Heathcliff's Tale (6 page)

For all that, no one stirred. The door into the kitchen was open, and a lack of bustle, augmented by a chill such as I had seldom experienced in a house where access to the outside is barred by a stout oak door and windows are well covered with curtains of a heavy velvet, worn with age but excluding draughts with much the same determination as when, one must suppose, the Reverend Brontë had come to take up his living there some thirty years before, came out into the hall to greet me. It was evident that the stove was unlit; and had been so all night, causing the glacial temperature which prevailed throughout the building. It was evident, also, that no
human being could have sustained such a cold, all night through. The only hope, as one might term it, for the survival of any member of the family or staff at Haworth, lay in the study, the door of which was firmly closed. I had, as may be imagined, no desire to try the handle: I knew the key was on the inside; and furthermore, I had absolutely no wish to find my host, the good parson of this small community, in the process of warming himself at a blaze kindled with more of the precious papers which made up the account I now read. What if the further exploits of Mr Heathcliff, an evil man perhaps, but one as blisteringly honest as any mortal born in this age of sin could ever show himself to be, were at that very moment affording solace to the Rector of Haworth as he snoozed before the flames? It was too horrible to think of. I would then never know what became of this benighted soul—or whether his great passion—to be blunt, as I must learn to be, for I know now that my vocation is as a writer, not a servant of the law—was ever consummated. Did Mr Brontë, to follow the metaphor (if this is indeed what it may be) warm his toes in the embers of Heathcliff's undying love?

I did not go into the study. I had a good number of pages still in the bag I had slid from under the rag rug earlier and must pray to God that Tabby had chosen one of Mr Brontë's sermons, rather than the confessions of this surely justified sinner, to light the study fire. But where was Tabby? Where was the ‘Miss Charlotte' I had heard speaking the evening before? Was I left alone, in this unearthly coldness, with a holy man and the shadow of last night's companion, a nightmare or a ghost? And if so, was the gaunt vicar of New Year's Eve as much a phantasm as the rest?

Thoughts such as these drove me to the front door; and once I had stepped out into the crisp air of a January day I regretted my folly and excitability at the notions I
had entertained when under the roof of Haworth Parsonage. I had come already apprehensive at my Uncle's displeasure if I should fail, to seek a manuscript by an author, and had mistaken the address—that was all. No Mr Ellis Bell resided now—or had ever resided—at the Parsonage. I had instead stumbled on an eccentric family, whose members included the devilish Mr Heathcliff, and I had come on his memoir. That it had alarmed me—had, even, changed my way of observing life—could not be denied. But otherwise my nerves alone accounted for the supposition that a dead woman had lain beside me last night. It had been no more than a twisted sheet on a damp bed. Faulty plumbing accounted for the high-pitched tones of what I had thought to be a supernatural visitor beyond the door. The truth was now clear to me—I had been drawn too deeply into a world never before glimpsed or heard—to understand the effect wrought on me. It was little wonder, I could not refrain all the same from concluding that all traces of the ungodly were swept under the carpet, here; and I felt shame—if, also a measure of excitement—at having read the life story of one the parson's family can no longer, for reasons of respectability and virtue, claim as kin.

