Nelly Dean

by Alison Case

  When the fortnight planned for the master’s and Hindley’s journey had expired, and the day came that we might expect them back, I was so agitated I could scarcely attend to my work. I had undertaken a rather ambitious dinner for their return, hoping, I suppose, to impress the master further with my usefulness, but found it difficult to stay in the kitchen. I kept finding excuses to sit in that part of the house that had a good view of the road, or to go outside and walk a little way along it, to a rise that commanded a longer view. I looked at the clock every time I passed it, and was astonished that the hours could pass so slowly. Cathy noticed my agitation and teased me for it, saying I looked as if I expected them to bring back a bridegroom for me, instead of just one for the ewes. They both laughed heartily at the joke, little thinking how near to home it was, and I responded by swinging my broom at them until they scattered, and telling them to keep out from under my feet, or I would shut them in the attic, to be sure they did.

  When I finally did spy movement on the road, though, it was not, as I expected, two men on horseback, with perhaps a sheep trotting behind them on a rope, but a woman driving the same pony carriage that had brought Mrs Thorne, years before. The figure driving was too heavyset to be Mrs Thorne, though, and a closer approach soon revealed none other than my own mother! I ran down the road to intercept her, fearing I knew not what dreadful news.

  ‘Mother! What brings you here? Do you bring news? Is everything all right?’

  ‘All well, my dear – don’t fret,’ she replied soothingly, helping me into the carriage beside her. ‘There has only been a change of plans.’

  ‘What plans?’

  ‘Well, Mr Earnshaw and Hindley stopped in York, to pay their respects to his cousins there, and they were invited to remain there through Christmas, and decided to accept. So the master wrote to me, and I got leave from the Thornes to come here in the meantime, so your own Christmas would not be too cheerless. And I come like Father Christmas himself, for I bring presents for all of you, from myself and from the Thornes, who also send their fond regards to you.’

  ‘When will they return, then?’

  ‘Well, I don’t rightly know. They will stay for New Year at least. And then travel will depend partly on the roads, you know. But if the snow holds off, Mr Earnshaw will probably return not long after New Year.’

  I knew not what to think. Had Hindley spoken to his father, and did this change of plans have something to do with that? My heart misgave me that it did. But what was my mother’s part in it? I searched her face, but hers was not one that gave much away.

  ‘It’s strange for Mr Earnshaw to change his plans like that. He has never gone away so long before, and I should think he would want to be home at Christmas,’ I ventured.

  ‘Well, perhaps he thought it was time to re-establish closer ties with his relations. A man often thinks of that, as his children start to grow older.’

  ‘Do you know if he bought the ram at the farm they were visiting?’

  ‘What ram?’

  I explained to her about the purpose of their journey. ‘Would they really show up to visit relations in the city with a ram in tow? It seems unlikely.’

  ‘Well, they could always leave it at a farm outside the city, and pick it up on their way back. But his letter said nothing about a ram.’

  ‘Did the letter say anything about Hindley? Did he seem, I don’t know, pleased with him, or otherwise?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’ asked my mother, looking at me intently. But I was prepared for this.

  ‘Since he came back, they have got on so well. I just hope that it will continue.’

  ‘Do you have any reason to suppose it won’t?’

  ‘Well, you know, they never did before. And if Hindley was wrong about the sheep … I don’t know. I just worry about them, of course.’

  ‘Hmm.’ My mother said nothing more.

  ‘But the letter … did it say anything?’

  ‘It said what it needed to say. No more. The master does not share his opinions with me.’ It was clear from my mother’s face that further questions would be unwelcome. I fell silent, calculating in my head. Even if nothing had gone wrong, this meant another two or three weeks’ delay, at the least, and probably more! By the time they came back, I would be past three months, and beginning to show. Meanwhile, my mother was looking at me carefully.

  ‘Are you well, Nelly?’ she asked. ‘You look ill.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said hastily, colouring in spite of myself. Then I remembered that, that very morning, Cathy had caught me being sick into the bushes behind the back door, a fact she would probably convey to my mother at the first opportunity. ‘I have been a little ill, just today,’ I amended. ‘I think I ate some meat that had gone off, yesterday.’

