by Alison Case
‘Not long, he is only three fields away. He will come straight away when Onry finds him.’ With this I was obliged to be content. She offered me a cup of tea while we waited, so we settled indoors, with Hareton on my lap. She made a large pot, and the rest of her children clustered around to get a cup each. She spoke French to her children, and the two littlest happily babbled it back to her, but the rest followed the example of their elder brother, and answered her in good Yorkshire English. The children then clustered around me to look at the baby. They all exclaimed at how tiny he was, and how skinny, until their mother, seeing how the remarks distressed me, said something sharply in French, and they all dispersed. After that, Mrs Smith and I laboured away at discussing the weather and comparing the contents and progress of our respective vegetable gardens. I asked about the grapevines, and she informed me that, while the vines grew well enough, they bore no fruit, for the frost always killed the blossoms.
‘I wonder you don’t pull them out, then,’ I said. ‘It’s a fine bit of land they are on – you could put apples or pears there.’
‘Ah, I have not the heart to kill them. They remind me so of my home. If we have a mild spring sometime, perhaps they will bear. And the leaves are useful to wrap the shev.’
Soon after this, Mr Smith arrived. He was a smallish man with dark hair and eyes, who looked more quick than strong – rather like one of his goats. Evidently his son had filled him in on the purpose of my visit, for he wasted no time in coming to the subject.
‘So, you have taken a liking to our Celeste, my son says, and wish to, what, lease her? For a season or two?’ I nodded. ‘Well, I would like to help you, but she is the queen of our little flock, you know. What security do I have that you will take good care of her, and bring her back as sound and healthy as she leaves us? To be frank, I hear things of your master that worry me.’
‘Mr Earnshaw will have little to do with her,’ I said hastily. ‘She will be under my care – I have charge of the dairy and the household both. I will see to it that she is well fed and looked after.’
‘The dairy, the household, and now an infant too? You look rather young to be carrying all that.’
‘I grew up in the household – my mother was housekeeper before me. Besides,’ I added, ‘it is no more than your wife manages.’
‘True enough,’ he said. ‘But I will need more than just your assurances. In addition to the price of the lease, you will need to leave us with her full value as security against her safe return.’
‘How much?’ He named a price that made me gasp. I had seen cows sold for less, and said so.
‘Ah, but they were not Celeste, and my wife tells me you will have no other but her.’
I wavered, but in truth he was right, and it left me little room to bargain. Still, I managed to knock a third off his price, to bring it within what I had brought with me, and further gained the assistance of young Henry (as I discovered his name to be) to lead her home with me, and the right to recoup some of the lease money, as well as my security, if I brought her back early.
I was just counting out the coins from my purse, when Hareton woke up, suddenly vomited out the whole contents of his stomach, and began to scream in distress. I hastily cleaned him up and took him outside to walk up and down, with a little bouncing step that often soothed him, but it had no effect this time.
The Smiths came out to join me.
‘I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting the nanny now,’ said Mr Smith sadly.
‘No,’ I said, choking back tears.
Mrs Smith said something to her husband, and he took Celeste’s halter and headed with her back to the fields. His wife reached out her arms and gestured for me to give her the baby. I handed him over. She took him inside and sat down with him, and then, to my great surprise, untied her tucker and gave him her breast. He was instantly calm, and commenced suckling with an earnestness that told me his efforts were not in vain. I looked around the cottage, thinking I must have missed sight of a crib somewhere, but there was none.
‘How,’ I began. Mrs Smith smiled.
‘My little one, Marie,’ she said, ‘she still likes to nurse sometimes. It is not so strange, where I come from. And why not? It is pleasant to me. I am sorry the goat’s milk did not agree with this one. It would be best if it had, no? But at least I can give him something, so he will not go home hungry.’
