they behaved and what they did, so they kept clear of him. I do not believe Mr. Hindley even suspected the boy was training to defend the manor. I know for a fact that he did not take notice the days when the boy disappeared to be among his gypsy relatives, returning with even sharper skills.
It was one of Heathcliff and Catherine’s chief amusements to run away to the moors on a Sabbath morning and remain there all day, playing vampire or lost maid and slayer, and the after punishment if caught grew a mere thing to laugh at. The teacher might set as many chapters as he pleased for Catherine to memorize, and Joseph might thrash Heathcliff till his arm ached, but they forgot everything the minute they were together again.
One Sunday evening, they were banished from the sitting room for making a noise or some other light offense, and when I went to call them to supper, they were nowhere to be found. We searched the house, the yard, and the stables; they were invisible. At last, Hindley told us to bolt the doors against the night, and swore nobody should let Cathy and Heathcliff in until morning for fear they might bring the beasties with them.
The household went to bed, but too anxious to lie down, I opened my shutters and put my head out to hear them, should they return. I would have let them in. I knew Heathcliff would not let the vampires inside. I had already seen how they feared him, respected him, or both. Only days before, I had seen him talk a vampire down, getting him to turn over a calf and walk down the lane without so much as a mouthful of blood.
In a while, that night, I distinguished running steps coming up the road, and the light of a lantern glimmered through the gate, a trail of vampires howling near behind. I threw a shawl over my head and ran to prevent them from waking Mr. Earnshaw with their snarls and howls. Heathcliff fought them off at the gate and sent them flying into the night, and he did enter then, by himself. It gave me a start to see him alone.
‘Where is Miss Catherine?’ I cried hurriedly, stanching the blood that ran from a wound on his arm. ‘No accident, I hope?’
‘She’s at Thrushcross Grange,’ he answered, wiping clean the black blood from a long-bladed sword. I did not know where the sword had come from and I did not dare ask. ‘I would have been there, too, but they had not the manners to ask me to stay.’
‘Well, you will catch it!’ I said. ‘You’ll never be content till you’re sent away for good. What in the world led you to wandering to Thrushcross Grange in the dark? You know the vampires congregate between here and there.’
‘I’m not afraid of them,’ he boasted. ‘They are afraid of me.’
‘And so they were chasing you down the lane,’ I muttered. Either he did not hear me or he chose to ignore my jibe.
‘Let me get off my wet clothes, and I’ll tell you all about it, Nelly,’ he replied, handing me the deadly sword.
I bid him beware of rousing the master, and while he undressed and I waited to put out the candle, he continued.
‘Cathy and I escaped from the wash-house to have a ramble at liberty and, getting a glimpse of the Grange lights, we thought we would just go and see whether the Lintons passed their Sunday evenings standing shivering in corners, while their father and mother sat eating and drinking, and singing and laughing.
‘We ran from the top of the Heights to the park, without stopping—Catherine completely beaten in the race, because she was barefoot. You’ll have to seek her shoes in the bog tomorrow. We crept through a broken hedge, groped our way up the path, and planted ourselves on a flowerpot under the drawing-room window. The light came from there; they had not put up the shutters, and the curtains were only half closed. Both of us were able to look in by clinging to the ledge, and we saw—ah! it was beautiful—a splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the center, and shimmering with little soft tapers. Old Mr. and Mrs. Linton were not there; Edgar and his sister had it entirely to themselves. Shouldn’t they have been happy? We should have thought ourselves in heaven! And now, guess what the children were doing? Isabella—I believe she is eleven, a year younger than Cathy—lay screaming at the farther end of the room, shrieking as if the vampires were sinking their fangs into her. Edgar stood on the hearth weeping silently, and in the middle of the table sat a little dog, shaking its paw and yelping, which, from their mutual accusations, we understood they had nearly pulled in two between them. The idiots! That was their pleasure! To quarrel who should hold a heap of warm hair, and each began to cry because both, after struggling to get it, refused to take it. We laughed outright at the petted things; we did despise them! When would you catch me wishing to have what Catherine wanted? I’d not exchange, for a thousand lives, my condition here, for Edgar Linton’s at Thrushcross Grange—not if I might have the privilege of tying Joseph to the front gate and painting the house-front with Hindley’s blood to lure the beasties to him!’
‘Hush, hush!’ I interrupted, fearing the master might hear him. ‘Still you have not told me, Heathcliff, how Catherine is left behind?’
‘I told you we laughed,’ he answered. ‘The Lintons heard us, and they shot like arrows to the door; there was silence, and then a cry, “Oh, Mamma, Mamma! Oh, Papa! Oh, Mamma, come here. Oh, Papa, oh!” They really did howl out something like that. We made frightful noises to terrify them still more, trying to sound like vampires scratching at the window and then we dropped off the ledge, thinking we had better flee. I had Cathy by the hand, and was urging her on, when all at once one of the bloodsuckers, a particularly ugly fellow I had encountered in the moors earlier in the week, fell upon her, dragging her down.
‘ “Run, Heathcliff, run!” she cried. “He holds me!”
‘The devil had seized her ankle, Nelly. I heard his abominable snorting. But Cathy did not yell out—no! She would have scorned to do it, if she had been spitted on the horns of a mad cow. I did, though. I vociferated curses enough to annihilate any fiend in Christendom, regretting that I had left my sword at the edge of the drive that leads up to the Grange. Without a weapon, I got a stone and thrust it between her attacker’s jaws, and tried with all my might to cram it down his throat. A servant came up with a lantern, at last, swinging a hoe, shouting, “Keep fast, beast of Satan, keep fast!”
‘He changed his note, however, when he saw the vampire’s game, which was not to kill, but maim. The beast was throttled off, his huge purple tongue hanging half a foot out of his mouth, and his pendant lips steaming with bloody slaver. Then another servant threw a bowl of ground garlic at the creature and it fled.
‘The manservant picked Cathy up. She was sick, not from fear, I’m certain, but from pain. Fortunately, the crude beast had bitten her ankle, not her neck, and had barely fed upon her! The servant carried her in; I followed, grumbling vengeance. I had let the vampire live that week, only to have him attack my Catherine! He would die, and those he cared for with him!
‘ “What prey, Robert?” hallooed Linton from the entrance.
‘ “The gap-toothed vampire that lurks at the gate has caught a little girl, sir,” he replied. “And there’s a lad here,” he added, making a clutch at me. “He looks dangerous. It’s likely robbers were for putting them through the window to open the doors to the gang after all were asleep, that they might murder us at their ease. Hold your tongue, you foul-mouthed thief, you! You shall go to the gallows for this. Mr. Linton, sir, don’t lay by your gun.”
‘ “No, no, Robert,” said the old fool, Linton. “Oh, my dear Mary, look here! Don’t be afraid, it is but a boy—yet the villain scowls so plainly in his face.”
‘He pulled me under the chandelier, and Mrs. Linton placed her spectacles on her nose and raised her hands in horror. The cowardly children crept nearer also, Isabella lisping, “Frightful thing! Put him in the cellar, Papa. He looks exactly like the son of the gypsy slayer that stole my tame pheasant. Doesn’t he, Edgar?”
‘While they examined me, Cathy came round. She heard the last speech and laughed. Edgar Linton, after an inquisitive stare, recognized her. They see us at church, you know, though we seldom meet them elsewhere.
‘