Wuthering Bites Read online

  Some were detached sentences, other parts took the form of a regular diary, scrawled in an unformed, childish hand. At the top of an extra page, I was greatly amused to find an excellent caricature of my friend Joseph, rudely yet powerfully sketched in the form of a hideous bloodsucking creature with fangs that nearly reached his waist.

  An immediate interest kindled within me for the unknown Catherine, and I began to decipher her faded hieroglyphics.

  An awful Sunday! commenced the paragraph beneath. I wish my father had not succumbed to that last nasty vampire attack and were back again. Hindley is a detestable substitute—his conduct to Heathcliff is atrocious—he has no idea what or who he is crossing. H. and I are going to rebel—we took our initiatory step this evening.

  All day had been flooding with rain; we could not go to church, so Joseph got up a congregation in the garret. While Hindley and his wife basked downstairs before a comfortable fire, doing anything but reading their Bibles, Heathcliff, myself, and the unhappy plough-boy were commanded to take our prayer-books. We were set in a row on a sack of corn, groaning and shivering, and hoping that Joseph would shiver, too, so that he might give us a short homily. A vain idea! The service lasted precisely three hours, and yet my brother had the face to exclaim, when he saw us descending—

  ‘What, done already?’

  On Sunday evenings we used to be permitted to play, if we did not make much noise; now a mere titter is sufficient to send us into corners!

  ‘You forget you have a master here,’ says the tyrant. ‘I’ll demolish the first who puts me out of temper! I insist on perfect sobriety and silence. Frances, darling,’ he said to his wife. ‘Pull the boy’s hair as you go by.’

  Frances pulled Heathcliff’s hair heartily, and then went and seated herself on her husband’s knee, and there they were, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour.

  We made ourselves as snug as our means allowed in the arch of the dresser. I had just fastened our pinafores together, and hung them up for a curtain, when in comes Joseph, on an errand from the stables. He tears down my handiwork, boxes my ears, and croaks—

  ‘Your own father just buried and the Sabbath not over, and you dare play your silly games. Shame on ye! Sit down. There’s good books to be read. Sit down, and save yer souls!’

  I could not bear the employment. I took my dingy volume and hurled it into the dog kennel, vowing I hated a good book.

  Heathcliff kicked his to the same place. Then there was a hubbub!

  ‘Master Hindley!’ shouted our self-made chaplain. ‘Master, come quick! Miss Catherine’s ripped the back off The Helmet of Salvation, and Heathcliff’s put his foot into the first part of The Broad Way to Destruction! The old man would have beat them soundly for such a crime—but he’s gone!’

  Hindley hurried up from his paradise on the hearth, and seizing one of us by the collar, and the other by the arm, hurled both into the back kitchen.

  I reached for this book, and a pot of ink from the shelf, and pushed the house door ajar to give me light, and I have got the time on with writing for twenty minutes. Heathcliff is impatient, though, and proposes that we should appropriate the dairy woman’s cloak and have a scamper on the moors, where he can practice the deadly arts he is secretly acquiring.

  I suppose Catherine fulfilled her project, for the next sentence took up another subject.

  How little did I dream that Hindley would ever make me cry so! she wrote. My head aches, till I cannot keep it on the pillow, and still I can’t give over. Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond and won’t let him sit with us, nor eat with us anymore. He says he and I must not play together. Most tragic of all, he has forbidden Heathcliff to practice the skills necessary to fight the vampires running rampant on the moors. My brother threatens to turn him out of the house if we break his orders.

  He has been blaming our father (how dared he?) for treating H. too liberally, and he swears he will reduce him to his right place.

  I began to nod drowsily over the dim page, hearing the sound of a branch of a fir tree touch my window as the blast wailed by and rattled against the panes. I listened an instant, detected the disturber, then turned and dozed, and dreamt.