  ‘How many times have I told you, you cannot be too careful with meat?’ my mother said, launching into one of her favourite lectures. ‘If you have any doubts, chop it up fine and feed it to the hens. It will do them no harm, and will come back to you in eggs.’ I longed to defend myself, since in truth I had imbibed her lessons well, and would never have served or eaten tainted meat, but I had brought this on myself, and now I must endure her close questioning about what meat it was, and who else had eaten it, and with what effects, and what I had done with it after, and so on, to all of which I must contrive likely answers. But it kept us both occupied, and away from subjects that might have proved yet more awkward, until she drew up at the house.

  Joseph came out, looking anything but pleased to see my mother instead of his master, and grew sourer still when she drew from her pocket a letter to him from Mr Earnshaw, which he had enclosed in one to her. Joseph held the paper at arm’s length and eyed it dubiously, as if suspicious that it might be a forgery, or poisoned, or both.

  ‘Come Joseph,’ said my mother irritably, ‘you know your employer’s hand, I am sure, and you can see that the seal is intact. Mr Earnshaw thought that his instructions would reach you more quickly and surely by my hand than through the post, that is all. There is nothing very dreadful inside, I can tell you, except that you will have to bear with my company, instead of his, until after New Year. Now be a good fellow, and find a lad to carry in my luggage, and put away this pony with some oats and a good brushing, until I can return him to Gimmerton tomorrow.’

  ‘Em ee to tak orders fra the loykes o’ you?’ he snarled.

  ‘Actually, you are, as you will find when you read that letter,’ said my mother briskly, whereupon she handed him the reins and swept into the house. Joseph stood dumbfounded, holding the reins in one hand, and the letter in the other, as if uncertain what to do with either. I flashed him a quick smile and a wink, for his further discomfiture, before following her in.

  However, I was feeling anything but cheerful. I was already worried about how I could continue to keep my condition hidden from the family, but now I had my mother’s sharper eyes and daily intimacy to contend with as well. It did occur to me that I might confide in her about everything, and take her advice. Certainly it would have been a great comfort to have someone with me who knew my secret, especially one who had some experience of my condition. But I had written to her at the time of the master’s words at the harvest feast, of Hindley’s departure, and later of his return, all without making any mention of my part in them, so it would be awkward to tell her now. And even though I could think of no reason why it should be so, my heart whispered that she would be no friend to my marriage to Hindley. Or so I told myself. The truth was that I had grown too used to keeping secrets from my mother to confide fully in her now, with the greatest secret of my life – even though there was good reason to believe she would soon ferret it out for herself.

  My mother settled in at the Heights, and took over the housekeeping as if she had never left it off. She did not sweep me aside, though, but did her best to make me a partner in the enterprise, and commended the order and methods I had maintained – always excepting the supposed episode of the tainted meat,
to which, to my great annoyance, she could not stop recurring. As regarded preparations for Christmas, though, her experience far exceeded mine, and I was reduced to a mere apprentice in the compounding of fruit cakes, mince pies, and plum puddings, most of the ingredients for which she had brought with her from Brassing.

  For Cathy and Heathcliff, the absence of both the master and Hindley was cause for riotous celebration in itself. I suspended their lessons, ostensibly in honour of the holidays, but really because I knew I had no hope of making them mind, without the master’s authority to back me. My mother’s authority they minded not a whit, and as she would neither beat them herself nor send them to Joseph for punishment, she was obliged to overlook most of their mischief. Not that they caused a great deal of trouble, really, beyond muddying their clothes and tramping dirt into the house, or stealing a few cakes and pies, which they might have got anyway, for the asking.

