Wuthering Bites (18 page)

The unsuspecting lad was pleased at this speech or at least at the attention, for he played with Heathcliff's whiskers and stroked his cheek.

I, however, divined its meaning, and observed tartly, ‘That boy must go back with me to Thrushcross Grange, sir. There is nothing in the world less yours than he is!'

‘Does Linton say so?' he demanded.

‘Of course—he has ordered me to take him,' I replied.

‘Well,' said the scoundrel. ‘We'll not argue the subject now, but I have a fancy to try my hand at rearing a young one. Tell your master that I don't engage to let Hareton go, undisputed, and if he presses it, I'll be pretty sure to make the other come! Remember to tell him.'

This hint was enough to bind our hands. If Edgar pressed, Heathcliff would seek out his own son. Edgar did not speak of interfering again. Hareton was left to Master Heathcliff, God forgive us.

The guest was now the master of Wuthering Heights. He held firm possession, and proved to the attorney—who, in his turn, proved it to Mr. Linton—that Earnshaw had mortgaged every yard of land he owned for cash to supply his mania for gaming with the beasties; and he, Heathcliff, was the mortgagee. No one ever expressed aloud the question of whether or not the vampires had been in league with Heathcliff, but we all had our opinions. In that manner poor Hareton, who should now be the first gentleman in the neighborhood, was reduced to a state of complete dependence on his father's enemy.

T
he twelve years, continued Nelly, following that dismal period, were the happiest of my life. Our little lady grew like a larch, and could walk and talk, too, in her own way, before the heath blossomed around (but never directly on) Mrs. Linton's grave.

Cathy was the most winning thing that ever brought sunshine into a desolate house. She was a beauty in face, with the Earnshaws' handsome dark eyes, but the Lintons' fair skin, and small features, and yellow curling hair. Her spirit was high, though not rough, and qualified by a heart sensitive and lively to excess in its affections. That capacity for intense attachments reminded me of her mother. Still she did not resemble her, for she could be soft and mild as a dove, and she had a gentle voice and pensive expression. Her anger was never furious, her love never fierce. It was deep and tender.

However, it must be acknowledged, dearest Cathy had faults to foil her gifts. A propensity to be saucy was one; she possessed a perverse will that indulged children invariably acquired, whether they be good-tempered or cross. If a servant chanced to vex her, it was always—‘I shall tell Papa!' And if he reproved her, even by a look, you would have thought it a heartbreaking business. I don't believe he ever did speak a harsh word to her.

He took her education entirely on himself and made it an amusement. Fortunately, curiosity and a quick intellect urged her into an apt scholar. She learnt rapidly and eagerly, and did honor to this teaching.

Till she reached the age of thirteen, she had not once been beyond the range of the park by herself. Mr. Linton would take her with him a mile or so outside, on rare occasions, but he trusted her to no one else. Even though the vampires did not run rampant as they once had, they were still out there, lurking in the shadows, waiting for an unsuspecting good soul from which to make a meal. Gimmerton was an unsubstantial name in Cathy's ears. Wuthering Heights and Mr. Heathcliff did not exist for her. She was a perfect recluse and, apparently, perfectly contented. Sometimes, indeed, while surveying the country from her nursery window, she would observe—

‘Nelly, how long will it be before I can walk to the top of those hills? I wonder what lies on the other side—is it the sea?'

‘No, Miss Cathy,' I would answer. ‘It is hills again, just like these.'

‘Is it because of the vampires that I cannot go?'

‘Aye. They like to feast particularly on blond little girls,' I warned.

‘Funny, but sometimes I think it is something more Papa keeps me from.' She pointed through the window. ‘And what are those golden rocks like, when you stand under them?' she once asked.

The abrupt descent of Penistone Crags particularly attracted her notice, especially when the setting sun shone on it and the topmost heights, and the whole extent of landscape besides lay in shadow.

I explained that they were bare masses of stone, with hardly enough earth in their clefts to nourish a stunted tree.

‘And why are they bright so long after it is evening here?' she pursued.

‘Because they are a great deal higher up than we are,' replied I. ‘You could not climb them. They are too high and steep. In winter, the frost is always there before it comes to us, and deep into summer I have found snow under that black hollow on the northeast side!'

‘Oh, you have been on them!' she cried, gleefully. ‘Then I can go, too, when I am a woman and can fight the vampires off on my own. Has Papa been, Nelly?'

