Wuthering Heights

‘He shall have his share of my hand, if I catch him down stairs again till dark,’ cried Hindley. ‘Begone, you vagabond! What, you are attempting the coxcomb, are you? Wait till I get hold of those elegant locks – see if I won’t pull them a bit longer!’

‘They are long enough already,’ observed Master Linton, peeping from the door-way; ‘I wonder they don’t make his head ache. It’s like a colt’s mane over his eyes!’

He ventured this remark without any intention to insult; but Heathcliff’s violent nature was not prepared to endure the appearance of impertinence from one whom he seemed to hate, even then, as a rival. He seized a tureen of hot apple-sauce, the first thing that came under his gripe, and dashed it full against the speaker’s face and neck – who instantly commenced a lament that brought Isabella and Catherine hurrying to the place.

Mr Earnshaw snatched up the culprit directly and conveyed him to his chamber, where, doubtless, he administered a rough remedy to cool the fit of passion, for he reappeared red and breathless. I got the dish-cloth, and, rather spitefully, scrubbed Edgar’s nose and mouth, affirming it served him right for meddling. His sister began weeping to go home, and Cathy stood by confounded, blushing for all.

‘You should not have spoken to him!’ she expostulated with Master Linton. ‘He was in a bad temper, and now you’ve spoilt your visit, and he’ll be flogged – I hate him to be flogged! I can’t eat my dinner. Why did you speak to him, Edgar?’

‘I didn’t,’ sobbed the youth, escaping from my hands, and finishing the remainder of the purification with his cambric pocket-handkerchief. ‘I promised mamma that I wouldn’t say one word to him, and I didn’t!’

‘Well, don’t cry!’ replied Catherine, contemptuously. ‘You’re not killed – don’t make more mischief – my brother is coming – be quiet! Give over, Isabella! Has any body hurt you?’

‘There, there, children – to your seats!’ cried Hindley, bustling in. ‘That brute of a lad has warmed me nicely. Next time, Master Edgar, take the law into your own fists – it will give you an appetite!’

The little party recovered its equanimity at sight of the fragrant feast. They were hungry, after their ride, and easily consoled, since no real harm had befallen them.

Mr Earnshaw carved bountiful platefuls; and the mistress made them merry with lively talk. I waited behind her chair, and was pained to behold Catherine, with dry eyes and an indifferent air, commence cutting up the wing of a goose before her.

‘An unfeeling child,’ I thought to myself, ‘how lightly she dismisses her old playmate’s troubles. I could not have imagined her to be so selfish.’

She lifted a mouthful to her lips; then, she set it down again: her cheeks flushed, and the tears gushed over them. She slipped her fork to the floor, and hastily dived under the cloth to conceal her emotion. I did not call her unfeeling long, for I perceived she was in purgatory throughout the day, and wearying to find an opportunity of getting by herself, or paying a visit to Heathcliff, who had been locked up by the master, as I discovered, on endeavouring to introduce to him a private mess of victuals.

In the evening we had a dance. Cathy begged that he might be liberated then, as Isabella Linton had no partner; her entreaties were vain, and I was appointed to supply the deficiency.

We got rid of all gloom in the excitement of the exercise, and our pleasure was increased by the arrival of the Gimmerton band, mustering fifteen strong; a trumpet, a trombone, clarionets, bassoons, French horns, and a bass viol, besides singers. They go the rounds of all the respectable houses, and receive contributions every Christmas, and we esteemed it a first-rate treat to hear them.

After the usual carols had been sung, we set them to songs and glees. Mrs Earnshaw loved the music, and, so, they gave us plenty.

Catherine loved it too; but she said it sounded sweetest at the top of the steps, and she went up in the dark: I followed. They shut the house door below, never noting our absence, it was so full of people. She made no stay at the stairs’ head, but mounted farther, to the garret where Heathcliff was confined, and called him. He stubbornly declined answering for a while – she persevered, and finally persuaded him to hold communion with her through the boards.

I let the poor things converse unmolested, till I supposed the songs were going to cease, and the singers to get some refreshment: then, I clambered up the ladder to warn her.

