Wuthering Heights
had scolded Heathcliff till I was hoarse for _him;_ I did not care
hardly what they did to each other; especially as I felt that, however
the scene closed, we should all be driven asunder for nobody knows how
long! Well, if I cannot keep Heathcliff for my friend—if Edgar will be
mean and jealous, I’ll try to break their hearts by breaking my own.
That will be a prompt way of finishing all, when I am pushed to
extremity! But it’s a deed to be reserved for a forlorn hope; I’d not
take Linton by surprise with it. To this point he has been discreet in
dreading to provoke me; you must represent the peril of quitting that
policy, and remind him of my passionate temper, verging, when kindled,
on frenzy. I wish you could dismiss that apathy out of that
countenance, and look rather more anxious about me.”
The stolidity with which I received these instructions was, no doubt,
rather exasperating: for they were delivered in perfect sincerity; but
I believed a person who could plan the turning of her fits of passion
to account, beforehand, might, by exerting her will, manage to control
herself tolerably, even while under their influence; and I did not wish
to “frighten” her husband, as she said, and multiply his annoyances for
the purpose of serving her selfishness. Therefore I said nothing when I
met the master coming towards the parlour; but I took the liberty of
turning back to listen whether they would resume their quarrel
together. He began to speak first.
“Remain where you are, Catherine,” he said; without any anger in his
voice, but with much sorrowful despondency. “I shall not stay. I am
neither come to wrangle nor be reconciled; but I wish just to learn
whether, after this evening’s events, you intend to continue your
intimacy with—”
“Oh, for mercy’s sake,” interrupted the mistress, stamping her foot,
“for mercy’s sake, let us hear no more of it now! Your cold blood
cannot be worked into a fever: your veins are full of ice-water; but
mine are boiling, and the sight of such chillness makes them dance.”
“To get rid of me, answer my question,” persevered Mr. Linton. “You
_must_ answer it; and that violence does not alarm me. I have found
that you can be as stoical as anyone, when you please. Will you give up
Heathcliff hereafter, or will you give up me? It is impossible for you
to be _my_ friend and _his_ at the same time; and I absolutely
_require_ to know which you choose.”
“I require to be let alone!” exclaimed Catherine, furiously. “I demand
it! Don’t you see I can scarcely stand? Edgar, you—you leave me!”
She rang the bell till it broke with a twang; I entered leisurely. It
was enough to try the temper of a saint, such senseless, wicked rages!
There she lay dashing her head against the arm of the sofa, and
grinding her teeth, so that you might fancy she would crash them to
splinters! Mr. Linton stood looking at her in sudden compunction and
fear. He told me to fetch some water. She had no breath for speaking. I
brought a glass full; and as she would not drink, I sprinkled it on her
face. In a few seconds she stretched herself out stiff, and turned up
her eyes, while her cheeks, at once blanched and livid, assumed the
aspect of death. Linton looked terrified.
“There is nothing in the world the matter,” I whispered. I did not want
him to yield, though I could not help being afraid in my heart.
“She has blood on her lips!” he said, shuddering.
“Never mind!” I answered, tartly. And I told him how she had resolved,
previous to his coming, on exhibiting a fit of frenzy. I incautiously
gave the account aloud, and she heard me; for she started up—her hair
flying over her shoulders, her eyes flashing, the muscles of her neck
and arms standing out preternaturally. I made up my mind for broken
bones, at least; but she only glared about her for an instant, and then
rushed from the room. The master directed me to follow; I did, to her
chamber-door: she hindered me from going further by securing it against
me.
As she never offered to descend to breakfast next morning, I went to
ask whether she would have some carried up. “No!” she replied,
peremptorily. The same question was repeated at dinner and tea; and
again on the morrow after, and received the same answer. Mr. Linton, on
his part, spent his time in the library, and did not inquire concerning
his wife’s occupations. Isabella and he had had an hour’s interview,
during which he tried to elicit from her some sentiment of proper
horror for Heathcliff’s advances: but he could make nothing of her
evasive replies, and was obliged to close the examination
unsatisfactorily; adding, however, a solemn warning, that if she were
so insane as to encourage that worthless suitor, it would dissolve all
bonds of relationship between herself and him.
CHAPTER XII
While Miss Linton moped about the park and garden, always silent, and
almost always in tears; and her brother shut himself up among books
that he never opened—wearying, I guessed, with a continual vague
expectation that Catherine, repenting her conduct, would come of her
own accord to ask pardon, and seek a reconciliation—and _she_ fasted
pertinaciously, under the idea, probably, that at every meal Edgar was
ready to choke for her absence, and pride alone held him from running
to cast himself at her feet; I went about my household duties,
convinced that the Grange had but one sensible soul in its walls, and
that lodged in my body. I wasted no condolences on Miss, nor any
expostulations on my mistress; nor did I pay much attention to the
sighs of my master, who yearned to hear his lady’s name, since he might
not hear her voice. I determined they should come about as they pleased
for me; and though it was a tiresomely slow process, I began to rejoice
at length in a faint dawn of its progress: as I thought at first.
