Emily Brontë
night since Mr. Earnshaw's departure, and the children, sleepy and
tired, had begged their mother to let them sit up a little longer--yet a
little longer--to welcome their father, and see their new presents. At
last--just about eleven o'clock--Mr. Earnshaw came back, laughing and
groaning over his fatigue; and opening his greatcoat, which he held
bundled up in his arms, he cried:
"'See here, wife! I was never so beaten with anything in my life: but
you must e'en take it as a gift of God; though it's as dark almost as if
it came from the devil.'
"We crowded round, and over Miss Cathy's head I had a peep at a dirty,
ragged, black-haired child; big enough both to walk and talk; indeed,
its face looked older than Catharine's; yet, when it was set on its
feet, it only stared round and repeated over and over again some
gibberish that nobody could understand. I was frightened, and Mrs.
Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors: she did fly up, asking how
he could fashion to bring that gipsy brat into the house when they had
their own bairns to feed and fend for? What he meant to do with it, and
whether he were mad? The master tried to explain the matter; but he was
really half dead with fatigue, and all that I could make out, amongst
her scolding, was a tale of his seeing it starving and houseless, and as
good as dumb, in the streets of Liverpool, where he picked it up and
inquired for its owner. Not a soul knew to whom it belonged, he said;
and his money and time being both limited, he thought it better to take
it home with him at once, than run into vain expenses there; because he
was determined he would not leave it as he found it."
So the child entered 'Wuthering Heights,' a cause of dissension from the
first. Mrs. Earnshaw grumbled herself calm; the children went to bed
crying, for the fiddle had been broken and the whip lost in carrying the
little stranger for so many miles. But Mr. Earnshaw was determined to
have his _protege_ respected; he cuffed saucy little Cathy for making
faces at the new comer, and turned Nelly Dean out of the house for
having set him to sleep on the stairs because the children would not
have him in their bed. And when she ventured to return some days
afterwards, she found the child adopted into the family, and called by
the name of a son who had died in childhood--Heathcliff.
Nevertheless, he had no enviable position. Cathy, indeed, was very thick
with him, and the master had taken to him strangely, believing every
word he said, "for that matter he said precious little, and generally
the truth," but Mrs. Earnshaw disliked the little interloper and never
interfered in his behalf when Hindley, who hated him, thrashed and
struck the sullen, patient child, who never complained, but bore all
his bruises in silence. This endurance made old Earnshaw furious when he
discovered the persecutions to which this mere baby was subjected; the
child soon discovered it to be a most efficient instrument of vengeance.
"I remember Mr. Earnshaw once bought a couple of colts at the parish
fair, and gave the lads each one. Heathcliff took the handsomest, but it
soon fell lame, and when he discovered it, he said to Hindley: 'You must
exchange horses with me, I don't like mine; and if you don't I shall
tell your father of the three thrashings you've given me this week, and
show him my arm which is black to the shoulder.' Hindley put out his
tongue, and cuffed him over the ears. 'You'd better do it at once,' he
persisted, escaping to the porch (they were in the stable). 'You'll have
to; and if I speak of these blows you'll get them back with interest.'
'Off, dog!' cried Hindley, threatening him with an iron weight, used for
weighing potatoes and hay. 'Throw it,' he replied, standing still, 'and
then I'll tell how you boasted you would turn me out of doors as soon as
he died, and see whether he will not turn you out directly. Hindley
threw it, hitting him on the breast, and down he fell, but staggered up
immediately, breathless and white; and had not I prevented it, he would
have gone just so to the master and got full revenge by letting his
condition plead for him, intimating who had caused it. 'Take my colt,
gipsy, then,' said young Earnshaw. 'And I pray that he may break your
neck; take him and be damned, you beggarly interloper! and wheedle my
father out of all he has: only afterwards show him what you are, imp of
Satan. And take that; I hope he'll kick out your brains!'
"Heathcliff had gone to loose the beast and shift it to his own stall;
he was passing behind it when Hindley finished his speech by knocking
him under its feet, and, without stopping to examine whether his hopes
were fulfilled, ran away as fast as he could. I was surprised to witness
how coolly the child gathered himself up and went on with his intention;
exchanging saddles and all, and then sitting down on a bundle of hay to
overcome the qualm which the violent blow occasioned, before he entered
the house. I persuaded him easily to let me lay the blame of his bruises
on the horse: he heeded little what tale was told so that he had what he
wanted. He complained so seldom, indeed, of such things as these that I
really thought him not vindictive; I was deceived completely, as you
will hear."
So the division grew. This malignant, uncomplaining child, with foreign
skin and Eastern soul, could only breed discord in that Yorkshire home.
He could not understand what was honourable by instinct to an English
mind. He was quick to take an advantage, long-suffering, sly, nursing
his revenge in silence like a vindictive slave, until at last the moment
of retribution should be his; sufficiently truthful and brave to have
grown noble in another atmosphere, but with a ready bent to underhand
and brooding vengeance. Insensible, it seemed, to gratitude. Proud with
the unreasoning pride of an Oriental; cruel, and violently passionate.