Instead of finding her outside, I heard her voice within. The little monkey had crept by the skylight of one garret, along the roof, into the skylight of the other, and it was with the utmost difficulty I could coax her out again.

When she did come, Heathcliff came with her; and she insisted that I should take him into the kitchen, as my fellow-servant had gone to a neighbour’s to be removed from the sound of our ‘devil’s psalmody,’ as it pleased him to call it.

I told them I intended, by no means, to encourage their tricks; but as the prisoner had never broken his fast since yesterday’s dinner, I would wink at his cheating Mr Hindley that once.

He went down; I set him a stool by the fire, and offered him a quantity of good things; but, he was sick and could eat little: and my attempts to entertain him were thrown away. He leant his two elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands, and remained wrapt in dumb meditation. On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely –

‘I’m trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don’t care how long I wait, if I can only do it, at last. I hope he will not die before I do!’

‘For shame, Heathcliff!’ said I. ‘It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.’

‘No, God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall,’ he returned. ‘I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I’ll plan it out: while I’m thinking of that, I don’t feel pain.’

But, Mr Lockwood, I forget these tales cannot divert you. I’m annoyed how I should dream of chattering on at such a rate; and your gruel cold, and you nodding for bed! I could have told Heathcliff’s history, all that you need hear, in half-a-dozen words.

Thus interrupting herself, the housekeeper rose, and proceeded to lay aside her sewing; but I felt incapable of moving from the hearth, and I was very far from nodding.

‘Sit still, Mrs Dean,’ I cried, ‘do sit still, another half hour! You’ve done just right to tell the story leisurely. That is the method I like; and you must finish in the same style. I am interested in every character you have mentioned, more or less.’

‘The clock is on the stroke of eleven, sir.’

‘No matter – I’m not accustomed to go to bed in the long hours. One or two is early enough for a person who lies till ten.’

‘You shouldn’t lie till ten. There’s the very prime of the morning gone long before that time. A person who has not done one half his day’s work by ten o’clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.’

‘Nevertheless, Mrs Dean, resume your chair; because tomorrow I intend lengthening the night till afternoon. I prognosticate for myself an obstinate cold, at least.’

‘I hope not, sir. Well, you must allow me to leap over some three years; during that space, Mrs Earnshaw –’

‘No, no, I’ll allow nothing of the sort! Are you acquainted with the mood of mind in which, if you were seated alone, and the cat licking its kitten on the rug before you, you would watch the operation so intently that puss’s neglect of one ear would put you seriously out of temper?’

‘A terribly lazy mood, I should say.’

‘On the contrary, a tiresomely active one. It is mine, at present, and, therefore, continue minutely. I perceive that people in these regions acquire over people in towns the value that a spider in a dungeon does over a spider in a cottage, to their various occupants; and yet the deepened attraction is not entirely owing to the situation of the looker-on. They do live more in earnest, more in themselves, and less in surface change, and frivolous external things. I could fancy a love for life here almost possible; and I was a fixed unbeliever in any love of a year’s standing – one state resembles setting a hungry man down to a single dish on which he may concentrate his entire appetite, and do it justice – the other, introducing him to a table laid out by French cooks; he can perhaps extract as much enjoyment from the whole, but each part is a mere atom in his regard and remembrance.’

‘Oh! here we are the same as anywhere else, when you get to know us,’ observed Mrs Dean, somewhat puzzled at my speech.

‘Excuse me,’ I responded; ‘you, my good friend, are a striking evidence against that assertion. Excepting a few provincialisms of slight consequence, you have no marks of the manners that I am habituated to consider as peculiar to your class. I am sure you have thought a great deal more than the generality of servants think. You have been compelled to cultivate your reflective faculties, for want of occasions for frittering your life away in silly trifles.’

Mrs Dean laughed.

‘I certainly esteem myself a steady, reasonable kind of body,’ she said, ‘not exactly from living among the hills, and seeing one set of faces, and one series of actions, from year’s end to year’s end: but I have undergone sharp discipline which has taught me wisdom; and then, I have read more than you would fancy, Mr Lockwood. You could not open a book in this library that I have not looked into, and got something out of also; unless it be that range of Greek and Latin, and that of French – and those I know one from another: it is as much as you can expect of a poor man’s daughter.

