Nelly Dean

by Alison Case

  ‘Hindley’s natural affection will lead him to do his best for the child, you may be sure.’

  ‘Pardon me, sir, but I have seen, as you have not, how far “natural affection” goes to protect a child when his father’s wrath is up. I have the scars to prove it, and if Hareton does not, it is only because I have been here to protect him. If you won’t take it from me, ask Dr Kenneth how many of the children he treats for broken bones, burns, and bruises are victims of their parents’ “natural affections”. And while you are there, ask him whether Miss Earnshaw’s health still requires that we all bow to her every whim. The answer may surprise you.’

  ‘I am not concerned with the brutality of the lower orders.’

  ‘I have seen things in this very house, sir …’

  ‘Which you ought not to speak of, to anyone. Have you learned nothing of a servant’s duties?’

  ‘I have always done my duty here, sir, and generally a great deal more.’

  I had thought Edgar Linton a sensible man – as he generally was, on any subject but his love – and so I had spoken to him frankly, thinking that persuading him would settle the matter for good. I little realized that I was only providing him with the means to destroy me. He went straight to Hindley and gave him a lecture on the proper running of a household, and the importance of nipping in the bud any tendencies towards insubordination by servants, quoting me at length to prove his points.

  ‘I don’t give a tinker’s damn what you think of my household, Linton,’ Hindley replied angrily, ‘and I’ll thank you not to meddle in it.’ But the damage was done. It always galled Hindley to have his authority and competence as master questioned, and the idea that I was speaking slightingly of him behind his back worked in him like a slow poison. So the next time Cathy began wheedling her brother about bringing me to Thrushcross Grange, in my hearing, Hindley announced that I could leave for all he cared, he wanted no more women in the house, with their underhanded meddling ways.

  ‘But who is to look after Hareton, if I go?’ I asked.

  ‘The boy has been under petticoat government for too long already: he’s in danger of becoming a thoroughgoing milksop. Every time I see him he is running to hide behind your skirts. Get you gone, and Joseph and I will make a proper man of him in no time.’

  ‘And his lessons?’

  ‘The curate can teach him, by and by.’

  ‘He is learning his letters now – he will forget them if the lessons are not kept up.’

  ‘Then let him forget them. There’s no need for him to be a prodigy of reading – he can learn his letters when he needs them.’

  ‘You’ll have to pay the curate for his lessons, you know.’

  Hindley slammed his hand on the table. ‘Then I’ll pay him! With the money I’m saving by not paying you for the privilege of listening to your insolence!’

  I opened my mouth to tell him he paid little enough of my wages as it was, but then shut it again, turned on my heel, and went upstairs. I had had a sudden idea. I went to my room, and dug out the little pocketbook where I kept Hindley’s notes of hand. They came to well over fifty pounds. A few days later, when I found Hindley alone and still reasonably sober, I confronted him.

  ‘If I am to leave with Cathy, you must pay me all my arrears of wages. I have over fifty pounds in your notes of hand that must be paid before I leave.’

  ‘Nonsense, you know as well as anyone that I have no such sum about me.’

  ‘Then perhaps you should not be so hasty in complaining of how much I cost you working here. Come, Hindley,’ I said pleadingly, ‘you know how little you actually pay me, and how much I do for the household for that little. You must know that your income will be lower, and your expenses greater, without me than with me. I am worth far more than I cost you. But I stay for Hareton’s sake, and will stay yet if you but let me. But if I go, I must have my back wages.’

  Hindley looked hesitant, and I pressed my advantage. ‘Do you really want to live on Joseph’s cooking?’ I said with a smile. ‘You and I have had enough of that for one lifetime, surely. And if you think the boy is too much with me, why that is easily remedied. He only wants a little kind attention from you, and he will be as ready to follow you and look up to you as any son can be. I know that for certain.’

  Hindley scowled and waved me off, but he did not dispute what I said, and I was confident that I had swayed him. I did not hear Cathy’s next conversation with Hindley on the subject, but I guessed the purport of it when, on his next visit, Edgar took me aside to remonstrate with me about using Hindley’s debt to me as leverage over him.

