CHAPTER 3
While leading the way upstairs, she asked me to hide the candle, and not make a noise; for her master had an odd notion about the chamber she would put me in, and never let anybody stay there. I asked the reason. She did not know, she answered: she had only lived there a year or two; and they had many queer goings on.
I fastened my bedroom door and glanced around. The furniture consisted of a chair, a clothes-press, and a large oak case, with squares cut out resembling coach windows. Approaching this, I looked inside, and found it to be a strange sort of old-fashioned couch, designed to make a little, private closet. It enclosed a window-ledge, which served as a table. I slid back the panelled sides, got in with my light, pulled them together again, and felt secure against Heathcliff and everyone else.
I placed my candle on the window-ledge. It had a few mildewed books piled up in one corner; and it was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of lettering, large and small: Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton.
Listlessly I leant my head against the window, and read Catherine Earnshaw – Heathcliff – Linton, till my eyes closed; but then a glare of white letters started from the dark, as vivid as spectres – the air swarmed with Catherines. I discovered my candle-wick was lying on one of the old books, and perfuming the place with an odour of burnt leather. I snuffed out the candle and, still feeling cold and sick, sat up and spread open the book on my knee. It was a Testament, smelling dreadfully musty: a fly-leaf bore the inscription: ‘Catherine Earnshaw, her book,’ and a date some quarter of a century back.
I shut it, and took up another and another, till I had examined all Catherine’s library. The books had been well used, though not for their proper purpose: she had scribbled over every morsel of blank paper in them. There was a regular diary, scrawled in an unformed, childish hand. At the top of one page I was greatly amused to behold an excellent caricature of Joseph, rudely, yet powerfully sketched. I felt an immediate interest in the unknown Catherine, and began to decipher her faded writing.
‘An awful Sunday,’ it began. ‘I wish my father were back again. Hindley is detestable. His conduct to Heathcliff is atrocious – H. and I are going to rebel. We took our first step this evening.
‘All day had been flooding with rain; we could not go to church, so Joseph had a prayer-meeting in the garret. While Hindley and his wife basked downstairs before a comfortable fire – doing anything but reading their Bibles – Heathcliff, myself, and the ploughboy had to take our prayer-books, and sit groaning and shivering, and hoping that Joseph would shiver too, so that he might give us a short sermon. A vain idea! The service lasted three hours; and yet my brother had the cheek to exclaim, when he saw us descending, “What, done already?” He will no longer let us play on Sunday evenings; now the smallest laugh gets us sent into the corner.
‘“You forget you have a master here,” says the tyrant. “Silence! Boy! was that you? Frances darling, pull his hair as you go by: I heard him snap his fingers.” Frances pulled his hair heartily, and then went and sat on her husband’s knee, and there they were, like two babies, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour – foolish chatter that we should be ashamed of. We made ourselves as snug as we could under the dresser. I had just fastened our pinafores together, and hung them up for a curtain, when in comes Joseph, tears it down, boxes my ears, and croaks:
‘“T’ master only just buried, and Sabbath not over, and t’ sound o’ t’ gospel still in yer ears, and ye dare be larking! Shame on ye! Sit down, and think o’ yer souls!”
‘He made us sit and read sermon-books. I hurled my dingy volume into the dog-kennel, vowing I hated a good book. Heathcliff kicked his to the same place. Then there was a hubbub!
‘“Master Hindley!” shouted Joseph. “Miss Cathy’s torn th’ back off ‘Th’ Helmet o’ Salvation,’ and Heathcliff’s ripped ‘T’ Broad Way to Destruction!’ It’s fearsome that ye let ’em go on this way!”
‘Hindley hurried up, and hurled us both into the back-kitchen. I took this book and a pot of ink from a shelf, and pushed the house-door open to give me light, and I have been writing for twenty minutes; but Heathcliff is impatient, and proposes that we should take the dairywoman’s cloak, and have a scamper on the moors under its shelter. A pleasant suggestion – we cannot be damper, or colder, out in the rain than we are here.’
