The evening after the funeral, my young lady and I were seated in the library; now musing mournfully\u2014one of us despairingly\u2014on our loss, now venturing conjectures as to the gloomy future.<\/p>\n
We had just agreed the best destiny which could await Catherine would be a permission to continue resident at the Grange; at least during Linton\u2019s life: he being allowed to join her there, and I to remain as housekeeper. That seemed rather too favourable an arrangement to be hoped for; and yet I did hope, and began to cheer up under the prospect of retaining my home and my employment, and, above all, my beloved young mistress; when a servant\u2014one of the discarded ones, not yet departed\u2014rushed hastily in, and said \u201cthat devil Heathcliff\u201d was coming through the court: should he fasten the door in his face?<\/p>\n
If we had been mad enough to order that proceeding, we had not time. He made no ceremony of knocking or announcing his name: he was master, and availed himself of the master\u2019s privilege to walk straight in, without saying a word. The sound of our informant\u2019s voice directed him to the library; he entered and motioning him out, shut the door.<\/p>\n
It was the same room into which he had been ushered, as a guest, eighteen years before: the same moon shone through the window; and the same autumn landscape lay outside. We had not yet lighted a candle, but all the apartment was visible, even to the portraits on the wall: the splendid head of Mrs. Linton, and the graceful one of her husband. Heathcliff advanced to the hearth. Time had little altered his person either. There was the same man: his dark face rather sallower and more composed, his frame a stone or two heavier, perhaps, and no other difference. Catherine had risen with an impulse to dash out, when she saw him.<\/p>\n
\u201cStop!\u201d he said, arresting her by the arm. \u201cNo more runnings away! Where would you go? I\u2019m come to fetch you home; and I hope you\u2019ll be a dutiful daughter and not encourage my son to further disobedience. I was embarrassed how to punish him when I discovered his part in the business: he\u2019s such a cobweb, a pinch would annihilate him; but you\u2019ll see by his look that he has received his due! I brought him down one evening, the day before yesterday, and just set him in a chair, and never touched him afterwards. I sent Hareton out, and we had the room to ourselves. In two hours, I called Joseph to carry him up again; and since then my presence is as potent on his nerves as a ghost; and I fancy he sees me often, though I am not near. Hareton says he wakes and shrieks in the night by the hour together, and calls you to protect him from me; and, whether you like your precious mate, or not, you must come: he\u2019s your concern now; I yield all my interest in him to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy not let Catherine continue here,\u201d I pleaded, \u201cand send Master Linton to her? As you hate them both, you\u2019d not miss them: they can only be a daily plague to your unnatural heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m seeking a tenant for the Grange,\u201d he answered; \u201cand I want my children about me, to be sure. Besides, that lass owes me her services for her bread. I\u2019m not going to nurture her in luxury and idleness after Linton is gone. Make haste and get ready, now; and don\u2019t oblige me to compel you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI shall,\u201d said Catherine. \u201cLinton is all I have to love in the world, and though you have done what you could to make him hateful to me, and me to him, you cannot make us hate each other. And I defy you to hurt him when I am by, and I defy you to frighten me!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are a boastful champion,\u201d replied Heathcliff; \u201cbut I don\u2019t like you well enough to hurt him: you shall get the full benefit of the torment, as long as it lasts. It is not I who will make him hateful to you\u2014it is his own sweet spirit. He\u2019s as bitter as gall at your desertion and its consequences: don\u2019t expect thanks for this noble devotion. I heard him draw a pleasant picture to Zillah of what he would do if he were as strong as I: the inclination is there, and his very weakness will sharpen his wits to find a substitute for strength.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know he has a bad nature,\u201d said Catherine: \u201che\u2019s your son. But I\u2019m glad I\u2019ve a better, to forgive it; and I know he loves me, and for that reason I love him. Mr. Heathcliff you<\/i> have nobody<\/i> to love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery. You are<\/i> miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? Nobody<\/i> loves you\u2014nobody<\/i> will cry for you when you die! I wouldn\u2019t be you!\u201d<\/p>\n
Catherine spoke with a kind of dreary triumph: she seemed to have made up her mind to enter into the spirit of her future family, and draw pleasure from the griefs of her enemies.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou shall be sorry to be yourself presently,\u201d said her father-in-law, \u201cif you stand there another minute. Begone, witch, and get your things!\u201d<\/p>\n
She scornfully withdrew. In her absence I began to beg for Zillah\u2019s place at the Heights, offering to resign mine to her; but he would suffer it on no account. He bid me be silent; and then, for the first time, allowed himself a glance round the room and a look at the pictures. Having studied Mrs. Linton\u2019s, he said\u2014\u201cI shall have that home. Not because I need it, but\u2014\u201d He turned abruptly to the fire, and continued, with what, for lack of a better word, I must call a smile\u2014\u201cI\u2019ll tell you what I did yesterday! I got the sexton, who was digging Linton\u2019s grave, to remove the earth off her coffin lid, and I opened it. I thought, once, I would have stayed there: when I saw her face again\u2014it is hers yet!\u2014he had hard work to stir me; but he said it would change if the air blew on it, and so I struck one side of the coffin loose, and covered it up: not Linton\u2019s side, damn him! I wish he\u2019d been soldered in lead. And I bribed the sexton to pull it away when I\u2019m laid there, and slide mine out too; I\u2019ll have it made so: and then by the time Linton gets to us he\u2019ll not know which is which!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were very wicked, Mr. Heathcliff!\u201d I exclaimed; \u201cwere you not ashamed to disturb the dead?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI disturbed nobody, Nelly,\u201d he replied; \u201cand I gave some ease to myself. I shall be a great deal more comfortable now; and you\u2019ll have a better chance of keeping me underground, when I get there. Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years\u2014incessantly\u2014remorselessly\u2014till yesternight; and yesternight I was tranquil. I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep by that sleeper, with my heart stopped and my cheek frozen against hers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if she had been dissolved into earth, or worse, what would you have dreamt of then?