  ‘It is ridiculous to make this into a dispute about money, Nelly – I have already offered you much better wages than Hindley can, and I can assure you they will be paid in full. I would never give a servant a note of hand in lieu of wages.’

  ‘Be that as it may, sir, I don’t think it right that I should be told to walk away from fifty-four pounds that is owed to me already, and I won’t do it.’

  ‘But you must know that you are not more likely to get it by staying here – the debt will only pile higher. It makes no sense at all.’

  ‘Well, I certainly won’t see it if I leave, sir. Come, you know it is not really about the money with me – I don’t want to leave Hareton, and don’t think it right that he should be left with no one to care for him. I have only tried to tip the balance for Mr Earnshaw by reminding him of how much I am worth to the household, and how much it will cost him if I leave. Surely I have every right to do that. The debt is real enough – you don’t dispute that.’

  ‘It is not a fit subject for dispute with you, Nelly. It only goes to show why no gentleman should get into debt to his servants. It is a violation of all right order.’

  ‘I am sure your views on what gentlemen ought and ought not to do are very strict and correct, Mr Linton,’ I said, as humbly as I could manage, ‘but I do not think Mr Earnshaw always shares them.’

  ‘That is very certain,’ snapped Edgar, and with that he left me. I thought him annoyed because he had lost his point, and felt quite pleased with myself for having gained mine. I underestimated what he was prepared to undertake on Cathy’s behalf.

  As I told you before, Cathy was entitled by her father’s will to five hundred pounds on her marriage. When he was reminded of this, Hindley announced that he couldn’t possibly pay it, as he had no money on hand. This had caused quite a storm. Edgar wanted no part of a fight with Hindley, and said Cathy herself was all the treasure he needed, but Cathy grew passionate on the subject – Hindley had already deprived her of so much that was precious to her (she did not specify Heathcliff, but it was clear enough that that was her meaning), she was damned if she would give up her birthright too. She would have the law on him, she said, and bankrupt him, if need be, but the money must be paid. Edgar was far more concerned about the public scandal that would ensue than about the money, but he was always eager to please Cathy, and so he had undertaken negotiations with Hindley for him to transfer some land to Cathy’s name that would return to Wuthering Heights if Cathy had no heirs. These negotiations were still underway at this time, the precise piece of land and the exact terms of its future transmission being still unsettled. I had paid little heed to the details, not thinking it a matter of much concern to me, one way or the other.

  I was taken aback, then, when, two weeks later, Hindley poked his head into the kitchen and said, ‘Nelly! Fetch your damn notes, and meet me in the office.’ I hurried to do as he said. When I arrived, he took the handful of notes and began to leaf through them. But the effort of adding the sums in his head was evidently too much for him. He handed me a fresh sheet of paper and a pen. ‘Make a schedule of these, with the dates and amounts, and add up the total,’ he said.

  ‘What is this about?’

  ‘Just do as you’re told.’

  I finished the schedule, which came, as I already knew, to fifty-four pounds, six shillings. I handed it to Hindley, and he glanced at the to
tal.

  ‘Right,’ he said. He picked up an odd piece of paper and pushed it at me. ‘Here is a cheque from Edgar Linton for fifty-four pounds sterling, and here’ – he dug into his pocket and pulled up a handful of coins – ‘are six shillings.’ He snapped them down onto the cheque, one at time, smiling nastily all the while. ‘Now I’ll thank you to write “paid in full” on your little schedule there, and sign your name to it. Then we can burn these notes.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, my heart thumping.

  ‘It is perfectly clear,’ said Hindley. ‘You are paid up, paid off, cashiered out. Take your money and go.’

  ‘But this is Mr Linton’s money.’

  ‘Mr Linton and I have concluded our negotiations. He has taken a piece of land off my hands, and in return … well, he is also taking you off my hands. A bargain at both ends, come to think of it.’

  I sat dumbfounded.

  ‘Go!’ he said.

  ‘You want me to leave … now?’ I could barely speak.

