Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (290 page)

Heathcliff had gone to loose the beast, and shift it to his own stall; he was passing behind it, when Hindley finished his speech by knocking him under its feet, and without stopping to examine whether his hopes were fulfilled, ran away as fast as he could.  I was surprised to witness how coolly the child gathered himself up, and went on with his intention; exchanging saddles and all, and then sitting down on a bundle of hay to overcome the qualm which the violent blow occasioned, before he entered the house.  I persuaded him easily to let me lay the blame of his bruises on the horse: he minded little what tale was told since he had what he wanted.  He complained so seldom, indeed, of such stirs as these, that I really thought him not vindictive: I was deceived completely, as you will hear.

CHAPTER V

In the course of time Mr. Earnshaw began to fail.  He had been active and healthy, yet his strength left him suddenly; and when he was confined to the chimney-corner he grew grievously irritable.  A nothing vexed him; and suspected slights of his authority nearly threw him into fits.  This was especially to be remarked if any one attempted to impose upon, or domineer over, his favourite: he was painfully jealous lest a word should be spoken amiss to him; seeming to have got into his head the notion that, because he liked Heathcliff, all hated, and longed to do him an ill-turn.  It was a disadvantage to the lad; for the kinder among us did not wish to fret the master, so we humoured his partiality; and that humouring was rich nourishment to the child’s pride and black tempers.  Still it became in a manner necessary; twice, or thrice, Hindley’s manifestation of scorn, while his father was near, roused the old man to a fury: he seized his stick to strike him, and shook with rage that he could not do it.

At last, our curate (we had a curate then who made the living answer by teaching the little Lintons and Earnshaws, and farming his bit of land himself) advised that the young man should be sent to college; and Mr. Earnshaw agreed, though with a heavy spirit, for he said — ‘Hindley was nought, and would never thrive as where he wandered.’

I hoped heartily we should have peace now.  It hurt me to think the master should be made uncomfortable by his own good deed.  I fancied the discontent of age and disease arose from his family disagreements; as he would have it that it did: really, you know, sir, it was in his sinking frame.  We might have got on tolerably, notwithstanding, but for two people — Miss Cathy, and Joseph, the servant: you saw him, I daresay, up yonder.  He was, and is yet most likely, the wearisomest self-righteous Pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake the promises to himself and fling the curses to his neighbours.  By his knack of sermonising and pious discoursing, he contrived to make a great impression on Mr. Earnshaw; and the more feeble the master became, the more influence he gained.  He was relentless in worrying him about his soul’s concerns, and about ruling his children rigidly.  He encouraged him to regard Hindley as a reprobate; and, night after night, he regularly grumbled out a long string of tales against Heathcliff and Catherine: always minding to flatter Earnshaw’s weakness by heaping the heaviest blame on the latter.

Certainly she had ways with her such as I never saw a child take up before; and she put all of us past our patience fifty times and oftener in a day: from the hour she came down-stairs till the hour she went to bed, we had not a minute’s security that she wouldn’t be in mischief.  Her spirits were always at high-water mark, her tongue always going — singing, laughing, and plaguing everybody who would not do the same.  A wild, wicked slip she was — but she had the bonniest eye, the sweetest smile, and lightest foot in the parish: and, after all, I believe she meant no harm; for when once she made you cry in good earnest, it seldom happened that she would not keep you company, and oblige you to be quiet that you might comfort her.  She was much too fond of Heathcliff.  The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him: yet she got chided more than any of us on his account.  In play, she liked exceedingly to act the little mistress; using her hands freely, and commanding her companions: she did so to me, but I would not bear slapping and ordering; and so I let her know.

