Wuthering Heights
alone, and watch till I departed, your conscience quite calm: you would
be hindering mischief.”
I protested against playing that treacherous part in my employer’s
house: and, besides, I urged the cruelty and selfishness of his
destroying Mrs. Linton’s tranquillity for his satisfaction. “The
commonest occurrence startles her painfully,” I said. “She’s all
nerves, and she couldn’t bear the surprise, I’m positive. Don’t
persist, sir! or else I shall be obliged to inform my master of your
designs; and he’ll take measures to secure his house and its inmates
from any such unwarrantable intrusions!”
“In that case I’ll take measures to secure you, woman!” exclaimed
Heathcliff; “you shall not leave Wuthering Heights till to-morrow
morning. It is a foolish story to assert that Catherine could not bear
to see me; and as to surprising her, I don’t desire it: you must
prepare her—ask her if I may come. You say she never mentions my name,
and that I am never mentioned to her. To whom should she mention me if
I am a forbidden topic in the house? She thinks you are all spies for
her husband. Oh, I’ve no doubt she’s in hell among you! I guess by her
silence, as much as anything, what she feels. You say she is often
restless, and anxious-looking: is that a proof of tranquillity? You
talk of her mind being unsettled. How the devil could it be otherwise
in her frightful isolation? And that insipid, paltry creature attending
her from _duty_ and _humanity_! From _pity_ and _charity_! He might as
well plant an oak in a flower-pot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine
he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares! Let us
settle it at once: will you stay here, and am I to fight my way to
Catherine over Linton and his footman? Or will you be my friend, as you
have been hitherto, and do what I request? Decide! because there is no
reason for my lingering another minute, if you persist in your stubborn
ill-nature!”
Well, Mr. Lockwood, I argued and complained, and flatly refused him
fifty times; but in the long run he forced me to an agreement. I
engaged to carry a letter from him to my mistress; and should she
consent, I promised to let him have intelligence of Linton’s next
absence from home, when he might come, and get in as he was able: I
wouldn’t be there, and my fellow-servants should be equally out of the
way. Was it right or wrong? I fear it was wrong, though expedient. I
thought I prevented another explosion by my compliance; and I thought,
too, it might create a favourable crisis in Catherine’s mental illness:
and then I remembered Mr. Edgar’s stern rebuke of my carrying tales;
and I tried to smooth away all disquietude on the subject, by
affirming, with frequent iteration, that that betrayal of trust, if it
merited so harsh an appellation, should be the last. Notwithstanding,
my journey homeward was sadder than my journey thither; and many
misgivings I had, ere I could prevail on myself to put the missive into
Mrs. Linton’s hand.
But here is Kenneth; I’ll go down, and tell him how much better you
are. My history is _dree_, as we say, and will serve to while away
another morning.
* * * * *
Dree, and dreary! I reflected as the good woman descended to receive
the doctor: and not exactly of the kind which I should have chosen to
amuse me. But never mind! I’ll extract wholesome medicines from Mrs.
Dean’s bitter herbs; and firstly, let me beware of the fascination that
lurks in Catherine Heathcliff’s brilliant eyes. I should be in a
curious taking if I surrendered my heart to that young person, and the
daughter turned out a second edition of the mother.
CHAPTER XV
Another week over—and I am so many days nearer health, and spring! I
have now heard all my neighbour’s history, at different sittings, as
the housekeeper could spare time from more important occupations. I’ll
continue it in her own words, only a little condensed. She is, on the
whole, a very fair narrator, and I don’t think I could improve her
style.
* * * * *
In the evening, she said, the evening of my visit to the Heights, I
knew, as well as if I saw him, that Mr. Heathcliff was about the place;
and I shunned going out, because I still carried his letter in my
pocket, and didn’t want to be threatened or teased any more. I had made
up my mind not to give it till my master went somewhere, as I could not
guess how its receipt would affect Catherine. The consequence was, that
it did not reach her before the lapse of three days. The fourth was
Sunday, and I brought it into her room after the family were gone to
church. There was a man servant left to keep the house with me, and we
generally made a practice of locking the doors during the hours of
service; but on that occasion the weather was so warm and pleasant that
I set them wide open, and, to fulfil my engagement, as I knew who would
be coming, I told my companion that the mistress wished very much for
some oranges, and he must run over to the village and get a few, to be
paid for on the morrow. He departed, and I went upstairs.
Mrs. Linton sat in a loose white dress, with a light shawl over her
shoulders, in the recess of the open window, as usual. Her thick, long
hair had been partly removed at the beginning of her illness, and now
she wore it simply combed in its natural tresses over her temples and
neck. Her appearance was altered, as I had told Heathcliff; but when
she was calm, there seemed unearthly beauty in the change. The flash of
her eyes had been succeeded by a dreamy and melancholy softness; they
no longer gave the impression of looking at the objects around her:
they appeared always to gaze beyond, and far beyond—you would have said
out of this world. Then, the paleness of her face—its haggard aspect
having vanished as she recovered flesh—and the peculiar expression
arising from her mental state, though painfully suggestive of their
causes, added to the touching interest which she awakened;
and—invariably to me, I know, and to any person who saw her, I should
think—refuted more tangible proofs of convalescence, and stamped her as
one doomed to decay.
