Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (288 page)

I imagined, for a moment, that this piece of eloquence was addressed to me; and, sufficiently enraged, stepped towards the aged rascal with an intention of kicking him out of the door.  Mrs. Heathcliff, however, checked me by her answer.

‘You scandalous old hypocrite!’ she replied.  ‘Are you not afraid of being carried away bodily, whenever you mention the devil’s name?  I warn you to refrain from provoking me, or I’ll ask your abduction as a special favour!  Stop! look here, Joseph,’ she continued, taking a long, dark book from a shelf; ‘I’ll show you how far I’ve progressed in the Black Art: I shall soon be competent to make a clear house of it.  The red cow didn’t die by chance; and your rheumatism can hardly be reckoned among providential visitations!’

‘Oh, wicked, wicked!’ gasped the elder; ‘may the Lord deliver us from evil!’

‘No, reprobate! you are a castaway — be off, or I’ll hurt you seriously!  I’ll have you all modelled in wax and clay! and the first who passes the limits I fix shall — I’ll not say what he shall be done to — but, you’ll see!  Go, I’m looking at you!’

The little witch put a mock malignity into her beautiful eyes, and Joseph, trembling with sincere horror, hurried out, praying, and ejaculating ‘wicked’ as he went.  I thought her conduct must be prompted by a species of dreary fun; and, now that we were alone, I endeavoured to interest her in my distress.

‘Mrs. Heathcliff,’ I said earnestly, ‘you must excuse me for troubling you.  I presume, because, with that face, I’m sure you cannot help being good-hearted.  Do point out some landmarks by which I may know my way home: I have no more idea how to get there than you would have how to get to London!’

‘Take the road you came,’ she answered, ensconcing herself in a chair, with a candle, and the long book open before her.  ‘It is brief advice, but as sound as I can give.’

‘Then, if you hear of me being discovered dead in a bog or a pit full of snow, your conscience won’t whisper that it is partly your fault?’

‘How so?  I cannot escort you.  They wouldn’t let me go to the end of the garden wall.’

‘
You
!  I should be sorry to ask you to cross the threshold, for my convenience, on such a night,’ I cried.  ‘I want you to tell me my way, not to
show
it: or else to persuade Mr. Heathcliff to give me a guide.’

‘Who?  There is himself, Earnshaw, Zillah, Joseph and I.  Which would you have?’

‘Are there no boys at the farm?’

‘No; those are all.’

‘Then, it follows that I am compelled to stay.’

‘That you may settle with your host.  I have nothing to do with it.’

‘I hope it will be a lesson to you to make no more rash journeys on these hills,’ cried Heathcliff’s stern voice from the kitchen entrance.  ‘As to staying here, I don’t keep accommodations for visitors: you must share a bed with Hareton or Joseph, if you do.’

‘I can sleep on a chair in this room,’ I replied.

‘No, no!  A stranger is a stranger, be he rich or poor: it will not suit me to permit any one the range of the place while I am off guard!’ said the unmannerly wretch.

With this insult my patience was at an end.  I uttered an expression of disgust, and pushed past him into the yard, running against Earnshaw in my haste.  It was so dark that I could not see the means of exit; and, as I wandered round, I heard another specimen of their civil behaviour amongst each other.  At first the young man appeared about to befriend me.

‘I’ll go with him as far as the park,’ he said.

‘You’ll go with him to hell!’ exclaimed his master, or whatever relation he bore.  ‘And who is to look after the horses, eh?’

‘A man’s life is of more consequence than one evening’s neglect of the horses: somebody must go,’ murmured Mrs. Heathcliff, more kindly than I expected.

‘Not at your command!’ retorted Hareton.  ‘If you set store on him, you’d better be quiet.’

‘Then I hope his ghost will haunt you; and I hope Mr. Heathcliff will never get another tenant till the Grange is a ruin,’ she answered, sharply.

‘Hearken, hearken, shoo’s cursing on ’em!’ muttered Joseph, towards whom I had been steering.

He sat within earshot, milking the cows by the light of a lantern, which I seized unceremoniously, and, calling out that I would send it back on the morrow, rushed to the nearest postern.

‘Maister, maister, he’s staling t’ lanthern!’ shouted the ancient, pursuing my retreat.  ‘Hey, Gnasher!  Hey, dog!  Hey Wolf, holld him, holld him!’

