Heathcliff's Tale (7 page)

And so I went on, as young Newby stared up at me as if I gave sustenance simply by filling him in on the people who had acted as invisible hosts when he paid his call at his uncle's behest to Haworth Parsonage. I told him about the saintly woman lost by the daughters to the family disease of consumption; of the cruel school which had claimed the lives of the two eldest girls, and how Patrick Brontë had kept Charlotte and Anne and Emily at home to be educated after that, with his wife's sister Miss Branwell in attendance.

‘Branwell?' said Henry Newby, and he sat up with a jerk in his bed, so his head hit the ceiling of the wooden box bed. ‘Did she speak in a high-pitched voice—did
she care for a girl who died in the upper room at the Parsonage?'

‘No, Master Henry', I replied—for I saw now that there had been events of the night before that were of an unusual nature, and I knew it was best, if the truth was to be extracted, with those who think themselves gentry at least, to take on the voice and manner of an old nurse or retainer. ‘Aunt Branwell, as they all called her, was impartial in her care for the remaining children. Master Branwell—that was the name of the only son—well, she found it hard to like him, I'll confess. And Miss Emily after that, who had as stubborn a nature and as wild a temper as you could find', I went on, wondering what type of visitation my poor visitor had suffered. ‘Especially after Miss Charlotte and Miss Anne went away to teach, that was a hard time for Miss Branwell. You'd think, with only two young ones in the house—Master Branwell and Emily, that is—that her work would be reduced. But they were up to any crazy scheme you could imagine, Mr Newby. Old Mr Brontë knew nothing of their deceivings and exploits. One day they'd be out on the moor dressed as pirates—if you can call a few old rags a true disguise—the next, Emily would have pulled one of her mother's dresses from the press on the landing and be dressed for a ball, or so she thought it, calling herself a Countess and having her hand kissed and bowed over by young Branwell. It wasn't good then, Master Henry, and no one could speak to the Reverend Brontë about it because he was off in his own imaginings, with God I daresay, though it seemed altogether stranger than that.'

A silence fell, as my guest digested some of the complexities of the family. ‘So who was Mr Ellis Bell?' he asked at last, as I heard the men down below spooning in their meal, and the dog barking beyond the pantry door to be let in. ‘Was he a lodger at the house?'

I'd been expecting the question so I answered with all I truly knew, unsatisfying though it must have seemed to the young man. ‘The three sisters used the same name of Bell for their writings', I said. ‘Miss Charlotte—that was the one you informed me earlier you'd heard speak in a loud voice on the stairs—she was the eldest and she didn't mind that they knew she was a Mr Currer Bell, though I cannot see for the life of me what good it did her to be laughed at by the county. Miss Anne didn't mind either, when the news came out. But Miss Emily—the youngest—she wanted it kept a secret, that she was Ellis Bell. Right up to the day of her death, just two weeks ago, she wanted it to be kept quiet. That'll be the reason your uncle sent you to Mr Bell, sir.'

‘I see', said the young man, though just at that moment he saw nothing at all, having fallen back on his bunk, and the curtain falling closed beside him.

‘Master Branwell died just three months before his sister', I went on, though I doubted whether my visitor needed any more information on the subject of the Brontë family. ‘Ever since the day the moor went up—back when they were very young—they were close. She pulled him out of the bog—it was like lava, pouring down the side of the hill, and I well remember it all even now.'

There was silence from the interior of the bed. I had sent Mr Newby to sleep, so I supposed, by recounting the sad lives of those sisters in this remote place. But, as I went to pull the curtain aside, a pale hand shot out to grasp mine.

‘You have neglected one person in your account, Mrs Woodhouse', came a low, urgent voice from within. ‘What became of Heathcliff? I do not hear of his life or fortunes from you, madam. Is he alive but forgotten by all of you? Is that the reason for your refusal to speak of him?'

We would have liked to have had the satisfaction, here, of informing hapless readers of these ‘statements', ‘depositions', ‘fragments' and the like, that Henry Newby's visit to Mrs Woodhouse was a fiction, possibly his first foray in the world of creative writing. Mrs Woodhouse did not exist: the budding author's imagination took over, and in his desire to portray a woman's voice and view of himself, he ran riot amongst the real inhabitants of Haworth and the fictional characters
of Wuthering Heights.