I ignored the comment about the vampires, for my master would never have allowed her to be trained to fight, even in self-defense. He was too tangled in his mental fantasy that the bloodsuckers did not exist, and even if they did, raising a weapon against them would have been entirely too unladylike for his darling. ‘Papa would tell you, miss,' I answered hastily, ‘that they are not worth the trouble of visiting. The moors, where you ramble with him, are much nicer. Thrushcross Park is the finest place in the world.'

‘But I know the park, and I don't know those,' she murmured to herself. ‘And I should delight to look round me from the brow of that tallest point. My little pony Minny shall take me sometime. She is far too fast for any bloodsucker to catch.'

One of the maids mentioning the Fairy Cave quite turned Cathy's head with a desire to fulfill this project. She teased Mr. Linton about it, and he promised she should have the journey when she got older. I doubt he meant it, but he would have promised her the moon should she have requested it.

‘Now am I old enough to go to Penistone Crags?' was the constant question in her mouth.

The road there ran close by Wuthering Heights. Edgar had not the heart to pass it, so she received as constantly the answer, ‘Not yet, love. Not yet.'

As for what else occurred at that time, Mrs. Heathcliff lived above a dozen years after leaving her husband. I was told she was attacked by a swarm of vampires whilst returning from church one Sunday morning. Fortunately, the child had been suffering from the ague and she had left him home. She was treated by the local doctor, but she never came back around as most folks with just a bite or two did. She wrote to inform her brother of the probable conclusion of the attack and entreated him to come to her, if possible. She said in her letter that she had much to settle, and she wished to bid him adieu and deliver Linton safely into his hands. Her hope was that Linton might be left with him. Somehow, she had convinced herself that his father had no desire to assume the burden of his maintenance or education.

My master didn't hesitate to comply with her request, reluctant as he was to leave home. Commending Catherine to my peculiar vigilance in his absence, he reiterated orders that she must not wander out of the park, even under my escort. He did not calculate on her going unaccompanied.

He was away three weeks. The first day or two, my charge sat in a corner of the library, too sad for either reading or playing. In that quiet state she caused me little trouble, but it was succeeded by an interval of impatient, fretful weariness. Me, being too busy, and too old then, to run up and down amusing her, I hit on a method by which she might entertain herself.

I used to send her on travels round the grounds—now on foot, and now on a pony, indulging her with a patient audience of all her real and imaginary adventures when she returned.

The summer shone in full prime, and she took such a taste for this solitary rambling that she often contrived to remain out from breakfast till tea. Then the evenings were spent in recounting her fanciful tales. I did not fear her breaking bounds because the gates were generally locked and the property was patrolled with guards. I thought she would never pass through the gates, even if they were thrown open.

Unluckily, my confidence proved misplaced. Catherine came to me one morning at eight o'clock, and said she was that day an Arabian merchant, going to cross the desert with his caravan. She asked that I provide plenty of provisions for herself and beasts: a horse and three camels, personated by a large hound and a couple of pointers.

I got together a good store of dainties and slung them in a basket on one side of the saddle. She sprang up as gay as a fairy, sheltered by her wide-brimmed hat and gauze veil from the July sun, and trotted off with a merry laugh, mocking my cautious counsel to avoid galloping, and come back early.

The naughty thing never made her appearance at tea. One traveler, the hound, being an old dog and fond of its ease, returned, but neither Cathy nor the pony, nor the two pointers were visible in any direction. I dispatched emissaries down this path, and that path, and at last went wandering in search of her myself.

There was a laborer working at a fence round a plantation, on the borders of the grounds. I enquired of him if he had seen our young lady.

‘I saw her at morn,' he replied. ‘She would have me to cut her a hazel switch, and then she leapt over the hedge yonder, where it is lowest, and galloped out of sight.'

You may guess how I felt at hearing this news. It struck me directly she must have started for Penistone Crags.

‘What will become of her?' I ejaculated, pushing through a gap which the man was repairing, and making straight to the high-road. I didn't even take the time to go back for a better weapon than the wee dagger I had carried all those years.

I walked mile after mile, till a turn brought me in view of the Heights, but no Catherine could I detect, far or near. I was frantic. What if she'd been eaten by wolves? Snatched up by gypsies and forced to tell fortunes in some far heathen place? What if she'd been set upon by robbers and wandered barefoot and penniless into some town, and there seized by the authorities as a pauper and shipped off to the far side of the world as an indentured wench? Worse, what if she'd wandered to Wuthering Heights and been attacked by Master Heathcliff's wee devil terrier? And then there were the vampires. I did not even want to consider what would become of my master if his little daughter was consumed by the bloodsuckers, not after losing a wife and a sister to them.

