Wuthering Bites, page 23
‘Good words,’ I replied. ‘But deeds must prove it also, and after he is well, remember you don’t forget resolutions formed in the hour of fear.’
As we talked, we neared a door that opened on the road, and my young lady, lightening into sunshine again, climbed up and seated herself on the top of the wall. She reached over to gather some hips that bloomed scarlet on the summit branches of the wild rose trees, shadowing the highway side; the lower fruit had disappeared, but only birds could touch the upper, except from Cathy’s present station.
In stretching to pull them, her hat fell off, and as the door was locked, she proposed scrambling down to recover it. I bid her be cautious lest she got a fall, and she nimbly disappeared.
But the return was no such easy matter. The stones were smooth and neatly cemented, and the rosebushes and blackberry stragglers could yield no assistance in re-ascending. I, like a fool, didn’t recollect that, till I heard her laughing and exclaiming, ‘Nelly, you’ll have to fetch the key, or else I must run round to the porter’s lodge. I can’t scale the ramparts on this side!’
‘Stay where you are,’ I answered. I was about to hurry home as fast as I could, when I heard Cathy’s dance stop as she gave a gasp.
‘Oh, dear,’ she muttered.
‘What is it?’
‘A visitor.’ Her tone was clipped. She sounded like a frightened child, trying to be brave.
‘Who, pray tell?’ I demanded.
‘Good afternoon, ma’am,’ I heard her say next.
‘Miss Cathy, who is it?’ I cried frantically.
‘It…it is the lady we met that day on the moors on our way to Wuthering Heights. Do you speak English?’ she said next, and I knew it was not me she addressed.
‘I do.’ The feminine voice was so silky smooth that it might be interpreted by some as enchanting.
‘Well, I am Catherine Linton.’
‘I know who you are,’ replied the female.
I did not know what to do. It would have been impossible for me to climb up and over as Cathy had, but I feared if I ran for help, by the time I returned, there would be nothing left of my charge but a flattened skin and fine bonnet. So there I was, left with nothing to do but quake in my sturdy shoes and pray that either Cathy could save herself or the bloodsucker had just fed.
‘Do you have a name?’ Cathy asked, surprising me and, apparently, the lady vampire.
‘Do you know, no human has ever asked me that before.’
‘Well, if you didn’t drink our blood, perhaps we’d be friendlier,’ the naïve young woman offered.
I would have laughed, had the situation not been so grave.
‘I am called Mirela.’
‘Is that a vampire name?’ Cathy inquired.
‘Romanian.’
‘It’s pretty.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Miss Cathy,’ I spoke up from the other side of the wall. ‘We should return home before anyone wonders where we are and sends out the boys with silver-tipped—’ An approaching sound arrested me. It was the trot of a horse, and in a minute the horse stopped also.
‘Who is that, now?’ I whispered.
‘Ho, Miss Linton!’ cried a deep voice. It was Heathcliff. ‘I’m glad to meet you. Don’t be in haste to enter, for I have an explanation to ask and obtain.’ I heard the shift of leather in the saddle. ‘Mirela,’ he said more sharply. ‘You try my patience. I have warned you this girl and her nurse are off-limits. Be gone.’
I did not hear her footsteps on the stones as she left the premises, but I was not entirely sure vampires’ footsteps made any sound.
‘I shan’t speak to you, Mr. Heathcliff,’ Catherine said. ‘Though I thank you for coming along the way you did. Mirela was pleasant enough, but she was eyeing my neck. I can’t say I could have trusted her to not take a bite of me.’
‘You’re a smart girl, then.’
‘Thank you, but I still shan’t speak with you. Papa says you are a wicked man, and you hate both him and me. Nelly says the same.’