  I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, only it was now a silk-lined casket, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind and the driving of the snow. I heard, also, the fir bough repeat its teasing sound, but it annoyed me so much that I resolved to silence it. I rose from my grave and endeavored to unhasp the casement. The hook was soldered into the staple, a circumstance observed by me when awake, but forgotten.

  “I must stop it, nevertheless!” I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass and stretching an arm out to seize the branch, instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand!

  The intense horror of nightmare came over me. I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed—

  “Let me in—let me in!”

  “Who are you?” I asked, struggling to disengage myself.

  “Catherine Linton,” it replied shiveringly. “I’m come home. I’d lost my way on the moor and been chased by the bloodthirsty devils!”

  As it spoke, I discerned a child’s pale face, her neck punctured and bleeding freely, staring through the window. Terror made me cruel, and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist onto the broken pane and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes. Still it wailed, “Let me in!” and maintained its tenacious grip. Horror gripped me at the icy touch of the unholy thing!

  “How can I!” I said. “You must let me go, if you want me to let you in!”

  The fingers relaxed, I snatched mine through the hole, hurriedly piled the books up in a pyramid against it, and stopped my ears to exclude the lamentable prayer.

  I seemed to keep them closed above a quarter of an hour; yet, the instant I listened again, there was the doleful cry moaning on!

  “Begone!” I shouted. “I’ll never let you in, not if you beg for twenty years.”

  “It is twenty years,” mourned the voice. “Twenty years. I’ve been a fed-upon for twenty years! Dead but not dead.”

  The feeble scratching outside began anew, and the pile of books moved as if thrust forward.

  I tried to jump up, but could not stir a limb in the tight confines of my death chamber, and so I yelled aloud, in a frenzy of fright.

  To my confusion, I discovered the yell was not ideal. Hasty footsteps approached my chamber door; somebody pushed it open with a vigorous hand, and a light pierced the top of my coffin, which had transformed into a bed again. I sat shuddering and wiping the perspiration from my forehead. The intruder appeared to hesitate, and muttered to himself.

  At last he said in a half-whisper, plainly not expecting an answer, “Is anyone here?”

  I opened the panels to confess my presence, and I shall not soon forget the effect my action produced.

  Heathcliff stood near the entrance, in his shirt and trousers, with a candle dripping over his fingers, and his face as white as the wall behind him. The first creak of the oak startled him like an electric shock: the light leapt from his hold to a distance of some feet, and his agitation was so extreme that he could hardly pick it up.

  “It is only your guest, sir. I had the misfortune to scream in my sleep, owing to a frightful nightmare. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

  He blinked and seemed to fall from his trance. “God confound you, Mr. Lockwood! Who showed you up to this room?” he demanded, crushing his nails into his palms and grinding his teeth. “Who was it? I’ve a good mind to turn them out of the house this moment!”

  “It was your servant, Zillah,” I replied, flinging myself out of the bed and pulling on my coat. “I should not care if you did, Mr. Heathcliff; she richly deserves it. I suppose that she wanted to get another proof that the place was haunted, at my expense. Well, it is—swarming with ghosts and goblins! You have reason in shutting it up, I assure you!”

  “What do you mean?” asked Heathcliff. “And what are you doing? Lie down and finish out the night, since you are here. But for heaven’s sake, don’t repeat that horrid noise. Nothing could excuse it, unless you were having your arteries sapped!”

  “If the little fiend had got in at the window, she probably would have bitten me!” I returned. “I’m not going to endure the persecutions of your hospitable ancestors again. That minx, Catherine Linton, or Earnshaw, or however she was called—she must have been a changeling—human turned vampire—wicked little soul! She told me she had been walking the earth these twenty years, a just punishment for her mortal transgressions, I’ve no doubt!”

