by Alison Case
Hindley looked as if he’d been struck. His face went pale, then flushed. He pushed himself away from the table, stood up, and walked away with the awkward self-consciousness of one who knows a hundred eyes are on him. I did not wait to see what the master would do, but hastily set down the platter I was carrying and, pausing only to ask one of the farmers’ wives to take charge of the kitchen in my absence, followed after Hindley.
TEN
How thick the pile of paper grows! As I turn each freshly written sheet onto the pile, its ink just dry, it sits lightly on top, but gently weighs on those beneath it, until near the bottom the leaves are as closely pressed as in a book. I turn the heavy stack over to see the first page. ‘Dear Mr Lockwood,’ it begins, in the large, thick script I used then, which now shocks me with its boldness, for it is only since I’ve been writing this that I have finally got the knack of shaving my point fine enough to write a small, close hand that conserves paper and ink both.
Why do I write this to you? You were a stranger who listened, and for no other reason than that you liked my telling, and that was new to me, I suppose. So when I imagined a listener for my own story, he had your face. But now, as I feel the weight of these pages in my hand, I try to imagine myself tying them up in whitey-brown paper and string, like a butcher’s parcel, and shipping the whole package off to your address in Italy. Would you read it through? And if you did, would you share it with your friends and acquaintances? Or would you read the first few pages, grow weary, and slip the rest into the fire? And which of those fates would be worst, after all? No, I will never send it to you. I address you as ‘Mr Lockwood’, because I must address myself to somebody, but it could as sensibly be Mr Knockwood – for I do feel sometimes, as I think on the trials and sorrows of the past, and how fortunate I am to be done with them, that I should knock on wood – or better, Mr Lockheart – for truly, these things might be better kept locked in my heart.
If I am to stop, it should be now, before I re-enter those years of shame and anger and grief beyond all bearing – though bear it I did. But then what would be the use of this pile of pages before me? I am like a man who sets out on a difficult journey, then grows weary and decides the destination is not worth the effort, only to find that he has passed the halfway mark, and home is even further off than his goal. So what is there to do but go on, and take comfort in the feeling that step follows step, mile follows mile, and objects that loom dark and ominous on the horizon turn commonplace as we pass them by? I will go on: I have avoided this bitter ground too long.
I found Hindley in the stable, hastily stuffing his working clothes into a sack. He barely glanced round when I came in, and then went back to his work, avoiding my eye.
‘Nelly,’ he said hurriedly, ‘could you go to my old room and fetch my grandfather Thwaite’s gold watch, that Mother gave me? Also my silver penknife, and the blue silk necktie and’ – here he choked a little – ‘anything else you can see that didn’t come from my father? And do it quickly – I want to be off before anyone comes looking for me.’
‘Where are you going?’
He turned and looked at me then. His face was dirty and streaked with tears. ‘Please, Nelly, just go. I can’t – I can’t set foot in that house. But I must have something to live on until I can get work.’ His voice was desperate.
‘I won’t be long,’ I said, deciding that there would be time enough for discussion when I had done what he asked. I hurried through the house, ignoring the concerned looks of the women in the kitchen, and leaped up the stairs to Hindley’s room. I hastily went through his things and piled upon the bed such small things of value as I remembered had come from his mother or mine. Then I dashed to my room to grab my heaviest shawl, a few other small valuables, and the little purse of my own savings, which I tucked into my bodice. Back in Hindley’s room, I piled everything else into the shawl and rolled it up. I was going to creep down the front stairs and out through the front door to avoid the curious eyes in the kitchen, but then I decided that bringing provisions was the more urgent need. So I took a deep breath and walked down the back stairs as calmly as I was able, tucking the bundle on the far side of the back door. In response to the anxious enquiries of the women, I forced a smile and made cheerful replies, then began matter-of-factly wrapping up leftover bread and meat in paper, and placing them in a basket, exactly as I would if I were taking them to a sick neighbour. ‘There now,’ I said when I was done, giving the basket a satisfied pat, ‘that will do them nicely.’ Then I picked up the basket and headed out of the door, grabbing my bundle on the way. Whether anyone was fooled by this little bit of play-acting, I will never know, but certainly it eased my pride, and signalled as clearly as I knew how that questions were unwelcome.
