Another week over—and I am so many days nearer health, and spring!I have now heard all my neighbour’s history, at different sittings,as the housekeeper could spare time from more important occupations.I’ll continue it in her own words, only a little condensed. She is, on the whole,a very fair narrator, and I don’t think I could improve her style.
* * * * *
In the evening, she said, the evening of my visit to the Heights, I knew, as well as if I saw him,that Mr. Heathcliff was about the place; and I shunned going out,because I still carried his letter in my pocket,and didn’t want to be threatened or teased any more.I had made up my mind not to give it till my master went somewhere,as I could not guess how its receipt would affect Catherine. The consequence was,that it did not reach her before the lapse of three days. The fourth was Sunday,and I brought it into her room after the family were gone to church.There was a man servant left to keep the house with me,and we generally made a practice of locking the doors during the hours of service;but on that occasion the weather was so warm and pleasant that I set them wide open, and,to fulfil my engagement, as I knew who would be coming,I told my companion that the mistress wished very much for some oranges,and he must run over to the village and get a few, to be paid for on the morrow. He departed, and I went upstairs.
Mrs. Linton sat in a loose white dress, with a light shawl over her shoulders,in the recess of the open window, as usual. Her thick,long hair had been partly removed at the beginning of her illness,and now she wore it simply combed in its natural tresses over her temples and neck.Her appearance was altered, as I had told Heathcliff; but when she was calm,there seemed unearthly beauty in the change.The flash of her eyes had been succeeded by a dreamy and melancholy softness;they no longer gave the impression of looking at the objects around her:they appeared always to gaze beyond, and far beyond—you would have said out of this world. Then,the paleness of her face—its haggard aspect having vanished as she recovered flesh—and the peculiar expression arising from her mental state,though painfully suggestive of their causes, added to the touching interest which she awakened;and—invariably to me, I know, and to any person who saw her,I should think—refuted more tangible proofs of convalescence, and stamped her as one doomed to decay.
A book lay spread on the sill before her,and the scarcely perceptible wind fluttered its leaves at intervals.I believe Linton had laid it there: for she never endeavoured to divert herself with reading,or occupation of any kind, and he would spend many an hour in trying to entice her attention to some subject which had formerly been her amusement.She was conscious of his aim, and in her better moods endured his efforts placidly,only showing their uselessness by now and then suppressing a wearied sigh,and checking him at last with the saddest of smiles and kisses. At other times,she would turn petulantly away, and hide her face in her hands, or even push him off angrily;and then he took care to let her alone, for he was certain of doing no good.
Gimmerton chapel bells were still ringing; and the full,mellow flow of the beck in the valley came soothingly on the ear.It was a sweet substitute for the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage,which drowned that music about the Grange when the trees were in leaf.At Wuthering Heights it always sounded on quiet days following a great thaw or a season of steady rain.And of Wuthering Heights Catherine was thinking as she listened: that is,if she thought or listened at all; but she had the vague, distant look I mentioned before,which expressed no recognition of material things either by ear or eye.
“There’s a letter for you, Mrs. Linton,” I said,gently inserting it in one hand that rested on her knee. “You must read it immediately,because it wants an answer. Shall I break the seal?” “Yes,” she answered, without altering the direction of her eyes. I opened it—it was very short.“Now,” I continued, “read it.” She drew away her hand, and let it fall. I replaced it in her lap,and stood waiting till it should please her to glance down;but that movement was so long delayed that at last I resumed—“Must I read it, ma’am?It is from Mr. Heathcliff.”
There was a start and a troubled gleam of recollection, and a struggle to arrange her ideas.She lifted the letter, and seemed to peruse it; and when she came to the signature she sighed:yet still I found she had not gathered its import, for, upon my desiring to hear her reply,she merely pointed to the name, and gazed at me with mournful and questioning eagerness.
“Well, he wishes to see you,” said I, guessing her need of an interpreter.“He’s in the garden by this time, and impatient to know what answer I shall bring.”
