Nelly Dean Page 8

  I saw it all with a heavy heart. Towards me, and me alone, had Hindley retained any of his old warmth and boyish sense of fun, and I felt I had still some good influence over him, but we had little time together any more.

  One day, about a month after Heathcliff’s arrival, we contrived to go off for a whole day together. It was the first of my monthly holidays, but my father being away, and my mother still a regular visitor at the Heights, I was not expected at home. Hindley had just succeeded (with much secret assistance from me of an evening) in keeping the whole of some hundred lines of Shakespeare in his mind at once, in honour of which achievement he had been granted a day’s freedom from lessons. The day being sunny, we had resolved to go to Pennistone Crag for a picnic. Mrs Earnshaw made up a packet of oatcakes and cheese for us to take along, which Hindley put in an old sack and slung over his shoulder, and off we went. But the day was unseasonably hot, so we chose to stop instead at another favourite place about midway there, a little hollow graced by a burbling stream and a small waterfall that stayed always cool and refreshing even when the rest of the world was baking.

  It was a beautiful little grotto, naturally walled with stone, where the water ran in over flat slabs of bedrock and then dropped in little waterfalls through multiple pools of varying shapes and levels. The water was coloured orange by the iron-rich soil, which also drifted to the bottom and made the pools red. There was one in particular in which a narrow fall dropped straight into still water, causing it to roil up in red bubbles. We had always called this ‘the pool of blood’, and avoided touching its contents with as much superstitious horror as if it had been blood indeed. At another place, the sunlight somehow came through the water from the back, though there was only stone behind it, so that the little waterfall, no more than a hand’s-breadth across, danced with an orange glow like flames. We called it the ‘the waternixie’s bonfire’, and liked to imagine tiny fairy-like creatures dancing behind it. Once, Hindley put out his hand and caught up the water’s flow, so we could see behind it and ‘catch them at it’ as he said, but there was nothing but bare stone behind. ‘Too quick for us,’ I said.

  We took off our shoes and sat on a rock to dangle our feet in the stream. Then Hindley scooped up some water in his hand to cool his face and neck, and I did the same. By chance, a bit of it splashed onto Hindley, and he responded by flinging some on me. Then I returned fire, and soon we were in full battle, chasing each other about, splashing and laughing until we both collapsed, sopping wet and exhausted, on the bank. In that state, we found the shaded hollow a little too cool, so we went back up into the sunlight, where we rolled about on the dry heather, and lay in the hot sun to dry our clothes. After a time, Hindley declared us ‘toasted to perfection’ – neither too hot, nor too cold – and said it was time to eat, so we made our way back to where we had left our provisions.

  ‘This is a bit like old times, is it not, Nelly?’ he said, as we sat ourselves on a patch of soft moss beside the stream.

  ‘Better,’ I said, ‘because these days are rarer for us now, and more precious accordingly.’ I was fond of wise sayings, then.

  ‘No, not better, because even now I can’t forget what I have to go home to,’ he replied bitterly. Then he burst out, ‘What am I to do, Nelly? Everybody hates me now, except you.’

  Well I had a dozen answers on the tip of my tongue, beginning with ‘Leave Heathcliff alone’. But for once I knew better than to offer them. I made no answer but to lean against him, and he was silent too, for so long that I peeked over to see if he had fallen asleep. But his eyes were open, and I saw a steady trickle of tears making a path down the side of his face. When he saw me looking at him, he made a savage grunt and turned away, ashamed to have been caught weeping. But by then I’d caught the infection, and I was soon sobbing away myself, huddling myself against his back for comfort. And then he turned round, and we held each other until the worst of it passed. There was no need to speak. We both knew what we had lost. After a while I began to busy myself with our provisions: I spread my kerchief on the ground and started to empty the sack and arrange our meal on it. When that was done, we both ate, still silent, but not so grieved as we had been.

  ‘When I am grown up and Wuthering Heights is mine,’ Hindley said at last, ‘I shall marry you, Nelly. I shall send Heathcliff packing, and Joseph too, and then we will be happy all day long.’

  I made no reply to his announcement, but blushed, and no doubt looked as awkward as I felt. When we were small children, Hindley and I had often talked of marrying when we grew up, as if it were a matter of course. We had even gone a whole fortnight, once, pretending that we were secretly married already, with a ‘cottage’ marked out with a square of stones in a little hollow nearby. But, as we got older, we had become shy of such talk, so that there had been no mention of marriage between us for some years. I had retained some secret hopes on that score, though, and often wondered if he did the same – especially after I had transformed from playmate to maidservant.

  Hindley looked a little dismayed at my reaction.

  ‘You will marry me, won’t you, Nell?’ he asked anxiously. I hastened to assure him that I loved him as dearly as ever, all my shyness dissolving in the face of his obvious distress. And then I had a marvellous thought.

