in every character you have mentioned, more or less.’
‘The clock is on the stroke of eleven, sir.’
‘No matter – I’m not accustomed to go to bed in the long hours. One or two is early enough for a person who lies till ten.’
‘You shouldn’t lie till ten. There’s the very prime of the morning gone long before that time. A person who has not done one half his day’s work by ten o’clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.’
‘Nevertheless, Mrs Dean, resume your chair; because tomorrow I intend lengthening the night till afternoon. I prognosticate for myself an obstinate cold, at least.’
‘I hope not, sir. Well, you must allow me to leap over some three years; during that space, Mrs Earnshaw –’
‘No, no, I’ll allow nothing of the sort! Are you acquainted with the mood of mind in which, if you were seated alone, and the cat licking its kitten on the rug before you, you would watch the operation so intently that puss’s neglect of one ear would put you seriously out of temper?’
‘A terribly lazy mood, I should say.’
‘On the contrary, a tiresomely active one. It is mine, at present, and, therefore, continue minutely. I perceive that people in these regions acquire over people in towns the value that a spider in a dungeon does over a spider in a cottage, to their various occupants; and yet the deepened attraction is not entirely owing to the situation of the looker-on. They do live more in earnest, more in themselves, and less in surface change, and frivolous external things. I could fancy a love for life here almost possible; and I was a fixed unbeliever in any love of a year’s standing – one state resembles setting a hungry man down to a single dish on which he may concentrate his entire appetite, and do it justice – the other, introducing him to a table laid out by French cooks; he can perhaps extract as much enjoyment from the whole, but each part is a mere atom in his regard and remembrance.’
‘Oh! here we are the same as anywhere else, when you get to know us,’ observed Mrs Dean, somewhat puzzled at my speech.
‘Excuse me,’ I responded; ‘you, my good friend, are a striking evidence against that assertion. Excepting a few provincialisms of slight consequence, you have no marks of the manners that I am habituated to consider as peculiar to your class. I am sure you have thought a great deal more than the generality of servants think. You have been compelled to cultivate your reflective faculties, for want of occasions for frittering your life away in silly trifles.’
Mrs Dean laughed.
‘I certainly esteem myself a steady, reasonable kind of body,’ she said, ‘not exactly from living among the hills, and seeing one set of faces, and one series of actions, from year’s end to year’s end: but I have undergone sharp discipline which has taught me wisdom; and then, I have read more than you would fancy, Mr Lockwood. You could not open a book in this library that I have not looked into, and got something out of also; unless it be that range of Greek and Latin, and that of French – and those I know one from another: it is as much as you can expect of a poor man’s daughter.
‘However, if I am to follow my story in true gossip’s fashion, I had better go on; and instead of leaping three years, I will be content to pass to the next summer – the summer of 1778, that is nearly twenty-three years ago.’
On the morning of a fine June day, my first bonny little nursling, and the last of the ancient Earnshaw stock, was born.
We were busy with the hay in a far away field, when the girl that usually brought our breakfasts came running, an hour too soon, across the meadow and up the lane, calling me as she ran.
‘Oh, such a grand bairn!’ she panted out. ‘The finest lad that ever breathed! But the doctor says missis must go; he says she’s been in a consumption these many months. I heard him tell Mr Hindley – and now she has nothing to keep her, and she’ll be dead before winter. You must come home directly. You’re to nurse it, Nelly – to feed it with sugar and milk, and take care of it, day and night – I wish I were you, because it will be all yours when there is no missis!’
‘But is she very ill?’ I asked, flinging down my rake, and tying my bonnet.
‘I guess she is; yet she looks bravely,’ replied the girl, ‘and she talks as if she thought of living to see it grow a man. She’s out of her head for joy, it’s such a beauty! If I were her I’m certain I should not die. I should get better at the bare sight of it, in spite of Kenneth. I was fairly mad at him. Dame Archer brought the cherub down to master, in the house, and his face just began to light up, then the old croaker steps forward, and, says he: – “Earnshaw, it’s a blessing your wife has been spared to leave you this son. When she came, I felt convinced we shouldn’t keep her long; and now, I must tell you, the winter will probably finish her. Don’t take on, and fret about it too much, it can’t be helped. And besides, you should have known better than to choose such a rush of a lass!”’
‘And what did the master answer?’ I enquired.
‘I think he swore – but, I didn’t mind him, I was straining to see the bairn,’ and she began again to describe it rapturously. I, as zealous as herself, hurried eagerly home to admire, on my part, though I was very sad for Hindley’s sake; he had room in his heart only for two idols – his wife and himself – he doted on both, and adored one, and I couldn’t conceive how he would bear the loss.
When we got to Wuthering Heights, there he stood at the front door; and, as I passed in, I asked, how was the baby?
‘Nearly ready to run about, Nell!’ he replied, putting on a cheerful smile.
‘And the mistress?’ I ventured to inquire, ‘the doctor says she’s –’
‘Damn the doctor!’ he interrupted, reddening. ‘Frances is quite right – she’ll be perfectly well by this time next week. Are you going upstairs? will you tell her that I’ll come, if she’ll promise not to talk. – I left her because she would not hold her tongue; and she must – tell her Mr Kenneth says she must be quiet.’
I delivered this message to Mrs Earnshaw; she seemed in flighty spirits, and replied merrily –
‘I hardly spoke a word, Ellen, and there he has gone out twice, crying. Well, say I promise I won’t speak; but that does not bind me not to laugh at him!’
Poor soul! Till within a week of her death that gay heart never failed her; and her husband persisted doggedly, nay, furiously, in affirming her health improved every day. When Kenneth warned him that his medicines were useless at that stage of the malady, and he needn’t put him to further expense by attending her, he retorted –
‘I know you need not – she’s well – she does not want any more attendance from you! She never was in a consumption. It was a fever; and it is gone – her pulse is as slow as mine now, and her cheek as cool.’
He told his wife the same story, and she seemed to believe him; but one night, while leaning on his shoulder, in the act of saying she thought she should be able to get up tomorrow, a fit of coughing took her – a very slight one – he raised her in his arms; she put her two hands about his neck, her face changed, and she was dead.
As the girl had anticipated, the child Hareton fell wholly into my hands. Mr Earnshaw, provided he saw him healthy, and never heard him cry, was contented, as far as regarded him. For himself, he grew desperate; his sorrow was of that kind that will not lament, he neither wept nor prayed – he cursed and defied – execrated God and man, and gave himself up to reckless dissipation.
The servants could not bear his tyrannical and evil conduct long: Joseph and I were the only two that would stay. I had not the heart to leave my charge; and besides, you know, I had been his foster sister, and excused his behaviour more readily than a stranger would.
Joseph