I suppose Catherine fulfilled her plan, for the next sentence was tearful.
‘How little did I dream that Hindley would ever make me cry so!’ she wrote. ‘My head aches, till I cannot keep it on the pillow. Poor Heathcliff! Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won’t let him sit with us, nor eat with us any more. He says, he and I must not play together, and threatens to turn him out of the house. He has been blaming our father for treating Heathcliff too kindly; and swears he will reduce him to his right place—’
I began to nod drowsily over the dim page. My eye wandered to the print, and I saw a red ornamented title: ‘Seventy Times Seven, and the First of the Seventy-First. A Pious Discourse delivered by the Reverend Jabez Branderham.’ While I was wondering what Jabez Branderham would make of his subject, I fell asleep.
Alas, for the effects of bad tea and bad temper! What else could have made me pass such a terrible night? I don’t remember another as dreadful.
I began to dream. I thought it was morning; and I had set out on my way home, with Joseph for a guide. The snow was deep; and, as we floundered on, my companion reproached me because I had not brought a pilgrim’s staff: telling me that I could never get into the house without one, and boastfully flourishing his own heavy cudgel.
Then a new idea flashed across me. I was not going home: we were journeying to hear the famous Jabez Branderham preach on seventy times seven sins; and either Joseph or I had committed the ‘First of the Seventy-First,’ and were to be publicly exposed.
We came to the chapel. I have passed it really in my walks a few times; it lies in a hollow, between two hills: a deserted and half-ruined building. However, in my dream, Jabez had a full congregation; and he preached – good God! what a sermon; divided into four hundred and ninety parts, each discussing a separate sin.
Oh, how weary I grew. How I writhed, and yawned! How I pinched myself, and rubbed my eyes, until finally, he reached the ‘First of the Seventy-First.’ Sudden inspiration came to me; I rose to denounce Jabez Branderham.
‘Sir,’ I exclaimed, ‘I have endured the four hundred and ninety heads of your discourse. The four hundred and ninety-first is too much. Fellow-martyrs, have at him! Drag him down, and crush him!’
‘Thou art the Man!’ cried Jabez. ‘Seventy times seven times didst thou gape and yawn. Brethren, execute judgment upon him!’
With that, the whole meeting, lifting their pilgrim’s staves, rushed round me; and I, having no weapon, began to grapple with Joseph for his. Soon the whole chapel resounded with blows: every man attacked his neighbour; and Branderham tapped so loudly on the pulpit that, to my unspeakable relief, the sounds woke me.
And what had suggested the tremendous tumult? Merely the branch of a fir-tree that touched my window as the blast wailed by, and rattled its dry cones against the panes! I listened, then turned and dozed, and dreamt again: if possible, still more disagreeably than before.
This time, I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow. I heard, also, the fir bough tapping: but it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to silence it. I thought I rose and tried to unfasten the casement; but the hook was stuck.
‘I must stop it, nevertheless!’ I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the branch; instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand!
The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in �
� let me in!’
‘Who are you?’ I asked, struggling to free myself.
‘Catherine Linton,’ it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton). ‘I’m come home: I’d lost my way on the moor!’ As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and, finding I could not shake the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes. Still it wailed, ‘Let me in!’ and kept its tenacious grip, maddening me with fear.
‘How can I?’ I said at last. ‘Let me go, if you want me to let you in!’
The fingers relaxed. I snatched my hand through the hole, hurriedly piled the books up in a pyramid against it, and stopped my ears to shut out the lamentable prayer. I seemed to keep them closed above a quarter of an hour; yet, the instant I listened again, there was the doleful cry moaning on!
‘Begone!’ I shouted. ‘I’ll never let you in, not if you beg for twenty years.’
‘It is twenty years,’ mourned the voice: ‘I’ve been a waif for twenty years!’ There began a feeble scratching outside, and the pile of books moved. I tried to jump up; but could not stir a limb; and I yelled aloud, in a frenzy of fright.
