Wuthering Heights Emily BrontĂ« (best free novels txt) đ
- Author: Emily Brontë
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When I chanced to encounter the housekeeper of Wuthering Heights, in paying business visits to Gimmerton, I used to ask how the young master got on; for he lived almost as secluded as Catherine herself, and was never to be seen. I could gather from her that he continued in weak health, and was a tiresome inmate. She said Mr. Heathcliff seemed to dislike him ever longer and worse, though he took some trouble to conceal it: he had an antipathy to the sound of his voice, and could not do at all with his sitting in the same room with him many minutes together. There seldom passed much talk between them: Linton learnt his lessons and spent his evenings in a small apartment they called the parlour: or else lay in bed all day: for he was constantly getting coughs, and colds, and aches, and pains of some sort.
âAnd I never know such a fainthearted creature,â added the woman; ânor one so careful of hisseln. He will go on, if I leave the window open a bit late in the evening. Oh! itâs killing, a breath of night air! And he must have a fire in the middle of summer; and Josephâs bacca-pipe is poison; and he must always have sweets and dainties, and always milk, milk foreverâ âheeding naught how the rest of us are pinched in winter; and there heâll sit, wrapped in his furred cloak in his chair by the fire, with some toast and water or other slop on the hob to sip at; and if Hareton, for pity, comes to amuse himâ âHareton is not bad-natured, though heâs roughâ âtheyâre sure to part, one swearing and the other crying. I believe the master would relish Earnshawâs thrashing him to a mummy, if he were not his son; and Iâm certain he would be fit to turn him out of doors, if he knew half the nursing he gives hisseln. But then he wonât go into danger of temptation: he never enters the parlour, and should Linton show those ways in the house where he is, he sends him upstairs directly.â
I divined, from this account, that utter lack of sympathy had rendered young Heathcliff selfish and disagreeable, if he were not so originally; and my interest in him, consequently, decayed: though still I was moved with a sense of grief at his lot, and a wish that he had been left with us. Mr. Edgar encouraged me to gain information: he thought a great deal about him, I fancy, and would have run some risk to see him; and he told me once to ask the housekeeper whether he ever came into the village? She said he had only been twice, on horseback, accompanying his father; and both times he pretended to be quite knocked up for three or four days afterwards. That housekeeper left, if I recollect rightly, two years after he came; and another, whom I did not know, was her successor; she lives there still.
Time wore on at the Grange in its former pleasant way till Miss Cathy reached sixteen. On the anniversary of her birth we never manifested any signs of rejoicing, because it was also the anniversary of my late mistressâs death. Her father invariably spent that day alone in the library; and walked, at dusk, as far as Gimmerton kirkyard, where he would frequently prolong his stay beyond midnight. Therefore Catherine was thrown on her own resources for amusement. This twentieth of March was a beautiful spring day, and when her father had retired, my young lady came down dressed for going out, and said she asked to have a ramble on the edge of the moor with me: Mr. Linton had given her leave, if we went only a short distance and were back within the hour.
âSo make haste, Ellen!â she cried. âI know where I wish to go; where a colony of moor-game are settled: I want to see whether they have made their nests yet.â
âThat must be a good distance up,â I answered; âthey donât breed on the edge of the moor.â
âNo, itâs not,â she said. âIâve gone very near with papa.â
I put on my bonnet and sallied out, thinking nothing more of the matter. She bounded before me, and returned to my side, and was off again like a young greyhound; and, at first, I found plenty of entertainment in listening to the larks singing far and near, and enjoying the sweet, warm sunshine; and watching her, my pet and my delight, with her golden ringlets flying loose behind, and her bright cheek, as soft and pure in its bloom as a wild rose, and her eyes radiant with cloudless pleasure. She was a happy creature, and an angel, in those days. Itâs a pity she could not be content.
âWell,â said I, âwhere are your moor-game, Miss Cathy? We should be at them: the Grange park-fence is a great way off now.â
âOh, a little furtherâ âonly a little further, Ellen,â was her answer, continually. âClimb to that hillock, pass that bank, and by the time you reach the other side I shall have raised the birds.â
But there were so many hillocks and banks to climb and pass, that, at length, I began to be weary, and told her we must halt, and retrace our steps. I shouted to her, as she had outstripped me a long way; she either did not hear or did not regard, for she still sprang on, and I was compelled to follow. Finally, she dived into a hollow; and before
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