One soft and tender speck there was in this dark and sullen heart; it
was an exceedingly great and forbearing love for the sweet, saucy,
naughty Catharine.
But this one affection only served to augment the mischief that he
wrought. He who had estranged son from father, husband from wife,
severed brother from sister as completely; for Hindley hated the swarthy
child who was Cathy's favourite companion. When Mrs. Earnshaw died, two
years after Heathcliff's advent, Hindley had learned to regard his
father as an oppressor rather than a friend, and Heathcliff as an
intolerable usurper. So, from the very beginning, he bred bad feeling in
the house.
In the course of time Mr. Earnshaw began to fail. His strength suddenly
left him, and he grew half childish, irritable, and extremely jealous of
his authority. He considered any slight to Heathcliff as a slight to his
own discretion; so that, in the master's presence, the child was
deferred to and courted from respect for that master's weakness, while,
behind his back, the old wrongs, the old hatred, showed themselves
unquenched. And so the child grew up bitter and distrustful. Matters got
a little better for a while, when the untameable Hindley was sent to
college; yet still there was disturbance and disquiet, for Mr. Earnshaw
did not love his daughter Catharine, and his heart was yet further
embittered by the grumbling and discontent of old Joseph the servant;
the wearisomest "self-righteous Pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to
take the promises to himself and fling the curses to his neighbours."
But Catharine, though slighted for Heathcliff, and nearly always in
trouble on his account, was much too fond of him to be jealous. "The
greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate
from Heathcliff.... Certainly she had ways with her such as I never saw
a child take up before; and she put all of us past our patience fifty
times and oftener in a day; from the hour she came downstairs till the
hour she went to bed, we hadn't a minute's security that she wouldn't be
in mischief. Her spirits were always at high-watermark, her tongue
always going--singing, laughing, and plaguing everybody who would not do
the same. A wild, wicked slip she was; but she had the bonniest eye,
the sweetest smile, and the lightest foot in the parish. And after all,
I believe, she meant no harm; for, when once she made you cry in good
earnest, it seldom happened that she wouldn't keep your company and
oblige you to be quiet that you might comfort her. In play she liked
exceedingly to act the little mistress, using her hands freely and
commanding her companions."
Suddenly this pretty, mischievous sprite was left fatherless; Mr.
Earnshaw died quietly, sitting in his chair by the fireside one October
evening. Mr. Hindley, now a young man of twenty, came home to the
funeral, to the great astonishment of the household bringing a wife with
him.
A rush of a lass, spare and bright-eyed, with a changing, hectic colour,
hysterical, and full of fancies, fickle as the winds, now flighty and
full of praise and laughter, now peevish and languishing. For the rest,
the very idol of her husband's heart. A word from her, a passing phrase
of dislike for Heathcliff, was enough to revive all young Earnshaw's
former hatred of the boy. Heathcliff was turned out of their society, no
longer allowed to share Cathy's lessons, degraded to the position of an
ordinary farm-servant. At first Heathcliff did not mind. Cathy taught
him what she learned, and played or worked with him in the fields. Cathy
ran wild with him, and had a share in all his scrapes; they both bade
fair to grow up regular little savages, while Hindley Earnshaw kissed
and fondled his young wife utterly heedless of their fate.
An adventure suddenly changed the course of their lives. One Sunday
evening Cathy and Heathcliff ran down to Thrushcross Grange to peep
through the windows and see how the little Lintons spent their Sundays.
They looked in, and saw Isabella at one end of the, to them, splendid
drawing-room, and Edgar at the other, both in floods of tears, peevishly
quarrelling. So elate were the two little savages from Wuthering Heights
at this proof of their neighbours' inferiority, that they burst into
peals of laughter. The little Lintons were terrified, and, to frighten
them still more, Cathy and Heathcliff made a variety of frightful
noises; they succeeded in terrifying not only the children but their
silly parents, who imagined the yells to come from a gang of burglars,
determined on robbing the house. They let the dogs loose, in this
belief, and the bulldog seized Cathy's bare little ankle, for she had
lost her shoes in the bog. While Heathcliff was trying to throttle off
the brute, the man-servant came up, and, taking both the children
prisoner, conveyed them into the lighted hall. There, to the humiliation
and surprise of the Lintons, the lame little vagrant was discovered to
be Miss Earnshaw, and her fellow-misdemeanant, "that strange acquisition
my late neighbour made in his journey to Liverpool--a little Lascar, or
an American or Spanish castaway."
Cathy stayed five weeks at Thrushcross Grange, by which time her ankle
was quite well, and her manners much improved. Young Mrs. Earnshaw had
tried her best, during this visit, to endeavour by a judicious mixture
of fine clothes and flattery to raise the standard of Cathy's
self-respect. She went home, then, a beautiful and finely-dressed young
lady, to find Heathcliff in equal measure deteriorated; the mere
farm-servant, whose clothes were soiled with three months' service in
mire and dust, with unkempt hair and grimy face and hands.
"'Heathcliff, you may come forward,' cried Mr. Hindley, enjoying his
discomfiture, and gratified to see what a forbidding young blackguard he
would be compelled to present himself. 'You may come and wish Miss