Читать книгу Wuthering Bites - Sarah Gray - Страница 10

In time, of course, Mr. Earnshaw began to fail. He had been active and healthy, yet his strength left him suddenly, and when he was confined to a chair in the corner, he grew grievously irritable. He became preoccupied by the growing number of vampires in the countryside and worried what would become of his children. We understood that the vampires were flooding into England and Scotland from their native land of Transylvania, where human blood was becoming scarce, but none knew what to do about it. Mr. Earnshaw could not sleep or eat for his obsession with the bloodsuckers. All day he filled journals with plans for strengthening the defenses at Wuthering Heights, and at night he burned candle after candle to the nub. By then, he was barely able to walk without the steady arm of a companion. His temper flared over the smallest things, and even though his body had grown weak, he could still rage with the roar of a charging bull. Nothing would make him so furious as some suspected slight of his authority.

This was especially true concerning Heathcliff. He had come to believe that the orphan lad could do no wrong, and he believed that the rest of the household was jealous. In his sickness, he became certain that because he liked Heathcliff, all hated him and longed to do him ill. In truth, the master’s favor did more harm to the boy than good. To have peace in the house, we all humored Heathcliff. That is never best for any child. Giving him what he demanded without question turned a gentle, grateful lad to a youth full of pride and black tempers. As expected, Heathcliff and Hindley clashed. Perhaps there was jealousy of the love Mr. Earnshaw showered on the foundling, but denied his own son. We’ll never know. But our peaceful home became a battleground as Hindley defied his father again and again, rousing the old man to fury. In a fit of rage, Mr. Earnshaw would seize his cane to strike Hindley, and his son would heap scorn on him, moving out of range of the ivory-handled weapon. More than once, we feared the master’s terrible wrath would be the death of young Earnshaw.

It was a bad time for all. Two households of our small church were ravished by the bloodsuckers. The small son of the butler at Grievegate Hall, not fifteen miles from here, was sent to fetch cheese from their well house at twilight. Six years of age was all he possessed. The child had run the distance a thousand times, yet on that night, he was snatched up by a heartless vampire. When they found poor Georgie, he was as pale as clabber, and two great wounds gaped on his throat.”

“The child was dead?” I asked, horrified and fascinated in the same blink of an eye. “Murdered by vampires?”

“Worse,” the woman hissed. “Shortly after his recovery, he was found sinking his teeth into pigeons. Then it was rats and larger animals. The family did all they could, but little Georgie was lost to the darkness. When he sucked a parlor maid dry and went for his little sister, his own father surrendered him to the authorities.”

“To be imprisoned?” I pleaded, although I knew what the penalty for murder was, even for a child.

“Not that.” She shrugged her shrunken shoulders. “What else could be done? Once they get the taste of human blood, even a servant’s blood, they will hunt. And even a six-year-old vampire has the strength of three human men. Sadly, it is kill or be killed.”

“Sadly,” I echoed. Then raised my gaze to her again. “Go on.”

At last, our curate, who taught the little Lintons and Earnshaws their numbers and letters, advised that Hindley should be sent away to college to be educated and to learn skills in fighting the vampires. All knew the threat would be greater as time passed, and this was becoming a necessary part of a young man’s education. Mr. Earnshaw agreed, though with a heavy spirit, for he said—

‘Hindley will never succeed no matter how many schools we send him to. It isn’t in his nature to defend those who cannot defend themselves. He is my son and it shames me to utter such words,’ the old man muttered. ‘But Hindley will be nearly useless should the vampires sweep the moors and invade Wuthering Heights. He doesn’t have it in his soul in the manner that Heathcliff does,’ he insisted, rapping his stick. ‘Heathcliff is the one who will save our immortal souls in the end!’

With the boy gone, I hoped heartily we would have peace. It hurt me to think the master would regret his own good deed by bringing the gypsy orphan home. And we might have got on tolerably, notwithstanding, but for two people, Miss Cathy and Joseph. You saw old Joseph, I dare say, up yonder. He was more religious in those days. He used the word of God to heap praise on his own head and flung curses on his neighbors.

Mrs. Dean waggled her finger. “I was suspicious of him, even then. There was something about Joseph’s manners that smelled of the undead. The way he never seemed to fear the beasties the way the rest of us did. The way the animals began to regard him, too. It was if he knew what was to come.”

“What was to come?” I echoed.

Mrs. Dean shook her head, ignoring my question, pressing on. “Joseph was relentless about ruling the children rigidly. He encouraged Mr. Earnshaw to regard Hindley as a reprobate, and, night after night, he regularly grumbled out a long string of tales against Heathcliff and Catherine. He took care to flatter the master’s weakness for the gypsy by heaping the heaviest blame on Catherine.