  Our Christmas celebration was quiet. Joseph, narrow Puritan that he was, thought Christmas a ‘Romish and heathen holiday’ – though how it could be both at once, I was never clear – and he appeared to think that the mere consumption of its customary delicacies would render him an apostate. So we did not have his sour visage at the table – as fine a Christmas gift to us as any, my mother pointed out. The Thornes had sent rich gifts: for Heathcliff and Cathy, two silver-mounted riding whips, identical but for the initial engraved on each. They must have had my mother’s advice on this, for a more perfect gift could not be conceived. Cathy still remembered the promised whip that had been lost when her father had come back from Liverpool, though she had long since reconciled herself to receiving Heathcliff instead – and now she had both together. I received from them a pretty little silver brooch set with Derbyshire spar. My mother provided what was to me a more precious gift: a copy of Paradise Lost. Cathy received Isaac Watts’s Divine and Moral Songs for Children, and Heathcliff, Pilgrim’s Progress. Cathy was always glad to receive a book, but she seemed a little downcast at the title, until my mother assured her it was full of ‘lively and interesting poems’, and nothing like the dry tomes Joseph imposed on us. Pilgrim’s Progress, she told them, was as fine an adventure story as they could hope to find, with giants and castles and thrilling escapes from terrible dangers – at which they both perked up considerably. I was almost as pleased at their gifts as at my own, for I looked forward to borrowing both. My mother had read me Pilgrim’s Progress when I was young, but we had no copy of it in the house, and Watts’s poems for children I had never encountered, though we often sang his hymns in church.

  We were previously unprepared with gifts for my mother, of course, but we managed to rustle up a few nonetheless: Cathy presented her with a small sampler of her own indifferent workmanship, and Heathcliff with some pretty feathers he had collected off the moors. I gave her a length of tatted lace I had been making with baby clothes in mind. She declared herself delighted with all three: Cathy’s would hang on the wall of her little sitting room at Brassing, Heathcliff’s would decorate her hats, and mine would adorn a cap, she said, and all three would remind her of Wuthering Heights and those she loved, every time she looked at them. And so our Christmas was cheerful enough, despite my worries.

  I continued to feel ill in the mornings, and scarcely got through one without having to make an excuse to run off and be sick, somewhere out of my mother’s sight. But if she noticed anything, she didn’t say so. My workload was lightened, with half the household gone and my mother pitching in, for which I was most grateful, as I was fatigued easily. I was also glad that my mother was often away from the house, paying visits to friends and acquaintances around Gimmerton. I was able to excuse myself from accompanying her by pointing out that I had to look out for the children. But in fact they needed little looking after, and I seized most of the time of her absences just to lie down and rest. Further efforts to sound out my mother on the contents of the master’s letter to her had yielded no information, and her habitually brisk and matter-of-fact manner was equally unreadable. I endeavoured to believe that everything was just as it appeared – that the master and Hindley were still on good terms, that the former had merely yielded to the invitation of his relatives, and the latter, with pardonable weakness, seized the excuse to delay our awkward revelation, and that the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, which had set in with my mother’s appearance, was no more than a natural consequence of my situation. But the sick feeling remained.

  It was four days after Christmas that my mother came upon me being sick into the bushes behind the near barn.

  ‘Nelly, whatever is the matter?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I feel a little ill,’ I said, thinking fast. ‘I suppose my digestion is not used to all this rich food.’

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ she said hastily, ‘I should have thought of that before. Come back to the house, child, and let’s see what we can do for you.’ I suffered myself to be led by her back into the kitchen, where she sat me in a chair and told me to put my head between my knees, and stay there. From that position I could see nothing, of course, but I heard her bustling by the stove, and pulling something out of the drawer where she was keeping her own stores. ‘I have a new herbal tea from Elspeth that is excellent for stomach troubles,’ she said, ‘something like the mint mixture I used to give you as a child, but much better. Let me brew you up some of it – it will do wonders for you. How are you feeling now?’

  ‘Glad to be sitting down,’ I said truthfully. It was a relief not to have to hide my illness in front of her, for once, and a comfort to have her fuss so soothingly about me. She asked no more questions, and I rested in silence, until she put down a large steaming mug in front of me. I looked up.