‘However, if I am to follow my story in true gossip’s fashion, I had better go on; and instead of leaping three years, I will be content to pass to the next summer – the summer of 1778, that is nearly twenty-three years ago.’

CHAPTER 8

On the morning of a fine June day, my first bonny little nursling, and the last of the ancient Earnshaw stock, was born.

We were busy with the hay in a far away field, when the girl that usually brought our breakfasts came running, an hour too soon, across the meadow and up the lane, calling me as she ran.

‘Oh, such a grand bairn!’ she panted out. ‘The finest lad that ever breathed! But the doctor says missis must go; he says she’s been in a consumption these many months. I heard him tell Mr Hindley – and now she has nothing to keep her, and she’ll be dead before winter. You must come home directly. You’re to nurse it, Nelly – to feed it with sugar and milk, and take care of it, day and night – I wish I were you, because it will be all yours when there is no missis!’

‘But is she very ill?’ I asked, flinging down my rake, and tying my bonnet.

‘I guess she is; yet she looks bravely,’ replied the girl, ‘and she talks as if she thought of living to see it grow a man. She’s out of her head for joy, it’s such a beauty! If I were her I’m certain I should not die. I should get better at the bare sight of it, in spite of Kenneth. I was fairly mad at him. Dame Archer brought the cherub down to master, in the house, and his face just began to light up, then the old croaker steps forward, and, says he: – “Earnshaw, it’s a blessing your wife has been spared to leave you this son. When she came, I felt convinced we shouldn’t keep her long; and now, I must tell you, the winter will probably finish her. Don’t take on, and fret about it too much, it can’t be helped. And besides, you should have known better than to choose such a rush of a lass!”’

‘And what did the master answer?’ I enquired.

‘I think he swore – but, I didn’t mind him, I was straining to see the bairn,’ and she began again to describe it rapturously. I, as zealous as herself, hurried eagerly home to admire, on my part, though I was very sad for Hindley’s sake; he had room in his heart only for two idols – his wife and himself – he doted on both, and adored one, and I couldn’t conceive how he would bear the loss.

When we got to Wuthering Heights, there he stood at the front door; and, as I passed in, I asked, how was the baby?

‘Nearly ready to run about, Nell!’ he replied, putting on a cheerful smile.

‘And the mistress?’ I ventured to inquire, ‘the doctor says she’s –’

‘Damn the doctor!’ he interrupted, reddening. ‘Frances is quite right – she’ll be perfectly well by this time next week. Are you going upstairs? will you tell her that I’ll come, if she’ll promise not to talk. – I left her because she would not hold her tongue; and she must – tell her Mr Kenneth says she must be quiet.’

I delivered this message to Mrs Earnshaw; she seemed in flighty spirits, and replied merrily –

‘I hardly spoke a word, Ellen, and there he has gone out twice, crying. Well, say I promise I won’t speak; but that does not bind me not to laugh at him!’

Poor soul! Till within a week of her death that gay heart never failed her; and her husband persisted doggedly, nay, furiously, in affirming her health improved every day. When Kenneth warned him that his medicines were useless at that stage of the malady, and he needn’t put him to further expense by attending her, he retorted –

‘I know you need not – she’s well – she does not want any more attendance from you! She never was in a consumption. It was a fever; and it is gone – her pulse is as slow as mine now, and her cheek as cool.’

He told his wife the same story, and she seemed to believe him; but one night, while leaning on his shoulder, in the act of saying she thought she should be able to get up tomorrow, a fit of coughing took her – a very slight one – he raised her in his arms; she put her two hands about his neck, her face changed, and she was dead.

As the girl had anticipated, the child Hareton fell wholly into my hands. Mr Earnshaw, provided he saw him healthy, and never heard him cry, was contented, as far as regarded him. For himself, he grew desperate; his sorrow was of that kind that will not lament, he neither wept nor prayed – he cursed and defied – execrated God and man, and gave himself up to reckless dissipation.

The servants could not bear his tyrannical and evil conduct long: Joseph and I were the only two that would stay. I had not the heart to leave my charge; and besides, you know, I had been his foster sister, and excused his behaviour more readily than a stranger would.