I thanked her as best I could, and bought a jug of the goat’s milk anyway – it had stayed longer in his belly than anything else I had tried, so I still had some hopes for it. Mrs Smith also insisted on giving me a little packet of the goat’s cheese, wrapped in vine leaves and then in paper to keep it fresh, to take away with me. But I was bitterly disappointed – and frightened, too, for I had lost my last expedient, and it was ominous to hear what was being reported of Hindley. The two worries mingled in my mind as I walked, as if Hindley’s excess of intoxicating drink were somehow the cause of his son’s refusal to drink milk, the one offsetting the other like some terrible devil’s bargain.
Instead of going directly home, I turned aside to go through Gimmerton. Hindley might decline to call Bodkin in to see his son, I thought, but there was nothing to stop me taking the child to him. The waiting room in the surgery was nearly full, to my disappointment. I had already been gone more than half the day on my expedition, and I was not sure how much longer I could be absent without raising suspicions. Hindley was inattentive, and disinclined to interfere with my management in general, but he was not completely insensible. But Bodkin must have guessed something of my situation, for when he next poked his head in the room and saw me, he called on me immediately.
‘Ah, Nelly, thank you so much for dropping in – it will save me a trip, as I said,’ he said smoothly, making it appear that I was there at his request. ‘I know you must get back to your duties, so why don’t you come in now?’ I hurried through the door, and Bodkin ushered me into the little room where he kept his supplies. ‘Will you take some tea?’ he asked, ringing a bell for the servant and then pulling out a chair for me.
‘Perhaps a bit,’ I said, for I was weary, ‘but I don’t want to keep you too long. Thank you for bringing me in that way, though – I was dreading the long wait.’
‘I guessed as much. Now, what brings you here? How is the little fellow?’
I took a deep breath and began a reasonably calm disquisition on Hareton’s symptoms, but in the midst of it the weight of my worries overcame me, and I began sobbing out my fears. ‘Ever since his mother died, he can keep down nothing. It is as if he wants to die, and go to her. He needs a wet nurse, but Hindley will not hear me on it. He flatly refuses – he talks as if I don’t want the extra work, and says if I will not take the trouble, he will give the baby to the kitchen maid instead, but though she’s eager enough to help, she’s a mere child and has no idea what to do. I have tried everything else, everything, but nothing works.’
Bodkin listened until I finished, nodding quietly and keeping his eyes fixed on mine, as if he sought to steady me with his look. When I finished speaking, he lifted the babe from my arms and unwrapped him to examine him, then placed him in the scale.
‘He has lost weight, to be sure,’ he said. ‘But you say this started when Mrs Earnshaw died? He must be keeping something down, or he would be in worse shape than he is.’
‘I have started walking to the Dodds’ cottage, once every day, and paying Emma Dodd to nurse him, and the rest of the time I give him boiled sugar-water, and he keeps a little down,’ I explained. ‘But her husband doesn’t want her to keep it up – he is afraid of what Hindley will do, if he finds out I have been going behind his back, and it takes three hours to walk there and back – I am running out of excuses.’
‘There’s no one nearer who can nurse him?’
‘Not in secret. They are all Hindley’s tenants, and dare not go against him.’
Bodkin sat back and sighed. ‘What would you have me do?’ he asked.
‘Can you no
t give him something, to make him keep the milk down better?’
‘I have no such thing. I am no magician. If I were, I would make up a potion to make Hindley see sense – that would be the surest cure, I think, for a great many problems at Wuthering Heights.’
‘But Hareton will die! How can you stand by and let that happen!’
Bodkin looked stricken. ‘I have stood by and watched children die before this, Nelly,’ he said sadly. ‘I have no power to make a parent take my medical advice against their will and judgement. Nor am I so certain of my skill, that I would force it on them if I could.’
‘Will you talk to Hindley, anyway?’