  ‘Hindley,’ I said excitedly, ‘I tell you what we must do. We must not grieve for the past, but think to the future, and prepare ourselves to be a good master and mistress of Wuthering Heights, as we will be some day. I am learning a great deal about that already, and you must learn too. You must ask your father if you can help him more in managing the estate, and ask him a great many questions about everything.’ Hindley caught my enthusiasm, so much so that he proposed we should return home straight away to put this plan into action. And so we packed up our things and headed back to Wuthering Heights, both of us more cheerful than we had been in a month. I was particularly delighted with my own cleverness in finding a way to turn Hindley into a path more likely to win him his father’s approbation, and more conducive to general peace in the household. When we were nearly home, with but one little hillock hiding us from view of the house, Hindley stopped and quickly kissed me on the lips. It was but a child’s kiss, after all, but it seemed momentous to us, and we walked the rest of the way holding hands and feeling rather solemn.

  Well, turning a person out of his wonted path is not like turning a sheep, to be accomplished with a single wave of a stick or a nip at the heels. It is more like trying to shift a stream out of its bed: it looks easy enough at the start, as the water will go wherever you send it, but your dam of pebbles and mud will only hold so long as you are there to tend it, and left alone the water soon finds its way into its old path again. So it was with Hindley. To be fair, it was not all his fault. He began with great enthusiasm, hovering about his father, offering his help, and asking all manner of questions. But the change was so sudden that his father was more puzzled than pleased, and suspected some hidden motive, the more so as he could not help but observe that the lad did not attend particularly well to his answers. I assured Hindley at every opportunity that the master would come round in time if he would but persevere, but in the end the father’s suspicions lasted longer than the son’s resolve. Not only did the waters return to their own path, but the release of dammed-up force only dug the channel deeper: to the master, Hindley’s short-lived reformation seemed to confirm that the boy would never come to anything, while Hindley took his father’s refusal to credit his good intentions as proof that any further effort to please his father would be fruitless. And I, who had been so pleased with my own hand in bringing this about, felt sick at heart, and feared I had done more harm than good.

  Despite this, however, Hindley and I still spoke privately of our marriage as a settled thing, and I continued in my own resolve to learn as much as I could of household management, against the day that I would be mistress there, and to steer Hindley into good behaviour whenever I could, and comfort him when I couldn
’t.

  As the weeks passed, my mother’s visits to the Heights became more infrequent, and my own responsibilities increased. I was still but a girl, of course, and not likely to be placed in command of servants older and longer-serving than myself, but I soon saw that it would not be long before I attained that eminence. At that time there were two maidservants employed at the Heights besides myself: one assigned to the dairy, and the other to the kitchen and household. They were both good, obedient, hard-working girls, like most rural folk, but rather slow of mind. They grew anxious when left to direct even their own work for very long, let alone anyone else’s, and, when faced with an unexpected obstacle, would come to a puzzled halt, like a sheep encountering a wall, until it was removed. Furthermore, neither of them expected to spend more than a few years at the Heights before leaving for homes of their own. When they did so, I foresaw, their replacements would naturally look to me for instructions when the mistress was not available, which was more often than not, and I would be housekeeper in effect, if not in name.

  During this period, I received my first and, did I but know it, only letter from my father, all but the signature written not in his own painstaking, coarse print but in a flowing script that told me he had pressed someone into service as a scribe. I have it still. It reads:

  Dear Nelly,

  I hope this finds you well. I am well myself. I have five men working under me. They are all good men now but one was a lazy sot so I had to let him go and find another to fill his place. You would like to see the house I am building. It is very grand. It will have two floors above the ground plus the attics. The stones for the ground floor are very large and we must use a tackle to move them, but they are all dressed stone and easy enough to work with once they are in place. They have a better sort of mortar here too, smooth as butter. I am boarding at a house in town. It is a clean place and the landlady is very kind but not so good a cook as your mother. I hope your mother will come here soon. This house will need many servants when it is done and I am sure they would take you on if I said the word. Also you would get better wages I guess than you do now. Meantime, work hard and be a good girl. Be sure to save your wages and take them to your mother.

  Your loving father,

  THOMAS DEAN

  Letters were scarce in those days, so this one would have been a prize whatever its contents, but ‘Your loving father’ moved me to tears, and remained precious to me for years, even after I realized that it was but a conventional closure, probably suggested by the scribe. The thought that my mother might leave soon, though, and worse, that my father might move me to a position in his employer’s household, filled me with alarm, which I conveyed to my mother on her next visit.

  ‘The house will be at least another year a-building, Nell,’ she assured me, ‘and probably more. And by the time it’s built, God willing, your father may be prosperous enough that he won’t wish you in service at all, and certainly not in his own neighbourhood.’

  ‘Will you be going there yourself soon?’

  ‘Not right away. I should like to see you better settled in your duties, and know that Mrs Earnshaw can rely on your abilities, before I leave you all.’

  ‘What about the cows?’ I asked. My mother had but four cows at present, but her dairy was her greatest pride and pleasure. Though generally unsentimental, she loved her ‘ladies’, as she called her cows, and continued the practice, begun in her girlhood by Mrs Earnshaw, of naming them all after Shakespeare’s heroines. So it was that I was plain Ellen, but her barn was populated with, at present, Rosalind, Ophelia, Viola, and Marina.