  ‘Drink this up,’ she said. ‘It’s cooled enough not to burn your mouth.’ I obeyed. The tea tasted strongly of mint, with other, bitter flavours somewhat masked by the addition of honey. When I was finished, she ordered me to go to bed, which I was glad enough to do. I lay down without undressing, and dozed off. When I awoke, perhaps an hour later, my mother was there with another mugful for me to drink, which tasted bitterer than the first. When, an hour after that, she came with yet another mugful, I declined, saying that the second was still sloshing in my stomach.

  ‘Drink it,’ she said, in a tone that brooked no disagreement. I complied, or tried to, but halfway through I paused again.

  ‘It’s making me feel more ill, not less,’ I complained.

  ‘It seems so at first,’ she said, ‘but you must drink it all, for it to work.’ I didn’t want to begin a dispute that might touch on the real cause of my illness, and I thought it could do no harm, so I gulped down the last of it, shuddering a little at the taste. She told me to stay in bed, that she would take care of the household for me for today. I lay back in the bed and closed my eyes. Though I knew it was not rich food that caused my illness, I had some hope that my mother’s mixture would ease my nausea, all the same, for I had always had implicit faith in her herbal mixtures.

  Instead of easing, though, my discomforts increased. The nausea faded, but I broke out in a cold sweat, my stomach cramped, and my bowels loosed so that I spent almost as much time on the chamber pot as in my bed. I called out for my mother.

  ‘What have you given me?’ I asked. ‘I feel worse and worse!’ My mother was sympathetic, but did not seem concerned.

  ‘It’s only a purgative,’ she said. ‘It will clean you out, and you’ll feel better for it, I promise.’

  ‘A purgative? What do you mean? What will it purge?’ I was growing fearful now. ‘You did not tell me it was a purgative.’

  ‘It will purge what ails you, Nelly. Too much rich food, you said. Why, what are you afraid of?’

  I searched my mother’s face, but it showed nothing but mild concern. Yet my heart misgave me. ‘Leave me alone,’ I groaned. My mother left, after exchanging the chamber pot for a clean one, and assuring me she would be back to check on me in another hour or so. I lay back down on the bed and closed my
eyes, hoping that sleep would come, and I would wake feeling better. But there was no sleep for me. Waves of cramping pain swept my lower body, growing more intense. Then the blood came, and I realized what was happening. ‘No!’ I wailed, in a voice that brought my mother running. When she opened the door, though, I was already up, a pillowcase stuffed where it would stop the blood.

  ‘What is the matter, Nelly? That was a fearsome cry!’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘only a bad dream. I am going out – I feel a need for fresh air.’ I could barely stand, but I was desperate to get away.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous – you’re far too ill to go out, even if the weather was good.’ I followed her eyes to the window, where I saw dense fog and a slow drizzle of rain, too light to make a sound on the roof. I hesitated. ‘Get back into bed, Nelly.’ There was a hard edge to her voice that made my heart beat faster.

  ‘I must go out,’ I said, and darted through the door before she could think to stop me. I ran down the stairs, grabbed my heavy woollen cloak, and fled out of the door. My mother was following, and calling after me to stop, but even in my illness I was quicker than she. By the time she got to the door, I had disappeared into the fog. She came out looking for me, but I knew she could not find me. She had come to Wuthering Heights as a grown woman, a housekeeper – she knew the yards and barns and gardens, and the paths that led away in one direction or another. But I had grown up there, and played hide-and-seek and sheep-in-the-pen with Hindley and Bodkin on every inch of its environs for half a mile around. The thick fog was no hindrance to me, but she would be lost as soon as she stepped off her familiar pathways. And the fog and rain hid sounds almost as much as sights. I made my way to a little hollow Hindley and I had always favoured, moving more slowly now, both for stealth and because, with the first rush of my impulse to flight faded, the pain and sickness were returning, and making it difficult to walk. Once there, I settled myself down, arranging the cloak to shield me as much as possible from the ground and the rain. That its heather grey colour would also hide me from view was an added benefit. My mother was still searching for me and calling out for me to return. I heard her increasingly anxious voice through the fog now and then, always from a different direction, but never very close to where I was.