Wuthering Heights
give a great deal to know.
I declined answering Mrs. Dean’s question, which struck me as something
heterodox. She proceeded:
Retracing the course of Catherine Linton, I fear we have no right to
think she is; but we’ll leave her with her Maker.
The master looked asleep, and I ventured soon after sunrise to quit the
room and steal out to the pure refreshing air. The servants thought me
gone to shake off the drowsiness of my protracted watch; in reality, my
chief motive was seeing Mr. Heathcliff. If he had remained among the
larches all night, he would have heard nothing of the stir at the
Grange; unless, perhaps, he might catch the gallop of the messenger
going to Gimmerton. If he had come nearer, he would probably be aware,
from the lights flitting to and fro, and the opening and shutting of
the outer doors, that all was not right within. I wished, yet feared,
to find him. I felt the terrible news must be told, and I longed to get
it over; but _how_ to do it I did not know. He was there—at least, a
few yards further in the park; leant against an old ash-tree, his hat
off, and his hair soaked with the dew that had gathered on the budded
branches, and fell pattering round him. He had been standing a long
time in that position, for I saw a pair of ousels passing and repassing
scarcely three feet from him, busy in building their nest, and
regarding his proximity no more than that of a piece of timber. They
flew off at my approach, and he raised his eyes and spoke:—“She’s
dead!” he said; “I’ve not waited for you to learn that. Put your
handkerchief away—don’t snivel before me. Damn you all! she wants none
of _your_ tears!”
I was weeping as much for him as her: we do sometimes pity creatures
that have none of the feeling either for themselves or others. When I
first looked into his face, I perceived that he had got intelligence of
the catastrophe; and a foolish notion struck me that his heart was
quelled and he prayed, because his lips moved and his gaze was bent on
the ground.
“Yes, she’s dead!” I answered, checking my sobs and drying my cheeks.
“Gone to heaven, I hope; where we may, every one, join her, if we take
due warning and leave our evil ways to follow good!”
“Did _she_ take due warning, then?” asked Heathcliff, attempting a
sneer. “Did she die like a saint? Come, give me a true history of the
event. How did—?”
He endeavoured to pronounce the name, but could not manage it; and
compressing his mouth he held a silent combat with his inward agony,
defying, meanwhile, my sympathy with an unflinching, ferocious stare.
“How did she die?” he resumed, at last—fain, notwithstanding his
hardihood, to have a support behind him; for, after the struggle, he
trembled, in spite of himself, to his very finger-ends.
“Poor wretch!” I thought; “you have a heart and nerves the same as your
brother men! Why should you be anxious to conceal them? Your pride
cannot blind God! You tempt him to wring them, till he forces a cry of
humiliation.”
“Quietly as a lamb!” I answered, aloud. “She drew a sigh, and stretched
herself, like a child reviving, and sinking again to sleep; and five
minutes after I felt one little pulse at her heart, and nothing more!”
“And—did she ever mention me?” he asked, hesitating, as if he dreaded
the answer to his question would introduce details that he could not
bear to hear.
“Her senses never returned: she recognised nobody from the time you
left her,” I said. “She lies with a sweet smile on her face; and her
latest ideas wandered back to pleasant early days. Her life closed in a
gentle dream—may she wake as kindly in the other world!”
“May she wake in torment!” he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping
his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion.
“Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not _there_—not in
heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my
sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue
stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living;
you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered _do_ haunt their
murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts _have_ wandered on earth. Be
with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only _do_ not leave me in
this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I
_cannot_ live without my life! I _cannot_ live without my soul!”
He dashed his head against the knotted trunk; and, lifting up his eyes,
howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast being goaded to death
with knives and spears. I observed several splashes of blood about the
bark of the tree, and his hand and forehead were both stained; probably
the scene I witnessed was a repetition of others acted during the
night. It hardly moved my compassion—it appalled me: still, I felt
reluctant to quit him so. But the moment he recollected himself enough
to notice me watching, he thundered a command for me to go, and I
obeyed. He was beyond my skill to quiet or console!
Mrs. Linton’s funeral was appointed to take place on the Friday
following her decease; and till then her coffin remained uncovered, and
strewn with flowers and scented leaves, in the great drawing-room.
Linton spent his days and nights there, a sleepless guardian; and—a
circumstance concealed from all but me—Heathcliff spent his nights, at
least, outside, equally a stranger to repose. I held no communication
with him; still, I was conscious of his design to enter, if he could;
and on the Tuesday, a little after dark, when my master, from sheer
fatigue, had been compelled to retire a couple of hours, I went and
opened one of the windows; moved by his perseverance to give him a
chance of bestowing on the faded image of his idol one final adieu. He
did not omit to avail himself of the opportunity, cautiously and
briefly; too cautiously to betray his presence by the slightest noise.
Indeed, I shouldn’t have discovered that he had been there, except for
the disarrangement of the drapery about the corpse’s face, and for
observing on the floor a curl of light hair, fastened with a silver
thread; which, on examination, I ascertained to have been taken from a
locket hung round Catherine’s neck. Heathcliff had opened the trinket
and cast out its contents, replacing them by a black lock of his own. I
twisted the two, and enclosed them together.
