| 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 a while 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 but 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 unhesitatingly.
`You must tell her,' she continued, `that I would answer her letter,
but l 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 l 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, were 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 inflicter. 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 rise 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 precluding further speech, he advanced hastily
to the entrance, where I made way for him to pass. But ere he had crossed
the doorstones, 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. 1 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 anyone.'
`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
notebook 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 bid
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!' l reflected, while
riding down the road. `What a realization 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!'
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