The Crags lie about a mile and a half beyond Mr. Heathcliff's place, and that is four from the Grange, so I began to fear night would fall ere I could reach them.

I ran to the door, knocking vehemently for admittance. A woman whom I knew, and who formerly lived at Gimmerton, answered. She had been a servant there since the death of Mr. Earnshaw.

‘Ah,' said she. ‘You are come a-seeking your little mistress! Don't be frightened. She's here safe, but I'm glad it isn't the master.'

‘He is not at home then, is he?' I panted, quite breathless with quick walking and alarm. ‘Have the dogs eaten her?'

‘No, no,' she replied. ‘The master's gone for hours at a time. God knows where and I'm not certain even God cares. Hunting, I suppose. He keeps these roads fairly clean of the bloodsuckers. Step in and rest you a bit.'

I entered, and beheld my stray lamb seated on the hearth, rocking herself in a little chair that had been her mother's when a child. Her hat was hung against the wall and she seemed perfectly at home, laughing and chattering, in the best spirits imaginable, to Hareton. He was now a great, strong lad of eighteen who stared at her with considerable curiosity and astonishment.

‘Very well, miss!' I exclaimed, concealing my joy under an angry countenance. ‘This is your last ride till your papa comes back. I'll not trust you over the threshold again, you naughty, naughty girl!'

‘Aha, Nelly!' she cried gaily, jumping up and running to my side. ‘I shall have a pretty story to tell tonight. I saw vampires in the distance whilst I was riding and then I found Wuthering Heights. Have you ever been here in your life before?'

‘Put that hat on, and home at once,' said I, glancing first this way and then the other for the Heathcliff hounds. ‘I'm dreadfully grieved at you, Miss Cathy. You've done extremely wrong! It's no use pouting and crying; that won't repay the trouble I've had, scouring the country after you. To think how Mr. Linton charged me to keep you in, and you stealing off so! It shows you are a cunning little fox, and nobody will put faith in you anymore.'

‘What have I done?' sobbed she, instantly checked. ‘Papa charged me nothing. He'll not scold me, Nelly—he's never cross, like you!'

‘Come, come!' I repeated ‘For shame. You thirteen years old, and such a baby!'

This exclamation was caused by her pushing the hat from her head and retreating to the chimney out of my reach.

‘Nay,' said the servant. ‘Don't be hard on the bonny lass, Mrs. Dean. We made her stop before she went farther. Hareton offered to go with her and I thought he should. Mr. Heathcliff has warned us to all stay away from there. I suppose it's one of the places where there are still nests of bloodsuckers.'

Hareton, during the discussion, stood with his hands in his pockets, too awkward to speak, though he looked as if he did not relish my intrusion.

‘It will be dark in ten minutes. Where is the pony, Miss Cathy? And where are the dogs? I shall leave you unless you be quick, so please yourself.'

‘The pony is in the yard,' she replied. ‘The dogs, too. I was going to tell you all about it, but you are in a bad temper, and don't deserve to hear.'

I picked up her hat, and approached to put it on her thick little head, but perceiving that the people of the house took her part, she commenced capering round the room. On my giving chase, she ran like a mouse over and under and behind the furniture, rendering it ridiculous for me to pursue.

Hareton and the woman laughed, and she joined them, and waxed more impertinent still till I cried, in great irritation, ‘Well, Miss Cathy, if you were aware whose house this is, you'd be glad to get out.'

‘It's
your
father's, isn't it?' said she, turning to Hareton.

‘Nay,' he replied, looking down and blushing bashfully. He could not stand a steady gaze from her eyes, though they were just like his own.

‘Whose, then—your master's?' she asked.

He colored deeper, with a different feeling, muttered an oath, and turned away.

‘Who is his master?' continued the tiresome girl, appealing to me. ‘He talked about “our house,” and “our folk.” I thought he was the owner's son. But he never said Miss. He should have done, shouldn't he, if he's a servant?'

Hareton grew black as a thunder-cloud at this childish speech. I silently shook my questioner and at last succeeded in equipping her for departure.

‘Now, get my horse,' she said, addressing her unknown kinsman as she would one of the stable boys at the Grange. ‘And you may come with me. I want to see where the vampires come out of the marsh. What's the matter? Get my horse, I say.'

‘I'll see thee damned before I be thy servant!' growled the lad.

‘You'll see me
what?
' asked Catherine in surprise.

‘Damned—thou saucy witch!' he replied.