Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (317 page)

CHAPTER XXXI

Yesterday was bright, calm, and frosty.  I went to the Heights as I proposed: my housekeeper entreated me to bear a little note from her to her young lady, and I did not refuse, for the worthy woman was not conscious of anything odd in her request.  The front door stood open, but the jealous gate was fastened, as at my last visit; I knocked and invoked Earnshaw from among the garden-beds; he unchained it, and I entered.  The fellow is as handsome a rustic as need be seen.  I took particular notice of him this time; but then he does his best apparently to make the least of his advantages.

I asked if Mr. Heathcliff were at home?  He answered, No; but he would be in at dinner-time.  It was eleven o’clock, and I announced my intention of going in and waiting for him; at which he immediately flung down his tools and accompanied me, in the office of watchdog, not as a substitute for the host.

We entered together; Catherine was there, making herself useful in preparing some vegetables for the approaching meal; she looked more sulky and less spirited than when I had seen her first.  She hardly raised her eyes to notice me, and continued her employment with the same disregard to common forms of politeness as before; never returning my bow and good-morning by the slightest acknowledgment.

‘She does not seem so amiable,’ I thought, ‘as Mrs. Dean would persuade me to believe.  She’s a beauty, it is true; but not an angel.’

Earnshaw surlily bid her remove her things to the kitchen.  ‘Remove them yourself,’ she said, pushing them from her as soon as she had done; and retiring to a stool by the window, where she began to carve figures of birds and beasts out of the turnip-parings in her lap.  I approached her, pretending to desire a view of the garden; and, as I fancied, adroitly dropped Mrs. Dean’s note on to her knee, unnoticed by Hareton — but she asked aloud, ‘What is that?’  And chucked it off.

‘A letter from your old acquaintance, the housekeeper at the Grange,’ I answered; annoyed at her exposing my kind deed, and fearful lest it should be imagined a missive of my own.  She would gladly have gathered it up at this information, but Hareton beat her; he seized and put it in his waistcoat, saying Mr. Heathcliff should look at it first.  Thereat, Catherine silently turned her face from us, and, very stealthily, drew out her pocket-handkerchief and applied it to her eyes; and her cousin, after struggling awhile to keep down his softer feelings, pulled out the letter and flung it on the floor beside her, as ungraciously as he could.  Catherine caught and perused it eagerly; then she put a few questions to me concerning the inmates, rational and irrational, of her former home; and gazing towards the hills, murmured in soliloquy:

‘I should like to be riding Minny down there!  I should like to be climbing up there!  Oh!  I’m tired — I’m
stalled
, Hareton!’  And she leant her pretty head back against the sill, with half a yawn and half a sigh, and lapsed into an aspect of abstracted sadness: neither caring nor knowing whether we remarked her.

‘Mrs. Heathcliff,’ I said, after sitting some time mute, ‘you are not aware that I am an acquaintance of yours? so intimate that I think it strange you won’t come and speak to me.  My housekeeper never wearies of talking about and praising you; and she’ll be greatly disappointed if I return with no news of or from you, except that you received her letter and said nothing!’

She appeared to wonder at this speech, and asked, —

‘Does Ellen like you?’

‘Yes, very well,’ I replied, hesitatingly.

‘You must tell her,’ she continued, ‘that I would answer her letter, but I have no materials for writing: not even a book from which I might tear a leaf.’

‘No books!’ I exclaimed.  ‘How do you contrive to live here without them? if I may take the liberty to inquire.  Though provided with a large library, I’m frequently very dull at the Grange; take my books away, and I should be desperate!’