On opening the little door, two hairy monsters flew at my throat, bearing me down, and extinguishing the light; while a mingled guffaw from Heathcliff and Hareton put the copestone on my rage and humiliation.  Fortunately, the beasts seemed more bent on stretching their paws, and yawning, and flourishing their tails, than devouring me alive; but they would suffer no resurrection, and I was forced to lie till their malignant masters pleased to deliver me: then, hatless and trembling with wrath, I ordered the miscreants to let me out — on their peril to keep me one minute longer — with several incoherent threats of retaliation that, in their indefinite depth of virulency, smacked of King Lear.

The vehemence of my agitation brought on a copious bleeding at the nose, and still Heathcliff laughed, and still I scolded.  I don’t know what would have concluded the scene, had there not been one person at hand rather more rational than myself, and more benevolent than my entertainer.  This was Zillah, the stout housewife; who at length issued forth to inquire into the nature of the uproar.  She thought that some of them had been laying violent hands on me; and, not daring to attack her master, she turned her vocal artillery against the younger scoundrel.

‘Well, Mr. Earnshaw,’ she cried, ‘I wonder what you’ll have agait next?  Are we going to murder folk on our very door-stones?  I see this house will never do for me — look at t’ poor lad, he’s fair choking!  Wisht, wisht; you mun’n’t go on so.  Come in, and I’ll cure that: there now, hold ye still.’

With these words she suddenly splashed a pint of icy water down my neck, and pulled me into the kitchen.  Mr. Heathcliff followed, his accidental merriment expiring quickly in his habitual moroseness.

I was sick exceedingly, and dizzy, and faint; and thus compelled perforce to accept lodgings under his roof.  He told Zillah to give me a glass of brandy, and then passed on to the inner room; while she condoled with me on my sorry predicament, and having obeyed his orders, whereby I was somewhat revived, ushered me to bed.

CHAPTER III

While leading the way upstairs, she recommended that I should 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 lodge there willingly.  I asked the reason.  She did not know, she answered: she had only lived there a year or two; and they had so many queer goings on, she could not begin to be curious.

Too stupefied to be curious myself, I fastened my door and glanced round for the bed.  The whole furniture consisted of a chair, a clothes-press, and a large oak case, with squares cut out near the top resembling coach windows.  Having approached this structure, I looked inside, and perceived it to be a singular sort of old-fashioned couch, very conveniently designed to obviate the necessity for every member of the family having a room to himself.  In fact, it formed a little closet, and the ledge of a window, which it enclosed, served as a table.  I slid back the panelled sides, got in with my light, pulled them together again, and felt secure against the vigilance of Heathcliff, and every one else.

The ledge, where I placed my candle, 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 characters, large and small —
Catherine Earnshaw
, here and there varied to
Catherine Heathcliff
, and then again to
Catherine Linton
.

In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the window, and continued spelling over Catherine Earnshaw — Heathcliff — Linton, till my eyes closed; but they had not rested five minutes when a glare of white letters started from the dark, as vivid as spectres — the air swarmed with Catherines; and rousing myself to dispel the obtrusive name, I discovered my candle-wick reclining on one of the antique volumes, and perfuming the place with an odour of roasted calf-skin.  I snuffed it off, and, very ill at ease under the influence of cold and lingering nausea, sat up and spread open the injured tome on my knee.  It was a Testament, in lean type, and 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 was select, and its state of dilapidation proved it to have been well used, though not altogether for a legitimate purpose: scarcely one chapter had escaped, a pen-and-ink commentary — at least the appearance of one — covering every morsel of blank that the printer had left.  Some were detached sentences; other parts took the form of a regular diary, scrawled in an unformed, childish hand.  At the top of an extra page (quite a treasure, probably, when first lighted on) I was greatly amused to behold an excellent caricature of my friend Joseph, — rudely, yet powerfully sketched.  An immediate interest kindled within me for the unknown Catherine, and I began forthwith to decipher her faded hieroglyphics.

‘An awful Sunday,’ commenced the paragraph beneath.  ‘I wish my father were back again.  Hindley is a detestable substitute — his conduct to Heathcliff is atrocious — H. and I are going to rebel — we took our initiatory step this evening.