As I spoke, I observed a large dog lying on the sunny grass beneath raise its ears as if about to bark,and then smoothing them back, announce, by a wag of the tail,that some one approached whom it did not consider a stranger. Mrs. Linton bent forward,and listened breathlessly. The minute after a step traversed the hall;the open house was too tempting for Heathcliff to resist walking in:most likely he supposed that I was inclined to shirk my promise,and so resolved to trust to his own audacity.With straining eagerness Catherine gazed towards the entrance of her chamber.He did not hit the right room directly: she motioned me to admit him,but he found it out ere I could reach the door, and in a stride or two was at her side, and had her grasped in his arms.
He neither spoke nor loosed his hold for some five minutes,during which period he bestowed more kisses than ever he gave in his life before, I daresay:but then my mistress had kissed him first, and I plainly saw that he could hardly bear,for downright agony, to look into her face!The same conviction had stricken him as me, from the instant he beheld her,that there was no prospect of ultimate recovery there—she was fated, sure to die.
“Oh, Cathy!Oh, my life!how can I bear it?” was the first sentence he uttered, in a tone that did not seek to disguise his despair.And now he stared at her so earnestly that I thought the very intensity of his gaze would bring tears into his eyes;but they burned with anguish: they did not melt.
“What now?” said Catherine, leaning back, and returning his look with a suddenly clouded brow:her humour was a mere vane for constantly varying caprices. “You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff!And you both come to bewail the deed to me, as if you were the people to be pitied!I shall not pity you, not I. You have killed me—and thriven on it, I think. How strong you are!How many years do you mean to live after I am gone?”
Heathcliff had knelt on one knee to embrace her; he attempted to rise, but she seized his hair, and kept him down.
“I wish I could hold you,” she continued, bitterly, “till we were both dead!I shouldn’t care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn’t you suffer?I do!Will you forget me?Will you be happy when I am in the earth?Will you say twenty years hence, ‘That’s the grave of Catherine Earnshaw?I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I’ve loved many others since:my children are dearer to me than she was; and, at death,I shall not rejoice that I am going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them!’ Will you say so, Heathcliff?”
“Don’t torture me till I’m as mad as yourself,” cried he, wrenching his head free, and grinding his teeth.
The two, to a cool spectator, made a strange and fearful picture.Well might Catherine deem that heaven would be a land of exile to her,unless with her mortal body she cast away her moral character also.Her present countenance had a wild vindictiveness in its white cheek,and a bloodless lip and scintillating eye;and she retained in her closed fingers a portion of the locks she had been grasping.As to her companion, while raising himself with one hand, he had taken her arm with the other;and so inadequate was his stock of gentleness to the requirements of her condition,that on his letting go I saw four distinct impressions left blue in the colourless skin.
“Are you possessed with a devil,” he pursued, savagely,“to talk in that manner to me when you are dying?Do you reflect that all those words will be branded in my memory,and eating deeper eternally after you have left me?You know you lie to say I have killed you: and, Catherine,you know that I could as soon forget you as my existence!Is it not sufficient for your infernal selfishness,that while you are at peace I shall writhe in the torments of hell?”
“I shall not be at peace,” moaned Catherine,recalled to a sense of physical weakness by the violent, unequal throbbing of her heart,which beat visibly and audibly under this excess of agitation.She said nothing further till the paroxysm was over; then she continued, more kindly—
“I’m not wishing you greater torment than I have, Heathcliff. I only wish us never to be parted:and should a word of mine distress you hereafter, think I feel the same distress underground, and for my own sake, forgive me!Come here and kneel down again!You never harmed me in your life. Nay, if you nurse anger,that will be worse to remember than my harsh words!Won’t you come here again?Do!”
