Wuthering Heights
flutterings, than she by her single “Oh!” and the change that
transfigured her late happy countenance. Mr. Linton looked up.
“What is the matter, love? Have you hurt yourself?” he said.
His tone and look assured her _he_ had not been the discoverer of the
hoard.
“No, papa!” she gasped. “Ellen! Ellen! come upstairs—I’m sick!”
I obeyed her summons, and accompanied her out.
“Oh, Ellen! you have got them,” she commenced immediately, dropping on
her knees, when we were enclosed alone. “Oh, give them to me, and I’ll
never, never do so again! Don’t tell papa. You have not told papa,
Ellen? say you have not? I’ve been exceedingly naughty, but I won’t do
it any more!”
With a grave severity in my manner I bade her stand up.
“So,” I exclaimed, “Miss Catherine, you are tolerably far on, it seems:
you may well be ashamed of them! A fine bundle of trash you study in
your leisure hours, to be sure: why, it’s good enough to be printed!
And what do you suppose the master will think when I display it before
him? I hav’n’t shown it yet, but you needn’t imagine I shall keep your
ridiculous secrets. For shame! and you must have led the way in writing
such absurdities: he would not have thought of beginning, I’m certain.”
“I didn’t! I didn’t!” sobbed Cathy, fit to break her heart. “I didn’t
once think of loving him till—”
“_Loving_!” cried I, as scornfully as I could utter the word.
“_Loving_! Did anybody ever hear the like! I might just as well talk of
loving the miller who comes once a year to buy our corn. Pretty loving,
indeed! and both times together you have seen Linton hardly four hours
in your life! Now here is the babyish trash. I’m going with it to the
library; and we’ll see what your father says to such _loving_.”
She sprang at her precious epistles, but I held them above my head; and
then she poured out further frantic entreaties that I would burn
them—do anything rather than show them. And being really fully as much
inclined to laugh as scold—for I esteemed it all girlish vanity—I at
length relented in a measure, and asked,—“If I consent to burn them,
will you promise faithfully neither to send nor receive a letter again,
nor a book (for I perceive you have sent him books), nor locks of hair,
nor rings, nor playthings?”
“We don’t send playthings,” cried Catherine, her pride overcoming her
shame.
“Nor anything at all, then, my lady?” I said. “Unless you will, here I
go.”
“I promise, Ellen!” she cried, catching my dress. “Oh, put them in the
fire, do, do!”
But when I proceeded to open a place with the poker the sacrifice was
too painful to be borne. She earnestly supplicated that I would spare
her one or two.
“One or two, Ellen, to keep for Linton’s sake!”
I unknotted the handkerchief, and commenced dropping them in from an
angle, and the flame curled up the chimney.
“I will have one, you cruel wretch!” she screamed, darting her hand
into the fire, and drawing forth some half-consumed fragments, at the
expense of her fingers.
“Very well—and I will have some to exhibit to papa!” I answered,
shaking back the rest into the bundle, and turning anew to the door.
She emptied her blackened pieces into the flames, and motioned me to
finish the immolation. It was done; I stirred up the ashes, and
interred them under a shovelful of coals; and she mutely, and with a
sense of intense injury, retired to her private apartment. I descended
to tell my master that the young lady’s qualm of sickness was almost
gone, but I judged it best for her to lie down a while. She wouldn’t
dine; but she reappeared at tea, pale, and red about the eyes, and
marvellously subdued in outward aspect. Next morning I answered the
letter by a slip of paper, inscribed, “Master Heathcliff is requested
to send no more notes to Miss Linton, as she will not receive them.”
And, thenceforth, the little boy came with vacant pockets.
CHAPTER XXII
Summer drew to an end, and early autumn: it was past Michaelmas, but
the harvest was late that year, and a few of our fields were still
uncleared. Mr. Linton and his daughter would frequently walk out among
the reapers; at the carrying of the last sheaves they stayed till dusk,
and the evening happening to be chill and damp, my master caught a bad
cold, that settled obstinately on his lungs, and confined him indoors
throughout the whole of the winter, nearly without intermission.
Poor Cathy, frightened from her little romance, had been considerably
sadder and duller since its abandonment; and her father insisted on her
reading less, and taking more exercise. She had his companionship no
longer; I esteemed it a duty to supply its lack, as much as possible,
with mine: an inefficient substitute; for I could only spare two or
three hours, from my numerous diurnal occupations, to follow her
footsteps, and then my society was obviously less desirable than his.
On an afternoon in October, or the beginning of November—a fresh watery
afternoon, when the turf and paths were rustling with moist, withered
leaves, and the cold blue sky was half hidden by clouds—dark grey
streamers, rapidly mounting from the west, and boding abundant rain—I
requested my young lady to forego her ramble, because I was certain of
showers. She refused; and I unwillingly donned a cloak, and took my
umbrella to accompany her on a stroll to the bottom of the park: a
formal walk which she generally affected if low-spirited—and that she
invariably was when Mr. Edgar had been worse than ordinary, a thing
never known from his confession, but guessed both by her and me from
his increased silence and the melancholy of his countenance. She went
sadly on: there was no running or bounding now, though the chill wind
might well have tempted her to race. And often, from the side of my
eye, I could detect her raising a hand, and brushing something off her
cheek. I gazed round for a means of diverting her thoughts. On one side
of the road rose a high, rough bank, where hazels and stunted oaks,
with their roots half exposed, held uncertain tenure: the soil was too
loose for the latter; and strong winds had blown some nearly
horizontal. In summer Miss Catherine delighted to climb along these
trunks, and sit in the branches, swinging twenty feet above the ground;
and I, pleased with her agility and her light, childish heart, still
considered it proper to scold every time I caught her at such an
elevation, but so that she knew there was no necessity for descending.
