Emily Brontë
Catharine welcome, like the other servants.' Cathy, catching a glimpse
of her friend in his concealment, flew to embrace him, she bestowed
seven or eight kisses on his cheek within the second, and then stopped,
and, drawing back, burst into a laugh, exclaiming: 'Why, how very black
and cross you look! and how--how funny and grim! But that's because I'm
used to Edgar and Isabella Linton.'
"'Well, Heathcliff, have you forgotten me? Shake hands, Heathcliff,'
said Mr. Earnshaw, condescendingly, 'once in a way, that is permitted.'
"'I shall not,' replied the boy, finding his tongue at last. 'I shall
not stand to be laughed at. I shall not bear it.'"
From this time Catharine's friendship with Heathcliff was chequered by
intermittent jealousy on his side and intermittent disgust upon hers;
and for this evil turn, far more than for any coarser brutality,
Heathcliff longed for revenge on Hindley Earnshaw. Meanwhile Edgar
Linton, greatly smitten with the beautiful Catharine, went from time to
time to visit at Wuthering Heights. He would have gone far oftener, but
that he had a terror of Hindley Earnshaw's reputation, and shrank from
encountering him.
For this fine young Oxford gentleman, this proud young husband, was
sinking into worse excesses than any of his wild Earnshaw ancestors. A
defiant sorrow had driven him to desperation. In the summer following
Catharine's visit to Thrushcross Grange, his only son and heir had been
born. An occasion of great rejoicings, suddenly dashed by the discovery
that his wife, his idol, was fast sinking in consumption. Hindley
refused to believe it, and his wife kept her flighty spirits till the
end; but one night, while leaning on his shoulder, a fit of coughing
took her--a very slight one. She put her two hands about his neck, her
face changed, and she was dead.
Hindley grew desperate, and gave himself over to wild companions, to
excesses of dissipation, and tyranny. "His treatment of Heathcliff was
enough to make a fiend of a saint." Heathcliff bore it with sullen
patience, as he had borne the blows and kicks of his childhood, turning
them into a lever for extorting advantages; the aches and wants of his
body were redeemed by a fierce joy at heart, for in this degradation of
Hindley Earnshaw he recognised the instrument of his own revenge.
Time went on, ever making a sharper difference between this gipsy hind
and his beautiful young mistress; time went on, leaving the two fast
friends enough, but leaving also in the heart of Heathcliff a passionate
rancour against the man who, of set purpose, had made him unworthy of
Catharine's hand, and of the other man on whom it was to be bestowed.
For Edgar Linton was infatuated with the naughty, tricksy young beauty
of Wuthering Heights. Her violent temper did not frighten him, although
his own character was singularly sweet, placid and feeble; her
compromising friendship with such a mere boor as young Heathcliff was
only a trifling annoyance easily to be excused. And when his own father
and mother died of a fever caught in nursing her he did not love her
less for the sorrow she brought. A fever she had wilfully taken in
despair, and a sudden sickness of life. One evening pretty Cathy came
into the kitchen to tell Nelly Dean that she had engaged herself to
marry Edgar Linton. Heathcliff, unseen, was seated on the other side the
settle, on a bench by the wall, quite hidden from those at the
fireside.
Cathy was very elated, but not at all happy. Edgar was rich, handsome,
young, gentle, passionately in love with her; still she was miserable.
Nelly Dean, who was nursing the baby Hareton by the fire, finally grew
out of patience with her whimsical discontent.
"'Your brother will be pleased,'" she said; "'the old lady and gentleman
will not object, I think; you will escape from a disorderly, comfortless
home into a wealthy, respectable one; and you love Edgar, and Edgar
loves you. All seems smooth and easy; where is the obstacle?'
"'_Here!_ and here!' replied Catharine, striking one hand on her
forehead and the other on her breast. 'In whichever place the soul
lives. In my soul and in my heart I'm convinced I'm wrong.'
"'That's very strange. I cannot make it out.'
"'It's my secret. But if you will not mock at me, I'll explain it. I
can't do it distinctly; but I'll give you a feeling of how I feel.'
"'She seated herself by me again; her countenance grew sadder and
graver, and her clasped hands trembled.
"'Nelly, do you never dream queer dreams?' she said, suddenly, after
some minutes' reflection.
"'Yes, now and then,' I answered.
"'And so do I. I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me
ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me
like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. And this is
one: I'm going to tell it, but take care not to smile at any part of
it.'
"'Oh, don't, Miss Catharine,' I cried. 'We're dismal enough without
conjuring up ghosts and visions to perplex us....'
"She was vexed, but she did not proceed. Apparently taking up another
subject, she recommenced in a short time.
"'If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.'
"'Because you are not fit to go there,' I answered; 'all sinners would
be miserable in heaven.'
"'But it is not that. I dreamt once that I was there.'
