by Alison Case
NINE
That scene was a fair presage of what followed. The master, my mother, and Hindley each withdrew into their grief alone, seeming to resent each other’s competing claims to sorrow, and each of them shunning my comfort, as one with less cause to grieve than they had themselves. Hindley’s grief, in particular, was all but ungovernable, and he persisted in blaming everybody, but especially his father, for adding to the strain and worry that had worn down the mistress at last. I still thought of myself as having some good influence over him, but for several weeks after the mistress’s death he would scarcely meet my eyes, or reply to me with more than the minimum necessary ‘aye’ or ‘nay’.
My mother’s better intentions had resurfaced in a few days, and she made some effort then to comfort me and include me in her grief, but we were awkward together. Each of us, I think, had loved Mrs Earnshaw better than we loved each other, and were ashamed to feel so, and that made us uncomfortable together. So I was more relieved than otherwise when, a week after the funeral, she announced that it was high time she returned to her duties at Brassing.
Heathcliff was the only one of us not much stricken by the mistress’s death – after her initial revulsion towards him, she had done her best to be kind, but she had never really warmed to him, nor he to her. But Heathcliff took on any grief of Cathy’s as if it were his own, and so she alone of us had real sympathy and comfort in her sorrow.
With the mistress buried and my mother gone, the household settled into new patterns. Cathy claimed the title of mistress, and I did not dispute it with her, but I paid no attention to her commands unless they coincided with what needed doing anyway, and made sure the other servants did likewise. But Cathy was content with the title, without the substance of command, and so I was housekeeper in all but name. Mr Earnshaw, for his part, seemed to avoid the house altogether. When, not long after this, one of his smaller farms fell vacant, he decided to take the farming of it into his own hands rather than find a new tenant, and that, on top of his regular duties, gave him cause to be away from home most days until nightfall, and often after. The curate, a Mr Jones by name, continued to attend Cathy and Heathcliff for lessons, but now taught Hindley at a different time, and in his own study in his lodgings at Gimmerton, as he said he needed to have his books to hand. Hindley was also given certain chores to perform outside, under Joseph’s supervision, but beyond that and his studies, his time was his own.
In his general avoidance of me, Hindley had ceased to come to me for help with his lessons of an evening. This worried me at first, but as the weeks went by and no bad reports were forthcoming from the curate, I took comfort, and told myself that sorrow had tamed Hindley at last, and made him able to settle to his lessons. At least, that was what I thought until, some weeks later, I needed to go into Gimmerton to make some purchases for the household. I had timed my trip so that the completion of my errands would coincide with the end of Hindley’s lesson, hoping to have his company on the walk home, and recover some of our lost intimacy. So I was startled, on passing the inn on my way to the shops, to see Hindley saunter a little unsteadily out of the door. Seeing me, he came to a dead halt.
‘Hindley, what are you doing there? I thought you were supposed to be studying with Mr Jones?’
‘That is exactly where I am supposed to be,’ he replied with a rather blurry dignity, pulling me at the same time into a quieter alleyway, ‘but as long as my father continues to suppose me to be there, I prefer to be somewhere else.’
‘But what about Mr Jones? Does he know of this?’
‘Mr Jones and I have reached an agreement. The effort of pounding Latin and Greek into my head, we found, was irksome to him and painful to me, and had little effect otherwise, so we left off.’
‘But your father pays him to teach you!’
‘No, my father pays him to appear to teach me. But that is only to appease his sense of duty as my father. He has never taken the trouble to enquire as to the results, which were bad enough anyway, for you know nothing stays in my head. If Mr Jones can achieve the same results – which is to say, no results at all – by leaving me alone, why shouldn’t he receive the same pay? A little less, actually,’ he added, ‘for he gives me some of it, and that is what pays for my, ah, refreshment.’