‘I was always reading, when I had them,’ said Catherine; ‘and Mr. Heathcliff never reads; so he took it into his head to destroy my books.  I have not had a glimpse of one for weeks.  Only once, I searched through Joseph’s store of theology, to his great irritation; and once, Hareton, I came upon a secret stock in your room — some Latin and Greek, and some tales and poetry: all old friends.  I brought the last here — and you gathered them, as a magpie gathers silver spoons, for the mere love of stealing!  They are of no use to you; or else you concealed them in the bad spirit that, as you cannot enjoy them, nobody else shall.  Perhaps
your
envy counselled Mr. Heathcliff to rob me of my treasures?  But I’ve most of them written on my brain and printed in my heart, and you cannot deprive me of those!’

Earnshaw blushed crimson when his cousin made this revelation of his private literary accumulations, and stammered an indignant denial of her accusations.

‘Mr. Hareton is desirous of increasing his amount of knowledge,’ I said, coming to his rescue.  ‘He is not
envious
, but
emulous
of your attainments.  He’ll be a clever scholar in a few years.’

‘And he wants me to sink into a dunce, meantime,’ answered Catherine.  ‘Yes, I hear him trying to spell and read to himself, and pretty blunders he makes!  I wish you would repeat Chevy Chase as you did yesterday: it was extremely funny.  I heard you; and I heard you turning over the dictionary to seek out the hard words, and then cursing because you couldn’t read their explanations!’

The young man evidently thought it too bad that he should be laughed at for his ignorance, and then laughed at for trying to remove it.  I had a similar notion; and, remembering Mrs. Dean’s anecdote of his first attempt at enlightening the darkness in which he had been reared, I observed, — ‘But, Mrs. Heathcliff, we have each had a commencement, and 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 afterthought 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 looks, as she bent to superintend his studies; and her face — it was lucky he could not see her face, or he would never have been so steady.  I could; and I bit my lip in spite, at having thrown away the chance I might have had of doing something besides staring at its smiting beauty.

The task was done, not free from further blunders; but the pupil claimed a reward, and received at least five kisses; which, however, he generously returned.  Then they came to the door, and from their conversation I judged they were about to issue out and have a walk on the moors.  I supposed I should be condemned in Hareton Earnshaw’s heart, if not by his mouth, to the lowest pit in the infernal regions if I showed my unfortunate person in his neighbourhood then; and feeling very mean and malignant, I skulked round to seek refuge in the kitchen.  There was unobstructed admittance on that side also; and at the door sat my old friend Nelly Dean, sewing and singing a song; which was often interrupted from within by harsh words of scorn and intolerance, uttered in far from musical accents.

‘I’d rayther, by th’ haulf, hev’ ’em swearing i’ my lugs fro’h morn to neeght, nor hearken ye hahsiver!’ said the tenant of the kitchen, in answer to an unheard speech of Nelly’s.  ‘It’s a blazing shame, that I cannot oppen t’ blessed Book, but yah set up them glories to sattan, and all t’ flaysome wickednesses that iver were born into th’ warld!  Oh! ye’re a raight nowt; and shoo’s another; and that poor lad ’ll be lost atween ye.  Poor lad!’ he added, with a groan; ‘he’s witched: I’m sartin on’t.  Oh, Lord, judge ’em, for there’s norther law nor justice among wer rullers!’

‘No! or we should be sitting in flaming fagots, I suppose,’ retorted the singer.  ‘But wisht, old man, and read your Bible like a Christian, and never mind me.  This is “Fairy Annie’s Wedding” — a bonny tune — it goes to a dance.’

Mrs. Dean was about to recommence, when I advanced; and recognising me directly, she jumped to her feet, crying — ‘Why, bless you, Mr. Lockwood!  How could you think of returning in this way?  All’s shut up at Thrushcross Grange.  You should have given us notice!’

‘I’ve arranged to be accommodated there, for as long as I shall stay,’ I answered.  ‘I depart again to-morrow.  And how are you transplanted here, Mrs. Dean? tell me that.’

‘Zillah left, and Mr. Heathcliff wished me to come, soon after you went to London, and stay till you returned.  But, step in, pray! Have you walked from Gimmerton this evening?’

‘From the Grange,’ I replied; ‘and while they make me lodging room there, I want to finish my business with your master; because I don’t think of having another opportunity in a hurry.’

