you see, and a great, dark hole covered with an iron slab. Some say the hole leads to hell.” She began to stitch again. “Not that I’m superstitious, you understand, but some do say it.”
“Well, it certainly makes sense. The gypsy orphan knowing to hide in the haystack whilst the others were slain,” I agreed. As for the entrance to hell she described, I was unsure what I thought, but I was too eager to have her continue to allow her to digress too far. “Tell me more about the child Heathcliff,” I urged, sliding up in my comfortable chair.
He seemed a sullen, patient child who had an aversion to the few sunny days we saw on these moors. He was hardened, perhaps, to the ways of his people, we would guess later. He would stand Hindley’s blows without winking or shedding a tear, as if he had hurt himself by accident and nobody was to blame.
This endurance made old Earnshaw furious when he discovered his son was persecuting the poor, fatherless child. He took to Heathcliff strangely, believing all he said. There seemed some bond between them we did not understand.
So, from the very beginning, Heathcliff bred bad feelings in the house. At Mrs. Earnshaw’s death two years later, the young master had learnt to regard his father as an oppressor rather than a friend, and Heathcliff as a usurper of his father’s affections, and he grew bitter with brooding over these injuries.
I sympathized awhile, but when the children fell ill of the measles, and I had to tend them, I changed my idea of Heathcliff. He was dangerously sick; however, I will say this, he was the quietest child that I ever watched over. The difference between him and the others forced me to be less partial. Cathy and her brother harassed me terribly; he was as uncomplaining as a lamb, though hardness, not gentleness, made him give little trouble.” She knotted her thread, threaded her needle once more, and began to hem the lace around the outside of the cap. “It made me certain he was a gypsy brat. They aren’t like us, sir. Not even human, perhaps.”
“But he recovered,” I prompted, wanting to hear more facts firsthand.
“He got through, and the doctor affirmed it was in a great measure owing to me, and praised me for my care. I softened toward Heathcliff, and thus Hindley lost his last ally. Still, I couldn’t dote on Heathcliff, and I wondered often what my master saw to admire so much in the sullen boy, who never, to my recollection, repaid his indulgence by any sign of gratitude. He was not insolent to his benefactor; he was simply unfeeling, but he had only to speak and Mr. Earnshaw would bend to his wishes.
As an instance, I remember Mr. Earnshaw and the children once met upon a band of gypsies at a parish fair. The gypsies noticed young Heathcliff at once and it came about that they knew him and they knew his poor dead mother. The tale told was that the boy became lost in Liverpool from the others and was thought dead. When Heathcliff learned the tale, he begged that he should go with the gypsies to meet his relations and, at first, Mr. Earnshaw forbid it.
‘Gypsy!’ taunted Hindley, cuffing him heartily when his father walked away. ‘Orphan, gypsy.’
‘Tell him to let me go with them,’ Heathcliff insisted, allowing himself to be pummeled again and again, ‘or I will speak of these blows and you’ll get them from your father with interest.’
‘Off with you, dog!’ cried Hindley, threatening him with an iron weight used for weighing potatoes and hay in one of the market stalls.
‘Throw it,’ Heathcliff replied, standing still, ‘and then I’ll tell how you boasted that you will turn me out of doors as soon as he dies, and see whether he will not turn you out directly.’
Hindley threw it, hitting Heathcliff on the breast. The boy fell, but staggered up immediately, breathless and white. The master did come along at that very moment and, taking pity, sent young Earnshaw home and allowed Heathcliff to catch up to the gypsies and go along.
I do not know what the boy did that day and night with the gypsies, but I can tell you he returned a different boy. He somehow seemed darker, but carried a confidence I sometimes found frightening. As he entered the barn upon his return, Hindley demanded to know where he had been and what the gypsies had told him of his parentage. When Heathcliff did ignore the request, Hindley knocked him off his feet. I was surprised to witness how coolly the child gathered himself and sat down on a bundle of hay to overcome the qualm which the violent blow occasioned, before he entered the house to announce his return. I persuaded him easily to let me lay the blame of his bruises on a new horse purchased only the day before at the fair: he minded little what tale was told since he had gotten what he wanted in going with the strangers. He complained so seldom, indeed, of such stirs as these with Hindley that I really thought him not vindictive.”
Again, Mrs. Dean met my gaze. “I was deceived completely, as you will later hear.”
Chapter 5
In time, of course, Mr. Earnshaw began to fail. He had been active and healthy, yet his strength left him suddenly, and when he was confined to a chair in the corner, he grew grievously irritable. He became preoccupied by the growing number of vampires in the countryside and worried what would become of his children. We understood that the vampires were flooding into England and Scotland from their native land of Transylvania, where human blood was becoming scarce, but none knew what to do about it. Mr. Earnshaw could not sleep or eat for his obsession with the bloodsuckers. All day he filled journals with plans for strengthening the defenses at Wuthering Heights, and at night he burned candle after candle to the nub. By then, he was barely able to walk without the steady arm of a companion. His temper flared over the smallest things, and even though his body had grown weak, he could still rage with the roar of a charging bull. Nothing would make him so furious as some suspected slight of his authority.
This was especially true concerning Heathcliff. He had come to believe that the orphan lad could do no wrong, and he believed that the rest of the household was jealous. In his sickness, he became certain that because he liked Heathcliff, all hated him and longed to do him ill. In truth, the master’s favor did more harm to the boy than good. To have peace in the house, we all humored Heathcliff. That is never best for any child. Giving him what he demanded without question turned a gentle, grateful lad to a youth full of pride and black tempers. As expected, Heathcliff and Hindley clashed. Perhaps there was jealousy of the love Mr. Earnshaw showered on the foundling, but denied his own son. We’ll never know. But our peaceful home became a battleground as Hindley defied his father again and again, rousing the old man to fury. In a fit of rage, Mr. Earnshaw would seize his cane to strike Hindley, and his son would heap scorn on him, moving out of range of the ivory-handled weapon. More than once, we feared the master’s terrible wrath would be the death of young Earnshaw.
It was a bad time for all. Two households of our small church were ravished by the bloodsuckers. The small son of the butler at Grievegate Hall, not fifteen miles from here, was sent to fetch cheese from their well house at twilight. Six years of age was all he possessed. The child had run the distance a thousand times, yet on that night, he was snatched up by a heartless vampire. When they found poor Georgie, he was as pale as clabber, and two great wounds gaped on his throat.”
“The child was dead?” I asked, horrified and fascinated in the same blink of an eye. “Murdered by vampires?”
“Worse,” the woman hissed. “Shortly after his recovery, he was found sinking his teeth into pigeons. Then it was rats and larger animals. The family did all they could, but little Georgie was lost to the darkness. When he sucked a parlor maid dry and went for his little sister, his own father surrendered him to the authorities.”
“To be imprisoned?” I pleaded, although I knew what the penalty for murder was, even for a child.
“Not that.” She shrugged her shrunken shoulders. “What else could be done? Once they get the taste of human blood, even a servant’s blood, they will hunt. And even a six-year-old vampire has the strength of three human men. Sadly, it is kill or be killed.”
“Sadly,” I echoed. Then raised my gaze to her again. “Go on.”
At last, our curate, who taught the little Lintons and Earnshaws their numbers and letters, advised that Hindley