‘That is nothing to the purpose,’ said Heathcliff. ‘I don’t hate my son, and it is concerning him that I demand your attention. Yes! You have cause to blush. Two or three months since, were you not in the habit of writing to Linton? Making love in play, eh? You deserved, both of you, flogging for that! You especially, the elder, and less sensitive, as it turns out. I’ve got your letters, and if you give me any pertness I’ll send them to your father. I presume you grew weary of the amusement and dropped it, didn’t you? Well, you dropped Linton with it, into a Slough of Despond. He was in earnest in love. As true as I live, he’s dying for you. His heart is breaking at your fickleness, not figuratively, but actually. Though Hareton has made him a standing jest for six weeks, and I have used more serious measures and attempted to frighten him out of his idiocy, he gets worse daily. He’ll be under the sod before summer, unless you restore him!’
‘How can you lie so glaringly to the poor child!’ I called from the inside. ‘Pray ride on! How can you deliberately get up such paltry falsehoods? Miss Cathy, I’ll knock the lock off with a stone. You can’t listen to his vile nonsense. It is impossible that a person should die for the love of a stranger.’ I then began to work on the gate lock in earnest with a fist-sized stone.
‘I was not aware there were eavesdroppers,’ muttered the detected villain. ‘Worthy Mrs. Dean, I like you, but I don’t like your double dealing,’ he added, aloud. ‘How could you lie so glaringly as to affirm I hated the “poor child,” and invent bugbear stories to terrify her from my door-stones? Catherine Linton, my bonny lass, I shall be away from home all this week.’
‘Are you going on a vampire-killing journey, because if you are I should love to—’
‘That is not your business,’ he snapped. But his voice softened at once. ‘Go and see if I have not spoken truth. Just imagine your father in my place, and Linton in yours, then think how you would value your careless lover if he refused to stir a step to comfort you, when your father, himself, entreated him. I swear, on my salvation, he’s going to his grave, and none but you can save him!’
The lock gave way, and I issued out, hustling toward them.
‘I swear Linton is dying,’ repeated Heathcliff, looking hard at me. ‘And grief and disappointment are hastening his death. Nelly, if you won’t let her go, you can walk over yourself. But I shall not return till this time next week, and I think your master himself would scarcely object to her visiting her cousin while I was safely away!’
‘Come in,’ said I, taking Cathy by the arm and half forcing her to re-enter, for she lingered, viewing with troubled eyes the features of the speaker, too stern to express his inward deceit.
He pushed his horse close and, bending down, observed, ‘Miss Catherine, I must tell you that I have little patience with Linton, and Hareton and Joseph have less. I’ll own that he’s with a harsh set. He pines for kindness, as well as love, and a kind word from you would be his best medicine. Don’t mind Mrs. Dean’s cruel cautions; but be generous, and contrive to see him. He dreams of you day and night, and cannot be persuaded that you don’t hate him, since you neither write nor call.’
I closed the door and rolled a stone to assist the loosened lock in holding it. I then spread my umbrella and drew my charge underneath, for the rain began to drive through the moaning branches of the trees, and warned us to avoid delay. There was no sign of the woman vampire who possessed a name.
Our hurry prevented any comment on the encounter with Heathcliff as we stretched toward home, but I suspected that Catherine’s heart was clouded now in double darkness. Her features were so sad, they did not seem hers; she evidently regarded what she had heard as every syllable true.
The master had retired to rest before we came in. Cathy stole to his room to inquire how he was, but he had fallen asleep. She returned and asked me to sit with her in the library. We took our tea together, and afterward she lay down on the rug and told me not to talk, for she was weary.
I got a book and pretended to read. As soon as she supposed me absorbed in my occupation, she recommenced her silent weeping; it appeared, at present, her favorite diversion. I suffered her to enjoy it awhile, then I spoke, deriding and ridiculing all Mr. Heathcliff’s assertions about his son, as if I were certain she would coincide. Alas! I hadn’t the skill to counteract the effect his account had produced; it was just what he intended.
‘You may be right, Nelly,’ she answered. ‘But I shall never feel at ease till I know. And I must tell Linton it is not my fault that I don’t write, and convince him that I shall not change.’
What use were anger and protestations against her silly credulity? We parted that night—hostile, but next day I found myself on the road to Wuthering Heights, by the side of my willful young mistress’s pony. I couldn’t bear to witness her sorrow, to see her pale, dejected countenance and heavy eyes, and I yielded, in the faint hope that Linton himself might prove, by his reception of us, how little of the tale was founded on fact.