‘I can try, but I doubt it will do any good. Hindley already blames my father for his wife’s death – he seems to think that if my father had not told her she was ill, she would have borne up better, and come through it. I’d guess he won’t thank me for bad news about his son’s health. But I will make the attempt, and that soon. I suppose it cannot make things worse. In the meantime, keep on with the sugar-water, and try adding just a little of the goat’s milk to it – say one quarter to start with. Then if that stays down, keep on with it, and then try a third the next day, and so on. We will see if we cannot coax his digestion into tolerating it.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, beginning to wrap up the babe and myself to leave. ‘What do I owe you for the visit?’
‘Nothing at all,’ said Bodkin. ‘I only wish I did have some medicine for the case, that I could charge you for. This is merely a friendly visit.’
‘I don’t like to take your time without paying you,’ I said anxiously.
‘And I don’t like to be paid to tell people I can’t help them,’ he replied firmly. ‘No more of that, Nelly, or I shall be angry.’
I had a sudden thought. ‘Have you ever had goat’s milk cheese?’ I asked. ‘Mrs Smith, from whom I got the goat’s milk, makes it. She is French, and got the taste for it at home.’
Bodkin looked startled. ‘Why, actually I have, in Edinburgh, and I liked it very much. I didn’t know it was to be had in these parts.’
‘Take it then,’ I said, hastily extricating it from my bundle. ‘She gave it to me, and I am sure no one at home will eat it.’
‘I will, with pleasure,’ said Bodkin.
‘And if you like it, you will find her or her husband in town on market day, selling more.’
Bodkin thanked me, we shook hands, and I left.
I was sorely disappointed, but I had got some little straws of hope to cling to from the visit anyway, and I was clinging to them with all my might. Yet, I might as well tell you, before the next day was gone, both were swept away: Hindley refused to hear a word from Bodkin on the subject of his son, and Hareton spat up the goat’s milk as fast as I could get it into him. And then, in my desperation, I thought of one final resource. Bodkin had told me that he had no magic potion that would change Hindley’s heart or his son’s digestion, and of course he did not. But there was someone else who just might.
NINETEEN
At dawn the next day, I again wrapped Hareton in my shawl, tucked the purse with my dwindling savings in my bosom, and left the house, heading for Elspeth’s cottage. I had never met her in person, but I knew the cottage well, as Hindley and I had passed it often in our wanderings. Children in the neighbourhood had long liked to frighten themselves by calling her a witch and running screaming from the sight of her, and Hindley and I had been no exception. Their parents had more respect, and those of them who could not afford the more expensive treatments of Dr Kenneth or Mr Smythe relied on her for remedies she compounded from the natural apothecary she cultivated around her cottage, and gathered from the moors and woods nearby. But it was whispered that there was more to her potions than herbs, and that, if asked in the right way, she would provide cures for problems the doctor and his ilk could never touch: philtres to be sneaked into some loved one’s food or drink, that could turn an unwilling heart or steady a troubled mind, and even darker remedies, whose purposes were only dimly hinted at. I had outgrown my childish fear of Elspeth, only to have it replaced by a deeper dread after the fateful dose of her art my mother had given me, and nothing less than my present state of desperation could have induced me to direct my feet to her door. But by now Hareton’s tiny fingers were twined deep in my heartstrings, and for his sake I would have sought her help even if I had believed her every inch the witch our childish fancy painted her.
Such sinister imaginings seemed merely silly, though, in the face of the neat little old woman who answered my knock at her cottage door. Her face was deeply seamed with age, and weathered from a life spent out-of-doors, but the lines were kindly ones, though the eyes were sharp and penetrating.
‘Nelly Dean,’ she said calmly. ‘Tha’ll be Mary Dean’s daughter.’
‘Yes,’ I stammered awkwardly, a little taken aback, as I had planned to begin by introducing myself.
‘And this little bundle, I’m guessing, is the motherless Earnshaw bairn – am I right?’
‘Yes, this is Hareton – I am his nurse.’
‘So I heard, missy, so I heard. Please, coom inside and sit tha down. Wilt tha take soom tea? It’s only the ordinary sort, from Hobson’s shop,’ she added, seeing me hesitate.
‘Yes, thank you, I would,’ I said, relieved. She turned and busied herself at the hearth.