A book lay spread on the sill before her, and the scarcely perceptible
wind fluttered its leaves at intervals. I believe Linton had laid it
there: for she never endeavoured to divert herself with reading, or
occupation of any kind, and he would spend many an hour in trying to
entice her attention to some subject which had formerly been her
amusement. She was conscious of his aim, and in her better moods
endured his efforts placidly, only showing their uselessness by now and
then suppressing a wearied sigh, and checking him at last with the
saddest of smiles and kisses. At other times, she would turn petulantly
away, and hide her face in her hands, or even push him off angrily; and
then he took care to let her alone, for he was certain of doing no
good.
Gimmerton chapel bells were still ringing; and the full, mellow flow of
the beck in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet
substitute for the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which
drowned that music about the Grange when the trees were in leaf. At
Wuthering Heights it always sounded on quiet days following a great
thaw or a season of steady rain. And of Wuthering Heights Catherine was
thinking as she listened: that is, if she thought or listened at all;
but she had the vague, distant look I mentioned before, which expressed
no recognition of material things either by ear or eye.
“There’s a letter for you, Mrs. Linton,” I said, gently inserting it in
one hand that rested on her knee. “You must read it immediately,
because it wants an answer. Shall I break the seal?” “Yes,” she
answered, without altering the direction of her eyes. I opened it—it
was very short. “Now,” I continued, “read it.” She drew away her hand,
and let it fall. I replaced it in her lap, and stood waiting till it
should please her to glance down; but that movement was so long delayed
that at last I resumed—“Must I read it, ma’am? It is from Mr.
Heathcliff.”
There was a start and a troubled gleam of recollection, and a struggle
to arrange her ideas. She lifted the letter, and seemed to peruse it;
and when she came to the signature she sighed: yet still I found she
had not gathered its import, for, upon my desiring to hear her reply,
she merely pointed to the name, and gazed at me with mournful and
questioning eagerness.
“Well, he wishes to see you,” said I, guessing her need of an
interpreter. “He’s in the garden by this time, and impatient to know
what answer I shall bring.”
As I spoke, I observed a large dog lying on the sunny grass beneath
raise its ears as if about to bark, and then smoothing them back,
announce, by a wag of the tail, that some one approached whom it did
not consider a stranger. Mrs. Linton bent forward, and listened
breathlessly. The minute after a step traversed the hall; the open
house was too tempting for Heathcliff to resist walking in: most likely
he supposed that I was inclined to shirk my promise, and so resolved to
trust to his own audacity. With straining eagerness Catherine gazed
towards the entrance of her chamber. He did not hit the right room
directly: she motioned me to admit him, but he found it out ere I could
reach the door, and in a stride or two was at her side, and had her
grasped in his arms.
He neither spoke nor loosed his hold for some five minutes, during
which period he bestowed more kisses than ever he gave in his life
before, I daresay: but then my mistress had kissed him first, and I
plainly saw that he could hardly bear, for downright agony, to look
into her face! The same conviction had stricken him as me, from the
instant he beheld her, that there was no prospect of ultimate recovery
there—she was fated, sure to die.
“Oh, Cathy! Oh, my life! how can I bear it?” was the first sentence he
uttered, in a tone that did not seek to disguise his despair. And now
he stared at her so earnestly that I thought the very intensity of his
gaze would bring tears into his eyes; but they burned with anguish:
they did not melt.
“What now?” said Catherine, leaning back, and returning his look with a
suddenly clouded brow: her humour was a mere vane for constantly
varying caprices. “You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff! And
you both come to bewail the deed to me, as if you were the people to be
pitied! I shall not pity you, not I. You have killed me—and thriven on
it, I think. How strong you are! How many years do you mean to live
after I am gone?”
Heathcliff had knelt on one knee to embrace her; he attempted to rise,
but she seized his hair, and kept him down.
“I wish I could hold you,” she continued, bitterly, “till we were both
dead! I shouldn’t care what you suffered. I care nothing for your
sufferings. Why shouldn’t you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will
you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence,
‘That’s the grave of Catherine Earnshaw? I loved her long ago, and was
wretched to lose her; but it is past. I’ve loved many others since: my
children are dearer to me than she was; and, at death, I shall not
rejoice that I am going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave
them!’ Will you say so, Heathcliff?”
“Don’t torture me till I’m as mad as yourself,” cried he, wrenching his
head free, and grinding his teeth.
The two, to a cool spectator, made a strange and fearful picture. Well
might Catherine deem that heaven would be a land of exile to her,
unless with her mortal body she cast away her moral character also. Her
present countenance had a wild vindictiveness in its white cheek, and a
bloodless lip and scintillating eye; and she retained in her closed
fingers a portion of the locks she had been grasping. As to her