  Scarcely were these words uttered, when I recollected the association of Heathcliff’s with Catherine’s name in the book, which had completely slipped from my memory. I blushed at my inconsideration, but, without showing further consciousness of the offense, I hastened to add—

  “The truth is, sir, I passed the first part of the night in spelling over the name scratched on that window ledge. A monotonous occupation, calculated to set me asleep, like counting or—”

  “What can you mean by talking this way to me?” thundered Heathcliff with savage vehemence. “How—how dare you, under my roof?” And he struck his forehead with rage.

  I did not know whether to resent this language or pursue my explanation, but he seemed so powerfully affected that I proceeded with my re-telling of my dream.

  Heathcliff gradually fell back into the shelter of the bed as I spoke, finally sitting down almost concealed behind it. I guessed, however, by his irregular and intercepted breathing that he struggled to vanquish an excess of violent emotion.

  “Not three o’clock yet!” I remarked, cont
inuing to dress. I was unsure of where I was going, but quite sure I would not stay there. “I could have taken oath it had been six. Time stagnates here; we must surely have retired to rest at eight!”

  “Always at nine in the winter, and always rising at four,” said my host, suppressing a groan. “Mr. Lockwood,” he added. “You may go into my room. You’ll only be in the way, coming downstairs so early, and your childish outcry has sent sleep to the devil for me.”

  “And for me, too,” I replied. “I’ll walk in the hall till daylight, and then I’ll be off. I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.”

  “Take the candle, and go where you please, then,” Heathcliff muttered. “I’ll join you directly. Keep out of the yard, though. The dogs are unchained to keep back the uninvited.”

  I obeyed, leaving the chamber, but unsure as to which way to go, I turned back and found myself an involuntary witness to the rather strange behavior of my landlord.

  Thinking himself alone, no doubt, he got onto the bed and wrenched open the lattice, bursting, as he pulled at it, into an uncontrollable passion of tears.

  “Come in! Come in!” he sobbed. “Catherine, do come. Oh do—once more! Oh! My heart’s darling! Hear me this time, Catherine, at last!”

  The specter showed a specter’s ordinary caprice. It gave no sign of its existence, but the snow and wind whirled wildly through, even reaching me and blowing out the light.

  There was such anguish in the gush of grief that accompanied Heathcliff’s raving that my compassion made me overlook its folly. I descended cautiously to the lower floor and landed in the back kitchen, where a gleam of fire enabled me to rekindle my candle. Nothing was stirring except a brindled, gray cat, which crept from the ashes and saluted me with a mew.

  Two benches, shaped in sections of a circle, nearly enclosed the hearth. I stretched myself on one, and the cat mounted the other. We were both of us nodding off when Joseph shuffled down a wooden ladder that vanished in the roof, through a trap. He cast a sinister look at me and swept the cat from its bench, and bestowing himself in the vacancy, began stuffing a three-inch pipe with tobacco. I let him enjoy the luxury undisturbed. After sucking out the last wreath, and heaving a profound sigh, he got up and departed as solemnly as he came.

  A more elastic footstep entered next, and I opened my mouth for a “good morning,” but closed it again. Hareton Earnshaw was directing a curse at every object he touched while he rummaged in a corner. He glanced over the back of the bench, dilating his nostrils, but made no more attempt at exchanging civilities than the cat had.

  When he came up with a spade, I guessed that he meant to use it to dig through the snow. Thinking that I was about to be escorted home, I made ready to follow him. He noticed this and thrust at an inner door with the end of his spade, intimating that there was the place where I must go.

  It opened into the house, where the females were already astir. Zillah was urging flakes of flame up the chimney with a colossal bellows, and Mrs. Heathcliff, kneeling on the hearth, read a book by the aid of the blaze.

  She held her hand interposed between the furnace heat and her eyes, and seemed absorbed in her occupation. I was surprised to see Heathcliff there also. He stood by the fire, his back toward me, just finishing a stormy scene to poor Zillah.

  “And you, you worthless—” he broke out as I entered, turning to his daughter-in-law and employing an epithet. “There you are, at your idle tricks again? The rest of them earn their bread, but you live on my charity! Put your trash away, and find something to do, you damnable jade.”

