Heathcliff's Tale by Emma Tennant Read Free Book Online Page B

return.’

Chapter Six
The Deposition of Henry Newby
    By the time I had read these pages; had suffered for Mr Heathcliff on his return from the far side of the world, a fortune to his name and yet no prospect of a bride—for his Cathy, ‘my Cathy’ as I am by now inclined to consider the wild, free spirit formed, as he was, by moor and storm, by a love of liberty and a hatred for the conventions of the world, had married Edgar Linton and could never be his—by the time, as I say, I had wept for each one of the separated couple and had dried my tears sufficient for a descent into the hall of the Parsonage, it was well past midday.
    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 nohuman 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 Ihad 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.