun came in on his dark eyes and features—and I wondered, for a mad moment, whether he suffered from a passion for his daughter-in-law Cathy, daughter of the love of his life, the long-dead Catherine Earnshaw.

‘If you wonder why young Cathy stays here with me at The Heights following the death of the milksop who
was her husband, then I must inform you that there is a good reason why she is here, even though she still considers The Grange to be her home: indeed, she prays often to return there'.

‘But—'

‘Edgar Linton, Cathy's father is also dead', Heathcliff said. He smiled fully into my face as he spoke and the cigar, now extinguished for lack of interest by its owner, rolled from the battered table top onto the floor. ‘Can you imagine that I mourn him, Mr Lockwood? No, I do not—and I daresay it was due to my own actions that Mr Linton died. When he lay ill in bed and The Grange had neither Nelly nor footmen indoors or out—I took advantage of the opportunity to hasten poor Mr Edgar's departure from this world'.

‘What do you mean?' I in turn could not resist interrupting him. Heathcliff, now leaning into the room and therefore approaching me too near for my own inclination, had, I saw, altered his smile to something more like a grin. I began to wish myself miles away, beyond Gimmerton and out in the freshness of a landscape which did not contain my host or any member of the Linton or Earnshaw tribes. I wondered, indeed, if I had been right to break off my tranquil visit to the Lakes with this incursion into a demonic mind.

‘I told Mr Edgar Linton', Heathcliff said, and having seen me glance round the room like one trapped by fire or some other natural disaster, he went so far as to grab hold of my wrist and hold it down tight on the table top. ‘I told the man whom my love, my life, my unforgettable and dead darling, Cathy, had in her youthful folly married in my absence—and I revenged myself, too late—alas! too late—I told the weak-kneed idiot Edgar that I had visited his house many times on my return from America—'

‘Yes, Mr Heathcliff', I said, and tried as politely as possible to remove my hand from the prison of his hot grasp. ‘I believe Nelly told anyone who wished to hear that her employer Mrs Linton, Cathy, had shown great pleasure and excitement when you announced yourself at The Grange and paid a call on Mrs Linton and her husband. You reminded Mr Edgar of this as he lay ill in bed, perhaps?' I added, privately thinking that if this was the case it had been a cruel thing to do. Heathcliff sprang to his feet. He seemed to have restored his spirits since beginning to talk of Cathy, HIS Cathy, as it were, and I no longer saw him as a failing man.

‘No, you dolt', came the reply, in a voice that was quiet, angry and amused at the same time. ‘I informed my dead Cathy's husband that I had taken possession of his wife, that I had made love to the woman who had been mine, body and soul, since we were children. This had been the purpose of my visits to The Grange. Now what do you think of that, Mr Lockwood?'

The manuscript continued with the single word ‘Heathcliff'. Below is his account—so I took it to be his dismissal by his childhood sweetheart Cathy, and his flight from home, followed by the adventures related to Mr Lockwood
.

‘I heard the words at the door and I ran. It was a dark night and the moor had opened up in treacherous bogs and ponds, impossible to see or avoid. It had closed hard against me too, with outcrops of rock sharp as knives now the recent rains had flattened their mossy covering.

‘I ran, at first without direction, tracking like an animal in what I gauged was the way to Peniston Crag. But I knew I ran in circles, when the mountain, revealing itself to me through gaps in the racing black cloud, loomed high above me twice. I was lost, and I had lost more than my knowledge of the moor at The Heights, that night. I feared—I knew only fear, as I remember: all other emotion had gone—I feared more than the prospect of my own death in one of those bottomless pits of black water, that my feet would lead me back to the house I had just left forever. The house where I had been brought as a child; where I had learned to speak and then to love. I could not go back there, yet my feet seemed to pull me towards a glimmer of light, no more than a marsh-glow, as I knew, a glimmer which could be the lantern at the door where Nelly stood over the stove, looking out for me from the kitchen.

‘The tree at the Gimmerton crossroads came at me like a friend and an enemy together. Here, we had kissed, Cathy and I—here, still, on nights when the moon relented and left its cloudy caverns to shine on those who walked the rough road to Gimmerton, she and I met again and I clasped a ghost while crying aloud in my desire to join her in the grave. Then the wind would blow across the moor and she would vanish in my arms, no more than a wraith, a figment of my fevered imagination. Here, men had been hung, and had died, for the tree was as much a gallows as a trysting-place. And here, as I ran from the fresh attack of freezing rain that came now from the west, was my refuge, at last. I knew where I was; and I knew where I had to go.