  ‘This office, yes. The household you need not leave until Cathy does, next month. For her sake, Mr Linton is very keen to employ you at Thrushcross Grange. I suggest you take him up on the offer, though I don’t much care one way or the other. But you will have no further employment here.’

  I got up and stumbled out. I had been so sure of my success that the blow came as suddenly as if the subject had never come up before, and I found myself unable even to think. I went into the kitchen and began preparing myself a cup of tea, hoping that would clear my head somewhat. No sooner had I sat down with it than little Hareton popped his head in.

  ‘Can you play with me now, Nana?’ he asked. ‘We have not played “sack of oats” in such a long time.’

  ‘No, dear child,’ I said, struggling to smile. ‘I have work to do. And you are getting so big now, that sack of oats is too heavy for me.’

  ‘Maybe the sack of oats could stand up and jump into your arms. That would be easier.’

  ‘What a strange sack of oats that would be! But I really cannot play just now.’

  ‘Are you sad, Nana?’ he asked, coming and clambering into my lap. ‘You look sad.’

  ‘A little, child, but I will be better soon.’

  ‘Did Dada make you sad?’

  ‘Let us not talk about sadness. Go and fetch your hornbook, and you can work on your letters while I start dinner.’

  ‘May I do that later? I want to go outside and play.’ I had scarcely noticed the weather when I went to the office. I looked outside now. The sun was shining and the air was balmy. What did it matter if Hareton did his lessons now or later, or indeed never?

  ‘Go on,’ I said, ‘but don’t go further than you can hear me.’

  I went about my work like an automaton. I still could not quite believe what I had heard, but the truth of it was beginning to sink in. Cathy had outflanked me. Between Edgar’s wealth and eagerness to please his love, and Hindley’s pride and greed for cash, I was trapped. All my cleverness, and more, all my years of loving sacrifice and all my real usefulness to the household, were powerless against those weapons. What was I to do?

  I will tell you what I did: over the next few days, I appealed to each of the three of them alone. I went down on my knees, I sobbed and begged, with all the hysterical desperation of a mother pleading for the life of her child, for I really believed his life was at stake. I will not write of those scenes: each was different, but they all ended the same way. Then Hareton learned what was coming – I hid it from him as long as I could, for pity’s sake, but his father and aunt had no such compunction – and he soon added his wails and pleas to mine. Nothing availed – in truth, it seemed that the more desperately we both begged, the more convinced the three of them became, each in their own way, that it was right for us to part. Cathy, under the Lintons’ tuition, had learned to think of both children and servants as beings not entitled to their own judgement, but fit only to follow the guidance of their elders and betters – and her guidance was of course based on what she wanted herself. That she was little more than a child herself apparently did not cross her mind. So then I swallowed my pain and my anger, told them I would come to Thrushcross Grange, and tried to look and act resigned to my fate, while inwardly I paced the walls of my enclosure like the Brownie in his cage, testing for any weakness by means of which I might make my escape.

  I thought of stealing away with Hareton, and hiding us both in some faraway town. I had cashed the cheque and added the resulting banknotes and sovereigns to my own modest hoard. Together they came to over seventy pounds. Surely that was enough to begin a new life somewhere? I could take a small house and let lodgings, or hire out as a dairywoman – I was young and clever and strong, and I felt confident that I could support us both by my efforts. But further reflection showed me the dangers of this proceeding: I would be a hunted woman, obliged to conceal my name and my origins, and requiring poor Hareton to do the same. Even if we escaped for a time, would we not live in terror of discovery? Then, too, while I might manage to put food in our mouths and a roof over our heads, I could not make up to Hareton for the loss of his birthright, or give him an education fitting his station. Did I have the right to condemn him to a life in the lower orders, when he was born to be a gentleman and a squire?

