Wuthering Bites, page 29
‘No, I do not dig her up with regularity. Listen to me, Nelly. I am trying to tell you what happened that night. My shovel, it scraped the coffin. I fell to work with my hands. The wood commenced cracking about the screws. I was on the point of attaining my object when it seemed that I heard a sigh from someone above, close at the edge of the grave, and bending down. “If I can only get this off,” I muttered. “I wish they may shove in the earth over us both!” and I wrenched more desperately still. There was another sigh, close at my ear. I appeared to feel the warm breath of it displacing the sleet-laden wind. I knew no living thing in flesh and blood was by, but as certainly as you perceive the approach to some substantial body in the dark, though it cannot be discerned, so certainly I felt that Cathy was there. She was not under me, but on the earth.
‘A sudden sense of relief flowed from my heart, through every limb. I relinquished my labor of agony, and turned consoled at once. Her presence was with me; it remained while I re-filled the grave, and led me home. You may laugh, if you will, but I was sure I should see her there. I was sure she was with me, and I could not help talking to her.
‘Having reached the Heights, I rushed eagerly to the door. It was fastened; that accursed Earnshaw and my wife were attempting to keep me out. I remember stopping to kick the breath out of him, and then hurrying upstairs to my room, and hers. I looked round impatiently—I felt her by me—I could almost see her, and yet I could not! I ought to have sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning—from the fervor of my supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! And, since then, sometimes more and sometimes less, I’ve been the sport of that intolerable torture! Infernal—keeping my nerves at such a stretch, that, if they had not resembled catgut, they would, long ago, have relaxed to the feebleness of Linton’s.
‘When I sat in the house with Hareton, it seemed that on going out, I should meet her. When I walked on the moors I should meet her coming in. When I went from home, I hastened to return. She must be somewhere at the Heights, I was certain! And when I tried to sleep in her chamber, I couldn’t lie there; for the moment I closed my eyes, she was either outside the window, or sliding back the panels, or entering the room, or even resting her darling head on the same pillow as she did when a child. And I must open my lids to see. And so I opened and closed them a hundred times a night—to be always disappointed! It racked me!
‘Now, since I’ve seen her, I’m pacified—a little. It was a strange way of killing, not by inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile with the specter of a hope, through eighteen years!’
Mr. Heathcliff paused and wiped his forehead. His hair clung to it, wet with perspiration; his eyes were fixed on the red embers of the fire, the brows not contracted, but raised next to the temples, diminishing the grim aspect of his countenance, but imparting a peculiar look of trouble and a painful appearance of mental tension toward one absorbing subject.
Realizing he had reached the end of his mad ranting, I looked at him. ‘Sounds to me as if her soul is as tortured as yours,’ I observed. When I was dead, I was hoping to enter the pearly gates of heaven. I did not want to roam the moors at night haunting Mr. Heathcliff.
‘Tortured, indeed. Caught between the here and the hereafter,’ he said softly, speaking more to himself than to me. ‘But I suspect now I know what she needs. What I must do.’
‘What she needs?’ I asked, thinking back to what he had said earlier. ‘You mean to rest peacefully.’
‘In time you will know all,’ he said.
Questions still dangled on the end of my tongue. First and foremost, I wanted to know how it was that he had come to be both a gypsy slayer and vampire, for I had never heard of such a creature and could only imagine what a tortured soul that creature would be. But Catherine entered, announcing that she was ready when her pony was saddled, and I did not have further opportunity to quiz him.
Heathcliff turned to her. ‘You may do without your pony; it is a fine evening, and you’ll need no ponies at Wuthering Heights. For what journeys you take, your own feet will serve you—Come along.’
‘Good-bye, Nelly!’ whispered my dear little mistress. As she kissed me, her lips felt like ice.
Protect her from the beasties, I prayed silently, half fearing she had already been bitten. What else would make her so cold?
‘Come and see me, Nelly. Don’t forget.’
‘Take care you do no such thing, Mrs. Dean!’ said her new father. ‘When I wish to speak to you, I’ll come here. I want none of your prying at my house!’