The pages presented here comprise the cache found at auction recently, the surprise in the whole endeavour consisting of the finding of a further bundle of papers tucked into the packet containing Mr Newby's deposition, as well as the confession—so we must imagine—of the origins of Heathcliff, as written shortly before her death in December 1848 by Emily Brontë. We had hoped, naturally, for elucidation on the ‘missing' parts of the original second novel; and had considered ourselves fortunate indeed in our quest for answers to two of literature's most pressing and perplexing questions, viz. did Heathcliff and Cathy in fact consummate their passion, and was young Cathy therefore the daughter not of Edgar Linton but of Heathcliff?—and, to solve the riddle of Hindley Earnshaw's being found dead at Wuthering Heights six months after the death in childbirth of his sister, did Heathcliff in fact murder him? We had supposed, once poor Henry Newby became aware of his hero's fictional nature, that he would not be deterred from reading—and relaying to his uncle, his journal, or even to posterity—the next chapters in the story he had failed to understand was the very manuscript the unscrupulous publisher Thomas Cautley Newby had sent him to retrieve from Haworth. It would be normal, as our colleagues at the Brontë Museum agree, to wish to pursue the tale confided by a rogue such as Heathcliff; and Newby's abrupt loss of interest is hard to understand. We can only hope that further searches and enquiries will yield the rest. Meanwhile, our conclusion must be that real life and
real people—such as Wuthering Heights and its denizens were assumed by young Mr Newby to be—were already of greater interest to the reader in the mid nineteenth century, than novels; and for this insight we are grateful. It is not only today, we are now in a position to emphasise, that biography holds the whip hand in book store and library alike
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The further bundle of papers referred to earlier appeared at first to be of interest only by reason of its proximity to the Brontë material (if such Henry Newby's discovery beneath the rag rug in the parsonage library, will turn out to be. Forensic experts work now on tracing the script, thought to be nearer to that of Branwell Brontë than his sister: results will be confirmed later this week)
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Without—we trust—suffering from the naivety of poor Henry Newby, we read the pages, and present a portion of them below, for further study and comment
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On New Year's Day 1849 Mr Henry Newby came to my house in Haworth and demanded assistance.

It was just beginning to snow when he arrived on my doorstep. I had seen him, naturally, from the window of the parlour.

I have lived at Northfield Farm for over twenty years, my husband being a hill farmer and his father before him. I go very seldom to visit my relatives at Gimmerton. In summer there's too much work in the fields, and in winter a fog comes down, or else snow such as we saw on New Year's Day, when a good five feet fell and we had a dozen or so sheep buried and beyond rescue by our collie dog.

When I last went across the moor, it was on a day in late spring and I picked a bunch of harebells for my nan, old Mrs Dean as they call her, who is at a cottage by The Grange. There's a great-nephew who comes from Halifax to see the old lady from time to time, but his wife died and I'm told he remarried and went south. He is related on Mr Dean's side; Mr Dean who was stepbrother to my grandmother, that is. There are a good many families around here who are difficult to puzzle out, such a time they've been closed in a valley together.

So the first big flakes of snow fell as this young man came down the street on the hill from the Parsonage, and then stopped outside our house. I would say he looked pale, or the like—but he didn't strike me as poorly. When I opened the door at his knock, though, he half fell into our hall, and then burst out crying like a baby. I had to take him into the kitchen, and mop his face and pour boiling water out of the kettle for a pot of tea. Then I offered him a bowl of porridge and he wolfed it down without waiting for milk on the oats. It occurred to me he was a prisoner on the run—and I made sure my carving knife was within range. Not that this one had the strength to hurt a fly, but you never know if they're wrong in the head.

When he could talk, our visitor spent a long time apologising for the state he was in. He'd been sent on a mission by his uncle—a man who was famous down in London, so he kept saying—though I don't know what difference it would have made to me if he was the King. ‘I was asked', says this young man who told me to call him Henry—he was a Leeds lad, so I learnt, though you couldn't tell from his voice, it was very high-class and he spoke as if there were balls of fluff in his throat as well as his nose—‘I was asked to fetch a … a batch of papers', and he looked hard at me then. ‘I was to go to the Parsonage and find a Mr Ellis Bell. I was to collect his second book, so my uncle wrote to me. And once I was there, I found myself in a…' and here I had to burst out laughing at the way my new caller did indeed go pale: he's a gingery man but he looked as if a sack of flour had been emptied over him. Except for his Adam's apple, which was red as a cherry as it waggled up and down.

‘Mr Newby!' I said—for I had no intention of calling him Henry. I was impatient too, by then, to get on with the supper. With snow coming down like this, Jack and the other men would be down from the hill shortly.
‘I ask only if you can direct me to the proper house for Mr Bell', the newcomer went on. And his colour did recover a little, when a sound could be heard outside the kitchen—perhaps he found me taciturn and thought he'd get further with someone else.