I was struck dumb. Hindley’s deceit – not to mention his drunkenness – was shocking enough, but that Mr Jones should connive in it – and he a man of the cloth! – I knew not where to begin. Hindley laughed and put an arm around me, giving me an affectionate squeeze.
‘Look at you,’ he said, ‘gaping like a fish, and white as the belly of one! You are such a good and proper girl, Nelly, and I love you for it, really I do. But you needn’t be so shocked. This arrangement keeps everyone happy, Father included, so what harm is there in it?’
‘But the lies, Hindley!’
‘What lies? I tell Father I am going straight to Mr Jones’s, which I do, and coming straight home from there, which I do also, as his lodgings are on the way – convenient, that, don’t you think? When Father asks Mr Jones, in a general way, about my progress, he says that I am getting on “as well as can be expected”, and that contents him.’
‘But if he should find out?’
‘How should he find out? He buries himself so in his work on the farm, he scarcely ever comes to Gimmerton any more, and when he does he never sets foot in the inn. He has no companions to pass on the chat of the town over a glass of wine; he talks to nobody but his servants and his tenants, and they are too much in awe of him to pass on idle talk. So unless you tell’ – here he gave me a squeeze, and a flash of his old conspiratorial grin, to assure me he was joking – ‘I have nothing to fear. Now, Nelly, would you like to come in, and I’ll treat you to a little glass of sherry?’
‘No indeed,’ I said hurriedly, ‘I have shopping to do, and though I’ll hold my tongue, I won’t partake of your ill-gotten gains. But I’ll walk home with you after, if you’ll wait here – or better yet,’ I added, guessing how he would spend the interim, ‘come with me – you can help me carry the parcels.’
‘I’ll do that with pleasure.’
And so I did my little round of errands, with Hindley by my side all the way. He chatted and joked like his old, sunny self, relieved, I think, that I was in on his secret at last, and he need not hold himself aloof any more. For my part, I said little, for my thoughts and feelings were both in turmoil. I had felt so alone since the mistress died, that this return of friendliness from Hindley was like a warm fire to a frozen traveller, and drew me close to him in spite of myself. But I could not share his sanguine view of the situation; how could such a secret be kept? And when it did come out, what a storm would break over all of our heads!
You will probably think, Mr Lockwood, that I did wrong to agree to keep Hindley’s secret, and ought to have gone directly to my employer with the information. And you are very likely right. But to this day, I cannot make myself feel the wrongness of it. I had great respect for the master in most things, but I had seen too often and felt too keenly his injustice to Hindley, particularly since Heathcliff had come and usurped the place in his heart that ought by rights to have belonged to his firstborn – to take the father’s side against the son. Since Mrs Earnshaw’s death, the master had withdrawn further from all of us, but more so from Hindley, and without the mistress’s restraining presence, he was often downright cruel to him, addressing him habitually as ‘oaf’ or ‘dunce’, making sarcastic remarks on his appearance and conversation, and seizing with apparent relish on any excuse to give him a beating. My mother had spoken truly of Hindley when she said that he had ‘a loving heart and a merry spirit, if they be not trampled down by harsh treatment’. I was watching the trampling daily, and with his mother dead and mine out of reach, Hindley had no one to love and comfort him under it but me. I felt I was the guardian of his better self, the more so as I believed I would be his wife in time. That duty, I told myself, must take precedence over any obligation to c
arry tales to his father.
Well, the secret kept longer than most secrets do, but in the end it came out, and in a manner none of us expected. One Sunday in mid-summer, Mr Jones’s regular parishioners came to church to find the pulpit empty and their priest vanished. Upon enquiry, it emerged that he had fled his lodgings in the dead of night, taking all his belongings with him, and leaving behind only a few unpaid bills. We were all in a wonder as to why, for the debts amounted to little enough, but the busybodies of Gimmerton soon ferreted out the reason. What Mr Jones was failing to teach Hindley, it appears, was nothing to what he was attempting to teach some of the other local lads in his care. Their fathers, having learned of this, were just debating whether to have him arrested, or resort to more direct punishment, when Jones got wind of the discovery, and wisely took flight at the earliest opportunity.