\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf dissolving with her, and being more happy still!\u201d he answered. \u201cDo you suppose I dread any change of that sort? I expected such a transformation on raising the lid\u2014but I\u2019m better pleased that it should not commence till I share it. Besides, unless I had received a distinct impression of her passionless features, that strange feeling would hardly have been removed. It began oddly. You know I was wild after she died; and eternally, from dawn to dawn, praying her to return to me her spirit! I have a strong faith in ghosts: I have a conviction that they can, and do, exist among us! The day she was buried, there came a fall of snow. In the evening I went to the churchyard. It blew bleak as winter\u2014all round was solitary. I didn\u2019t fear that her fool of a husband would wander up the glen so late; and no one else had business to bring them there. Being alone, and conscious two yards of loose earth was the sole barrier between us, I said to myself\u2014\u2018I\u2019ll have her in my arms again! If she be cold, I\u2019ll think it is this north wind that chills me<\/i>; and if she be motionless, it is sleep.\u2019 I got a spade from the tool-house, and began to delve with all my might\u2014it scraped the coffin; I fell to work with my hands; the wood commenced cracking about the screws; I was on the point of attaining my object, when it seemed that I heard a sigh from some one above, close at the edge of the grave, and bending down. \u2018If I can only get this off,\u2019 I muttered, \u2018I wish they may shovel in the earth over us both!\u2019 and I wrenched at it more desperately still. There was another sigh, close at my ear. I appeared to feel the warm breath of it displacing the sleet-laden wind. I knew no living thing in flesh and blood was by; but, as certainly as you perceive the approach to some substantial body in the dark, though it cannot be discerned, so certainly I felt that Cathy was there: not under me, but on the earth. A sudden sense of relief flowed from my heart through every limb. I relinquished my labour of agony, and turned consoled at once: unspeakably consoled. Her presence was with me: it remained while I re-filled the grave, and led me home. You may laugh, if you will; but I was sure I should see her there. I was sure she was with me, and I could not help talking to her. Having reached the Heights, I rushed eagerly to the door. It was fastened; and, I remember, that accursed Earnshaw and my wife opposed my entrance. I remember stopping to kick the breath out of him, and then hurrying upstairs, to my room and hers. I looked round impatiently\u2014I felt her by me\u2014I could almost<\/i> see her, and yet I could not<\/i>! I ought to have sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning\u2014from the fervour of my supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! And, since then, sometimes more and sometimes less, I\u2019ve been the sport of that intolerable torture! Infernal! keeping my nerves at such a stretch that, if they had not resembled catgut, they would long ago have relaxed to the feebleness of Linton\u2019s. When I sat in the house with Hareton, it seemed that on going out I should meet her; when I walked on the moors I should meet her coming in. When I went from home I hastened to return; she must<\/i> be somewhere at the Heights, I was certain! And when I slept in her chamber\u2014I was beaten out of that. I couldn\u2019t lie there; for the moment I closed my eyes, she was either outside the window, or sliding back the panels, or entering the room, or even resting her darling head on the same pillow as she did when a child; and I must open my lids to see. And so I opened and closed them a hundred times a night\u2014to be always disappointed! It racked me! I\u2019ve often groaned aloud, till that old rascal Joseph no doubt believed that my conscience was playing the fiend inside of me. Now, since I\u2019ve seen her, I\u2019m pacified\u2014a little. It was a strange way of killing: not by inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope through eighteen years!\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Heathcliff paused and wiped his forehead; his hair clung to it, wet with perspiration; his eyes were fixed on the red embers of the fire, the brows not contracted, but raised next the temples; diminishing the grim aspect of his countenance, but imparting a peculiar look of trouble, and a painful appearance of mental tension towards one absorbing subject. He only half addressed me, and I maintained silence. I didn\u2019t like to hear him talk! After a short period he resumed his meditation on the picture, took it down and leant it against the sofa to contemplate it at better advantage; and while so occupied Catherine entered, announcing that she was ready, when her pony should be saddled.<\/p>\n
\u201cSend that over to-morrow,\u201d said Heathcliff to me; then turning to her, he added: \u201cYou may do without your pony: it is a fine evening, and you\u2019ll need no ponies at Wuthering Heights; for what journeys you take, your own feet will serve you. Come along.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGood-bye, Ellen!\u201d whispered my dear little mistress.<\/p>\n
As she kissed me, her lips felt like ice. \u201cCome and see me, Ellen; don\u2019t forget.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTake care you do no such thing, Mrs. Dean!\u201d said her new father. \u201cWhen I wish to speak to you I\u2019ll come here. I want none of your prying at my house!\u201d<\/p>\n
He signed her to precede him; and casting back a look that cut my heart, she obeyed. I watched them, from the window, walk down the garden. Heathcliff fixed Catherine\u2019s arm under his: though she disputed the act at first evidently; and with rapid strides he hurried her into the alley, whose trees concealed them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"menu_order":29,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[48],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-52","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-numberless"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/wutheringheights\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/wutheringheights\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/wutheringheights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/wutheringheights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/wutheringheights\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/wutheringheights\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/52\/revisions\/179"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/wutheringheights\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/wutheringheights\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/52\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/wutheringheights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/wutheringheights\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/wutheringheights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/wutheringheights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}