Now, Mr. Earnshaw did not understand jokes from his children: he had always been strict and grave with them; and Catherine, on her part, had no idea why her father should be crosser and less patient in his ailing condition than he was in his prime.  His peevish reproofs wakened in her a naughty delight to provoke him: she was never so happy as when we were all scolding her at once, and she defying us with her bold, saucy look, and her ready words; turning Joseph’s religious curses into ridicule, baiting me, and doing just what her father hated most — showing how her pretended insolence, which he thought real, had more power over Heathcliff than his kindness: how the boy would do
her
bidding in anything, and
his
only when it suited his own inclination.  After behaving as badly as possible all day, she sometimes came fondling to make it up at night.  ‘Nay, Cathy,’ the old man would say, ‘I cannot love thee, thou’rt worse than thy brother.  Go, say thy prayers, child, and ask God’s pardon.  I doubt thy mother and I must rue that we ever reared thee!’  That made her cry, at first; and then being repulsed continually hardened her, and she laughed if I told her to say she was sorry for her faults, and beg to be forgiven.

But the hour came, at last, that ended Mr. Earnshaw’s troubles on earth.  He died quietly in his chair one October evening, seated by the fire-side.  A high wind blustered round the house, and roared in the chimney: it sounded wild and stormy, yet it was not cold, and we were all together — I, a little removed from the hearth, busy at my knitting, and Joseph reading his Bible near the table (for the servants generally sat in the house then, after their work was done).  Miss Cathy had been sick, and that made her still; she leant against her father’s knee, and Heathcliff was lying on the floor with his head in her lap.  I remember the master, before he fell into a doze, stroking her bonny hair — it pleased him rarely to see her gentle — and saying, ‘Why canst thou not always be a good lass, Cathy?’  And she turned her face up to his, and laughed, and answered, ‘Why cannot you always be a good man, father?’  But as soon as she saw him vexed again, she kissed his hand, and said she would sing him to sleep.  She began singing very low, till his fingers dropped from hers, and his head sank on his breast.  Then I told her to hush, and not stir, for fear she should wake him.  We all kept as mute as mice a full half-hour, and should have done so longer, only Joseph, having finished his chapter, got up and said that he must rouse the master for prayers and bed.  He stepped forward, and called him by name, and touched his shoulder; but he would not move: so he took the candle and looked at him.  I thought there was something wrong as he set down the light; and seizing the children each by an arm, whispered them to ‘frame up-stairs, and make little din — they might pray alone that evening — he had summut to do.’

‘I shall bid father good-night first,’ said Catherine, putting her arms round his neck, before we could hinder her.  The poor thing discovered her loss directly — she screamed out — ‘Oh, he’s dead, Heathcliff! he’s dead!’  And they both set up a heart-breaking cry.

I joined my wail to theirs, loud and bitter; but Joseph asked what we could be thinking of to roar in that way over a saint in heaven.  He told me to put on my cloak and run to Gimmerton for the doctor and the parson.  I could not guess the use that either would be of, then.  However, I went, through wind and rain, and brought one, the doctor, back with me; the other said he would come in the morning.  Leaving Joseph to explain matters, I ran to the children’s room: their door was ajar, I saw they had never lain down, though it was past midnight; but they were calmer, and did not need me to console them.  The little souls were comforting each other with better thoughts than I could have hit on: no parson in the world ever pictured heaven so beautifully as they did, in their innocent talk; and, while I sobbed and listened, I could not help wishing we were all there safe together.

CHAPTER VI

Mr. Hindley came home to the funeral; and — a thing that amazed us, and set the neighbours gossiping right and left — he brought a wife with him.  What she was, and where she was born, he never informed us: probably, she had neither money nor name to recommend her, or he would scarcely have kept the union from his father.