Hindley was where I had left him, but the energy that his anger had given him was gone now. He sat on the straw pallet that had served him as a bed, his head in his hands, his fingers clutched tightly in his hair. He barely glanced up as I came in.
‘Did you bring the things I asked for?’ he asked dully.
‘Yes, and a good deal else,’ I said briskly. ‘Come and see.’ I unrolled the shawl and began laying out my findings. Hindley shifted over to look, nodding in acknowledgement at each item, but without animation. He objected to the few little valuables of my own I had included, though (my purse I did not mention), and waved away the basket of food.
‘I don’t want your things, Nelly – I have taken too much from you already. And as for the food, I couldn’t keep down what I’ve eaten anyway.’ The bucket beside him had already told me that much. ‘It’s just as well. I shall leave here as empty as I feel.’
‘Fine words, Hindley, but a man must eat, and tomorrow is Sunday. Where are you to get food, or the money to pay for it?’
‘I don’t care. I’ll fast if I have to.’
‘And sleep rough, too? In this season, and on an empty stomach?’
‘Well, what would you have me do?’ he said angrily. ‘Do you think I can stay here, after what he did to me?’
I was mute, but I felt my lip quiver and my eyes fill with tears. I fought against them, thinking that I ought to remain calm and practical for Hindley’s sake, but in truth I think my tears did him more good than any advice I might have offered. He folded me in his arms, and began talking soothingly.
‘Don’t fret, Nelly, please. I must leave – that much is clear now, and perhaps it will be for the best, all round.’
‘But how will you live?’
‘I’ll find work. The harvest is still underway, to the north of here. A man can make good wages for nearly a month yet, tramping north to follow it. If there is one thing I have learned in the last two months, it is that I can work as hard as any man, and earn my bread doing it, whatever my father may think.’
I was silent. I did not share Hindley’s confidence – it was one thing to work among men who knew him for their employer’s heir, but quite another to seek work from strangers, and live among rough men who had neither home nor master, and were answerable to no one for their treatment of him. But to say that to him now seemed unbearably cruel. However, I formed a resolution of my own, and began to prepare accordingly.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘Getting ready to go with you,’ I replied.
‘You can’t come with me, Nelly. This is no work for a woman, and you have a valued place here, even if I do not.’
‘I’m not running away with you, Hindley, but I can walk with you to Penniton today, anyway.’
‘But how will you get home?’
‘I’ll walk home tomorrow: tonight I can stay with Mrs White, my mother’s old teacher there – I have been meaning to visit her for some months now, and I know she will be glad to see me.’
‘I would rather go alone.’
‘And I would rather go with you.’
‘I am telling you to stay,’ said Hindley stubbornly.
‘And I am telling you that I will go,’ I said, as stubbornl
y as he. ‘Come, Hindley, you are not my master yet. I have as good a right to walk to Penniton as you do, and if I choose to do it at the same time and by the same path as you, who are you to say me nay?’
‘Suit yourself then,’ said Hindley irritably, and, turning his back to me, stumped out of the stable. I grabbed the basket and followed.
The afternoon was still fine, though it was cooling fast, and a few dark clouds were showing on the horizon. Hindley walked quickly, hoping to leave me behind, I suppose, but I was as brisk a walker as he, and kept a few paces behind him. For the first two miles he ignored me, looking straight ahead and saying not a word, but I suppose he walked off the worst of his anger that way, for then he slowed a little and let me catch up with him. After that I ventured now and then to point out little sights as we passed – a stoat crossing our path, a kestrel overhead, a late-blooming wild rose – things of the sort we had always noted to each other before when we were on the moors together. At first he only grunted or nodded acknowledgement, but soon he began noticing things himself, and we walked along together in reasonably good fellowship.
