Heathcliff's Tale by Emma Tennant Page B

this it was, for I could no more dare to move outside and confront my captor than to hang myself with a tassel from one of the garments dangling above my head—I saw I was indeed among the dresses of my sister-in-law, or Madam, as Edgar would have had Heathcliff address her in past days. I shrank from the unintentional caress of muslin, satin or the pleated silk she’d worn on the evening of our ball atThe Grange; and as I did so, I half-fell against the door of the press, which yielded an inch or two into the room. But I went unheard; the owner of the fine dresses, visible now, could not have spied me even if a creaking door had alerted her to the presence of a stranger; and only modesty and a fear of detection by
him
, prevented me from bursting out and running from the house altogether.
    Cathy lay on her back on the four-poster bed, her petticoats billowing out around her. Her face—thought pretty by Nelly, I know, but a face that could appear wild and cruel and so had long been unappealing to me—could just be seen, deep in the welter of cushions and pillows she liked to keep her company on the bed. Her cheeks were flushed—that I did see—and her hair as messed as if the moor wind had blown it out forever from the constraints of curlers and fine coiffure. A look of joy in her eyes—I had never seen them like that before, dark one moment and blue as a summer sky the next. And she wept—
she
could make any sound she wished, it was soon clear. Heathcliff, naked and brown-skinned as a child that has bathed in rock pools and lain in heather to dry—lay astride her. I thought at first—in my innocence—that they played a game together, aping their childhood days just as the sudden confinement in my mother’s press had momentarily returned me to mine. But
their
childhood had indeed been different to those of the children of The Grange, if this was the case; for soon I could be left in no doubt as to the passion and reality of their love-making.
    Afternoon turned to dusk, as it does in autumn in the North, more quickly than could be expected; and I heard Edgar’s voice outside, as he dismounted from his mare and came into the hall. What were we all to do now? Would I be discovered as an accomplice to the adulterous crime? I pushed open the cupboard door; my will returned to me in a great burst; I fled.

Chapter Twelve
Isabella’s Story
    From that time, I became a servant of the Devil—for there is no other way to describe the man I loved and hated and married, while knowing his own heart was frozen in a raging Hell. I was at Heathcliff’s beck and call, aware of his undying devotion to another; and I wished a hundred times that my brother had come more quickly up the stairs on that fateful September day, to discover and arrest the sinners and expel them from our lives and home. But, as ever in our tranquil existence at The Grange, Edgar suspected nothing. I went to Nelly and complained of a headache, once I felt safe to crawl from my hiding-place beneath the stairs; and for all I know, Cathy and her devoted husband dined amicably enough together while I was put to bed by the old servant. At least there was no sound of disagreement in the house that night. The Grange was calm, and the recent visitor—or interloper, as Heathcliff certainly was—had vanished as surely as the last glow of the September day.
    It took three months more of this dreadful year for me to find myself a bride and banished forever from the home I had since infancy cherished and adored. All the autumn, Heathcliff called when my brother was abroad—he had, it seemed, powers of some kind which informed him of the absence of the proprietor of The Grangeand Cathy, aware also for some reason of the suitability of the time, was ever prepared for his coming—and I would see them steal off into the orchard, or even run as far as the moor, returning spangled with the muddy rain and bracken