Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (read full novel txt) 📖

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 upstairs, 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?’

‘Were not you naughty?’ I said; ‘answer me that.’

‘Perhaps I was,’ she went on; ‘but I did not expect him to be so silly. Hareton, if I gave you a book, would you take it now? I’ll try!’

She placed one she had been perusing on his hand; he flung it off, and muttered, if she did not give over, he would break her neck.

‘Well, I shall put it here,’ she said, ‘in the table-drawer; and I’m going to bed.’

Then she whispered me to watch whether he touched it, and departed. But he would not come near it; and so I informed her in the morning, to her great disappointment. I saw she was sorry for his persevering sulkiness and indolence: her conscience reproved her for frightening him off improving himself: she had done it effectually. But her ingenuity was at work to remedy the injury: while I ironed, or pursued other such stationary employments as I could not well do in the parlour, she would bring some pleasant volume and read it aloud to me. When Hareton was there, she generally paused in an interesting part, and left the book lying about: that she did repeatedly; but he was as obstinate as a mule, and, instead of snatching at her bait, in wet weather he took to smoking with Joseph; and they sat like automatons, one on each side of the fire, the elder happily too deaf to understand her wicked nonsense, as he would have called it, the younger doing his best to seem to disregard it. On fine evenings the latter followed his shooting expeditions, and Catherine yawned and sighed, and teased me to talk to her, and ran off into the court or garden the moment I began; and, as a last resource, cried, and said she was tired of living: her life was useless.

Mr. Heathcliff, who grew more and more disinclined to society, had almost banished Earnshaw from his apartment. Owing to an accident at the commencement of March, he became for some days a fixture in the kitchen. His gun burst while out on the hills by himself; a splinter cut his arm, and he lost a good deal of blood before he could reach home. The consequence was that, perforce, he was condemned to the fireside and tranquillity, till he made it up again. It suited Catherine to have him there: at any rate, it made her hate her room upstairs more than ever: and she would compel me to find out business below, that she might accompany me.

On Easter Monday, Joseph went to Gimmerton fair with some cattle; and, in the afternoon, I was busy getting up linen in the kitchen. Earnshaw sat, morose as usual, at the chimney corner, and my little mistress was beguiling an idle hour with drawing pictures on the window-panes, varying her amusement by smothered bursts of songs, and whispered ejaculations, and quick glances of annoyance and impatience in the direction of her cousin, who steadfastly smoked, and looked into the grate. At a notice that I could do with her no longer intercepting my light, she removed to the hearthstone. I bestowed little attention on her proceedings, but, presently, I heard her begin—‘I’ve found out, Hareton, that I want—that I’m glad—that I should like you to be my cousin now, if you had not grown so cross to me, and so rough.’

Hareton returned no answer.

‘Hareton, Hareton, Hareton! do you hear?’ she continued.

‘Get off wi’ ye!’ he growled, with uncompromising gruffness.

‘Let me take that pipe,’ she said, cautiously advancing her hand and abstracting it from his mouth.

Before he could attempt to recover it, it was broken, and behind the fire. He swore at her and seized another.

‘Stop,’ she cried, ‘you must listen to me first; and I can’t speak while those clouds are floating in my face.’

‘Will you go to the devil!’ he exclaimed, ferociously, ‘and let me be!’

‘No,’ she persisted, ‘I won’t: I can’t tell what to do to make you talk to me; and you are determined not to understand. When I call you stupid, I don’t mean anything: I don’t mean that I despise you. Come, you shall take notice of me, Hareton: you are my cousin, and you shall own me.’

‘I shall have naught to do wi’ you and your mucky pride, and your damned mocking tricks!’ he answered. ‘I’ll go to hell, body and soul, before I look sideways after you again. Side out o’ t’ gate, now, this minute!’

Catherine frowned, and retreated to the window-seat chewing her lip, and endeavouring, by humming an eccentric tune, to conceal a growing tendency to sob.

‘You should be friends with your cousin, Mr. Hareton,’ I interrupted, ‘since she repents of her sauciness. It would do you a great deal of good: it would make you another man to have her for a companion.’

‘A companion!’ he cried; ‘when she hates me, and does not think me fit to wipe her shoon! Nay, if it made me a king, I’d not be scorned for seeking her good-will any more.’

‘It is not I who hate you, it is you who hate me!’ wept Cathy, no longer disguising her trouble. ‘You hate me as much as Mr. Heathcliff does, and more.’

‘You’re a damned liar,’ began Earnshaw: ‘why have I made