  ‘Only Reenie and Rosie will need milking over the winter,’ she told me, ‘Feelie and Vi are drying off now – they’re due to calve in March. I shall take Reenie with me – your father has his eye on a little house in the town with one stall that will do for a cow, and she’ll bear the journey easily enough. The other three shall come here – I’ve spoken to Mr Earnshaw about it already. In return for feeding them through the winter, he’s to have Rosie’s milk and his pick of Feelie’s and Vi’s calves come spring. They won’t overload the dairy either, for you’re getting low on milkers just now. And I know I can count on you to make sure my ladies get good care.’

  Accordingly, one bleak afternoon in late November she appeared at the Heights, driving three weary-looking cows before her, and looking thoroughly exhausted herself.

  ‘Nelly,’ she called out, ‘come out here, my dear, and take these three into the barn. My, that was weary work! I thought to have been here hours ago, but these ladies won’t be hurried – balky as mules, they were.’ Despite her weariness, she was shaking her head and laughing as she spoke. Meanwhile Mrs Earnshaw had hurried out, wrapping a shawl around her as she came, and keeping up a steady stream of excited talk.

  ‘Mary, there you are at last! And your ladies, too – is this Rosalind? Ah, you didn’t think I’d recognize her, did you? But I remember her clear as yesterday – the prettiest heifer in all the barn she was, with those long legs and that little star on her forehead, when I picked her out to be your wedding present. And my, what a beauty she has grown into. You say she’s your best milker still, after all these years? You see I haven’t lost my eye for a good cow, at any rate.’

  ‘No you certainly haven’t, and not a day passes that I don’t thank you for her: Rosie’s been a rare treasure to me in the dairy. And so good-natured! She’s still as an owl for the milking, and an angel for temperament always: I don’t think she’s ever kicked in her whole life. These two here are her daughters, Vi and Feely – Viola and Ophelia, that is – you see I’ve kept up our old practice. Reenie – that’s Marina – is back at home. She’s Rosie’s granddaughter, and bids fair to be her equal, but she’ll go with me to Brassing.’

  ‘Oh Mary, must you really go? Brassing is so far away, and I can’t bear to think of you being gone so long.’ The mistress was pulling my mother towards the house as she spoke.

  ‘Come now, Helen, you wouldn’t have me neglect my duty to Tom, would you? The poor fellow is living in paid lodgings, and eating Heaven-knows-what: tallow in the butter, chalk in the milk, and the last time the landlady served goose, it tasted so foul, he thought it must be a vulture! He was half minded to demand to see the feet, he said. And I’ll only be gone until spring – I’ll be back before you’ve noticed I’m gone.’ With suchlike jollyings and reassurances, my mother led the mistress back to the house, while I turned away to attend to the cows, awkwardly shooing them towards the barn. I actually had little to do with managing livestock at the Heights – the produce of the dairy was more my department than its four-footed inhabitants – so I was in some difficulties, until Joseph spied me and came running over.

  ‘What are ye up to, ye daft hinny? That’s no way to move cattle – ye’ll only get them into a fright, and have them trampling all the beds.’ He snatched the stick from my hands and, with a sequence of light taps, accompanied by deep cooing noises, soon had the cows moving into the barn.

  ‘Do you know where they’re to go?’ I asked, trying to sound as if I knew myself.

  ‘A-course I do – wasn’t it left to me to ready the stalls for them? An’ it’ll be left to me to find fodder for them too, I suppose. Feeding three for the milk of one – that’s a bad bargain the maister’s made – but he always did make bad bargains wi’ womanites, and yon canny witch is the warst on ’em.’

  I had turned away before Joseph shot this parting bolt, but I turned to call back at him: ‘It’s nothing to the bad bargain you’d be to any “womanite” foolish enough to look twice at a sour-tempered, monkey-faced dwarf like you!’ I regretted it the moment I’d said it, of course. Not for its unkindness, which was well deserved, but because Joseph was forever trying to provoke me to lash out at him, so that he could denounce me to the master for ill temper and insubordination, and I had been trying to school myself to ignore him, or at least respond with no more than dignified silence and scornful looks. Now he had just what he wanted, and
was gleefully working himself up into a hopping rage before running to report to the master: ‘Hoo, listen to the little hussy – she’s as bad as her mother – nay worse, for talking evil to her elders and betters. The maister shall hear of this – he’ll turn you out, this time, he will, for sure. It’s too long he’s put up with your insolence and bad ways, but now he’ll see, now he’ll see what she’s really made of, witch bastard that she is.’

  I was almost at the house by now, using up all my little stock of self-control not to reply, or give any sign that his words affected me. ‘Witch bastard’ was one of his favourite epithets for me, combining as it did aspersions on my character, my mother’s, and the circumstances of my birth, and it usually got a response from me when nothing else could, but today I did no more than slam the kitchen door behind me and commence chopping onions with a fury, both to vent my anger, and to provide some cover for the tears that were sure to follow.