After a while of this, I asked if we might stop and rest, and he agreed. I sat down, unwrapped the bread and meat from my basket and laid it out temptingly on its wrappings. I then picked up a piece of bread myself and began to eat. Hindley looked at the food, wavered, and then sat down by me and began eating himself. I was careful to say nothing, and avoided meeting his eye, not liking to call attention to his abandonment of principle, so we ate in silence for some time. At last Hindley, having finished a large portion, rolled up the wrappings and tucked it back in my basket with an air of finality. Then he turned his eyes on me, and I saw something like his old grin.
‘When we are married, Nelly,’ he said, ‘will you let me win an argument now and again, if only for the novelty of it?’
‘When we are married,’ I said, ‘I will have sworn before God to obey you.’
Hindley snorted. ‘So has every other wife, I suppose, but I’ve never seen that they argue any less with their husbands because of it.’
‘Quite the contrary,’ I said. ‘They argue all the more for it. If wives were permitted to follow their own judgement now and again, instead of always doing as they were bid, they would have less need to convince their husbands.’ I was rather surprised to hear myself say this, as I had never thought much about it before. But I was remembering Mrs Earnshaw’s story, of how she and my mother had had to kneel before their husbands to beg for Hindley’s life, when they knew better than anyone what the poor babe needed.
‘I set great store by your judgement, Nelly,’ Hindley said softly, ‘and I always will. I know you are cleverer than I am.’
I looked at him, startled by the seriousness in his voice. The afternoon light had deepened the shadows on his face, setting off the darkness of his eyes and brow, and I noticed the stubble on his chin and cheeks. He was not a boy any more. I think I had always thought of marriage to Hindley as an extension of our childhood together, or in terms of our prospective occupation of the coveted places of master and mistress of Wuthering Heights. Now, for the first time, I thought, ‘This man will be my husband,’ and the thought was strangely stirring. I blushed and looked down, and then busied myself wrapping up the uneaten food and replacing it in the basket.
‘We’d best get moving,’ I said. ‘It’s still a good four miles to Penniton, at least.’
We set off again, walking side by side as before. The path to Penniton lay over empty moorland, dipping down into a ravine and across a stream before climbing up to Pennistone Crag, then following the ridge from there until it crossed another beck at its head. We walked briskly because of the chill, and had made excellent time as we reached the Crag. Hindley stopped to catch his breath there, where the huge outcropping made a seat, and I sat beside him, enjoying the broad view over the moors from the airy perch.
‘Nelly,’ said Hindley, ‘what say we clamber down to the Stonegate?
The Stonegate, as it was known, was a formation just below the Crag, where a chance arrangement of boulders made a natural arch one could pass through from one side of the rock to the other. Getting there required a short scramble down part of the steep slope, but, as the same route had been taken by generations of local visitors, the path was clear and safe enough. But I was hesitant.
‘We should save our energy for our walk,’ I said. ‘I should like to get to Penniton as early as we can.’
‘There are a couple of hours of daylight left yet,’ said Hindley, gesturing towards the sun.
‘True enough,’ I replied, ‘but only if it stays clear. I don’t like those clouds.‘
‘Oh, they are a long way off, and have scarcely moved all afternoon.’
I hesitated. Local superstition said that couples who passed through the Stonegate together would be wed within the year, so among the local folk, taking someone through it was considered as all but a formal betrothal. I was worried about the time, and the weather, but I worried more about turning Hindley loose the next day to tramp on the roads, with nothing to pull him back but the unpleasant prospect of trying to make peace with his father.
‘Very well,’ I said, ‘but we mustn’t linger.’
So we scrambled down the short, steep path, laughing as we slipped and slid on the way. Neither Hindley nor I had visited the Stonegate in many years, and we found it rather smaller than we remembered.