I only hoped we would not encounter a female vampire by the name of Mirela on our way.
Chapter 23
The rainy night had ushered in a misty morning—half frost, half drizzle—and temporary brooks crossed our path, gurgling from the uplands. My feet were thoroughly wet. I was cross and low, exactly the humor suited for making the most of this disagreeable task.
We saw no sign of our friend the lady vampire on our journey—perhaps because she had the good sense to stay out of the wretched weather. We entered the farmhouse by the kitchen way to ascertain whether Mr. Heathcliff was really absent. Joseph sat beside a roaring fire, a quart of ale on the table near him, his black, short pipe in his mouth, his habitual scarf tied round and round his neck. Although why Joseph needed a muffler when he sat close enough to the hearth to spit in it, I can’t imagine. But there he was, paler and more wretched looking than ever. If there ever was a more morose man, I’ve yet to see him.
The dogs leapt up, growling and snapping, the wicked terrier in the lead, but when they saw who it was, they ceased their snarling and hunkered down on the stone floor. Even the mean little terrier seemed cowed by her presence. His ears flattened onto his skull, he tucked his tail between his legs and crept back to the corner where he’d been devouring a large rat.
‘There, there,’ Catherine cried as she ran to the hearth to warm herself. ‘Didn’t I tell you the dogs won’t hurt me, Nelly?’
I asked Joseph if the master was in. My question remained so long unanswered that I thought the old man had grown deaf, or died where he sat, eyes open. I repeated it louder.
‘Na-ay!’ he snarled. ‘Na-ay! Yah better go back from where ye come from.’
‘Joseph!’ cried a peevish voice from the inner room. ‘How often am I to call you? There are only a few red ashes now.” Linton entered the kitchen. ‘Joseph! Come this moment.’
Cathy flew to him.
‘No—don’t kiss me. It takes my breath—dear me! Papa said you would call,’ continued he, after recovering a little from his cousin’s embrace. ‘Will you come in and shut the door? Those detestable creatures waltz right in if you let them.’
‘The dogs?’ I asked.
He shuddered walking into the parlor, ignoring my question and making me wonder exactly which creatures he meant. I looked around cautiously for any sign of bloodsuckers clinging to the rafters or crouched in dark corners, and we followed.
‘It’s so cold!’ he complained, falling into a chair.
I stirred up the cinders and fetched a scuttle of coal from the kitchen myself, taking care to close the door between the two rooms.
‘Well, Linton,’ murmured Catherine. ‘Are you glad to see me?’
‘Why didn’t you come before?’ he said, looking feverish and ill. ‘You should have come, instead of writing. It tired me dreadfully, writing those long letters. I’d far rather have talked to you. Now I can neither bear to talk, nor anything else. I wonder where Zillah is! Will you (looking at me) step into the kitchen and see?’
I had received no thanks for my other service, and being unwilling to run to and fro at his behest, I replied, ‘You saw for yourself. Nobody is out there but Joseph.’
‘Give them time—they’ll be by. It’s how he keeps them under control.’
‘I have no idea what you speak of,’ I responded. “Those beastly dogs?”
‘It doesn’t matter, so long as they stay far from me. I want a drink,’ he exclaimed fretfully, turning away. ‘Zillah is constantly gadding off to Gimmerton since Papa went. It’s miserable! And I’m obliged to come down here—they resolved never to hear me upstairs.’
‘Is your father attentive to you, Master Heathcliff?’ I asked, perceiving Catherine to be checked in her friendly advances.
‘Attentive? He makes them a little more attentive, at least,’ he cried. ‘The wretches! Do you know, Miss Linton, that brute Hareton laughs at me! I hate him! Indeed, I hate them all. They are odious beings.’
Cathy began searching for some water; she lighted on a pitcher in the dresser, filled a tumbler, and brought it. He bid her add a spoonful of wine from a bottle on the table, and having swallowed a small portion, appeared more tranquil.
‘And are you glad to see me?’ she repeated, pleased to detect a faint dawn of a smile.