Mrs. Linton, on the third day, unbarred her door, and having finished
the water in her pitcher and decanter, desired a renewed supply, and a
basin of gruel, for she believed she was dying. That I set down as a
speech meant for Edgar’s ears; I believed no such thing, so I kept it
to myself and brought her some tea and dry toast. She ate and drank
eagerly, and sank back on her pillow again, clenching her hands and
groaning. “Oh, I will die,” she exclaimed, “since no one cares anything
about me. I wish I had not taken that.” Then a good while after I heard
her murmur, “No, I’ll not die—he’d be glad—he does not love me at
all—he would never miss me!”
“Did you want anything, ma’am?” I inquired, still preserving my
external composure, in spite of her ghastly countenance and strange,
exaggerated manner.
“What is that apathetic being doing?” she demanded, pushing the thick
entangled locks from her wasted face. “Has he fallen into a lethargy,
or is he dead?”
“Neither,” replied I; “if you mean Mr. Linton. He’s tolerably well, I
think, though his studies occupy him rather more than they ought: he is
continually among his books, since he has no other society.”
I should not have spoken so if I had known her true condition, but I
could not get rid of the notion that she acted a part of her disorder.
“Among his books!” she cried, confounded. “And I dying! I on the brink
of the grave! My God! does he know how I’m altered?” continued she,
staring at her reflection in a mirror hanging against the opposite
wall. “Is that Catherine Linton? He imagines me in a pet—in play,
perhaps. Cannot you inform him that it is frightful earnest? Nelly, if
it be not too late, as soon as I learn how he feels, I’ll choose
between these two: either to starve at once—that would be no punishment
unless he had a heart—or to recover, and leave the country. Are you
speaking the truth about him now? Take care. Is he actually so utterly
indifferent for my life?”
“Why, ma’am,” I answered, “the master has no idea of your being
deranged; and of course he does not fear that you will let yourself die
of hunger.”
“You think not? Cannot you tell him I will?” she returned. “Persuade
him! speak of your own mind: say you are certain I will!”
“No, you forget, Mrs. Linton,” I suggested, “that you have eaten some
food with a relish this evening, and to-morrow you will perceive its
good effects.”
“If I were only sure it would kill him,” she interrupted, “I’d kill
myself directly! These three awful nights I’ve never closed my lids—and
oh, I’ve been tormented! I’ve been haunted, Nelly! But I begin to fancy
you don’t like me. How strange! I thought, though everybody hated and
despised each other, they could not avoid loving me. And they have all
turned to enemies in a few hours. _They_ have, I’m positive; the people
_here_. How dreary to meet death, surrounded by their cold faces!
Isabella, terrified and repelled, afraid to enter the room, it would be
so dreadful to watch Catherine go. And Edgar standing solemnly by to
see it over; then offering prayers of thanks to God for restoring peace
to his house, and going back to his _books_! What in the name of all
that feels has he to do with _books_, when I am dying?”
She could not bear the notion which I had put into her head of Mr.
Linton’s philosophical resignation. Tossing about, she increased her
feverish bewilderment to madness, and tore the pillow with her teeth;
then raising herself up all burning, desired that I would open the
window. We were in the middle of winter, the wind blew strong from the
north-east, and I objected. Both the expressions flitting over her
face, and the changes of her moods, began to alarm me terribly; and
brought to my recollection her former illness, and the doctor’s
injunction that she should not be crossed. A minute previously she was
violent; now, supported on one arm, and not noticing my refusal to obey
her, she seemed to find childish diversion in pulling the feathers from
the rents she had just made, and ranging them on the sheet according to
their different species: her mind had strayed to other associations.
“That’s a turkey’s,” she murmured to herself; “and this is a wild
duck’s; and this is a pigeon’s. Ah, they put pigeons’ feathers in the
pillows—no wonder I couldn’t die! Let me take care to throw it on the
floor when I lie down. And here is a moor-cock’s; and this—I should
know it among a thousand—it’s a lapwing’s. Bonny bird; wheeling over
our heads in the middle of the moor. It wanted to get to its nest, for
the clouds had touched the swells, and it felt rain coming. This
feather was picked up from the heath, the bird was not shot: we saw its
nest in the winter, full of little skeletons. Heathcliff set a trap
over it, and the old ones dared not come. I made him promise he’d never
shoot a lapwing after that, and he didn’t. Yes, here are more! Did he
shoot my lapwings, Nelly? Are they red, any of them? Let me look.”
“Give over with that baby-work!” I interrupted, dragging the pillow
away, and turning the holes towards the mattress, for she was removing
its contents by handfuls. “Lie down and shut your eyes: you’re
wandering. There’s a mess! The down is flying about like snow.”
I went here and there collecting it.
“I see in you, Nelly,” she continued dreamily, “an aged woman: you have
grey hair and bent shoulders. This bed is the fairy cave under
Penistone Crags, and you are gathering elf-bolts to hurt our heifers;
pretending, while I am near, that they are only locks of wool. That’s
what you’ll come to fifty years hence: I know you are not so now. I’m
not wandering: you’re mistaken, or else I should believe you really
_were_ that withered hag, and I should think I _was_ under Penistone
Crags; and I’m conscious it’s night, and there are two candles on the
table making the black press shine like jet.”
“The black press? where is that?” I asked. “You are talking in your
sleep!”