He signed her to precede him, and casting back a look that cut my heart, she obeyed.
Chapter 30
I see Zillah in Gimmerton and she tells me something of what goes on at Wuthering Heights, otherwise I should hardly know who was dead and who living, bitten or still clean. The first time I met up with her, after my dear girl had been taken from me, I asked if she knew her master was not only a vampire slayer, but vampire, too, thinking I might find an advocate for my dear girl. I expected a shocked response, or perhaps one of fear if she had been recruited to guard Mr. Heathcliff’s secret, but I did not expect the answer I received.
‘Of course I know. I empty chamber pots at the Heights. There is nothing that goes on there that I do not know.’
‘And…and you do not mind, being under the employment of such a devil, for surely he is worse than a vampire. An even more tortured soul, playing both sides!’
‘Safest employment in Great Britain, I say,’ Zillah corrected me. ‘As his employee, my neck is off-limits to all who seek the nourishment of blood, and he never takes from his servants. Why would he, for then he would constantly have to interview for the positions left vacant.’
‘But…how did this happen? How can it be? I knew the boy as a child. My previous master brought him into the house as an orphan found on the streets of Liverpool. He was the child of a gypsy vampire slayer.’
‘His mother was a gypsy slayer, but his father,’ Zillah explained with far more haughtiness than she had a right to bear, ‘his father was a vampire. Taken advantage of, his mother was, on a moonless night when she should have kept behind locked doors instead of hunting bloodsuckers. My master was the spawn of that night.’
‘No,’ I breathed, my eyes widening. ‘Vampires do not procreate. That is impossible!’
‘Apparently not,’ she finished, snub nose high in the air. ‘Now, do you wish to hear of the new missus or not?’
I learned that Zillah thinks Catherine haughty, and does not like her. My young lady asked some aid of her when she first arrived, but Mr. Heathcliff told Zillah to follow her own business and let his daughter-in-law look after herself. Zillah, being a narrow-minded, selfish woman, willingly acquiesced. Catherine repaid her unwillingness to aid her with contempt, and thus enlisted my informant among her enemies, as securely as if she had done her some great wrong.
‘The first thing Mrs. Linton did,’ Zillah explained, on her arrival at the Heights, ‘was to run upstairs without even wishing good evening to me and Joseph. She shut herself into Linton’s room and remained till morning. Then, while the master and Earnshaw were at breakfast, she entered the house, and asked all in a quiver if the doctor might be sent for. Her cousin was very ill.
‘ “We know that!” answered Heathcliff. “But his life is not worth a farthing, and I won’t spend a farthing on him.”
‘ “But I don’t know what to do,” she said. “And if nobody will help me, he’ll die!”
‘ “Walk out of the room,” cried the master, “and let me never hear a word more about him! None here care what becomes of him. If you do, act the nurse; if you do not, lock him up and leave him.”
‘How they managed together, I can’t tell. I fancy he fretted a great deal, and moaned night and day. She had precious little rest, one could guess by her white face and heavy eyes. Once or twice, after we had gone to bed, I’ve happened to open my door again, and seen her sitting crying, on the stairs’ top. But then I’ve shut myself in, quick, for fear of being moved to interfere. I did pity her then, I’m sure. Still, I didn’t want to lose my place, you know!
‘At last, one night she came boldly into my chamber, and frightened me out of my wits by saying—
‘ “Tell Mr. Heathcliff that his son is dying—I’m sure he is, this time. Get up, instantly, and tell him!”
‘Having uttered this speech, she vanished again. I lay a quarter of an hour listening and trembling. Nothing stirred—the house was quiet.
‘She’s mistaken, I told myself. He’s got over it. I needn’t disturb them. I knew the master didn’t like his nights disturbed. He either occupied himself pacing the dead Catherine’s bedroom or he roamed the moors, chasing down vampires, or chasing humans, I suppose, depending on his mood. So after Mrs. Heathcliff came to me, I began to doze. But my sleep was marred a second time, by a sharp ringing of the bell—the only bell we have, put up on purpose for Linton. It turned out the master was indoors that night, and he called to me to see what was the matter. Too busy pacing that haunted room to see for himself, I suppose. He said to check on the bell ringer and make it clear he wouldn’t have that noise repeated, else he would send one of the beasties from the barn rafters to check in on them.