Heathcliff went to the back of her chair, and leant over, but not so far as to let her see his face,which was livid with emotion. She bent round to look at him; he would not permit it:turning abruptly, he walked to the fireplace, where he stood, silent, with his back towards us.Mrs. Linton’s glance followed him suspiciously: every movement woke a new sentiment in her.After a pause and a prolonged gaze, she resumed;addressing me in accents of indignant disappointment:—
“Oh, you see, Nelly, he would not relent a moment to keep me out of the grave. _That_ is how I’m loved!Well, never mind. That is not _my_ Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me:he’s in my soul. And,” added she musingly, “the thing that irks me most is this shattered prison,after all. I’m tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world,and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears,and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it. Nelly,you think you are better and more fortunate than I; in full health and strength:you are sorry for me—very soon that will be altered. I shall be sorry for _you_.I shall be incomparably beyond and above you all. I _wonder_ he won’t be near me!” She went on to herself. “I thought he wished it. Heathcliff, dear!you should not be sullen now. Do come to me, Heathcliff.”
In her eagerness she rose and supported herself on the arm of the chair.At that earnest appeal he turned to her, looking absolutely desperate. His eyes, wide and wet,at last flashed fiercely on her; his breast heaved convulsively. An instant they held asunder,and then how they met I hardly saw, but Catherine made a spring, and he caught her,and they were locked in an embrace from which I thought my mistress would never be released alive:in fact, to my eyes, she seemed directly insensible. He flung himself into the nearest seat,and on my approaching hurriedly to ascertain if she had fainted, he gnashed at me,and foamed like a mad dog, and gathered her to him with greedy jealousy.I did not feel as if I were in the company of a creature of my own species:it appeared that he would not understand, though I spoke to him; so I stood off,and held my tongue, in great perplexity.
A movement of Catherine’s relieved me a little presently: she put up her hand to clasp his neck,and bring her cheek to his as he held her; while he, in return, covering her with frantic caresses, said wildly—
“You teach me now how cruel you’ve been—cruel and false. _Why_ did you despise me?_Why_ did you betray your own heart, Cathy?I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me,and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they’ll blight you—they’ll damn you.You loved me—then what _right_ had you to leave me?What right—answer me—for the poor fancy you felt for Linton?Because misery and degradation, and death,and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, _you_, of your own will, did it.I have not broken your heart—_you_ have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live?What kind of living will it be when you—oh, God!would _you_ like to live with your soul in the grave?”
“Let me alone. Let me alone,” sobbed Catherine. “If I’ve done wrong, I’m dying for it. It is enough!You left me too: but I won’t upbraid you!I forgive you. Forgive me!”
“It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands,” he answered.“Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes!I forgive what you have done to me. I love _my_ murderer—but _yours_!How can I?”
They were silent—their faces hid against each other, and washed by each other’s tears. At least,I suppose the weeping was on both sides;as it seemed Heathcliff _could_ weep on a great occasion like this.
I grew very uncomfortable, meanwhile; for the afternoon wore fast away,the man whom I had sent off returned from his errand, and I could distinguish,by the shine of the western sun up the valley,a concourse thickening outside Gimmerton chapel porch.
“Service is over,” I announced. “My master will be here in half an hour.”
Heathcliff groaned a curse, and strained Catherine closer: she never moved.
Ere long I perceived a group of the servants passing up the road towards the kitchen wing. Mr.Linton was not far behind; he opened the gate himself and sauntered slowly up,probably enjoying the lovely afternoon that breathed as soft as summer.
“Now he is here,” I exclaimed. “For heaven’s sake, hurry down!You’ll not meet any one on the front stairs. Do be quick;and stay among the trees till he is fairly in.”
“I must go, Cathy,” said Heathcliff, seeking to extricate himself from his companion’s arms.“But if I live, I’ll see you again before you are asleep.I won’t stray five yards from your window.”
“You must not go!” she answered, holding him as firmly as her strength allowed. “You _shall_ not, I tell you.”
“For one hour,” he pleaded earnestly.
“Not for one minute,” she replied.
“I _must_—Linton will be up immediately,” persisted the alarmed intruder.
He would have risen, and unfixed her fingers by the act—she clung fast, gasping: there was mad resolution in her face.
“No!” she shrieked. “Oh, don’t, don’t go. It is the last time!Edgar will not hurt us. Heathcliff, I shall die!I shall die!”
“Damn the fool!There he is,” cried Heathcliff, sinking back into his seat. “Hush, my darling!Hush, hush, Catherine!I’ll stay. If he shot me so, I’d expire with a blessing on my lips.”