‘All day had been flooding with rain; we could not go to church, so Joseph must needs get up a congregation in the garret; and, while Hindley and his wife basked downstairs before a comfortable fire — doing anything but reading their Bibles, I’ll answer for it — Heathcliff, myself, and the unhappy ploughboy were commanded to take our prayer-books, and mount: we were ranged in a row, on a sack of corn, groaning and shivering, and hoping that Joseph would shiver too, so that he might give us a short homily for his own sake.  A vain idea!  The service lasted precisely three hours; and yet my brother had the face to exclaim, when he saw us descending, “What, done already?”  On Sunday evenings we used to be permitted to play, if we did not make much noise; now a mere titter is sufficient to send us into corners.

‘“You forget you have a master here,” says the tyrant.  “I’ll demolish the first who puts me out of temper!  I insist on perfect sobriety and silence.  Oh, 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 seated herself on her husband’s knee, and there they were, like two babies, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour — foolish palaver that we should be ashamed of.  We made ourselves as snug as our means allowed in the arch of the dresser.  I had just fastened our pinafores together, and hung them up for a curtain, when in comes Joseph, on an errand from the stables.  He tears down my handiwork, boxes my ears, and croaks:

‘“T’ maister nobbut just buried, and Sabbath not o’ered, und t’ sound o’ t’ gospel still i’ yer lugs, and ye darr be laiking!  Shame on ye! sit ye down, ill childer! there’s good books eneugh if ye’ll read ’em: sit ye down, and think o’ yer sowls!”

‘Saying this, he compelled us so to square our positions that we might receive from the far-off fire a dull ray to show us the text of the lumber he thrust upon us.  I could not bear the employment.  I took my dingy volume by the scroop, and hurled it into the dog-kennel, vowing I hated a good book.  Heathcliff kicked his to the same place.  Then there was a hubbub!

‘“Maister Hindley!” shouted our chaplain.  “Maister, coom hither!  Miss Cathy’s riven th’ back off ‘Th’ Helmet o’ Salvation,’ un’ Heathcliff’s pawsed his fit into t’ first part o’ ‘T’ Brooad Way to Destruction!’  It’s fair flaysome that ye let ’em go on this gait.  Ech! th’ owd man wad ha’ laced ’em properly — but he’s goan!”

‘Hindley hurried up from his paradise on the hearth, and seizing one of us by the collar, and the other by the arm, hurled both into the back-kitchen; where, Joseph asseverated, “owd Nick” would fetch us as sure as we were living: and, so comforted, we each sought a separate nook to await his advent.  I reached this book, and a pot of ink from a shelf, and pushed the house-door ajar to give me light, and I have got the time on with writing for twenty minutes; but my companion is impatient, and proposes that we should appropriate the dairywoman’s cloak, and have a scamper on the moors, under its shelter.  A pleasant suggestion — and then, if the surly old man come in, he may believe his prophecy verified — we cannot be damper, or colder, in the rain than we are here.’

* * * * * *

I suppose Catherine fulfilled her project, for the next sentence took up another subject: she waxed lachrymose.

‘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; and still I can’t give over.  Poor Heathcliff!  Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won’t let him sit with us, nor eat with us any more; and, he says, he and I must not play together, and threatens to turn him out of the house if we break his orders.  He has been blaming our father (how dared he?) for treating H. too liberally; and swears he will reduce him to his right place — ’

* * * * * *

I began to nod drowsily over the dim page: my eye wandered from manuscript to print.  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, in the Chapel of Gimmerden Sough.’  And while I was, half-consciously, worrying my brain to guess what Jabez Branderham would make of his subject, I sank back in bed, and fell asleep.  Alas, for the effects of bad tea and bad temper!  What else could it be that made me pass such a terrible night?  I don’t remember another that I can at all compare with it since I was capable of suffering.

I began to dream, almost before I ceased to be sensible of my locality.  I thought it was morning; and I had set out on my way home, with Joseph for a guide.  The snow lay yards deep in our road; and, as we floundered on, my companion wearied me with constant reproaches that I had not brought a pilgrim’s staff: telling me that I could never get into the house without one, and boastfully flourishing a heavy-headed cudgel, which I understood to be so denominated.  For a moment I considered it absurd that I should need such a weapon to gain admittance into my own residence.  Then a new idea flashed across me.  I was not going there: we were journeying to hear the famous Jabez Branderham preach, from the text — ‘Seventy Times Seven;’ and either Joseph, the preacher, or I had committed the ‘First of the Seventy-First,’ and were to be publicly exposed and excommunicated.

