CHAPTER XXXI
Yesterday was bright, calm, and frosty. I went to the Heights as Iproposed: my housekeeper entreated me to bear a little note from her toher young lady, and I did not refuse, for the worthy woman was notconscious of anything odd in her request. The front door stood open, butthe jealous gate was fastened, as at my last visit; I knocked and invokedEarnshaw from among the garden-beds; he unchained it, and I entered. Thefellow is as handsome a rustic as need be seen. I took particular noticeof him this time; but then he does his best apparently to make the leastof his advantages.
I asked if Mr. Heathcliff were at home? He answered, No; but he would bein at dinner-time. It was eleven o'clock, and I announced my intentionof going in and waiting for him; at which he immediately flung down histools and accompanied me, in the office of watchdog, not as a substitutefor the host.
We entered together; Catherine was there, making herself useful inpreparing some vegetables for the approaching meal; she looked moresulky and less spirited than when I had seen her first. She hardlyraised her eyes to notice me, and continued her employment with the samedisregard to common forms of politeness as before; never returning mybow and good-morning by the slightest acknowledgment.
'She does not seem so amiable,' I thought, 'as Mrs. Dean would persuademe to believe. She's a beauty, it is true; but not an angel.'
Earnshaw surlily bid her remove her things to the kitchen. 'Remove themyourself,' she said, pushing them from her as soon as she had done; andretiring to a stool by the window, where she began to carve figures ofbirds and beasts out of the turnip-parings in her lap. I approached her,pretending to desire a view of the garden; and, as I fancied, adroitlydropped Mrs. Dean's note on to her knee, unnoticed by Hareton--but sheasked aloud, 'What is that?' And chucked it off.
'A letter from your old acquaintance, the housekeeper at the Grange,' Ianswered; annoyed at her exposing my kind deed, and fearful lest itshould be imagined a missive of my own. She would gladly have gatheredit up at this information, but Hareton beat her; he seized and put it inhis waistcoat, saying Mr. Heathcliff should look at it first. Thereat,Catherine silently turned her face from us, and, very stealthily, drewout her pocket-handkerchief and applied it to her eyes; and her cousin,after struggling awhile to keep down his softer feelings, pulled out theletter and flung it on the floor beside her, as ungraciously as he could.Catherine caught and perused it eagerly; then she put a few questions tome concerning the inmates, rational and irrational, of her former home;and gazing towards the hills, murmured in soliloquy:
'I should like to be riding Minny down there! I should like to beclimbing up there! Oh! I'm tired--I'm _stalled_, Hareton!' And sheleant her pretty head back against the sill, with half a yawn and half asigh, and lapsed into an aspect of abstracted sadness: neither caring norknowing whether we remarked her.
'Mrs. Heathcliff,' I said, after sitting some time mute, 'you are notaware that I am an acquaintance of yours? so intimate that I think itstrange you won't come and speak to me. My housekeeper never wearies oftalking about and praising you; and she'll be greatly disappointed if Ireturn with no news of or from you, except that you received her letterand said nothing!'
She appeared to wonder at this speech, and asked,--
'Does Ellen like you?'
'Yes, very well,' I replied, hesitatingly.
'You must tell her,' she continued, 'that I would answer her letter, butI have no materials for writing: not even a book from which I might teara leaf.'
'No books!' I exclaimed. 'How do you contrive to live here without them?if I may take the liberty to inquire. Though provided with a largelibrary, I'm frequently very dull at the Grange; take my books away, andI should be desperate!'
'I was always reading, when I had them,' said Catherine; 'and Mr.Heathcliff never reads; so he took it into his head to destroy my books.I have not had a glimpse of one for weeks. Only once, I searched throughJoseph's store of theology, to his great irritation; and once, Hareton, Icame upon a secret stock in your room--some Latin and Greek, and sometales and poetry: all old friends. I brought the last here--and yougathered them, as a magpie gathers silver spoons, for the mere love ofstealing! They are of no use to you; or else you concealed them in thebad spirit that, as you cannot enjoy them, nobody else shall. Perhaps_your_ envy counselled Mr. Heathcliff to rob me of my treasures? ButI've most of them written on my brain and printed in my heart, and youcannot deprive me of those!'