She was not one that would have disturbed the house much on her own account.  Every object she saw, the moment she crossed the threshold, appeared to delight her; and every circumstance that took place about her: except the preparing for the burial, and the presence of the mourners.  I thought she was half silly, from her behaviour while that went on: she ran into her chamber, and made me come with her, though I should have been dressing the children: and there she sat shivering and clasping her hands, and asking repeatedly — ‘Are they gone yet?’  Then she began describing with hysterical emotion the effect it produced on her to see black; and started, and trembled, and, at last, fell a-weeping — and when I asked what was the matter, answered, she didn’t know; but she felt so afraid of dying!  I imagined her as little likely to die as myself.  She was rather thin, but young, and fresh-complexioned, and her eyes sparkled as bright as diamonds.  I did remark, to be sure, that mounting the stairs made her breathe very quick; that the least sudden noise set her all in a quiver, and that she coughed troublesomely sometimes: but I knew nothing of what these symptoms portended, and had no impulse to sympathise with her.  We don’t in general take to foreigners here, Mr. Lockwood, unless they take to us first.

Young Earnshaw was altered considerably in the three years of his absence.  He had grown sparer, and lost his colour, and spoke and dressed quite differently; and, on the very day of his return, he told Joseph and me we must thenceforth quarter ourselves in the back-kitchen, and leave the house for him.  Indeed, he would have carpeted and papered a small spare room for a parlour; but his wife expressed such pleasure at the white floor and huge glowing fireplace, at the pewter dishes and delf-case, and dog-kennel, and the wide space there was to move about in where they usually sat, that he thought it unnecessary to her comfort, and so dropped the intention.

She expressed pleasure, too, at finding a sister among her new acquaintance; and she prattled to Catherine, and kissed her, and ran about with her, and gave her quantities of presents, at the beginning.  Her affection tired very soon, however, and when she grew peevish, Hindley became tyrannical.  A few words from her, evincing a dislike to Heathcliff, were enough to rouse in him all his old hatred of the boy.  He drove him from their company to the servants, deprived him of the instructions of the curate, and insisted that he should labour out of doors instead; compelling him to do so as hard as any other lad on the farm.

Heathcliff bore his degradation pretty well at first, because Cathy taught him what she learnt, and worked or played with him in the fields.  They both promised fair to grow up as rude as savages; the young master being entirely negligent how they behaved, and what they did, so they kept clear of him.  He would not even have seen after their going to church on Sundays, only Joseph and the curate reprimanded his carelessness when they absented themselves; and that reminded him to order Heathcliff a flogging, and Catherine a fast from dinner or supper.  But it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day, and the after punishment grew a mere thing to laugh at.  The curate might set as many chapters as he pleased for Catherine to get by heart, and Joseph might thrash Heathcliff till his arm ached; they forgot everything the minute they were together again: at least the minute they had contrived some naughty plan of revenge; and many a time I’ve cried to myself to watch them growing more reckless daily, and I not daring to speak a syllable, for fear of losing the small power I still retained over the unfriended creatures.  One Sunday evening, it chanced that they were banished from the sitting-room, for making a noise, or a light offence of the kind; and when I went to call them to supper, I could discover them nowhere.  We searched the house, above and below, and the yard and stables; they were invisible: and, at last, Hindley in a passion told us to bolt the doors, and swore nobody should let them in that night.  The household went to bed; and I, too, anxious to lie down, opened my lattice and put my head out to hearken, though it rained: determined to admit them in spite of the prohibition, should they return.  In a while, I distinguished steps coming up the road, and the light of a lantern glimmered through the gate.  I threw a shawl over my head and ran to prevent them from waking Mr. Earnshaw by knocking.  There was Heathcliff, by himself: it gave me a start to see him alone.