Hasty footsteps approached my chamber door; somebody pushed it open, and a light glimmered through the squares at the top of the bed. I sat shuddering, and wiping the perspiration from my forehead. The intruder appeared to hesitate. At last, he said, in a half-whisper, plainly not expecting an answer, ‘Is anyone here?’
I thought it best to confess my presence; for I knew Heathcliff’s voice, so I turned and opened the panels.
Heathcliff stood near the door, in his shirt and trousers; with a candle dripping over his fingers, and his face as white as the wall behind him. The first creak of the oak panel startled him like an electric shock: the candle leaped from his hold, and his agitation was so extreme that he could hardly pick it up.
‘It is only your guest, sir,’ I called out, to spare him the humiliation of exposing his cowardice further. ‘I screamed in my sleep, owing to a frightful nightmare. I’m sorry I disturbed you.’
‘Oh, God confound you, Mr. Lockwood!’ My host set the candle on a chair, finding it impossible to hold it steady. ‘And who showed you into this room?’ he continued, grinding his teeth. ‘Who was it? I’ve a good mind to turn them out of the house!’
‘It was Zillah,’ I replied, standing and rapidly pulling on my clothes. ‘I should not care if you did, Mr. Heathcliff; she richly deserves it. I suppose that she wanted to get another proof that the place was haunted. Well, it is – swarming with ghosts and goblins! You have good reason to shut it up, I assure you!’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Heathcliff, ‘and why are you getting dressed? Lie down and sleep, since you are here; but, for heaven’s sake! don’t repeat that horrid noise. Nothing could excuse it, unless you were having your throat cut!’
‘If the little fiend had got in at the window, she probably would have strangled me!’ I returned. ‘That minx, Catherine Linton, or Earnshaw, or however she was called – she must have been a changeling. Wicked little soul! She told me she had been walking the earth these twenty years: a just punishment for her sins, no doubt!’
Scarcely were these words uttered when I recollected seeing Heathcliff’s name with Catherine’s in the book. I blushed, and hastened to add, ‘The truth is, sir, I passed the first part of the night in—’
Here I stopped again: I was about to say ‘reading those old books,’ but that would have revealed my knowledge of their contents. So I went on—‘in spelling over the name scratched on that window-ledge, an occupation to set me asleep, like counting, or—’
‘What can you mean by talking in this way to me!’ thundered Heathcliff savagely. ‘How dare you? God! he’s mad to speak so!’ And he struck his forehead with rage.
He seemed so powerfully affected that I took pity on him. I told him my dreams; affirming I had never heard the name of ‘Catherine Linton’ before, but reading it had produced an impression which had affected my sleep.
Heathcliff gradually fell back into the shelter of the bed, as I spoke; finally sitting down almost concealed behind it. I guessed, however, by his irregular breathing, that he struggled to vanquish violent emotion. Not liking to show that I had heard him, I continued to dress rather noisily, looked at my watch, and commented: ‘Not three o’clock yet! I could have sworn it was six. We must surely have retired to rest at eight!’
‘At nine in winter, and rise at four,’ said my host, suppressing a groan: and, as I fancied, dashing a tear from his eyes. ‘Mr. Lockwood,’ he added, ‘you may go into my room: you’ll only be in the way, coming down-stairs so early: and your outcry has sent sleep to the devil for me.’
‘For me, too,’ I replied. ‘I’ll walk in the yard till daylight, and then I’ll be off; and you need not dread my return.’
‘Take the candle, and go where you please,’ he said. ‘I shall join you directly. Keep out of the yard, though, the dogs are unchained; and Juno guards the house. You can only ramble about the steps and passages. But, away with you! I’ll come in two minutes!’
I obeyed, quitting the chamber; then, not knowing which way to go, I stood still, and saw a piece of superstition on the part of my landlord which belied, oddly, his apparent sense. He got on to the bed, and wrenched open the window, bursting, as he pulled at it, into an uncontrollable passion of tears.