  If I could have known for certain that Hareton would die if left with his father – which I certainly feared, and not without reason, as you know – all these risks and disadvantages would have been worth braving, for his sake. Yet I knew not how to weigh the one set of risks against the other. Hareton was not a helpless baby any more, and though he still feared his father, he had gained some skill in avoiding the dangers he posed. I, on the other hand, had never been a fugitive, and knew not how far the tentacles of the law might extend themselves to find me, or how long and resolutely Hindley would keep up a search. And if we were discovered, I would hang for sure, and Hareton be carried back in grief and ignominy, in a worse condition than ever. I kept thinking of the stories in Dr Perkins’s pamphlet, of wet nurses who had been mad enough to steal away their charges, and had come to a miserable end, often taking the babes with them into death. Now I understood too well what had driven them to such desperate acts. But did I really wish to share their fate, and be reduced to a mere cautionary example in his next edition? Reluctantly, and with great misgivings, I let go of this plan.

  At last another thought crossed my mind, which ultimately decided me: was it not possible that Hindley would tire of the trouble and expense of keeping a young child? And if he did, what was more likely than that he would send Hareton to live at Thrushcross Grange? Edgar would be eager to have his nephew raised under his more civilized care, I did not doubt, and Cathy was unlikely to object either, for she was fond enough of Hareton, provided that he did not inconvenience her. In that case, if I were there already, what a joyous reunion Hareton and I would have, and how much better off would we both be henceforward, than we ever were at Wuthering Heights! Deep in my heart, I think I knew that this dream was but a will-o’-the-wisp that would lead me astray, but I was desperate for some sliver of hope to guide my judgement. That it also guided me to the path that was easiest for me to take, because the one most in keeping with my long habit of obedience, only strengthened it the more.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Hope is but a thin broth to live on, when there is nothing of substance to add to it, and so I found it, over those last remaining weeks before the wedding. Poor Hareton was tormented by fears that, alas, I thought all too reasonable, though to comfort him I tried to make light of them. So it was that our last few weeks together were spent under the shadow of that looming sorrow. I tried to offset it with every indulgence and pleasure I could manage. I neglected my household duties shamefully, hoping to give Hindley a taste of what life would be like without me, and instead spent my days playing ‘sack of oats’ with Hareton, or going on long rambling picnics with him over the moors. I could lift his spirits this way, for he was young
enough still to live mostly in the present moment, unweighed by thoughts of past or future except when something occurred to remind him of it. But for me each peal of glee at our game, or excited wonder at the discovery of a bird’s nest or a butterfly, was like a knife in my chest, and it was all I could do to keep a smile on my face, and tears from my eyes.

  And then there were the dreams, nightmares that tortured me so that I dreaded going to sleep. In all of them, Hareton was again a babe-in-arms, dependent on me for everything, and in each I would be ordered to relinquish him in some terrifying circumstance. In one, I might be directed to lay him down in a pit where prowled a slavering lion. I would be given the order casually, in passing, as if someone had asked me to fetch him a cup of tea or a clean towel. It would be Cathy or Hindley who gave the order, but there were whole crowds of people who milled about indifferently in the scene. I would remonstrate, pointing out the danger to the child, but as soon as my desperation showed through, their faces would close and they would turn away. And so I would struggle to speak calmly, reasonably and respectfully, carefully framing my commonplace reflections on the natures of lions and the vulnerabilities of babies, and drawing logical inferences therefrom, while tentatively pointing out that there was no good reason to leave the baby in such a place. But not only would Hindley and Cathy be unconvinced, but all the people around would give looks of distaste and disapproval, as if my efforts were not only wrong, but incomprehensible. That was the real horror – not only that I must deliver the child to this beast, but that nobody but me saw any danger at all, but thought this command the most ordinary and sensible thing in the world, so that I felt that either I must be mad, or the whole world was. Then Hindley would point sternly to the place where the child must be laid, and the lion would growl and snatch, and I would clutch the babe and look desperately around for a way to flee, but the wall of people would close around me, and I would cry out – and wake. In another, I might be directed to put the baby into a basket shaped like a cockleshell, and launch it into a raging sea, where it was plain it would be overset by the first wave that came against it. Again I would plead and reason, and again the uncomprehending crowd would frown on me with disapproval. There were many more dreams in the same vein: my sleeping imagination was horribly fertile in the invention of dangers for the child to be consigned to against my will, and always they ended the same way: with the indifferent crowd closing in on me to compel me to the act, whereupon I would cry out, and wake myself up.