Joseph remained to hector over tenants and labourers; and because it was his vocation to be where he had plenty of wickedness to reprove.

The master’s bad ways and bad companions formed a pretty example for Catherine and Heathcliff. His treatment of the latter was enough to make a fiend of a saint. And, truly, it appeared as if the lad were possessed of something diabolical at that period. He delighted to witness Hindley degrading himself past redemption; and became daily more notable for savage sullenness and ferocity.

I could not half tell what an infernal house we had. The curate dropped calling, and nobody decent came near us, at last; unless Edgar Linton’s visits to Miss Cathy might be an exception. At fifteen she was the queen of the country-side; she had no peer: and she did turn out a haughty, headstrong creature! I own I did not like her, after her infancy was past; and I vexed her frequently by trying to bring down her arrogance; she never took an aversion to me, though. She had a wondrous constancy to old attachments; even Heathcliff kept his hold on her affections unalterably, and young Linton, with all his superiority, found it difficult to make an equally deep impression.

He was my late master; that is his portrait over the fireplace. It used to hang on one side, and his wife’s on the other; but hers has been removed, or else you might see something of what she was. Can you make that out?

Mrs Dean raised the candle, and I discerned a soft-featured face, exceedingly resembling the young lady at the Heights, but more pensive and amiable in expression. It formed a sweet picture. The long light hair curled slightly on the temples; the eyes were large and serious; the figure almost too graceful. I did not marvel how Catherine Earnshaw could forget her first friend for such an individual. I marvelled much how he, with a mind to correspond with his person, could fancy my idea of Catherine Earnshaw.

‘A very agreeable portrait,’ I observed to the housekeeper. ‘Is it like?’

‘Yes,’ she answered; ‘but he looked better when he was animated; that is his everyday countenance; he wanted spirit in general.’

Catherine had kept up her acquaintance with the Lintons since her five weeks’ residence among them; and as she had no temptation to show her rough side in their company, and had the sense to be ashamed of being rude where she experienced such invariable courtesy, she imposed unwittingly on the old lady and gentleman, by her ingenious cordiality; gained the admiration of Isabella, and the heart and soul of her brother – acquisitions that flattered her from the first, for she was full of ambition – and led her to adopt a double character without exactly intending to deceive anyone.

In the place where she heard Heathcliff termed a ‘vulgar young ruffian,’ and ‘worse than a brute,’ she took care not to act like him; but at home she had small inclination to practise politeness that would only be laughed at, and restrain an unruly nature when it would bring her neither credit, nor praise.

Mr Edgar seldom mustered courage to visit Wuthering Heights openly. He had a terror of Earnshaw’s reputation, and shrunk from encountering him, and yet, he was always received with our best attempts at civility: the master himself avoided offending him – knowing why he came – and if he could not be gracious; kept out of the way. I rather think his appearance there was distasteful to Catherine; she was not artful, never played the coquette, and had evidently an objection to her two friends meeting at all: for when Heathcliff expressed contempt of Linton, in his presence, she could not half coincide, as she did in his absence; and when Linton evinced disgust and antipathy to Heathcliff, she dare not treat his sentiments with indifference, as if depreciation of her playmate were of scarcely any consequence to her.

I’ve had many a laugh at her perplexities and untold troubles, which she vainly strove to hide from my mockery. That sounds ill-natured – but she was so proud, it became really impossible to pity her distresses, till she should be chastened into more humility.

She did bring herself, finally, to confess, and confide in me. There was not a soul else that she might fashion into an adviser.

Mr Hindley had gone from home, one afternoon; and Heathcliff presumed to give himself a holiday, on the strength of it. He had reached the age of sixteen then, I think, and without having bad features or being deficient in intellect, he contrived to convey an impression of inward and outward repulsiveness that his present aspect retains no traces of.