‘Come in! come in!’ he sobbed. ‘Cathy, do come. Oh, do – once more! Oh! my heart’s darling! hear me this time, Catherine, at last!’ The spectre gave no sign of being; but the snow and wind whirled wildly through, blowing out the light.
There was such anguish in his grief and raving, that I was moved to compassion; half angry to have listened, and vexed at having related my ridiculous nightmare, since it produced that baffling agony. I went cautiously downstairs, and landed in the back-kitchen, where a gleam of fire enabled me to relight my candle. Nothing was stirring except a grey cat, which crept from the ashes with a querulous mew.
Two benches nearly enclosed the hearth; on one of these I stretched myself, and the cat mounted the other. We were both of us nodding, when Joseph came shuffling down a wooden ladder that vanished in the roof, through a trapdoor: the way to his garret, I suppose. He cast a sinister look at the fire, swept the cat from its bed, and sitting down in its place, began to stuff a pipe with tobacco. My presence was evidently a piece of impudence too shameful for remark: he smoked silently, arms folded; then heaved a deep sigh and left as solemnly as he came.
A stronger footstep entered next; and now I opened my mouth for a ‘good-morning,’ but closed it again: for Hareton Earnshaw was cursing every object he touched, while he rummaged for a spade to dig through the snowdrifts. He glanced at me without any greeting.
Leaving my hard couch, I moved to follow him. He thrust at an inner door with the end of his spade, meaning that there was the place where I must go.
It opened into the main room, where the females were already astir. Zillah was urging flames up the chimney with a colossal bellows; and Mrs. Heathcliff, kneeling on the hearth, was reading a book by the aid of the blaze. She held her hand between the furnace-heat and her eyes, and seemed absorbed in it; stopping only to chide the servant for covering her with sparks, or to push away a dog that snoozled its nose into her face.
I was surprised to see Heathcliff there also. He stood by the fire, his back towards me, just finishing a stormy scene with poor Zillah.
‘And you, you worthless ___’ he broke out, turning to his daughter-in-law, and using a term generally represented by a dash ___. ‘There you are, at your idle tricks again! The rest of them earn their bread – you live on my charity! Put your trash away, and find something to do. You shall pay me for the plague of having you eternally in my sight – do you hear, damnable jade?’
‘I’ll put my trash away,’ answered the you
ng lady, throwing her book on a chair. ‘But I’ll not do anything except what I please!’
Heathcliff lifted his hand, and she sprang away. Having no desire to be entertained by a fight, I stepped forward briskly, as if eager to warm myself at the fire. Heathcliff placed his fists in his pockets; Mrs. Heathcliff curled her lip, and walked to a seat far off, where she played the part of a statue during the rest of my stay.
That was not long. I declined breakfast, and, at the first gleam of dawn, escaped into the free air, now clear, and still, and cold as ice.
Before I reached the end of the garden, my landlord called to me to stop, and offered to accompany me across the moor. It was well he did, for the whole hill was one billowy, white ocean; the swells and falls gave no sign of the rises and depressions in the ground. Many pits were filled level; and entire ranges of mounds, the refuse of the quarries, were blotted from the scene of my walk yesterday. I had noticed a line of upright stones along the road, daubed with whitewash to serve as guides in the dark or in the snow: but almost all traces of them had vanished. My companion had to warn me frequently to steer to right or left, when I imagined I was following the road.
We talked little, and he left me at the entrance of Thrushcross Park; then I pushed forward alone. The distance from the gate to the grange is two miles. I believe I managed to make it four, what with losing myself among the trees, and sinking up to the neck in snow. The clock chimed twelve as I entered the house; so I had taken exactly an hour for every mile of the way from Wuthering Heights.
My housekeeper and servants rushed to welcome me, exclaiming that they thought that I had perished last night. I bid them be quiet, and numbly dragged upstairs. After putting on dry clothes, and pacing to and fro for thirty minutes to restore warmth to my limbs, I retired to my study, feeble as a kitten: almost too weak to enjoy the cheerful fire and steaming coffee which the servant had prepared for me.
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights: Abridged Page 4