Certainly, the girl tried our patience fifty times a day. From the hour she came downstairs till the hour she went to bed, we had not a minute when we didn’t suspect she was into mischief. She was always speaking nonsense, stuff I think Heathcliff secretly poured into her head. She spoke of a day when women would defend their homes and children against the vampires at their places beside the men. Her spirits were always high, her tongue always going—singing, laughing, and plaguing everybody who would not do the same. A wild, wicked slip she was, and as daring as the devil himself, but she had the bonniest eyes and the sweetest smile.

She was much too fond of Heathcliff, even then. All day long they were about in the moors. They were seen fighting with wooden swords, she playing a victim strayed from the path, attacked by a vampire, and he was always the savior. It was then that young Heathcliff began to slip away some nights. Gone a day or two at a time, and her worrying herself sick over his whereabouts.”

Mrs. Dean leaned closer. “With the gypsies is where I think he was. Taking up training far superior to what the young master was learning in college. And learning not just ways to fight them, but to outsmart them, to command them, to coax them into doing his bidding. But Miss Cathy didn’t like Heathcliff gone, not even for a night. The greatest punishment we could invent was to separate them, yet she got chided more than any of us on his account.

Now, Mr. Earnshaw did not understand jokes from his children; he had always been strict and grave with them. His peevish reproofs wakened in her a naughty delight to provoke him. She was never so happy as when we were all scolding her at once, and she defying us with her bold, saucy look and her ready words. She would turn Joseph’s religious curses into ridicule, baiting me, feigning to have been chased by vampires, or worse, bitten by them. She would pretend to be possessed by the spirit of them, be one of them. Back then, we barely even knew such a curse was possible; all remembered the fate of the butler’s son at Grievegate Hall. We knew all too well that if you were misfortunate enough to be caught and fed on for too long, you died or were turned into one of them. And as was with poor Georgie, who could know if our dear Catherine had been bitten? She was a constant handful and a worry. After behaving as badly as possible all day, she sometimes came sweetly to make it up at night. And who could deny her…who but her own father?

‘Nay, Cathy,’ the old man would say. ‘I cannot love thee; thou’rt worse than thy brother. Go, wipe the blood that I know is not really blood from your neck, say thy prayers, child, and ask God’s pardon. I doubt thy mother and I must rue that we ever reared thee!’ That made her cry, at first; and then, being continually rejected hardened her, and she laughed if I told her to say she was sorry for her faults.

But the hour came, at last, that ended Mr. Earnshaw’s troubles on earth. He died quietly in his chair one October evening, seated by the fireside. A high wind blustered round the house and roared in the chimney. It sounded wild and stormy, yet it was not cold. We were all together—I, a little removed from the hearth, busy at my knitting, and Joseph reading on vampires near the table. Miss Cathy had been sick, and that made her still; she leant against her father’s knee, and Heathcliff was lying on the floor with his head in her lap.

I remember the master, before he fell into a doze, stroking her bonny hair—it pleased him rarely to see her gentle—and saying, ‘Why canst thou not always be a good lass, Cathy?’

And she turned her face up to his, and laughed, and answered, ‘Why cannot you always be a good man, father?’

But as soon as she saw him vexed again, she kissed his hand and said she would sing him to sleep. She began singing very low, till his fingers dropped from hers and his head sank on his breast. Then I told her to hush, and not stir, for fear she should wake him. We all kept as mute as mice a full half-hour; and should have done longer, only Joseph, having finished his reading, got up and said that he must rouse the master for prayers and bed. He stepped forward, and called him by name, and touched his shoulder, but he would not move, so he took the candle and looked at him.

I thought there was something wrong as Joseph set down the light, and seizing the children each by an arm, whispered them to go upstairs.

‘I shall bid Father good night first,’ said Catherine, putting her arms around his neck before we could stop her.

The poor thing discovered her loss directly and she screamed out, ‘Oh, he’s dead, Heathcliff! Father’s dead!’

And they both set up a heartbreaking cry.

I joined my wail to theirs, loud and bitter, but Joseph asked what we could be thinking of to roar in that way over a saint in heaven.

He told me to put on my cloak and run for the doctor and the parson, taking care. Vampires had been seen lurking at dusk, and the previous night a goat had gone missing. I could not guess of what use either the doctor or the parson would be then. However, I went, through wind and rain, looking forever over my shoulder, praying I would not be devoured, and brought the doctor back with me. The parson said he was not traveling the roads with the vampires flying about and that he would come in the morning.

Leaving Joseph to explain matters, I ran to the children’s room. Their door was ajar. I saw they had never lain down, though it was past midnight, but they were calmer and did not need me to console them. The little souls were comforting each other with better thoughts than I could have offered. No parson in the world ever pictured heaven so beautifully as they did, in their innocent talk of slaying vampires all over the world until there were none left to bedevil good folk. And, while I sobbed and listened, I could not help wishing we were all there in their make-believe world, safe together.