This scandal was great enough to reach even the master’s ears. Hindley’s name was not mentioned in it, but Mr Earnshaw was naturally concerned, and questioned him closely about his own lessons. Hindley’s answers being awkward and evasive, the master was driven at length to ask him directly if he had ‘been led into abominations by that man’, and Hindley was so outraged at the suggestion that he found himself confessing to one sin to avoid the imputation of a greater.
Well, that caused a storm, of course, but not so great a one as I had feared, after all. Mr Earnshaw was so relieved that there was nothing worse to tell, and Mr Jones’s name was so blackened already as a corrupter of youth, that Hindley was spared much of the blame he might have had, the more so as he had confessed of his own accord. Still, his punishment was bad enough.
‘Since you won’t take the trouble to be educated as a gentleman’s son,’ his father said, ‘we will stop treating you as one, and give you a trial of the alternative. For two months you will wear the clothes and perform the work of an ordinary farm labourer. You will take your meals with the workmen, and you will sleep above the stable. At the end of that time, you can decide whether it is worth your effort to learn to behave like an Earnshaw.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Hindley, with his head down, in a passable effort at contrition.
‘Do you have any questions?’
Hindley looked up. ‘Will I get a labourer’s wages?’ he asked hesitantly.
‘Your wages will go to repay the money I paid Mr Jones for your lessons.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Hindley moved out of his room and into the stable that evening. The next day, he wore his oldest clothes to begin his labours, while the master sent me into Gimmerton to buy some more suitable to his new condition. I was not to buy new, he told me, and he budgeted my funds accordingly, so I made my way to a little basement shop I knew of that dealt in second-hand clothes of a poorer sort. I had never been in there before, and a very melancholy task it was to sort through the piles of coarse, worn garments in search of some that might do for Hindley. I was careful with my funds, though, and had enough left to add to the pile a gay red neckerchief, scarcely faded, that I hoped would add a note of good cheer to the whole. The old woman who ran the shop took my coins, rolled up my purchases, and tied them into a bundle with string.
‘No paper?’ I asked.
‘Whatever for, missy? To protect them from dirt?’ She laughed loudly at her own joke, and I grabbed my bundle and fled.
Coming out of the shop, I met Bodkin in the street. He cast a puzzled eye at my purchases.
‘Buying wedding clothes, I see,’ he said. ‘Who’s the lucky fellow?’
‘Go on with you,’ I said, not at all amused. ‘If you must know, they’re for Hindley.’
‘Hindley! I smell a story. Are you in a hurry?’
I shook my head.
‘Well, why don’t you come by the surgery? You can tell me the whole story, and I’ll pay you back one of those many cups of tea I owe you.’
‘You’ve drunk no tea at my expense,’ I said, but I smiled and fell in beside him.
‘And you won’t drink any at mine, either, but I don’t think Father will mind. He likes you – says you’re “a sensible girl”, and that’s rare praise, coming from him.’
‘“A sensible girl”! Have a care, Bodkin. With flattery like that, I shall grow vain for sure.’
‘You couldn’t. You’re far too sensible.’
We turned off the wide, dusty main street onto the shadier side street that held the Kenneths’ pretty, modest-sized brick house, with the surgery on the side. I had been in the front waiting room several times, picking up medicine for the mistress, but now Bodkin invited me into a little back room, furnished with a small table and two chairs, and lined with shelves full of bottles, boxes, and jars. He left me seated there, then came back a few minutes later bearing a tray with tea and biscuits. He poured us each a cup, and waited until I had taken a sip or two, before leaning forward expectantly.
‘Now, tell me everything.’
‘Only if you can promise to keep it entirely to yourself, Bodkin. These are family matters and ought not to be shared.’