"'I tell you, I won't hearken to your dreams, Miss Catharine. I'll go to
bed,' I interrupted again.
"She laughed, and held me down, for I made a motion to leave my chair.
"'This is nothing,' cried she; 'I was only going to say that heaven did
not seem to be any home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back
to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the
middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I woke
sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret as well as the other.
I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven;
and, if the wicked man in there hadn't brought Heathcliff so low, I
shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff
now, so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he's
handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our
souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as
different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.'
"Ere this speech ended I became sensible of Heathcliff's presence.
Having noticed a slight movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise
from the bench and steal out noiselessly. He had listened till he had
heard Catharine say that it would degrade her to marry him, and then he
stayed to hear no further. My companion, sitting on the ground, was
prevented by the back of the settle from remarking his presence or
departure; but I started, and bade her hush.
"'Why?' she asked, gazing nervously round.
"'Joseph is here,' I answered, catching opportunely the roll of his
cart-wheels up the road, 'and Heathcliff will be coming in with him....
Unfortunate creature, as soon as you become Mrs. Linton he loses friend
and love and all. Have you considered how you'll bear the separation,
and how he'll bear to be quite deserted in the world? Because, Miss
Catharine....'
"'He quite deserted! we separated!' she exclaimed, with an accent of
indignation. 'Who is to separate us, pray! They'll meet the fate of
Milo. Not as long as I live, Ellen; for no mortal creature. Every Linton
on the face of the earth might melt into nothing, before I could consent
to forsake Heathcliff.... My great miseries in this world have been
Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning.
My great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and _he_
remained, _I_ should still continue to be; and if all else remained and
he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I
should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in
the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the
trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath; a
source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff.
He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am
always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our
separation again; it is impracticable; and----'
"She paused, and hid her face in the folds of my gown; but I jerked it
forcibly away. I was out of patience with her folly."
Poor Cathy! beautiful, haughty, and capricious; who should guide and
counsel her? her besotted, drunken brother? the servant who did not love
her and was impatient of her weathercock veerings? No. And Heathcliff,
who, brutalised and rude as he was, at least did love and understand
her? Heathcliff, who had walked out of the house, her rejection burning
in his ears, not to enter it till he was fitted to exact both love and
vengeance. He did not come back that night, though the thunder rattled
and the rain streamed over Wuthering Heights; though Cathy, shawl-less
in the wind and wet, stood calling him through the violent storms that
drowned and baffled her cries.
All night she would not leave the hearth, but lay on the settle sobbing
and moaning, all soaked as she was, with her hands on her face and her
face to the wall. A strange augury for her marriage, these first dreams
of her affianced love--not dreams, indeed, but delirium; for the next
morning she was burning and tossing in fever, near to death's door as it
seemed.
But she won through, and Edgar's parents carried her home to nurse. As
we know, they took the infection and died within a few days of each
other. Nor was this the only ravage that the fever made. Catharine,
always hasty and fitful in temper, was henceforth subject at rare
intervals to violent and furious rages, which threatened her life and
reason by their extremity. The doctor said she ought not to be crossed;
she ought to have her own way, and it was nothing less than murder in
her eyes for any one to presume to stand up and contradict her. But the
strained temper, the spoiled, authoritative ways, the saucy caprices of
his bride, were no blemishes in Edgar Linton's eyes. "He was infatuated,
and believed himself the happiest man alive on the day he led her to
Gimmerton Chapel three years subsequent to his father's death."
Despite so many gloomy auguries the marriage was a happy one at first.
Catharine was petted and humoured by every one, with Edgar for a
perpetual worshipper; his pretty, weak-natured sister Isabella as an
admiring companion; and for the necessary spectator of her happiness,
Nelly Dean, who had been induced to quit her nursling at Wuthering
Heights.
Suddenly Heathcliff returned, not the old Heathcliff, but a far more
dangerous enemy, a tall, athletic, well-formed man, intelligent, and
severe. "A half-civilised ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and
eyes, full of black fire, but it was subdued; and his manner was even
dignified, though too stern for grace." A formidable rival for boyish
Edgar Linton, with his only son's petulance, constitutional timidity,
and weak health. Cathy, though she was really attached to her husband,
gave him cruel pain by her undisguised and childish delight at
Heathcliff's return; he had a presentiment that evil would come of the
old friendship thus revived, and would willingly have forbidden
Heathcliff the house; but Edgar, so anxious lest any cross be given to
his wife, with a double reason then for tenderly guarding her health,
could not inflict a serious sorrow upon her with only a baseless
jealousy for its excuse. Thus, Heathcliff became intimate at Thrushcross
Grange, the second house to which he was made welcome, the second hearth
he meant to ruin. At this time he was lodging at Wuthering Heights. On