And there they were fast again. I heard my master mounting the stairs—the cold sweat ran from my forehead: I was horrified.
“Are you going to listen to her ravings?” I said, passionately. “She does not know what she says. Will you ruin her,because she has not wit to help herself?Get up!You could be free instantly. That is the most diabolical deed that ever you did.We are all done for—master, mistress, and servant.”
I wrung my hands, and cried out; and Mr. Linton hastened his step at the noise.In the midst of my agitation, I was sincerely glad to observe that Catherine’s arms had fallen relaxed, and her head hung down.
“She’s fainted, or dead,” I thought: “so much the better. Far better that she should be dead,than lingering a burden and a misery-maker to all about her.”
Edgar sprang to his unbidden guest, blanched with astonishment and rage.What he meant to do I cannot tell; however, the other stopped all demonstrations, at once,by placing the lifeless-looking form in his arms.
“Look there!” he said. “Unless you be a fiend, help her first—then you shall speak to me!”
He walked into the parlour, and sat down. Mr. Linton summoned me, and with great difficulty,and after resorting to many means, we managed to restore her to sensation;but she was all bewildered; she sighed, and moaned, and knew nobody. Edgar, in his anxiety for her,forgot her hated friend. I did not. I went, at the earliest opportunity,and besought him to depart; affirming that Catherine was better,and he should hear from me in the morning how she passed the night.
“I shall not refuse to go out of doors,” he answered; “but I shall stay in the garden: and, Nelly,mind you keep your word to-morrow. I shall be under those larch-trees. Mind!or I pay another visit, whether Linton be in or not.”
He sent a rapid glance through the half-open door of the chamber, and,ascertaining that what I stated was apparently true, delivered the house of his luckless presence.
CHAPTER XVI
About twelve o’clock that night was born the Catherine you saw at Wuthering Heights: a puny,seven-months’ child; and two hours after the mother died,having never recovered sufficient consciousness to miss Heathcliff, or know Edgar.The latter’s distraction at his bereavement is a subject too painful to be dwelt on;its after-effects showed how deep the sorrow sunk. A great addition, in my eyes,was his being left without an heir. I bemoaned that, as I gazed on the feeble orphan;and I mentally abused old Linton for (what was only natural partiality) the securing his estate to his own daughter,instead of his son’s. An unwelcomed infant it was, poor thing!It might have wailed out of life, and nobody cared a morsel, during those first hours of existence.We redeemed the neglect afterwards; but its beginning was as friendless as its end is likely to be.
Next morning—bright and cheerful out of doors—stole softened in through the blinds of the silent room,and suffused the couch and its occupant with a mellow, tender glow.Edgar Linton had his head laid on the pillow, and his eyes shut.His young and fair features were almost as deathlike as those of the form beside him,and almost as fixed: but _his_ was the hush of exhausted anguish, and _hers_ of perfect peace.Her brow smooth, her lids closed, her lips wearing the expression of a smile;no angel in heaven could be more beautiful than she appeared.And I partook of the infinite calm in which she lay:my mind was never in a holier frame than while I gazed on that untroubled image of Divine rest.I instinctively echoed the words she had uttered a few hours before: “Incomparably beyond and above us all!Whether still on earth or now in heaven, her spirit is at home with God!”
I don’t know if it be a peculiarity in me,but I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death,should no frenzied or despairing mourner share the duty with me.I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break,and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter—the Eternity they have entered—where life is boundless in its duration,and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fulness.I noticed on that occasion how much selfishness there is even in a love like Mr. Linton’s,when he so regretted Catherine’s blessed release!To be sure, one might have doubted, after the wayward and impatient existence she had led,whether she merited a haven of peace at last. One might doubt in seasons of cold reflection;but not then, in the presence of her corpse. It asserted its own tranquillity,which seemed a pledge of equal quiet to its former inhabitant.
Do you believe such people _are_ happy in the other world, sir?I’d give a great deal to know.
I declined answering Mrs. Dean’s question, which struck me as something heterodox. She proceeded:
Retracing the course of Catherine Linton, I fear we have no right to think she is; but we’ll leave her with her Maker.