‘It will be a tight squeeze,’ said Hindley. ‘I’d best take off my coat.’ He did so, and I stripped off my shawl as well. Even so, we could not go through side by side, but held hands and kept close together as we crawled through at an angle. Hindley was just coming through the other side when I heard a metallic clatter down the rock.
‘What was that?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Hindley, ‘something fell out of my pocket, I think.’
‘What was in there?’ Hindley felt in his pockets.
‘My silver penknife. Damn, I can’t afford to lose that now.’
‘It can’t have fallen far. We’ll find it,’ I said, and we both began looking around.
Well, it was true that it couldn’t have fallen far, but nonetheless, we could not find it. When our first hasty search yielded nothing, we retrieved the coat and shawl from the other side of the gate (it was getting chillier) and settled in to searching more systematically, dividing the ground into segments and poking sticks into every crack and cranny. While we were thus crouched over, I was startled to find the light fading fast. I looked up at the sky and saw that the distant clouds had made their move at last, and were on the way to blotting out the sun altogether.
‘Hindley, look at the sky – we’d better make a run for it!’ A distant flash of lightning and a crack of thunder answered me.
‘Too dangerous now,’ said Hindley. ‘Out in the open, we’d be struck by lightning for sure.’
‘But the Crag draws lightning even surer than we will. What are we to do?’ I felt a rising sense of panic.
‘What about the fairy cave?’ said Hindley. ‘It’s a safe distance from the Crag, and will at least keep us dry.’ The fairy cave, as it was known, was little more than a hollow of bare earth underneath a sheltering slab of rock. It required all the help of local superstition and childish imagination to live up to the romance of its name.
‘Will we even fit in it?’ The cave had seemed quite large to us when we were children, but then, so had the Stonegate.
‘We’ll have to. Unless you can think of something better.’ I couldn’t, and so we made our way onto the little path that led further down and along the ravine to the cave. It was small, but there looked to be enough space for us both to lie in it, anyway. We pulled up some heather and ling to make a bed, driven to haste by the first leading drops of the coming storm. Then we wriggled into the space, drawing our feet up into the shelter just before the heavens opened.
Our nest was cramped, and though it was dry at present, we could only hope it would remain so in
the downpour that now commenced. The wind howled, and the rain pounded outside, raising a strong smell of damp earth to remind us how fortunate we were not to be out in it. Lightning flashed too, giving us quick glimpses of each other’s pale faces, wide-eyed and streaked with dirt. One mighty crack of lightning hit so close by that the very rock we sheltered under shook with it. We held each other tightly, and I must confess that I cried a little, from fright and cold and worry and weariness. But our refuge kept dry, and crammed in as we were, it soon warmed up as well. In a little while the worst of the storm had passed, leaving behind only a heavy, steady rain, and then we were able to feel about a little to find the outer limits of our effective shelter, and rearrange ourselves a little more comfortably within them. It was only then that I began to relax, and feel that we were safe for the night, at least.
Do I really need to tell you what happened next? Remember that my heart was sore for Hindley’s humiliation by his father, and that I was his only comfort. Remember that we had crawled through the Stonegate together, and thought ourselves as good as betrothed. Remember that we were frightened and cold and far from home. And I loved him. Yes, there on our heathery bed in that little earthen chamber, roofed with stone and curtained by falling rain, I loved him with all my heart.
ELEVEN
We parted early the next morning. Walking into Penniton with Hindley now would only lead to gossip, so I thought it best to strike out over the moors in another direction. I could then return to Wuthering Heights from one Dagley’s farm, where I could claim to have been visiting, as Mrs Dagley was ill, and to have taken shelter overnight from the storm. Before we parted, though, I convinced Hindley to take my little purse of savings, as a loan against the gold watch, which he gave into my keeping. I would have given him the money for nothing, of course, but he would not accept it, and this arrangement had the added benefit of ensuring that the watch would not be lost or stolen.