‘Yes, I am. It’s something new to hear a voice like yours!’ he replied. ‘But I have been vexed, because you wouldn’t come. And Papa swore it was my fault. He called me a pitiful, shuffling, worthless thing, and said you despised me. He said if he had been in my place, he would be more the master of the Grange than your father, by this time. But you don’t despise me, do you, Miss—’
‘I wish you would say Catherine, or Cathy,’ interrupted my young lady. ‘We are kin, after all. It’s not necessary for you to call me Miss, dear cousin.’
‘But you admit you despise me as much as they all despise me?’
‘Despise you? No! Next to Papa, and Nelly, I love you better than anybody living. I don’t love Mr. Heathcliff, though. I dare not come when he returns. Will he stay away many days?’
‘Not many. But he goes onto the moors frequently, since the vampires have begun moving about the county again. I don’t know what he does out there. If he just killed them, they would be gone, wouldn’t you think?’ It wasn’t a question he wished anyone to answer and he continued, ‘You might spend an hour or two with me, some days, in his absence. Say you will! I think I should not be peevish with you.’
‘Yes,’ said Catherine, stroking his long, soft hair. ‘If I could only get Papa’s consent, I’d spend half my time with you. Pretty Linton! I wish you were my brother! If you were my brother, you would be of stronger countenance and we could go away to be schooled in the arts of fighting the bloodsuckers. The milkmaid tells me that she has a cousin who says there’s a fine school in Paris. The teachers there are the best. They come from the far corners of the world to teach the ancient skills of defense with sword and knife and other secret ways. I should like to go to Paris. Don’t you think it a noble task, to spend one’s life defending mankind against the bloodsuckers?’
‘Lose one’s life, most likely,’ he whined. He pouted for a moment, then looked at my dear Cathy with the slyest of looks. ‘Papa says you would love me better than him and all the world if you were my wife, so I’d rather you were that.’
‘No!’ she returned gravely. ‘People hate their wives, sometimes, but not their sisters and brothers. If you were my brother, you would live with us, and Papa would be as fond of you as he is of me.’
‘My papa scorns yours!’ cried Linton. ‘He calls him a sneaking fool!’
‘Yours is a wicked man,’ retorted Catherine. ‘And you are very naughty to dare to repeat what he says. He must be wicked to have made Aunt Isabella leave him as she did!’
‘She didn’t leave him,’ said the boy. ‘You shan’t contradict me!’
‘She did!’ cried my young lady.
‘Well, I’ll tell you something!’ said Linton. ‘Your mother hated your father!’
‘Oh!’ exclaimed Catherine, too enraged to continue.
‘And she loved mine!’ added he.
‘You little liar! I hate you now,’ she panted, and her face grew red with passion.
‘She did! She did!’ sang Linton, sinking into the recess of his chair, and leaning back his head to enjoy her agitation.
‘Hush, Master Heathcliff!’ I said finally.
‘She did, she did, Catherine! She did, she did!’
Cathy, beside herself, gave the chair a violent push, and caused him to fall against one arm. He was immediately seized by a suffocating cough that soon ended his triumph.
It lasted so long that it frightened even me. As to his cousin, she wept with all her might.
I held him till the fit exhausted itself. Then he thrust me away and leant his head down silently. Catherine quelled her lamentations also, took a seat opposite, and looked solemnly into the fire.
‘How do you feel now, Master Heathcliff?’ I inquired after waiting ten minutes.
‘I wish she felt as I do,’ he whimpered. ‘I have never been struck in my life.’
‘I didn’t strike you!’ muttered Cathy, chewing her lip to prevent another burst of emotion. ‘If I had struck you, you’d know it. I’m quite strong, you know. I exercise every day. I wish I had a sword, but Papa won’t buy me one, so I use a fireplace poker to practice my parrying. I can run and climb and jump as well as handle a poker. So don’t fuss to me about a little push that wouldn’t have troubled a suckling babe.’
He sighed and moaned like one under great suffering, and kept it up for a quarter of an hour, on purpose to distress his cousin, apparently, for whenever he caught a stifled sob from her, he put renewed pain and pathos into the inflections of his voice.