‘Oatcake too?’ she asked, with her back still turned.
‘No, thank you, just tea,’ I said. I fussed over Hareton to hide my nervousness – he had been lulled to sleep by the walk, as he usually was, and I was trying to settle him comfortably in my lap without waking him.
Soon Elspeth returned to the table with the tea and poured us each a mug.
‘Now, child, what is it tha wants?’
‘I need something that will help the baby keep down his food,’ I said. ‘He keeps nothing down.’
‘What art tha feeding him?’
‘Cow’s milk, to start with,’ I said, and went on to detail all I had tried, and how little success I had had with it. In the course of it, I had to explain, too, about Hindley’s intransigence on hiring a wet nurse, and my efforts to get round it.
‘So tha’s been going behind his back, and sneaking off to pay a nurse out of thy own pocket, just to keep the poor lad alive?’
I nodded. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. But it’s not enough, you can see that, and now the nurse doesn’t want to go on, either, and I don’t know what else to try. I was hoping you had something that would help him, or maybe—’
‘Maybe what?’
‘Something … for Mr Earnshaw. I know he loves his son, or he would, but he’s troubled in his mind, since his wife’s death – he can’t think clearly. If you had something …’
‘Ah,’ she smiled, ‘a little powder, is it, that you could slip in his porridge, to give his mind the right turning?’
‘Yes,’ I said eagerly, ‘that is just what I want!’
She shook her head. ‘Poor child,’ she said. ‘If I had a powder that could give men sense, and make them do better by their bairns than they often do, the world would be a much better place, and I a rich woman. But I have no such magic. Not for this wee babe, either, I’m sorry to say. There are some who just won’t thrive on aught but mother’s milk, and it seems he is such a one.’
But I was not going to give up my last hope so easily. ‘There must be something you can do,’ I begged. ‘There must! You must help me, or he will die – I will pay anything, do anything, please, you must!’
‘Must, child?’ she said sternly. ‘Who art tha to tell me what I “must” do, when tha’s never come to my door before today. I am sorry for thy trouble, but I owe tha nothing.’
‘But you do,’ I said, struck with a sudden thought, ‘you do.’
‘And how is that?’
I looked at her steadily, though my heart was pounding. ‘You killed my baby.’
I expected her to protest, or demand an explanation, but she did neithe
r. She held my gaze a long time, her expression unreadable. Then she nodded, ever so slightly.
‘That would be about three years ago, wouldn’t it?’ she said. ‘The herbs I gave thy mother?’
I nodded. ‘A stomachic,’ I said. My throat was almost closed with grief – it was all I could do to get the words out. ‘A purgative. It purged …’ I stopped, unable to say more.
‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘It would. How far along were you?’
‘About three months.’
‘And it was Hindley’s child?’
I nodded. She was silent.
‘So you will help me?’
‘Let me think,’ she said.
And think she did, staring off into the dark eaves of the cottage for so long that I feared she had gone into some kind of trance. It was Hareton’s cries that brought her back, the sad little whimperings that were all he could manage these days, in his weakened state. She shook herself, and turned to me with an air of decision.
‘Show me the child.’
I started to pass her the whimpering bundle, but she declined to take it, indicating that I should unwrap him myself. I did so, and, discovering his clothes to be wet, I commenced changing him into the dry clothes I had brought with me. Always when I did this, however tired or hungry or fussy Hareton might have been before, as soon as I began the operation he would become calm and still, and hold my eyes with that wide, dark stare of his, and I would be taken with him into another world, where there was only him and me, as I chattered and crooned to him an ever-lengthening string of pet-names: my bonnie nurseling, my wee little laddie, my beautiful boy, and more in that vein, ending, as I always did, with the same ones: Hareton, my little hare, my leveret, my love.
When I was finished, I glanced over to find Elspeth watching me intently.
‘He is clean now – do you want to take him?’ I asked.
‘I can see what I need to from here,’ she said.
