Wuthering Heights
In passing the garden to reach the road, at a place where a bridle hook
is driven into the wall, I saw something white moved irregularly,
evidently by another agent than the wind. Notwithstanding my hurry, I
stayed to examine it, lest ever after I should have the conviction
impressed on my imagination that it was a creature of the other world.
My surprise and perplexity were great on discovering, by touch more
than vision, Miss Isabella’s springer, Fanny, suspended by a
handkerchief, and nearly at its last gasp. I quickly released the
animal, and lifted it into the garden. I had seen it follow its
mistress upstairs when she went to bed; and wondered much how it could
have got out there, and what mischievous person had treated it so.
While untying the knot round the hook, it seemed to me that I
repeatedly caught the beat of horses’ feet galloping at some distance;
but there were such a number of things to occupy my reflections that I
hardly gave the circumstance a thought: though it was a strange sound,
in that place, at two o’clock in the morning.
Mr. Kenneth was fortunately just issuing from his house to see a
patient in the village as I came up the street; and my account of
Catherine Linton’s malady induced him to accompany me back immediately.
He was a plain rough man; and he made no scruple to speak his doubts of
her surviving this second attack; unless she were more submissive to
his directions than she had shown herself before.
“Nelly Dean,” said he, “I can’t help fancying there’s an extra cause
for this. What has there been to do at the Grange? We’ve odd reports up
here. A stout, hearty lass like Catherine does not fall ill for a
trifle; and that sort of people should not either. It’s hard work
bringing them through fevers, and such things. How did it begin?”
“The master will inform you,” I answered; “but you are acquainted with
the Earnshaws’ violent dispositions, and Mrs. Linton caps them all. I
may say this; it commenced in a quarrel. She was struck during a
tempest of passion with a kind of fit. That’s her account, at least:
for she flew off in the height of it, and locked herself up.
Afterwards, she refused to eat, and now she alternately raves and
remains in a half dream; knowing those about her, but having her mind
filled with all sorts of strange ideas and illusions.”
“Mr. Linton will be sorry?” observed Kenneth, interrogatively.
“Sorry? he’ll break his heart should anything happen!” I replied.
“Don’t alarm him more than necessary.”
“Well, I told him to beware,” said my companion; “and he must bide the
consequences of neglecting my warning! Hasn’t he been intimate with Mr.
Heathcliff lately?”
“Heathcliff frequently visits at the Grange,” answered I, “though more
on the strength of the mistress having known him when a boy, than
because the master likes his company. At present he’s discharged from
the trouble of calling; owing to some presumptuous aspirations after
Miss Linton which he manifested. I hardly think he’ll be taken in
again.”
“And does Miss Linton turn a cold shoulder on him?” was the doctor’s
next question.
“I’m not in her confidence,” returned I, reluctant to continue the
subject.
“No, she’s a sly one,” he remarked, shaking his head. “She keeps her
own counsel! But she’s a real little fool. I have it from good
authority that last night (and a pretty night it was!) she and
Heathcliff were walking in the plantation at the back of your house
above two hours; and he pressed her not to go in again, but just mount
his horse and away with him! My informant said she could only put him
off by pledging her word of honour to be prepared on their first
meeting after that: when it was to be he didn’t hear; but you urge Mr.
Linton to look sharp!”
This news filled me with fresh fears; I outstripped Kenneth, and ran
most of the way back. The little dog was yelping in the garden yet. I
spared a minute to open the gate for it, but instead of going to the
house door, it coursed up and down snuffing the grass, and would have
escaped to the road, had I not seized it and conveyed it in with me. On
ascending to Isabella’s room, my suspicions were confirmed: it was
empty. Had I been a few hours sooner Mrs. Linton’s illness might have
arrested her rash step. But what could be done now? There was a bare
possibility of overtaking them if pursued instantly. _I_ could not
pursue them, however; and I dared not rouse the family, and fill the
place with confusion; still less unfold the business to my master,
absorbed as he was in his present calamity, and having no heart to
spare for a second grief! I saw nothing for it but to hold my tongue,
and suffer matters to take their course; and Kenneth being arrived, I
went with a badly composed countenance to announce him. Catherine lay
in a troubled sleep: her husband had succeeded in soothing the excess
of frenzy; he now hung over her pillow, watching every shade and every
change of her painfully expressive features.
The doctor, on examining the case for himself, spoke hopefully to him
of its having a favourable termination, if we could only preserve
around her perfect and constant tranquillity. To me, he signified the
threatening danger was not so much death, as permanent alienation of
intellect.
I did not close my eyes that night, nor did Mr. Linton: indeed, we
never went to bed; and the servants were all up long before the usual
hour, moving through the house with stealthy tread, and exchanging
whispers as they encountered each other in their vocations. Every one
was active but Miss Isabella; and they began to remark how sound she
slept: her brother, too, asked if she had risen, and seemed impatient
for her presence, and hurt that she showed so little anxiety for her
sister-in-law. I trembled lest he should send me to call her; but I was
spared the pain of being the first proclaimant of her flight. One of
the maids, a thoughtless girl, who had been on an early errand to
Gimmerton, came panting upstairs, open-mouthed, and dashed into the
chamber, crying: “Oh, dear, dear! What mun we have next? Master,
master, our young lady—”
“Hold your noise!” cried I hastily, enraged at her clamorous manner.