‘Where is Miss Catherine?’ I cried hurriedly.  ‘No accident, I hope?’  ‘At Thrushcross Grange,’ he answered; ‘and I would have been there too, but they had not the manners to ask me to stay.’  ‘Well, you will catch it!’ I said: ‘you’ll never be content till you’re sent about your business.  What in the world led you wandering to Thrushcross Grange?’  ‘Let me get off my wet clothes, and I’ll tell you all about it, Nelly,’ he replied.  I bid him beware of rousing the master, and while he undressed and I waited to put out the candle, he continued — ‘Cathy and I escaped from the wash-house to have a ramble at liberty, and getting a glimpse of the Grange lights, we thought we would just go and see whether the Lintons passed their Sunday evenings standing shivering in corners, while their father and mother sat eating and drinking, and singing and laughing, and burning their eyes out before the fire.  Do you think they do?  Or reading sermons, and being catechised by their manservant, and set to learn a column of Scripture names, if they don’t answer properly?’  ‘Probably not,’ I responded.  ‘They are good children, no doubt, and don’t deserve the treatment you receive, for your bad conduct.’  ‘Don’t cant, Nelly,’ he said: ‘nonsense!  We ran from the top of the Heights to the park, without stopping — Catherine completely beaten in the race, because she was barefoot.  You’ll have to seek for her shoes in the bog to-morrow.  We crept through a broken hedge, groped our way up the path, and planted ourselves on a flower-plot under the drawing-room window.  The light came from thence; they had not put up the shutters, and the curtains were only half closed.  Both of us were able to look in by standing on the basement, and clinging to the ledge, and we saw — ah! it was beautiful — a splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers.  Old Mr. and Mrs. Linton were not there; Edgar and his sisters had it entirely to themselves.  Shouldn’t they have been happy?  We should have thought ourselves in heaven!  And now, guess what your good children were doing?  Isabella — I believe she is eleven, a year younger than Cathy — lay screaming at the farther end of the room, shrieking as if witches were running red-hot needles into her.  Edgar stood on the hearth weeping silently, and in the middle of the table sat a little dog, shaking its paw and yelping; which, from their mutual accusations, we understood they had nearly pulled in two between them.  The idiots!  That was their pleasure! to quarrel who should hold a heap of warm hair, and each begin to cry because both, after struggling to get it, refused to take it.  We laughed outright at the petted things; we did despise them!  When would you catch me wishing to have what Catherine wanted? or find us by ourselves, seeking entertainment in yelling, and sobbing, and rolling on the ground, divided by the whole room?  I’d not exchange, for a thousand lives, my condition here, for Edgar Linton’s at Thrushcross Grange — not if I might have the privilege of flinging Joseph off the highest gable, and painting the house-front with Hindley’s blood!’

‘Hush, hush!’ I interrupted.  ‘Still you have not told me, Heathcliff, how Catherine is left behind?’

‘I told you we laughed,’ he answered.  ‘The Lintons heard us, and with one accord they shot like arrows to the door; there was silence, and then a cry, “Oh, mamma, mamma!  Oh, papa!  Oh, mamma, come here.  Oh, papa, oh!”  They really did howl out something in that way.  We made frightful noises to terrify them still more, and then we dropped off the ledge, because somebody was drawing the bars, and we felt we had better flee.  I had Cathy by the hand, and was urging her on, when all at once she fell down.  “Run, Heathcliff, run!” she whispered.  “They have let the bull-dog loose, and he holds me!”  The devil had seized her ankle, Nelly: I heard his abominable snorting.  She did not yell out — no! she would have scorned to do it, if she had been spitted on the horns of a mad cow.  I did, though: I vociferated curses enough to annihilate any fiend in Christendom; and I got a stone and thrust it between his jaws, and tried with all my might to cram it down his throat.  A beast of a servant came up with a lantern, at last, shouting — “Keep fast, Skulker, keep fast!”  He changed his note, however, when he saw Skulker’s game.  The dog was throttled off; his huge, purple tongue hanging half a foot out of his mouth, and his pendent lips streaming with bloody slaver.  The man took Cathy up; she was sick: not from fear, I’m certain, but from pain.  He carried her in; I followed, grumbling execrations and vengeance.  “What prey, Robert?” hallooed Linton from the entrance.  “Skulker has caught a little girl, sir,” he replied; “and there’s a lad here,” he added, making a clutch at me, “who looks an out-and-outer!  Very like the robbers were for putting them through the window to open the doors to the gang after all were asleep, that they might murder us at their ease.  Hold your tongue, you foul-mouthed thief, you! you shall go to the gallows for this.  Mr. Linton, sir, don’t lay by your gun.”  “No, no, Robert,” said the old fool.  “The rascals knew that yesterday was my rent-day: they thought to have me cleverly.  Come in; I’ll furnish them a reception.  There, John, fasten the chain.  Give Skulker some water, Jenny.  To beard a magistrate in his stronghold, and on the Sabbath, too!  Where will their insolence stop?  Oh, my dear Mary, look here!  Don’t be afraid, it is but a boy — yet the villain scowls so plainly in his face; would it not be a kindness to the country to hang him at once, before he shows his nature in acts as well as features?”  He pulled me under the chandelier, and Mrs. Linton placed her spectacles on her nose and raised her hands in horror.  The cowardly children crept nearer also, Isabella lisping — “Frightful thing!  Put him in the cellar, papa.  He’s exactly like the son of the fortune-teller that stole my tame pheasant.  Isn’t he, Edgar?”