‘What business, sir?’ said Nelly, conducting me into the house. ‘He’s gone out at present, and won’t return soon.’

‘About the rent,’ I answered.

‘Oh! then it is with Mrs. Heathcliff you must settle,’ she observed; ‘or rather with me.  She has not learnt to manage her affairs yet, and I act for her: there’s nobody else.’

I looked surprised.

‘Ah! you have not heard of Heathcliff’s death, I see,’ she continued.

‘Heathcliff dead!’ I exclaimed, astonished.  ‘How long ago?’

‘Three months since: but sit down, and let me take your hat, and I’ll tell you all about it.  Stop, you have had nothing to eat, have you?’

‘I want nothing: I have ordered supper at home.  You sit down too. I never dreamt of his dying!  Let me hear how it came to pass.  You say you don’t expect them back for some time — the young people?’

‘No — I have to scold them every evening for their late rambles: but they don’t care for me.  At least, have a drink of our old ale; it will do you good: you seem weary.’

She hastened to fetch it before I could refuse, and I heard Joseph asking whether ‘it warn’t a crying scandal that she should have followers at her time of life?  And then, to get them jocks out o’ t’ maister’s cellar!  He fair shaamed to ‘bide still and see it.’

She did not stay to retaliate, but re-entered in a minute, bearing a reaming silver pint, whose contents I lauded with becoming earnestness.  And afterwards she furnished me with the sequel of Heathcliff’s history.  He had a ‘queer’ end, as she expressed it.

I was summoned to Wuthering Heights, within a fortnight of your leaving us, she said; and I obeyed joyfully, for Catherine’s sake. My first interview with her grieved and shocked me: she had altered so much since our separation.  Mr. Heathcliff did not explain his reasons for taking a new mind about my coming here; he only told me he wanted me, and he was tired of seeing Catherine: I must make the little parlour my sitting-room, and keep her with me. It was enough if he were obliged to see her once or twice a day. She seemed pleased at this arrangement; and, by degrees, I smuggled over a great number of books, and other articles, that had formed her amusement at the Grange; and flattered myself we should get on in tolerable comfort.  The delusion did not last long.  Catherine, contented at first, in a brief space grew irritable and restless. For one thing, she was forbidden to move out of the garden, and it fretted her sadly to be confined to its narrow bounds as spring drew on; for another, in following the house, I was forced to quit her frequently, and she complained of loneliness: she preferred quarrelling with Joseph in the kitchen to sitting at peace in her solitude.  I did not mind their skirmishes: but Hareton was often obliged to seek the kitchen also, when the master wanted to have the house to himself! and though in the beginning she either left it at his approach, or quietly joined in my occupations, and shunned remarking or addressing him — and though he was always as sullen and silent as possible — after a while, she changed her behaviour, and became incapable of letting him alone: talking at him; commenting on his stupidity and idleness; expressing her wonder how he could endure the life he lived — how he could sit a whole evening staring into the fire, and dozing.

‘He’s just like a dog, is he not, Ellen?’ she once observed, ‘or a cart-horse?  He does his work, eats his food, and sleeps eternally! What a blank, dreary mind he must have!  Do you ever dream, Hareton?  And, if you do, what is it about?  But you can’t speak to me!’

Then she looked at him; but he would neither open his mouth nor look again.

‘He’s, perhaps, dreaming now,’ she continued.  ‘He twitched his shoulder as Juno twitches hers.  Ask him, Ellen.’

‘Mr. Hareton will ask the master to send you up-stairs, if you don’t behave!’ I said.  He had not only twitched his shoulder but clenched his fist, as if tempted to use it.

‘I know why Hareton never speaks, when I am in the kitchen,’ she exclaimed, on another occasion.  ‘He is afraid I shall laugh at him.  Ellen, what do you think?  He began to teach himself to read once; and, because I laughed, he burned his books, and dropped it: was he not a fool?’