This, unfortunately, can be seen not to be the case. Parish records show J. Woodhouse and his wife Cecily to have been in residence at the farmhouse on the fringes of the village in the year 1849, although Mrs Woodhouse was that year removed from the parish register. We may conclude that Henry Newby was unable to resist taking the real name of the woman whose farmhouse he visited and then, in his eagerness to revisit the novel which by now seemed so much more real to him than the mundane existence he found there, gave her as kinswoman the famous Nelly Dean
.

The above led us, with the assistance of the University of York, to search for an Ellen Dean in the vicinity. Had Emily Brontë perhaps taken her moorland Scheherezade from real life? Enquiries have so far produced no answers
.

It is difficult to set down—even to recall correctly—the succession of events following the speech of the shepherd's wife on that bleak New Year's morning of 1849. There was a scuffling downstairs, followed by the dog's name bellowed out by a man as bad-tempered as might be expected after suffering a snowstorm on the hill and very probably the death of three or four of his ewes. ‘Heathcliff!' the husband—as I took him to be—of my informant shouted out a few more times, the word jarring in my ears along with my own plaintive request of the good woman that she tell me the story of the man I now pitied and loved and would never scorn, for all the evil deeds laid to his name. ‘Heathcliff!' shouted the farmer—and I heard the door bang out at the back and three or four others set off, whistling in long, shrill bursts to the collie, to go seek in deep drifts those members of the flock lost since the last ravages of the storm.

I decided to wait no longer. Mrs Woodhouse, as I was to discover was her name, had run from the room and down the stairs, and a fine to and fro started up, succeeded by the clatter of a spoon against a pot and a chair scraping across the flags, this joined by another.

I crept from the box bed where I had lain hidden and made my way onto the sloping roof above the pantry, by way of a small window rimed with snow and frost but surprisingly amenable to my thumbnail and a strong tug when it came to be needed. I slipped and slithered down to the ground, dislodging parcels of snow as I went. I was able to observe, once on the ground, that the men were a good hundred yards off, climbing the hill with their heads bent as they searched the terrain. The dog ran ahead of the men, stopping once to paw the snowy hillocks and whimper, when they had got nearly to the cairn at the summit of the hill.

I eased myself round the side of the house. However tempted I might be to enter by the back door, I resisted the urge. In any case, I felt no interest in looking through the kitchen window, at the farmer and his wife at their marital breakfast—though I did quickly glance in—for it was the very positioning of back door, pantry, and small stable there which drew my care and thought. Was it not in an arrangement of buildings like these—and with moor and hill looming beyond—that my hero Heathcliff heard the death-dealing words of loss of love from Cathy? Did she not proclaim to the old housekeeper, Mrs Dean, that she would never marry a stable lad such as Heathcliff, and find herself looked down on by the world?

The old shepherd indoors must have had sufficient of his breakfast, for he came out the back and stood puffing at his pipe as the last stars faded from the sky and the false dawn was succeeded by a stronger light of day. He was old, I saw, as I slunk away to the side of what appeared to be a wash-house, my footsteps muffled by the freshly fallen snow. This ancient keeper of the flock could never have walked back up the hill, in search of missing sheep. I wondered for a moment at his wife being so much younger—then I ran, for suddenly I was exposed, once the wash-house eaves ended and my cover
was gone. I ran I had no idea where—down towards Haworth as I hoped and prayed, drawn by the idea of transport, comfort or advice as to a way out of the place. But truly I had no notion, now, of where the village with its steep cobbled street might lie.

A solitary man trudged along a track where snow had been shovelled to one side, leaving a path no wider than would allow a single file progression along it. Already a further fall needed no predicting, as the sky had turned heavy and dark; and even as I went, keeping at a discreet distance behind the walker, a whirl of snowflakes began to descend on the landscape, obliterating the bank made by a previous digger and adding to the uniform whiteness.