I confess I didn't know what to reply, in the brief time I had. The arrival of the dog at the back door—for that had been the sound outside—meant Jack was half way down the home field. I'd need a tub of hot water, I could tell; the snowstorm would have started earlier, as it always does up on the Crag, and there'd be three men to dry, inside and out. All the same, I felt sorry for this visitor who was as ignorant of the events at the Parsonage, I could tell, as if he had come from the city he boasted of where his uncle lives. If it hadn't been for the dog pushing open the kitchen door I'd have stood there a few minutes longer and told Mr Newby where he could find Ellis Bell. But as it was, the black and tan collie (dripping wet and still with snow stuck to his coat) came running and snuffling up to us. ‘Down', I said. ‘You're soaking the both of us, Heathcliff. Out to the pantry with you'—and I delivered a kick which sent the animal cowering. ‘Excuse me, Mr Newby. You don't need a wetting before you set out on your way back to Leeds tonight.'

Now I suppose I knew there was no chance of this young man finding his way home in conditions like these. The coach wouldn't leave today, and no one in their right senses would take a horse and ride across the moor: even a grown, sensible man would be taking his life in his hands if he did so. And it was pretty clear to me by now that Mr Henry Newby could not be described as being in his right mind—indeed, in the last minute or two he seemed to have lost his mind altogether. With tea and porridge inside him, this was a bad sign; and I have to say I backed off to the dresser and laid my hand on the long knife. I could hear Jack stamping snow from his
shoes by the back door and even the sound of him blowing on his fingers, which generally grates on my nerves, was welcome to me then. ‘Why do you call the dog by that name?' my strange visitor insisted. He made to move towards me and then went back to stand by the kitchen table and stare at nothing, as if he had just seen a ghost.

Now it is late at night and while I have time I shall try to finish what I remember of that New Year's Day, all of ten years ago by now.

I can't say I know now any better than I did then, what prompted me to pull the stranger up the stairs and hide him in the box bed in our room up there where my sister stays on her infrequent visits from Gimmerton. Many's the story I've heard from behind that gingham curtain when it's pulled across to deflect the draughts that blow in ferociously from our loft. Often I've heard stories I'd have thought impossible, when my Nelly remembered them—but then, she was the one named after our grandmother, and it was to her that Grandma Dean used to tell of wild happenings and dreadful hauntings, all when little Ellen was no more than three or four years old.

This time, though, it was my turn to speak. I felt sorry for the young man—there was something childlike about him, as if he'd never been told a bedtime story and knew he was lacking something in his life—and it was clear, too, that this lad who spoke of London and an uncle in such an important way, couldn't tell what was real from the most fantastic fabrication any of his uncle's famous authors might choose to spin.

I let Jack stump into the kitchen below with the other shepherds and I heard him grunt at the sight of the stew in the pot before the door closed and we were left in silence. Apart, that is, from the sound of the hailstones that came down as an interruption to the snow, from
time to time. And then my guest in the box bed would jump out of his skin and demand to know who was there, as the balls of ice hit our roof with a sound like an escaped felon who's climbed up there and insists on being let in. ‘It's nothing, Mr Newby. Keep still, and keep your voice down as well, and I'll tell you more of the family at the Parsonage where you spent such a lively night', I said. And that would quieten him: still very white in the face, this poor fellow would poke his head out from behind the curtain and demand to know more of the man he had encountered in the hall as another year came in: where was his wife? Were there children? Did I know Tabby?—for I saw he placed me, a farmer's wife, on a level with a servant, as a townsman will.

‘The Reverend Patrick Brontë', I said, when my visitor had fallen back in the box bed again—I didn't want Jack climbing the stairs and finding a strange man conversing with his wife and visible for all to see. ‘Patrick Bronte's wife died, God bless her soul, after giving birth to five daughters and a son. She is buried in Haworth churchyard—and if you need to find out more about the family, you'll discover a number of them under the turf there with her, a good many taken before their time.'