Wuthering Heights
each stumbled and tottered on the threshold; had our teachers scorned
instead of aiding us, we should stumble and totter yet.”
“Oh!” she replied, “I don’t wish to limit his acquirements: still, he
has no right to appropriate what is mine, and make it ridiculous to me
with his vile mistakes and mispronunciations! Those books, both prose
and verse, are consecrated to me by other associations; and I hate to
have them debased and profaned in his mouth! Besides, of all, he has
selected my favourite pieces that I love the most to repeat, as if out
of deliberate malice.”
Hareton’s chest heaved in silence a minute: he laboured under a severe
sense of mortification and wrath, which it was no easy task to
suppress. I rose, and, from a gentlemanly idea of relieving his
embarrassment, took up my station in the doorway, surveying the
external prospect as I stood. He followed my example, and left the
room; but presently reappeared, bearing half a dozen volumes in his
hands, which he threw into Catherine’s lap, exclaiming,—“Take them! I
never want to hear, or read, or think of them again!”
“I won’t have them now,” she answered. “I shall connect them with you,
and hate them.”
She opened one that had obviously been often turned over, and read a
portion in the drawling tone of a beginner; then laughed, and threw it
from her. “And listen,” she continued, provokingly, commencing a verse
of an old ballad in the same fashion.
But his self-love would endure no further torment: I heard, and not
altogether disapprovingly, a manual check given to her saucy tongue.
The little wretch had done her utmost to hurt her cousin’s sensitive
though uncultivated feelings, and a physical argument was the only mode
he had of balancing the account, and repaying its effects on the
inflictor. He afterwards gathered the books and hurled them on the
fire. I read in his countenance what anguish it was to offer that
sacrifice to spleen. I fancied that as they consumed, he recalled the
pleasure they had already imparted, and the triumph and ever-increasing
pleasure he had anticipated from them; and I fancied I guessed the
incitement to his secret studies also. He had been content with daily
labour and rough animal enjoyments, till Catherine crossed his path.
Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval, were his first prompters
to higher pursuits; and instead of guarding him from one and winning
him to the other, his endeavours to raise himself had produced just the
contrary result.
“Yes, that’s all the good that such a brute as you can get from them!”
cried Catherine, sucking her damaged lip, and watching the
conflagration with indignant eyes.
“You’d _better_ hold your tongue, now,” he answered fiercely.
And his agitation precluded further speech; he advanced hastily to the
entrance, where I made way for him to pass. But ere he had crossed the
door-stones, Mr. Heathcliff, coming up the causeway, encountered him,
and laying hold of his shoulder asked,—“What’s to do now, my lad?”
“Naught, naught,” he said, and broke away to enjoy his grief and anger
in solitude.
Heathcliff gazed after him, and sighed.
“It will be odd if I thwart myself,” he muttered, unconscious that I
was behind him. “But when I look for his father in his face, I find
_her_ every day more! How the devil is he so like? I can hardly bear to
see him.”
He bent his eyes to the ground, and walked moodily in. There was a
restless, anxious expression in his countenance, I had never remarked
there before; and he looked sparer in person. His daughter-in-law, on
perceiving him through the window, immediately escaped to the kitchen,
so that I remained alone.
“I’m glad to see you out of doors again, Mr. Lockwood,” he said, in
reply to my greeting; “from selfish motives partly: I don’t think I
could readily supply your loss in this desolation. I’ve wondered more
than once what brought you here.”
“An idle whim, I fear, sir,” was my answer; “or else an idle whim is
going to spirit me away. I shall set out for London next week; and I
must give you warning that I feel no disposition to retain Thrushcross
Grange beyond the twelve months I agreed to rent it. I believe I shall
not live there any more.”
“Oh, indeed; you’re tired of being banished from the world, are you?”
he said. “But if you be coming to plead off paying for a place you
won’t occupy, your journey is useless: I never relent in exacting my
due from any one.”
“I’m coming to plead off nothing about it,” I exclaimed, considerably
irritated. “Should you wish it, I’ll settle with you now,” and I drew
my note-book from my pocket.
“No, no,” he replied, coolly; “you’ll leave sufficient behind to cover
your debts, if you fail to return: I’m not in such a hurry. Sit down
and take your dinner with us; a guest that is safe from repeating his
visit can generally be made welcome. Catherine! bring the things in:
where are you?”
Catherine reappeared, bearing a tray of knives and forks.
“You may get your dinner with Joseph,” muttered Heathcliff, aside, “and
remain in the kitchen till he is gone.”
She obeyed his directions very punctually: perhaps she had no
temptation to transgress. Living among clowns and misanthropists, she
probably cannot appreciate a better class of people when she meets
them.
With Mr. Heathcliff, grim and saturnine, on the one hand, and Hareton,
absolutely dumb, on the other, I made a somewhat cheerless meal, and
bade adieu early. I would have departed by the back way, to get a last
glimpse of Catherine and annoy old Joseph; but Hareton received orders
to lead up my horse, and my host himself escorted me to the door, so I
could not fulfil my wish.
“How dreary life gets over in that house!” I reflected, while riding
down the road. “What a realisation of something more romantic than a
fairy tale it would have been for Mrs. Linton Heathcliff, had she and I
struck up an attachment, as her good nurse desired, and migrated
together into the stirring atmosphere of the town!”