The master looked asleep, and I ventured soon after sunrise to quit the room and steal out to the pure refreshing air.The servants thought me gone to shake off the drowsiness of my protracted watch; in reality,my chief motive was seeing Mr. Heathcliff. If he had remained among the larches all night,he would have heard nothing of the stir at the Grange; unless, perhaps,he might catch the gallop of the messenger going to Gimmerton. If he had come nearer,he would probably be aware, from the lights flitting to and fro,and the opening and shutting of the outer doors, that all was not right within. I wished,yet feared, to find him. I felt the terrible news must be told, and I longed to get it over;but _how_ to do it I did not know. He was there—at least, a few yards further in the park;leant against an old ash-tree, his hat off,and his hair soaked with the dew that had gathered on the budded branches,and fell pattering round him. He had been standing a long time in that position,for I saw a pair of ousels passing and repassing scarcely three feet from him,busy in building their nest, and regarding his proximity no more than that of a piece of timber.They flew off at my approach, and he raised his eyes and spoke:—“She’s dead!” he said; “I’ve not waited for you to learn that.Put your handkerchief away—don’t snivel before me. Damn you all!she wants none of _your_ tears!”
I was weeping as much for him as her: we do sometimes pity creatures that have none of the feeling either for themselves or others.When I first looked into his face, I perceived that he had got intelligence of the catastrophe;and a foolish notion struck me that his heart was quelled and he prayed,because his lips moved and his gaze was bent on the ground.
“Yes, she’s dead!” I answered, checking my sobs and drying my cheeks. “Gone to heaven, I hope; where we may,every one, join her, if we take due warning and leave our evil ways to follow good!”
“Did _she_ take due warning, then?” asked Heathcliff, attempting a sneer. “Did she die like a saint?Come, give me a true history of the event. How did—?”
He endeavoured to pronounce the name, but could not manage it;and compressing his mouth he held a silent combat with his inward agony, defying, meanwhile,my sympathy with an unflinching, ferocious stare. “How did she die?” he resumed, at last—fain, notwithstanding his hardihood, to have a support behind him; for,after the struggle, he trembled, in spite of himself, to his very finger-ends.
“Poor wretch!” I thought; “you have a heart and nerves the same as your brother men!Why should you be anxious to conceal them?Your pride cannot blind God!You tempt him to wring them, till he forces a cry of humiliation.”
“Quietly as a lamb!” I answered, aloud. “She drew a sigh, and stretched herself, like a child reviving,and sinking again to sleep; and five minutes after I felt one little pulse at her heart, and nothing more!”
“And—did she ever mention me?” he asked, hesitating, as if he dreaded the answer to his question would introduce details that he could not bear to hear.
“Her senses never returned: she recognised nobody from the time you left her,” I said.“She lies with a sweet smile on her face;and her latest ideas wandered back to pleasant early days.Her life closed in a gentle dream—may she wake as kindly in the other world!”
“May she wake in torment!” he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot,and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. “Why, she’s a liar to the end!Where is she?Not _there_—not in heaven—not perished—where?Oh!you said you cared nothing for my sufferings!And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw,may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then!The murdered _do_ haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts _have_ wandered on earth.Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad!only _do_ not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!Oh, God!it is unutterable!I _cannot_ live without my life!I _cannot_ live without my soul!”
He dashed his head against the knotted trunk; and, lifting up his eyes, howled, not like a man,but like a savage beast being goaded to death with knives and spears.I observed several splashes of blood about the bark of the tree,and his hand and forehead were both stained;probably the scene I witnessed was a repetition of others acted during the night.It hardly moved my compassion—it appalled me: still, I felt reluctant to quit him so.But the moment he recollected himself enough to notice me watching,he thundered a command for me to go, and I obeyed. He was beyond my skill to quiet or console!