‘While they examined me, Cathy came round; she heard the last speech, and laughed.  Edgar Linton, after an inquisitive stare, collected sufficient wit to recognise her.  They see us at church, you know, though we seldom meet them elsewhere.  “That’s Miss Earnshaw?” he whispered to his mother, “and look how Skulker has bitten her — how her foot bleeds!”

‘“Miss Earnshaw?  Nonsense!” cried the dame; “Miss Earnshaw scouring the country with a gipsy!  And yet, my dear, the child is in mourning — surely it is — and she may be lamed for life!”

‘“What culpable carelessness in her brother!” exclaimed Mr. Linton, turning from me to Catherine.  “I’ve understood from Shielders”’ (that was the curate, sir) ‘“that he lets her grow up in absolute heathenism.  But who is this?  Where did she pick up this companion?  Oho! I declare he is that strange acquisition my late neighbour made, in his journey to Liverpool — a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway.”

‘“A wicked boy, at all events,” remarked the old lady, “and quite unfit for a decent house!  Did you notice his language, Linton?  I’m shocked that my children should have heard it.”

‘I recommenced cursing — don’t be angry, Nelly — and so Robert was ordered to take me off.  I refused to go without Cathy; he dragged me into the garden, pushed the lantern into my hand, assured me that Mr. Earnshaw should be informed of my behaviour, and, bidding me march directly, secured the door again.  The curtains were still looped up at one corner, and I resumed my station as spy; because, if Catherine had wished to return, I intended shattering their great glass panes to a million of fragments, unless they let her out.  She sat on the sofa quietly.  Mrs. Linton took off the grey cloak of the dairy-maid which we had borrowed for our excursion, shaking her head and expostulating with her, I suppose: she was a young lady, and they made a distinction between her treatment and mine.  Then the woman-servant brought a basin of warm water, and washed her feet; and Mr. Linton mixed a tumbler of negus, and Isabella emptied a plateful of cakes into her lap, and Edgar stood gaping at a distance.  Afterwards, they dried and combed her beautiful hair, and gave her a pair of enormous slippers, and wheeled her to the fire; and I left her, as merry as she could be, dividing her food between the little dog and Skulker, whose nose she pinched as he ate; and kindling a spark of spirit in the vacant blue eyes of the Lintons — a dim reflection from her own enchanting face.  I saw they were full of stupid admiration; she is so immeasurably superior to them — to everybody on earth, is she not, Nelly?’

‘There will more come of this business than you reckon on,’ I answered, covering him up and extinguishing the light.  ‘You are incurable, Heathcliff; and Mr. Hindley will have to proceed to extremities, see if he won’t.’  My words came truer than I desired.  The luckless adventure made Earnshaw furious.  And then Mr. Linton, to mend matters, paid us a visit himself on the morrow, and read the young master such a lecture on the road he guided his family, that he was stirred to look about him, in earnest.  Heathcliff received no flogging, but he was told that the first word he spoke to Miss Catherine should ensure a dismissal; and Mrs. Earnshaw undertook to keep her sister-in-law in due restraint when she returned home; employing art, not force: with force she would have found it impossible.