From dinner to tea she would lie in her breeze-rocked cradle, doing
nothing except singing old songs—my nursery lore—to herself, or
watching the birds, joint tenants, feed and entice their young ones to
fly: or nestling with closed lids, half thinking, half dreaming,
happier than words can express.
“Look, Miss!” I exclaimed, pointing to a nook under the roots of one
twisted tree. “Winter is not here yet. There’s a little flower up
yonder, the last bud from the multitude of bluebells that clouded those
turf steps in July with a lilac mist. Will you clamber up, and pluck it
to show to papa?”
Cathy stared a long time at the lonely blossom trembling in its earthy
shelter, and replied, at length—“No, I’ll not touch it: but it looks
melancholy, does it not, Ellen?”
“Yes,” I observed, “about as starved and sackless as you: your cheeks
are bloodless; let us take hold of hands and run. You’re so low, I
daresay I shall keep up with you.”
“No,” she repeated, and continued sauntering on, pausing at intervals
to muse over a bit of moss, or a tuft of blanched grass, or a fungus
spreading its bright orange among the heaps of brown foliage; and, ever
and anon, her hand was lifted to her averted face.
“Catherine, why are you crying, love?” I asked, approaching and putting
my arm over her shoulder. “You mustn’t cry because papa has a cold; be
thankful it is nothing worse.”
She now put no further restraint on her tears; her breath was stifled
by sobs.
“Oh, it _will_ be something worse,” she said. “And what shall I do when
papa and you leave me, and I am by myself? I can’t forget your words,
Ellen; they are always in my ear. How life will be changed, how dreary
the world will be, when papa and you are dead.”
“None can tell whether you won’t die before us,” I replied. “It’s wrong
to anticipate evil. We’ll hope there are years and years to come before
any of us go: master is young, and I am strong, and hardly forty-five.
My mother lived till eighty, a canty dame to the last. And suppose Mr.
Linton were spared till he saw sixty, that would be more years than you
have counted, Miss. And would it not be foolish to mourn a calamity
above twenty years beforehand?”
“But Aunt Isabella was younger than papa,” she remarked, gazing up with
timid hope to seek further consolation.
“Aunt Isabella had not you and me to nurse her,” I replied. “She wasn’t
as happy as Master: she hadn’t as much to live for. All you need do, is
to wait well on your father, and cheer him by letting him see you
cheerful; and avoid giving him anxiety on any subject: mind that,
Cathy! I’ll not disguise but you might kill him if you were wild and
reckless, and cherished a foolish, fanciful affection for the son of a
person who would be glad to have him in his grave; and allowed him to
discover that you fretted over the separation he has judged it
expedient to make.”
“I fret about nothing on earth except papa’s illness,” answered my
companion. “I care for nothing in comparison with papa. And I’ll
never—never—oh, never, while I have my senses, do an act or say a word
to vex him. I love him better than myself, Ellen; and I know it by
this: I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would
rather be miserable than that he should be: that proves I love him
better than myself.”
“Good words,” I replied. “But deeds must prove it also; and after he is
well, remember you don’t forget resolutions formed in the hour of
fear.”
As we talked, we neared a door that opened on the road; and my young
lady, lightening into sunshine again, climbed up and seated herself on
the top of the wall, reaching over to gather some hips that bloomed
scarlet on the summit branches of the wild-rose trees shadowing the
highway side: the lower fruit had disappeared, but only birds could
touch the upper, except from Cathy’s present station. In stretching to
pull them, her hat fell off; and as the door was locked, she proposed
scrambling down to recover it. I bid her be cautious lest she got a
fall, and she nimbly disappeared. But the return was no such easy
matter: the stones were smooth and neatly cemented, and the rosebushes
and blackberry stragglers could yield no assistance in re-ascending.
I, like a fool, didn’t recollect that, till I heard her laughing and
exclaiming—“Ellen! you’ll have to fetch the key, or else I must run
round to the porter’s lodge. I can’t scale the ramparts on this side!”
“Stay where you are,” I answered; “I have my bundle of keys in my
pocket: perhaps I may manage to open it; if not, I’ll go.”
Catherine amused herself with dancing to and fro before the door, while
I tried all the large keys in succession. I had applied the last, and
found that none would do; so, repeating my desire that she would remain
there, I was about to hurry home as fast as I could, when an
approaching sound arrested me. It was the trot of a horse; Cathy’s
dance stopped also.
“Who is that?” I whispered.
“Ellen, I wish you could open the door,” whispered back my companion,
anxiously.
“Ho, Miss Linton!” cried a deep voice (the rider’s), “I’m glad to meet
you. Don’t be in haste to enter, for I have an explanation to ask and
obtain.”
“I sha’n’t speak to you, Mr. Heathcliff,” answered Catherine. “Papa
says you are a wicked man, and you hate both him and me; and Ellen says
the same.”