Mrs. Linton’s funeral was appointed to take place on the Friday following her decease;and till then her coffin remained uncovered, and strewn with flowers and scented leaves,in the great drawing-room. Linton spent his days and nights there, a sleepless guardian;and—a circumstance concealed from all but me—Heathcliff spent his nights, at least, outside,equally a stranger to repose. I held no communication with him; still,I was conscious of his design to enter, if he could; and on the Tuesday, a little after dark,when my master, from sheer fatigue, had been compelled to retire a couple of hours,I went and opened one of the windows; moved by his perseverance to give him a chance of bestowing on the faded image of his idol one final adieu.He did not omit to avail himself of the opportunity, cautiously and briefly;too cautiously to betray his presence by the slightest noise. Indeed,I shouldn’t have discovered that he had been there,except for the disarrangement of the drapery about the corpse’s face,and for observing on the floor a curl of light hair, fastened with a silver thread; which,on examination, I ascertained to have been taken from a locket hung round Catherine’s neck.Heathcliff had opened the trinket and cast out its contents,replacing them by a black lock of his own. I twisted the two, and enclosed them together.
Mr. Earnshaw was, of course, invited to attend the remains of his sister to the grave;he sent no excuse, but he never came; so that, besides her husband,the mourners were wholly composed of tenants and servants. Isabella was not asked.
The place of Catherine’s interment, to the surprise of the villagers,was neither in the chapel under the carved monument of the Lintons,nor yet by the tombs of her own relations, outside.It was dug on a green slope in a corner of the kirkyard,where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry-plants have climbed over it from the moor;and peat-mould almost buries it. Her husband lies in the same spot now;and they have each a simple headstone above, and a plain grey block at their feet, to mark the graves.
CHAPTER XVII
That Friday made the last of our fine days for a month. In the evening the weather broke:the wind shifted from south to north-east, and brought rain first, and then sleet and snow.On the morrow one could hardly imagine that there had been three weeks of summer:the primroses and crocuses were hidden under wintry drifts; the larks were silent,the young leaves of the early trees smitten and blackened. And dreary, and chill, and dismal, that morrow did creep over!My master kept his room; I took possession of the lonely parlour, converting it into a nursery:and there I was, sitting with the moaning doll of a child laid on my knee; rocking it to and fro,and watching, meanwhile, the still driving flakes build up the uncurtained window,when the door opened, and some person entered, out of breath and laughing!My anger was greater than my astonishment for a minute. I supposed it one of the maids, and I cried—“Have done!How dare you show your giddiness here?What would Mr. Linton say if he heard you?”
“Excuse me!” answered a familiar voice; “but I know Edgar is in bed, and I cannot stop myself.”
With that the speaker came forward to the fire, panting and holding her hand to her side.
“I have run the whole way from Wuthering Heights!” she continued, after a pause; “except where I’ve flown.I couldn’t count the number of falls I’ve had. Oh, I’m aching all over!Don’t be alarmed!There shall be an explanation as soon as I can give it;only just have the goodness to step out and order the carriage to take me on to Gimmerton,and tell a servant to seek up a few clothes in my wardrobe.”
The intruder was Mrs. Heathcliff. She certainly seemed in no laughing predicament:her hair streamed on her shoulders, dripping with snow and water;she was dressed in the girlish dress she commonly wore, befitting her age more than her position:a low frock with short sleeves, and nothing on either head or neck. The frock was of light silk,and clung to her with wet, and her feet were protected merely by thin slippers;add to this a deep cut under one ear, which only the cold prevented from bleeding profusely,a white face scratched and bruised, and a frame hardly able to support itself through fatigue;and you may fancy my first fright was not much allayed when I had had leisure to examine her.
“My dear young lady,” I exclaimed, “I’ll stir nowhere, and hear nothing,till you have removed every article of your clothes, and put on dry things;and certainly you shall not go to Gimmerton to-night, so it is needless to order the carriage.”
“Certainly I shall,” she said; “walking or riding: yet I’ve no objection to dress myself decently.And—ah, see how it flows down my neck now!The fire does make it smart.”
She insisted on my fulfilling her directions, before she would let me touch her;and not till after the coachman had been instructed to get ready,and a maid set to pack up some necessary attire,did I obtain her consent for binding the wound and helping to change her garments.