We came to the chapel.  I have passed it really in my walks, twice or thrice; it lies in a hollow, between two hills: an elevated hollow, near a swamp, whose peaty moisture is said to answer all the purposes of embalming on the few corpses deposited there.  The roof has been kept whole hitherto; but as the clergyman’s stipend is only twenty pounds per annum, and a house with two rooms, threatening speedily to determine into one, no clergyman will undertake the duties of pastor: especially as it is currently reported that his flock would rather let him starve than increase the living by one penny from their own pockets.  However, in my dream, Jabez had a full and attentive congregation; and he preached — good God! what a sermon; divided into
four hundred and ninety
parts, each fully equal to an ordinary address from the pulpit, and each discussing a separate sin!  Where he searched for them, I cannot tell.  He had his private manner of interpreting the phrase, and it seemed necessary the brother should sin different sins on every occasion.  They were of the most curious character: odd transgressions that I never imagined previously.

Oh, how weary I grow.  How I writhed, and yawned, and nodded, and revived!  How I pinched and pricked myself, and rubbed my eyes, and stood up, and sat down again, and nudged Joseph to inform me if he would
ever
have done.  I was condemned to hear all out: finally, he reached the ‘
First of the Seventy-First
.’  At that crisis, a sudden inspiration descended on me; I was moved to rise and denounce Jabez Branderham as the sinner of the sin that no Christian need pardon.

‘Sir,’ I exclaimed, ‘sitting here within these four walls, at one stretch, I have endured and forgiven the four hundred and ninety heads of your discourse.  Seventy times seven times have I plucked up my hat and been about to depart — Seventy times seven times have you preposterously forced me to resume my seat.  The four hundred and ninety-first is too much.  Fellow-martyrs, have at him!  Drag him down, and crush him to atoms, that the place which knows him may know him no more!’

‘
Thou art the Man
!’ cried Jabez, after a solemn pause, leaning over his cushion.  ‘Seventy times seven times didst thou gapingly contort thy visage — seventy times seven did I take counsel with my soul — Lo, this is human weakness: this also may be absolved!  The First of the Seventy-First is come.  Brethren, execute upon him the judgment written.  Such honour have all His saints!’

With that concluding word, the whole assembly, exalting their pilgrim’s staves, rushed round me in a body; and I, having no weapon to raise in self-defence, commenced grappling with Joseph, my nearest and most ferocious assailant, for his.  In the confluence of the multitude, several clubs crossed; blows, aimed at me, fell on other sconces.  Presently the whole chapel resounded with rappings and counter rappings: every man’s hand was against his neighbour; and Branderham, unwilling to remain idle, poured forth his zeal in a shower of loud taps on the boards of the pulpit, which responded so smartly that, at last, to my unspeakable relief, they woke me.  And what was it that had suggested the tremendous tumult?  What had played Jabez’s part in the row?  Merely the branch of a fir-tree that touched my lattice as the blast wailed by, and rattled its dry cones against the panes!  I listened doubtingly an instant; detected the disturber, 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 repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause: but it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to silence it, if possible; and, I thought, I rose and endeavoured to unhasp the casement.  The hook was soldered into the staple: a circumstance observed by me when awake, but forgotten.  ‘I must stop it, nevertheless!’ I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate 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, meanwhile, to disengage 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 it useless to attempt shaking 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 maintained its tenacious gripe, almost maddening me with fear.  ‘How can I!’ I said at length.  ‘Let
me
go, if you want me to let you in!’  The fingers relaxed, I snatched mine through the hole, hurriedly piled the books up in a pyramid against it, and stopped my ears to exclude 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: ‘twenty years.  I’ve been a waif for twenty years!’  Thereat began a feeble scratching outside, and the pile of books moved as if thrust forward.  I tried to jump up; but could not stir a limb; and so yelled aloud, in a frenzy of fright.  To my confusion, I discovered the yell was not ideal: hasty footsteps approached my chamber door; somebody pushed it open, with a vigorous hand, and a light glimmered through the squares at the top of the bed.  I sat shuddering yet, and wiping the perspiration from my forehead: the intruder appeared to hesitate, and muttered to himself.  At last, he said, in a half-whisper, plainly not expecting an answer, ‘Is any one here?’  I considered it best to confess my presence; for I knew Heathcliff’s accents, and feared he might search further, if I kept quiet.  With this intention, I turned and opened the panels.  I shall not soon forget the effect my action produced.