CHAPTER XXXII
1802.—This September I was invited to devastate the moors of a friend
in the north, and on my journey to his abode, I unexpectedly came
within fifteen miles of Gimmerton. The ostler at a roadside
public-house was holding a pail of water to refresh my horses, when a
cart of very green oats, newly reaped, passed by, and he
remarked,—“Yon’s frough Gimmerton, nah! They’re allas three wick’ after
other folk wi’ ther harvest.”
“Gimmerton?” I repeated—my residence in that locality had already grown
dim and dreamy. “Ah! I know. How far is it from this?”
“Happen fourteen mile o’er th’ hills; and a rough road,” he answered.
A sudden impulse seized me to visit Thrushcross Grange. It was scarcely
noon, and I conceived that I might as well pass the night under my own
roof as in an inn. Besides, I could spare a day easily to arrange
matters with my landlord, and thus save myself the trouble of invading
the neighbourhood again. Having rested awhile, I directed my servant to
inquire the way to the village; and, with great fatigue to our beasts,
we managed the distance in some three hours.
I left him there, and proceeded down the valley alone. The grey church
looked greyer, and the lonely churchyard lonelier. I distinguished a
moor-sheep cropping the short turf on the graves. It was sweet, warm
weather—too warm for travelling; but the heat did not hinder me from
enjoying the delightful scenery above and below: had I seen it nearer
August, I’m sure it would have tempted me to waste a month among its
solitudes. In winter nothing more dreary, in summer nothing more
divine, than those glens shut in by hills, and those bluff, bold swells
of heath.
I reached the Grange before sunset, and knocked for admittance; but the
family had retreated into the back premises, I judged, by one thin,
blue wreath, curling from the kitchen chimney, and they did not hear. I
rode into the court. Under the porch, a girl of nine or ten sat
knitting, and an old woman reclined on the housesteps, smoking a
meditative pipe.
“Is Mrs. Dean within?” I demanded of the dame.
“Mistress Dean? Nay!” she answered, “she doesn’t bide here: shoo’s up
at th’ Heights.”
“Are you the housekeeper, then?” I continued.
“Eea, Aw keep th’ hause,” she replied.
“Well, I’m Mr. Lockwood, the master. Are there any rooms to lodge me
in, I wonder? I wish to stay all night.”
“T’ maister!” she cried in astonishment. “Whet, whoiver knew yah wur
coming? Yah sud ha’ send word. They’s nowt norther dry nor mensful
abaht t’ place: nowt there isn’t!”
She threw down her pipe and bustled in, the girl followed, and I
entered too; soon perceiving that her report was true, and, moreover,
that I had almost upset her wits by my unwelcome apparition, I bade her
be composed. I would go out for a walk; and, meantime she must try to
prepare a corner of a sitting-room for me to sup in, and a bedroom to
sleep in. No sweeping and dusting, only good fire and dry sheets were
necessary. She seemed willing to do her best; though she thrust the
hearth-brush into the grates in mistake for the poker, and
malappropriated several other articles of her craft: but I retired,
confiding in her energy for a resting-place against my return.
Wuthering Heights was the goal of my proposed excursion. An
after-thought brought me back, when I had quitted the court.
“All well at the Heights?” I inquired of the woman.
“Eea, f’r owt ee knaw!” she answered, skurrying away with a pan of hot
cinders.
I would have asked why Mrs. Dean had deserted the Grange, but it was
impossible to delay her at such a crisis, so I turned away and made my
exit, rambling leisurely along, with the glow of a sinking sun behind,
and the mild glory of a rising moon in front—one fading, and the other
brightening—as I quitted the park, and climbed the stony by-road
branching off to Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling. Before I arrived in sight
of it, all that remained of day was a beamless amber light along the
west: but I could see every pebble on the path, and every blade of
grass, by that splendid moon. I had neither to climb the gate nor to
knock—it yielded to my hand. That is an improvement, I thought. And I
noticed another, by the aid of my nostrils; a fragrance of stocks and
wallflowers wafted on the air from amongst the homely fruit-trees.
Both doors and lattices were open; and yet, as is usually the case in a
coal-district, a fine red fire illumined the chimney: the comfort which
the eye derives from it renders the extra heat endurable. But the house
of Wuthering Heights is so large that the inmates have plenty of space
for withdrawing out of its influence; and accordingly what inmates
there were had stationed themselves not far from one of the windows. I
could both see them and hear them talk before I entered, and looked and
listened in consequence; being moved thereto by a mingled sense of
curiosity and envy, that grew as I lingered.
“Con-_trary_!” said a voice as sweet as a silver bell. “That for the
third time, you dunce! I’m not going to tell you again. Recollect, or
I’ll pull your hair!”
“Contrary, then,” answered another, in deep but softened tones. “And
now, kiss me, for minding so well.”
“No, read it over first correctly, without a single mistake.”
The male speaker began to read: he was a young man, respectably dressed
and seated at a table, having a book before him. His handsome features
glowed with pleasure, and his eyes kept impatiently wandering from the
page to a small white hand over his shoulder, which recalled him by a
smart slap on the cheek, whenever its owner detected such signs of
inattention. Its owner stood behind; her light, shining ringlets
blending, at intervals, with his brown locks, as she bent to