“Miss Earnshaw? Nonsense!” cried the dame. “Miss Earnshaw scouring the country with a gypsy! And yet, my dear, the child is in mourning—sure it is—and she may be lamed for life!”
‘ “How careless is her brother!” exclaimed Mr. Linton, turning from me to Catherine. “I’ve understood from neighbors that he lets her grow up in absolute heathenism, running about the moors with gypsy vampire slayers. But who is this? Where did she pick up this companion? Oho! I declare he is that strange acquisition my late neighbor made, in his journey to Liverpool.”
‘ “A wicked boy, at all events,” remarked the old lady, “and quite unfit for a decent house! Did you notice his language, Linton? I’m shocked that my children should have heard it.”
‘I recommenced cursing—don’t be angry, Nelly—and so Robert was ordered to take me off. I refused to go without Cathy, but he dragged me into the garden, pushed the lantern into my hand, and sent me on my way.
‘I ran back for my sword, should the vampire return, and I resumed my station as spy. If Catherine had wished to return, I intended shattering their great glass panes to a million fragments to reach her.
‘She sat on the sofa quietly. Mrs. Linton took off the gray cloak of the dairy maid, which we had borrowed for our excursion, shaking her head and expostulating. She was a young lady, and they made a distinction between her treatment and mine. Then the woman-servant brought a basin of warm water and washed Cathy’s feet, and Mr. Linton mixed a tumbler of negus, and Isabella emptied a plateful of cakes into her lap, and Edgar stood gaping at a distance. Afterward, they dried and combed her beautiful hair, and gave her a pair of enormous slippers, and wheeled her to the fire. I left her, as merry as she could be, dividing her food between herself and a little dog whose nose she pinched as she ate. I saw her eyes full of stupid admiration; she is so immeasurably superior to them—to everybody on earth, is she not, Nelly? Why would she admire them?’
‘There will more come of this business than you reckon on,’ I answered, covering him up and extinguishing the light. ‘You are incurable, Heathcliff, and Mr. Hindley will have to proceed to extremes, see if he won’t.’
My words came truer than I desired. The luckless adventure made Earnshaw furious. And then Mr. Linton, to mend matters, paid us a visit himself on the morrow and read the young master such a lecture on the road he guided his family.
Heathcliff received no flogging, but he was told that the first word he spoke to Miss Catherine should see him driven from Wuthering Heights. Mrs. Earnshaw undertook to keep her sister-in-law in due restraint when she returned home, employing art not force, for with force she would have found it impossible.
Chapter 7
Cathy stayed at Thrushcross Grange five weeks, until Christmas. By that time her ankle was thoroughly cured, and her manners much improved. The mistress visited her often, and began a plan of reform with fine clothes and flattery, which Cathy took readily. So, instead of a wild, hatless little savage jumping into the house and rushing to squeeze us all breathless, a very dignified person with brown ringlets falling from the cover of a feathered beaver hat lighted from a handsome pony.
Hindley lifted her from her horse, delighted. ‘Why, Cathy, you are quite a beauty! I should scarcely have known you. You look like a lady now.’
I removed Catherine’s coat and beneath she wore a grand plaid silk frock, white trousers, and burnished shoes, and, while her eyes sparkled joyfully when the dogs came bounding up to welcome her, she hardly touched them, fearing they might soil her splendid garments.
She kissed me gently. Then she looked round for Heathcliff. ‘Is Heathcliff not here?’ she demanded, pulling off her gloves and displaying fingers wonderfully whitened from staying indoors.
‘Heathcliff, you may come forward,’ ordered Mr. Earnshaw. ‘You may come and wish Miss Catherine welcome, like the other servants.’
Cathy, catching a glimpse of her friend, flew to embrace him. She kissed him seven or eight times on his cheek and then drawing back, burst into laughter. ‘How very black and cross you look! Heathcliff, have you forgotten me?’
Shame and pride threw double gloom over his countenance and kept him immovable.
‘Shake hands, Heathcliff,’ said Mr. Earnshaw, condescendingly.
‘I will not,’ replied the boy, finding his tongue at last. ‘I will not stand to be laughed at.’
Miss Cathy seized him again before he could escape. ‘I did not mean to laugh at you,’ she said. ‘Heathcliff, shake hands, at least! What are you sulky for? It was only that you looked odd. If you wash your face, and brush your hair, it will be all right, but you are so dirty!’
I must tell you that if Heathcliff was careless and uncared for before Catherine’s absence, it was ten times worse now. His clothes were dirty and covered with dry blood from wandering the moors. I could not say when he had last bathed. Truthfully, he had been gone from Wuthering Heights more than he had been there—where, I didn’t know, but I could guess. Gypsy slayers had been camping in the area, and while the vampires had been bold only weeks before, they were quieter again, keeping to themselves and the shadows.
Catherine gazed at Heathcliff’s soiled fingers and then at her dress, which he had dirtied where he touched her.
He snatched his hand away. ‘I shall be as dirty as I please, and I like to be dirty, and I will be dirty.’
With that he dashed out of the room, leaving Catherine unable to comprehend how her remark had made him so angry.
After playing lady’s maid to the newcomer, and putting my cakes in the oven, and making the house and kitchen cheerful with great fires, befitting Christmas Eve, I sat down to amuse myself by singing carols. Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw were engaging Missy’s attention by gay trifles bought for her to present to the little Lintons, as an acknowledgment of their kindness.
They had invited them to spend the next day at Wuthering Heights, and the invitation had been accepted, on one condition: Heathcliff must be banned from coming in contact with the Linton offspring.
Smelling the rich scent of heating spices in the kitchen, I remembered how old Earnshaw used to come in when all was tidied, and call me a cant lass, and slip a shilling into my hand as a Christmas gift. From that I went on to think of his fondness for Heathcliff. That naturally led me to consider the poor lad’s situation now, and I got up and walked into the court to seek him.
He was not far; I found him in the stable, cornering a young female vampire with the aid of a pitchfork. It hissed and bared ivory fangs, but the gleam in its eyes was more of lust than fierceness, and the amount of white ankle and shapely leg it revealed beneath its gown and cloak bordered on indecent.
‘Stay back, Nelly,’ he warned, thrusting the tines of the fork in the beastie’s direction.
It squealed, cowering, its arms thrust out in an attempt to protect its face.
I drew back, pulling my cloak around me, horrified and yet oddly intrigued at the same time.
‘What did I tell you?’ Heathcliff demanded of the creature. Her long, stringy black hair was the color of pitch, her eyes black holes, her lips blood red, and when she shrieked, I could see her fangs.
‘I told you, you could not pass beyond the outer walls! You take advantage of my Christmas cheer!’ he bellowed. ‘I throw you and yours a perfectly good sheep and then you dare come after my horses?’
It shrilled in response, almost as if it could speak, but if it could, its language was beyond me.
‘I should kill you,’ Heathcliff threatened. ‘Christmas cheer be damned.’ But then he lowered the pitchfork. ‘Go, before I change my mind.’
With a hiss, the vampire scurried past me and out into the darkness.
Heathcliff returned the pitchfork to its place along the wall. He said nothing about the vampire,