“Speak lower, Mary—What is the matter?” said Mr. Linton. “What ails
your young lady?”
“She’s gone, she’s gone! Yon’ Heathcliff’s run off wi’ her!” gasped the
girl.
“That is not true!” exclaimed Linton, rising in agitation. “It cannot
be: how has the idea entered your head? Ellen Dean, go and seek her. It
is incredible: it cannot be.”
As he spoke he took the servant to the door, and then repeated his
demand to know her reasons for such an assertion.
“Why, I met on the road a lad that fetches milk here,” she stammered,
“and he asked whether we weren’t in trouble at the Grange. I thought he
meant for missis’s sickness, so I answered, yes. Then says he, ‘There’s
somebody gone after ’em, I guess?’ I stared. He saw I knew nought about
it, and he told how a gentleman and lady had stopped to have a horse’s
shoe fastened at a blacksmith’s shop, two miles out of Gimmerton, not
very long after midnight! and how the blacksmith’s lass had got up to
spy who they were: she knew them both directly. And she noticed the
man—Heathcliff it was, she felt certain: nob’dy could mistake him,
besides—put a sovereign in her father’s hand for payment. The lady had
a cloak about her face; but having desired a sup of water, while she
drank it fell back, and she saw her very plain. Heathcliff held both
bridles as they rode on, and they set their faces from the village, and
went as fast as the rough roads would let them. The lass said nothing
to her father, but she told it all over Gimmerton this morning.”
I ran and peeped, for form’s sake, into Isabella’s room; confirming,
when I returned, the servant’s statement. Mr. Linton had resumed his
seat by the bed; on my re-entrance, he raised his eyes, read the
meaning of my blank aspect, and dropped them without giving an order,
or uttering a word.
“Are we to try any measures for overtaking and bringing her back,” I
inquired. “How should we do?”
“She went of her own accord,” answered the master; “she had a right to
go if she pleased. Trouble me no more about her. Hereafter she is only
my sister in name: not because I disown her, but because she has
disowned me.”
And that was all he said on the subject: he did not make a single inquiry
further, or mention her in any way, except directing me to send what
property she had in the house to her fresh home, wherever it was, when
I knew it.
CHAPTER XIII
For two months the fugitives remained absent; in those two months, Mrs.
Linton encountered and conquered the worst shock of what was
denominated a brain fever. No mother could have nursed an only child
more devotedly than Edgar tended her. Day and night he was watching,
and patiently enduring all the annoyances that irritable nerves and a
shaken reason could inflict; and, though Kenneth remarked that what he
saved from the grave would only recompense his care by forming the
source of constant future anxiety—in fact, that his health and strength
were being sacrificed to preserve a mere ruin of humanity—he knew no
limits in gratitude and joy when Catherine’s life was declared out of
danger; and hour after hour he would sit beside her, tracing the
gradual return to bodily health, and flattering his too sanguine hopes
with the illusion that her mind would settle back to its right balance
also, and she would soon be entirely her former self.
The first time she left her chamber was at the commencement of the
following March. Mr. Linton had put on her pillow, in the morning, a
handful of golden crocuses; her eye, long stranger to any gleam of
pleasure, caught them in waking, and shone delighted as she gathered
them eagerly together.
“These are the earliest flowers at the Heights,” she exclaimed. “They
remind me of soft thaw winds, and warm sunshine, and nearly melted
snow. Edgar, is there not a south wind, and is not the snow almost
gone?”
“The snow is quite gone down here, darling,” replied her husband; “and
I only see two white spots on the whole range of moors: the sky is
blue, and the larks are singing, and the becks and brooks are all brim
full. Catherine, last spring at this time, I was longing to have you
under this roof; now, I wish you were a mile or two up those hills: the
air blows so sweetly, I feel that it would cure you.”
“I shall never be there but once more,” said the invalid; “and then
you’ll leave me, and I shall remain for ever. Next spring you’ll long
again to have me under this roof, and you’ll look back and think you
were happy to-day.”
Linton lavished on her the kindest caresses, and tried to cheer her by
the fondest words; but, vaguely regarding the flowers, she let the
tears collect on her lashes and stream down her cheeks unheeding. We
knew she was really better, and, therefore, decided that long
confinement to a single place produced much of this despondency, and it
might be partially removed by a change of scene. The master told me to
light a fire in the many-weeks’ deserted parlour, and to set an
easy-chair in the sunshine by the window; and then he brought her down,
and she sat a long while enjoying the genial heat, and, as we expected,
revived by the objects round her: which, though familiar, were free
from the dreary associations investing her hated sick chamber. By
evening she seemed greatly exhausted; yet no arguments could persuade
her to return to that apartment, and I had to arrange the parlour sofa
for her bed, till another room could be prepared. To obviate the
fatigue of mounting and descending the stairs, we fitted up this, where
you lie at present—on the same floor with the parlour; and she was soon