All the same, I walked on. The man before me appeared undeterred by the conditions—or was, perhaps, so familiar with the region that he could pay little attention to the weather. I was glad of his presence there, I confess. No lights showed anywhere; I might have been following him into the wilderness; but I was uncommonly glad not to find myself alone.

After a while, as I kept pace with the steady rhythm of my guide, a faint glow did appear on the horizon. But, unsure as to whether this was a delusion, like those said to be undergone in the desert by explorers lost and desperate for the sight of an oasis, I quenched the hope that rose in my breast and trudged on. It was this new resolve—or perhaps only the limitation of an apparently sightless man leading the way was the cause—but suddenly I found myself brought up against him. I felt my legs slide beneath me, as I tried to curb my steady and not inconsiderable speed. In short, I ran right into the back of the stranger; and, not surprisingly, he halted also and swivelled round to inspect what manner of attack he was about to undergo.

It is as difficult here to describe my sensations on seeing the unknown walker's face as it would be to set down an accurate account of leaving this life and of going to meet the denizens beyond the gates of Hell. For the character who turned and looked down at me was handsome—he was devilishly handsome, I expect some would say, yet every feature and lineament was marked—or so it seemed to me—by a profound sadness. Who was this lachrymose fiend?—for soon I saw I was right, and that he wept: tears flowed down his rugged cheeks which could not have been caused by an icy wind or a fresh fall of snow. How had he sinned?—and for what crime, if this was the case, did he repent? Or had he, as it came to me in slow degrees of horror, simply lost his heart's desire, the love of his life? Did he survive only to regret each passing day on earth? Did he exist solely to be reunited with his passion in the grave?

So I speculated, and before long there was not one trace of doubt in me that I had walked behind none other than Heathcliff. He it was who led me to the place where he had run free with his childhood sweetheart, and where he must live on in bitterness as she indulges her desire for calm and comfort with another. This man who cried so copiously, thinking himself far from prying eyes, was the man his Cathy had refused when talking to the housekeeper by the kitchen door up at The Heights. And it was to this house that I knew he must now lead me.

‘Who are you?' The stranger's voice was low and gentle: I would not have imagined it to issue from such a one as Heathcliff. ‘And'—for he saw by now that I had no evil intentions towards him—‘you must be lost, sir. Where are you from? Where do you go?'

As he spoke, the good man—more of a saint now than a devil, I had to admit, but still as handsome as when I had first seen him, propelled me gently down a slope to the side of the now-invisible road. A light gleamed in the
near-night to which this New Year's Day had, due to the gathering snow-clouds, sourly turned. My feet, I realised, as this kind stranger placed his hand on my back to guide me further in the direction of a huddle of buildings, were devoid of sensation. I shall never forget the gratitude I felt at that time, for the appearance of the man I saw as Heathcliff: he had known, somehow, of my sympathy for his sad fate, so I considered, and he had come to me like a shepherd who, after days searching in the blind whiteness of the snow, catches sight of a member of his missing flock.

That this had indeed been pure conjecture came both as a sorrow and a relief to me. The stranger, as soon as he crossed the threshold of a hostelry dimly proclaiming itself as the Black Bull on a battered sign which swung alongside a lantern, was greeted with familiarity and respect. It was soon clear that my Heathcliff's name was John Brown; references were made to recent work in the churchyard at Haworth, the chiselling of inscriptions and so on, which convinced me he must be sexton of the parish; and very soon, when I was seated in the ‘snug' by a roaring fire and sipping a glass of hot brandy, I had forgotten my insistence on labelling my saviour by the name of a man I had never encountered. This had been due to hearing the dog up at the farm called for by this name, I concluded. But I was curious, I confess, to discover from the agreeable Mr Brown just what the connection could be between the man whose confession I had read just one long night ago at the Parsonage and the people hereabouts. Was Heathcliff, like Mr Bony, the Napoleon of popular nightmare, a bogeyman for the district? Where did he reside now, if still living? All this I determined to ask the good sexton when he returned from his conversation at a table with friends and companions and resumed the seat next to me, on the wooden bench by the fire.