  “I’ll put it away because you can make me, if I refuse,” answered the young lady, closing her book and throwing it on a chair. “But I’ll not do anything else, except what I please!”

  Heathcliff lifted his hand, and she sprang to a safer distance, obviously acquainted with its sting.

  Having no desire to be entertained by a cat-and-dog combat, I stepped forward briskly, as if eager to take in the warmth of the hearth. Each had enough decorum to suspend further hostilities. Heathcliff placed his fists out of temptation, in his pockets. Mrs. Heathcliff curled her lip and walked to a seat far off, where she remained silent during the remainder of my stay.

  That was not long. I declined joining their breakfast, and, at the first gleam of dawn, took the opportunity of escaping into the free air, now clear and still, and cold as impalpable ice.

  My landlord hallooed for me to stop, ere I reached the bottom of the garden, and offered to accompany me across the moor. It was well he did, for the whole hill was one billowy white ocean. The snow had filled the swells, reshaped the rises, blotting out the chart which my yesterday’s walk left pictured in my mind.

  The day before, I had noticed on one side of the road, at intervals of six or seven yards, a line of upright stones, continued through the whole length of the barren. But, excepting a dirty dot pointing up here and there, all traces of their existence had vanished, and my companion found it necessary to warn me frequently to steer to the right or left, when I imagined I was following, correctly, the windings of the road.

  We exchanged little conversation, saw no sign of any vampires, and he halted at the entrance of Thrushcross Park, saying I could make no error there. Our adieux were limited to a hasty bow, and then I pushed forward, trusting to my own resources.

  I managed to make my way to my door, losing myself among the trees several times, but fortunately, not falling into a nest of sleeping vampires or sinking up to the neck in snow. At any rate, whatever were my wanderings, the clock chimed twelve as I entered the house.

  My housekeeper and her staff rushed to welcome me, exclaiming that they had completely given me up. Everybody conjectured that I had been drained of my blood last night, and they were wondering how they must set about the search for my remains or if the vampires would even have bothered to leave a morsel behind. I bid them be quiet now that they saw me returned unbitten and unscathed, and, benumbed to my very heart, I dragged upstairs.

  Chapter 4

  What vain fools we are! Determined to be content with my own company and scorn social interaction, I settled in a remote place. But, after maintaining till dusk a struggle with low spirits and solitude, I was finally compelled to summon Mrs. Dean, for I was frightfully bored. I hoped she would prove a regular gossip while I ate the supper she brought me, and either rouse my interest or lull me to sleep by her talk.

  “You have lived here a considerable time,” I commenced. “Did you not say sixteen years?”

  “Eighteen, sir. I came when the mistress was married, to wait on her. After she died, the master retained me for his housekeeper.”

  “Indeed.”

  She paused and I feared she was not a gossip. Unless about her own affairs, and those could hardly interest me. What I wished to know was what history rested upon Wuthering Heights and the odd crew who lived there under the stern hand of my landlord.

  However, she studied me for a moment and then, with a fist on either knee and a thoughtful look on her weathered face, she spoke. “Ah, times are greatly changed since then!”

  “Yes,” I remarked. “Those early days must have been peaceful and quiet, before the vampire infestation. You’ve seen a good many changes, I suppose?”

  “I have. And troubles, too,” she said.

  Oh, I’ll turn the talk on my landlord’s family now! I thought to myself. A good subject to start—and that pretty girl-widow, I would like to know her history. With this intention, I asked Mrs. Dean why Heathcliff left Thrushcross Grange and preferred living in a situation and residence so much inferior. “Is he not rich enough to keep the estate in good order?” I inquired.

  “Rich, indeed!” she returned. “He has nobody knows what money, and every year it increases. Yes, yes, he’s rich enough to live in a finer house than this.”

  “He had a son, it seems?”

  “Yes, he had one—he is dead.”

  “And that young lady, Mrs. Heathcliff, is his widow?”