‘I delivered Catherine’s message. He cursed to himself, and in a few minutes came out with a lighted candle and proceeded to their room. I followed. Mrs. Heathcliff was seated by the bedside, with her hands folded on her knees, the devil dog curled at her feet. Her father-in-law went up, held the light to Linton’s face, looked at him, and touched him. Afterward he turned to her.
‘ “Now—Catherine,” he said. “How do you feel?”
‘She was silent.
‘ “How do you feel, Catherine?” he repeated.
‘ “He’s safe, and I’m free,” she answered, stroking that terrier’s head. “I should feel well—but,” she continued with a bitterness she couldn’t conceal, “you have left me so long to struggle against death, alone with no companions but the bloodsuckers that peek in the windows, that I feel and see only death! I feel like death!”
‘And she looked like it, too! I gave her a little wine. Hareton and Joseph, who had been wakened by the ringing and the sound of feet, and heard our talk from outside, now entered. Joseph was pleased, I believe, of the lad’s removal. Hareton seemed a little bothered, though he was more taken up with staring at Catherine than thinking of Linton. But the master bid him get off to bed again; we didn’t want his help. He made Joseph remove the body and we all went back to bed.
‘In the morning, he sent me to tell Mrs. Heathcliff that she must come down to breakfast. She had undressed and appeared to be going to sleep. She said she was ill. I informed Mr. Heathcliff, and he replied—
‘ “Well, let her be till after the funeral. Go up now and then to get her what she needs and as soon as she seems better, tell me.” ’
Cathy stayed upstairs a fortnight, according to Zillah, who visited her twice a day, and would have been rather more friendly, but her attempts at increasing kindness were proudly and promptly repelled.
Heathcliff went up at once, to show her Linton’s will. He had bequeathed the whole of his, and what had been her moveable property, to his father. The poor creature was threatened, or coaxed, into that act during her week’s absence, when his uncle died. The lands, being a minor, he could not meddle with. However, Mr. Heathcliff has claimed and kept them in his wife’s right. I suppose legally, at any rate, Catherine, destitute of cash and friends, cannot disturb his possession.
‘Nobody ever approached her door and nobody asked anything about her. The first occasion of her coming down into the house was on a Sunday afternoon.
‘She had cried out, when I carried up her dinner, that she couldn’t bear any longer being in the cold. I told her the master was going to Thrushcross Grange, and Earnshaw and I needn’t hinder her from descending. As soon as she heard Mr. Heathcliff’s horse trot off, she made her appearance, donned in black, and her yellow curls combed back behind her ears, as plain as a Quaker.
‘Joseph had gone, but I thought it proper to bide at home. Young folks are always the better for an elder’s over-looking. I let Hareton know that his cousin would very likely sit with us, so he should leave his guns and swords alone while she stayed.
‘He colored up at the news, and cast his eyes over his hands and clothes. The saber he was sharpening was shoved out of sight in a minute. I saw he meant to keep her company and I guessed he wanted to be presentable. Trying not to laugh at the idea of him ever being presentable, I offered to help him and joked at his confusion. He grew sullen, and began to swear.
‘Now, Mrs. Dean,’ she went on, seeing me not pleased by her manner. ‘You might think your young lady too fine for Mr. Hareton and you might be right, but I’d like to see her pride a peg lower. And what will all her learning and her daintiness do for her now? She’s as poor as you or I. Poorer.’
Hareton allowed Zillah to give him her aid and she flattered him into a good humor, so when Catherine came he tried to make himself agreeable, by the housekeeper’s account.
‘Missus walked in,’ she said, ‘as chill as an icicle, and as high as a princess. I got up and offered her my seat in the armchair. She turned up her nose at my civility. Earnshaw rose, too, and bid her come to the settle, and sit close by the fire. He was sure she was starved.