Mr. Earnshaw was, of course, invited to attend the remains of his
sister to the grave; he sent no excuse, but he never came; so that,
besides her husband, the mourners were wholly composed of tenants and
servants. Isabella was not asked.
The place of Catherine’s interment, to the surprise of the villagers,
was neither in the chapel under the carved monument of the Lintons, nor
yet by the tombs of her own relations, outside. It was dug on a green
slope in a corner of the kirkyard, where the wall is so low that heath
and bilberry-plants have climbed over it from the moor; and peat-mould
almost buries it. Her husband lies in the same spot now; and they have
each a simple headstone above, and a plain grey block at their feet, to
mark the graves.
CHAPTER XVII
That Friday made the last of our fine days for a month. In the evening
the weather broke: the wind shifted from south to north-east, and
brought rain first, and then sleet and snow. On the morrow one could
hardly imagine that there had been three weeks of summer: the primroses
and crocuses were hidden under wintry drifts; the larks were silent,
the young leaves of the early trees smitten and blackened. And dreary,
and chill, and dismal, that morrow did creep over! My master kept his
room; I took possession of the lonely parlour, converting it into a
nursery: and there I was, sitting with the moaning doll of a child laid
on my knee; rocking it to and fro, and watching, meanwhile, the still
driving flakes build up the uncurtained window, when the door opened,
and some person entered, out of breath and laughing! My anger was
greater than my astonishment for a minute. I supposed it one of the
maids, and I cried—“Have done! How dare you show your giddiness here?
What would Mr. Linton say if he heard you?”
“Excuse me!” answered a familiar voice; “but I know Edgar is in bed,
and I cannot stop myself.”
With that the speaker came forward to the fire, panting and holding her
hand to her side.
“I have run the whole way from Wuthering Heights!” she continued, after
a pause; “except where I’ve flown. I couldn’t count the number of falls
I’ve had. Oh, I’m aching all over! Don’t be alarmed! There shall be an
explanation as soon as I can give it; only just have the goodness to
step out and order the carriage to take me on to Gimmerton, and tell a
servant to seek up a few clothes in my wardrobe.”
The intruder was Mrs. Heathcliff. She certainly seemed in no laughing
predicament: her hair streamed on her shoulders, dripping with snow and
water; she was dressed in the girlish dress she commonly wore,
befitting her age more than her position: a low frock with short
sleeves, and nothing on either head or neck. The frock was of light
silk, and clung to her with wet, and her feet were protected merely by
thin slippers; add to this a deep cut under one ear, which only the
cold prevented from bleeding profusely, a white face scratched and
bruised, and a frame hardly able to support itself through fatigue; and
you may fancy my first fright was not much allayed when I had had
leisure to examine her.
“My dear young lady,” I exclaimed, “I’ll stir nowhere, and hear
nothing, till you have removed every article of your clothes, and put
on dry things; and certainly you shall not go to Gimmerton to-night, so
it is needless to order the carriage.”
“Certainly I shall,” she said; “walking or riding: yet I’ve no
objection to dress myself decently. And—ah, see how it flows down my
neck now! The fire does make it smart.”
She insisted on my fulfilling her directions, before she would let me
touch her; and not till after the coachman had been instructed to get
ready, and a maid set to pack up some necessary attire, did I obtain
her consent for binding the wound and helping to change her garments.
“Now, Ellen,” she said, when my task was finished and she was seated in
an easy-chair on the hearth, with a cup of tea before her, “you sit
down opposite me, and put poor Catherine’s baby away: I don’t like to
see it! You mustn’t think I care little for Catherine, because I
behaved so foolishly on entering: I’ve cried, too, bitterly—yes, more
than any one else has reason to cry. We parted unreconciled, you
remember, and I sha’n’t forgive myself. But, for all that, I was not
going to sympathise with him—the brute beast! Oh, give me the poker!
This is the last thing of his I have about me:” she slipped the gold
ring from her third finger, and threw it on the floor. “I’ll smash it!”
she continued, striking it with childish spite, “and then I’ll burn
it!” and she took and dropped the misused article among the coals.
“There! he shall buy another, if he gets me back again. He’d be capable
of coming to seek me, to tease Edgar. I dare not stay, lest that notion
should possess his wicked head! And besides, Edgar has not been kind,
has he? And I won’t come suing for his assistance; nor will I bring him
into more trouble. Necessity compelled me to seek shelter here; though,
if I had not learned he was out of the way, I’d have halted at the
kitchen, washed my face, warmed myself, got you to bring what I wanted,
and departed again to anywhere out of the reach of my accursed—of that
incarnate goblin! Ah, he was in such a fury! If he had caught me! It’s
a pity Earnshaw is not his match in strength: I wouldn’t have run till
I’d seen him all but demolished, had Hindley been able to do it!”
“Well, don’t talk so fast, Miss!” I interrupted; “you’ll disorder the