In the first place, he had, by that time, lost the benefit of his early education: continual hard work, begun soon and concluded late, had extinguished any curiosity he once possessed in pursuit of knowledge, and any love for books or learning. His childhood’s sense of superiority, instilled into him by the favours of old Mr Earnshaw, was faded away. He struggled long to keep up an equality with Catherine in her studies and yielded with poignant though silent regret: but, he yielded completely; and there was no prevailing on him to take a step in the way of moving upward, when he found he must, necessarily, sink beneath his former level. Then personal appearance sympathised with mental deterioration; he acquired a slouching gait, and ignoble look; his naturally reserved disposition was exaggerated into an almost idiotic excess of unsociable moroseness; and he took a grim pleasure, apparently, in exciting the aversion rather than the esteem of his few acquaintance.

Catherine and he were constant companions still, at his seasons of respite from labour; but, he had ceased to express his fondness for her in words, and recoiled with angry suspicion from her girlish caresses, as if conscious there could be no gratification in lavishing such marks of affection on him. On the before-named occasion he came into the house to announce his intention of doing nothing, while I was assisting Miss Cathy to arrange her dress – she had not reckoned on his taking it into his head to be idle, and imagining she would have the whole place to herself, she managed, by some means, to inform Mr Edgar of her brother’s absence, and was then preparing to receive him.

‘Cathy, are you busy, this afternoon?’ asked Heathcliff. ‘Are you going anywhere?’

‘No, it is raining,’ she answered.

‘Why have you that silk frock on, then?’ he said. ‘Nobody coming here, I hope?’

‘Not that I know of,’ stammered Miss, ‘but you should be in the field now, Heathcliff. It is an hour past dinner time; I thought you were gone.’

‘Hindley does not often free us from his accursed presence,’ observed the boy. ‘I’ll not work any more today, I’ll stay with you.’

‘O, but Joseph will tell,’ she suggested, ‘you’d better go!’

‘Joseph is loading lime on the farther side of Pennistow Crag; it will take him till dark, and he’ll never know.’

So saying, he lounged to the fire, and sat down. Catherine reflected an instant, with knitted brows – she found it needful to smooth the way for an intrusion.

‘Isabella and Edgar Linton talked of calling this afternoon,’ she said, at the conclusion of a minute’s silence. ‘As it rains, I hardly expect them; but, they may come, and if they do, you run the risk of being scolded for no good.’

‘Order Ellen to say you are engaged, Cathy,’ he persisted. ‘Don’t turn me out for those pitiful, silly friends of yours! I’m on the point, sometimes, of complaining that they – but I’ll not –’

‘That they what?’ cried Catherine, gazing at him with a troubled countenance. ‘Oh, Nelly!’ she added petulantly, jerking her head away from my hands, ‘you’ve combed my hair quite out of curl! That’s enough, let me alone. What are you on the point of complaining about, Heathcliff?’

‘Nothing – only look at the almanack, on that wall.’ He pointed to a framed sheet hanging near the window, and continued;

‘The crosses are for the evenings you have spent with the Lintons, the dots for those spent with me – Do you see, I’ve marked every day?’

‘Yes – very foolish; as if I took notice!’ replied Catherine in a peevish tone. ‘And where is the sense of that?’

‘To show that I do take notice,’ said Heathcliff.

‘And should I always be sitting with you,’ she demanded, growing more irritated. ‘What good do I get – What do you talk about? You might be dumb or a baby for anything you say to amuse me, or for anything you do, either!’

‘You never told me, before, that I talked too little, or that you disliked my company, Cathy!’ exclaimed Heathcliff in much agitation.

‘It is no company at all, when people know nothing and say nothing,’ she muttered.

Her companion rose up, but he hadn’t time to express his feelings further, for a horse’s feet were heard on the flags, and, having knocked gently, young Linton entered, his face brilliant with delight at the unexpected summons he had received.

Doubtless Catherine marked the difference between her friends as one came in, and the other went out. The contrast resembled what you see in exchanging a bleak, hilly, coal country for a beautiful fertile valley; and his voice and greeting were as opposite as his aspect – He had a sweet, low manner of speaking, and pronounced his words as you do, that’s less gruff than we talk here, and softer.

‘I’m not come too soon, am I?’ he said, casting a look at me. I had begun to wipe the plate, and tidy some drawers at the far end in the dresser.

‘No,’ answered Catherine. ‘What are you doing there, Nelly?’

‘My work, Miss,’ I replied. (Mr Hindley had given me directions to make a third party in any private visits Linton chose to pay.)