‘ “I’ve been starved a month and more,” she answered, resting on the word, as scornful as she could.
‘And she got a chair for herself, and placed it at a distance from both of us.
‘Having sat till she was warm, she began to look around and discovered a number of books in the dresser, many pertaining to the current vampire infestation. She was instantly upon her feet again, stretching to reach them, but they were too high up. Her cousin, after watching her endeavors awhile, at last summoned courage to help her. She held her frock, and he filled it with the first that came to hand.
‘That was a great advance for the lad. She didn’t thank him, but he felt gratified that she had accepted his assistance, and ventured to stand behind as she examined them. He even pointed out what struck his fancy in certain pictures which they contained; sketches of vampire anatomy and such. Then he went from looking at the book to looking at her instead of the book.
‘She continued reading. His attention became, by degrees, quite centered in the study of her thick, silky curls. And, perhaps not quite aware of what he did, but attracted like a child to a candle, he proceeded from staring to touching. He put out his hand and stroked one curl as gently as if it were a bird. He might have taken a bite from her neck, she pulled away so quickly.
‘ “Get away, this moment! How dare you touch me!” she cried, in a tone of disgust. “I can’t endure you! I’ll go upstairs again, if you come near me.”
‘Mr. Hareton recoiled, looking as foolish as he could do, and sat down on the settle. He remained very quiet, and she continued turning over her volumes, another half-hour. Finally, Earnshaw crossed over and whispered to me.
‘ “Will you ask her to read to us, Zillah? I would like to hear what is said of the bloodsuckers that I don’t already know, but I can’t read myself. Dunnot say I wanted it, but ask of yourself.”
‘ “Mr. Hareton wishes you would read to us, ma’am,” I said immediately. “He’d take it very kind—he’d be much obliged.”
‘She frowned and, looking up, answered, “Mr. Hareton, and the whole set of you, will be good enough to understand that I reject any pretense at kindness you have the hypocrisy to offer! I despise you, and will have nothing to say to any of you! When I would have given my life for one kind word, even to see one of your faces, you all kept off. But I won’t complain to you! I’m driven down here by the cold, not either to amuse you or enjoy your society.”
‘ “What could I have done?” began Earnshaw. “I am much a prisoner as you. How was I to blame?”
‘ “Be silent! I’ll go out of doors, or anywhere, rather than have your disagreeable voice in my ear!” said my lady.
‘Hareton muttered, she might go to hell, for him! And unsheathing a sword, he began to sharpen it right in front of her. She seemed unexpectedly interested in the weapon, but when he offered to show it, she saw fit to retreat to her solitude.’
At first, on hearing this account from Zillah, I determined to leave my situation, take a cottage, and get Catherine to come and live with me. But Mr. Heathcliff would as soon permit that as he would set up Hareton in an independent house, and I can see no remedy, at present. All I could do was wait and see what would unfold next.
Thus ended Mrs. Dean’s story. As strange as it may seem, I believed what she’d told me, or at least I believed that she believed what she’d related. For that reason, I made plans for my future. Notwithstanding the doctor’s prophecy, I am rapidly recovering strength, and, though it be only the second week in January, I propose getting out on horseback in a day or two, and riding over to Wuthering Heights, with an armed escort, of course. There, I will inform my landlord that I will be taking my leave of the moors and that he may look for another tenant to take the place. At the beginning of Nelly’s tale, I did think myself on an adventure, but upon hearing that Mr. Heathcliff is, indeed, a vampire, one that digs up graves, well, I have no intention of renting from any such gentleman, for he is surely no gentleman at all!
Chapter 31
Yesterday was bright, calm, and frosty. After hiring some strapping men with swords in Gimmerton, I went to the Heights as I proposed. Mrs. Dean entreated me to bear a note from her to her young lady, and I did not refuse.
The front door stood open, but the gate was fastened, as at my last visit. I knocked, and invoked Earnshaw from among the garden beds; he unchained it, glancing at the mounted men carrying various implements used in vampire destruction.
