CHAPTER 25
‘These things happened last winter, sir,’ said Mrs. Dean. ‘I did not think, back then, I should be amusing a stranger with relating them! Yet, who knows how long you’ll be a stranger? I fancy no one could see Catherine Linton and not love her. You smile; but why do you look so lively and interested when I talk about her? and why have you asked me to hang her picture over your fireplace?’
‘Stop, my good friend!’ I cried. ‘It may be very possible that I should love her; but would she love me? I doubt it: and my home is not here. I’m of the busy world, and to its arms I must return. Go on. Did Catherine obey her father?’
‘She did.’ The housekeeper continued her story:
Edgar spoke without anger, with the deep tenderness of one about to leave his treasure, who can bequeath only words to guide her.
He said to me, ‘I wish my nephew would write, Ellen. Tell me, sincerely: is he changed for the better, or is he likely to improve as he grows to a man?’
‘He’s very delicate, sir,’ I replied; ‘and scarcely likely to reach manhood: but this I can say, he does not resemble his father; and if Miss Catherine had the misfortune to marry him, he would not be beyond her control unless she were foolishly indulgent. However, master, you’ll have plenty of time to get acquainted with him: it’s still four years until he’s of age at twenty-one.’
Edgar sighed; and, walking to the window, looked out towards Gimmerton Church. It was a misty afternoon, but the February sun shone dimly, and we could just distinguish the gravestones.
‘I’ve prayed often,’ he murmured, ‘for the approach of what is coming. I’ve been very happy with my little Cathy. But I’ve been as happy musing by myself among those stones, under that old church: lying on the green mound of her mother’s grave, and yearning for the time when I might lie beneath it. What can I do for Cathy? It doesn’t matter that Linton is Heathcliff’s son, if he could console her for my loss. But if Linton is unworthy – only a feeble tool to his father – I cannot abandon her to him! And, hard though it be, I must make her sad while I live, and leave her solitary when I die. Darling! I’d rather resign her to God, and lay her in the earth before me.’
‘Resign her to God, sir,’ I answered, ‘and if we should lose you – which may God forbid – I’ll stand her friend to the last. Miss Catherine is a good girl, and does her duty.’
Spring advanced; yet my master gathered no strength, though he resumed his walks in the grounds with his daughter. She thought he was recovering: his cheek was often flushed, and his eyes were bright.
On her seventeenth birthday, he wrote again to Linton, expressing his great desire to see him; and, had the invalid been presentable, I’ve no doubt his father would have let him come. As it was, Linton replied that Mr. Heathcliff objected to his calling at the Grange; but that his uncle’s kind remembrance delighted him, and he hoped to meet him sometimes in his rambles, and to ask that his cousin and he might not remain divided. That part of his letter was simple, and probably his own.
‘I do not ask,’ he said, ‘that she may visit here; but am I never to see her? Do sometimes ride with her towards the Heights; and let us exchange a few words, in your presence! Dear uncle! send me a kind note tomorrow, and allow me to join you anywhere except at Thrushcross Grange. My father’s character is not mine: he says I am more your nephew than his son; and though I have faults which make me unworthy of Catherine, she has excused them. My health is better; but while I am cut off from hope, and doomed to solitude, how can I be cheerful and well?’
Edgar, though he felt for the boy, could not grant his request; because he could not accompany Catherine. He said, in summer, perhaps, they might meet: meantime, he sent him advice, and wished him to continue writing.
Linton obeyed. If he had been unrestrained, he would probably have spoiled all by filling his letters with complaints: but his father kept a sharp watch over him, and insisted on seeing every line; so he merely suggested that Mr. Linton must allow him an interview with Cathy soon.
At length my master agreed to their having a ride or a walk together once a week, under my guardianship, on the moors near the Grange. He was still declining in health. Though he had set aside money for my young lady’s fortune, he had a natural desire that she might return to Wuthering Heights, the house of her ancestors; and her only prospect of doing that was by marrying his heir. He had no idea that Linton was failing almost as fast as himself; nor had any one, I believe: no doctor visited the Heights.
I, for my part, began to think that Linton must be rallying, when he mentioned riding and walking on the moors. I could not picture a father treating a dying child as tyrannically and wickedly as I afterwards learned Heathcliff had treated him, to make him write so eagerly, when his greedy plans were threatened with defeat by death.
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights: Abridged Page 26