‘Have no fear. Keeping confidences is one of a doctor’s most sacred duties, as my father has often impressed upon me, and I consider you a patient.’
‘I’m your patient, am I? I didn’t even know I was ill.’
‘Well then, I must be doing an excellent job.’
‘Of what, exactly?’
‘A complex regimen of strengthening, stimulants, and bleeding. I strengthen you with tea and biscuits, stimulate you with laughter, and then bleed off Earnshaw family confidences that might otherwise fester and make you ill. So please, let the bleeding commence. Or shall I get the leeches?’
I laughed, ‘You are the leech, Bodkin.’ But I told him the whole story anyway, and it is certainly true that I felt better for doing so. When I had finished, Bodkin shook his head and let out a low whistle.
‘Well, Hindley is a bolder man than I, to pull off such a trick against his own father. It’s hardly surprising that Mr Earnshaw should wish to come down hard upon him. But a common labourer for two months – and with the harvest coming too! That’s hard work even for them that are used to it – and they at least have the higher harvest wages to look forward to.’
‘The harvest – my God, I hadn’t thought of that! How will he ever get through it?’
‘Well, perhaps Mr Earnshaw will take pity on him and give him shorter days, if Hindley works with a good heart until then.’
‘He won’t,’ I said shortly.
‘You think not? I don’t know him well, but Father says he has a fount of kindness hidden behind that stern exterior.’
‘For his wife, yes, and for Heathcliff. And for others, sometimes, perhaps. Not for Hindley, though. Not ever.’
Bodkin looked thoughtful. ‘It’s hard for me to imagine,’ he said slowly, ‘but we do see it sometimes – a parent just taking against a child like that.’
‘I know,’ I said feelingly.
Bodkin blushed. ‘That’s right. I’d forgotten you had your own experience with that. I’m sorry, Nelly, I didn’t mean to bring up painful subjects.’
‘Oh, that’s all past and done. We parted friends, in the end. He asked my forgiveness before he died.’ I forced a smile, but had to busy myself over the teacups for a few moments to recover myself. ‘And how did you know about that anyway?’ I asked at last. ‘What happened to the sacredness of patient confidences?’
‘Oh, that was common knowledge. After your mother brought you in here to have your arm set, apparently, she marched straight to the inn, where your father was drinking, and held you up, cast, bandages, bruises, and all, right in front of all his friends, and announced, “Nelly is going to live at Wuthering Heights, and if you dare to go near her there, they will set the dogs on you.” Then she marched out.’
My mouth was hanging open when he finished. He leaned across the table and gently closed it. ‘Did you really never hear that before?’
‘Who would tell me?’
‘Ah yes, I forget you l
ive out in the unmapped wilderness, beyond the reach of the civilizing influence of gossip. Here in town, not only can nobody remain ignorant of whatever is known to the discredit of their parents and grandparents, they are never allowed to forget it. But if that was to your father’s discredit,’ he added apologetically, ‘it was certainly not to your mother’s, and she has been held in high respect here, ever since.’
Bodkin meant well, but I didn’t want to talk about my mother. ‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘Did you never experience anything of that sort?’
‘Oh, there has only ever been Father and me,’ he said, ‘and we get on quite well, usually. My mother died giving birth to me – you must have known that.’
‘It must have been hard, though, growing up without a mother.’
‘Well, I had Tabby, of course. She was nursemaid to my father before me, so took me on as a matter of course. She was like a mother to me. But she hasn’t a stern bone in her body – Father used to joke that she thought “spare the rod and spoil the child” was a commandment. She’s too old now to do much of anything except sit by the fire, pour tea, and remind us both to wrap up warmly before we go out. But she does that admirably, to this day. As for Father, he started taking me about with him to cases – all but the dangerous ones – as soon as I was old enough to sit on a pony. He always wanted me to follow him into medicine, and I never wanted anything but to be as much like him as possible, so we have generally got along pretty well.’