Earnshaw blushed crimson when his cousin made this revelation of hisprivate literary accumulations, and stammered an indignant denial of heraccusations.
'Mr. Hareton is desirous of increasing his amount of knowledge,' I said,coming to his rescue. 'He is not _envious_, but _emulous_ of yourattainments. He'll be a clever scholar in a few years.'
'And he wants me to sink into a dunce, meantime,' answered Catherine.'Yes, I hear him trying to spell and read to himself, and pretty blundershe makes! I wish you would repeat Chevy Chase as you did yesterday: itwas extremely funny. I heard you; and I heard you turning over thedictionary to seek out the hard words, and then cursing because youcouldn't read their explanations!'
The young man evidently thought it too bad that he should be laughed atfor his ignorance, and then laughed at for trying to remove it. I had asimilar notion; and, remembering Mrs. Dean's anecdote of his firstattempt at enlightening the darkness in which he had been reared, Iobserved,--'But, Mrs. Heathcliff, we have each had a commencement, andeach stumbled and tottered on the threshold; had our teachers scornedinstead of aiding us, we should stumble and totter yet.'
'Oh!' she replied, 'I don't wish to limit his acquirements: still, he hasno right to appropriate what is mine, and make it ridiculous to me withhis vile mistakes and mispronunciations! Those books, both prose andverse, are consecrated to me by other associations; and I hate to havethem debased and profaned in his mouth! Besides, of all, he has selectedmy favourite pieces that I love the most to repeat, as if out ofdeliberate malice.'
Hareton's chest heaved in silence a minute: he laboured under a severesense of mortification and wrath, which it was no easy task to suppress.I rose, and, from a gentlemanly idea of relieving his embarrassment, tookup my station in the doorway, surveying the external prospect as I stood.He followed my example, and left the room; but presently reappeared,bearing half a dozen volumes in his hands, which he threw intoCatherine's lap, exclaiming,--'Take them! I never want to hear, or read,or think of them again!'
'I won't have them now,' she answered. 'I shall connect them with you,and hate them.'
She opened one that had obviously been often turned over, and read aportion in the drawling tone of a beginner; then laughed, and threw itfrom her. 'And listen,' she continued, provokingly, commencing a verseof an old ballad in the same fashion.
But his self-love would endure no further torment: I heard, and notaltogether disapprovingly, a manual check given to her saucy tongue. Thelittle wretch had done her utmost to hurt her cousin's sensitive thoughuncultivated feelings, and a physical argument was the only mode he hadof balancing the account, and repaying its effects on the inflictor. Heafterwards gathered the books and hurled them on the fire. I read in hiscountenance what anguish it was to offer that sacrifice to spleen. Ifancied that as they consumed, he recalled the pleasure they had alreadyimparted, and the triumph and ever-increasing pleasure he had anticipatedfrom them; and I fancied I guessed the incitement to his secret studiesalso. He had been content with daily labour and rough animal enjoyments,till Catherine crossed his path. Shame at her scorn, and hope of herapproval, were his first prompters to higher pursuits; and instead ofguarding him from one and winning him to the other, his endeavours toraise himself had produced just the contrary result.
'Yes that's all the good that such a brute as you can get from them!'cried Catherine, sucking her damaged lip, and watching the conflagrationwith indignant eyes.
'You'd _better_ hold your tongue, now,' he answered fiercely.
And his agitation precluded further speech; he advanced hastily to theentrance, where I made way for him to pass. But ere he had crossed thedoor-stones, Mr. Heathcliff, coming up the causeway, encountered him, andlaying hold of his shoulder asked,--'What's to do now, my lad?'
'Naught, naught,' he said, and broke away to enjoy his grief and anger insolitude.
Heathcliff gazed after him, and sighed.
'It will be odd if I thwart myself,' he muttered, unconscious that I wasbehind him. 'But when I look for his father in his face, I find _her_every day more! How the devil is he so like? I can hardly bear to seehim.'
He bent his eyes to the ground, and walked moodily in. There was arestless, anxious expression in his countenance. I had never remarkedthere before; and he looked sparer in person. His daughter-in-law, onperceiving him through the window, immediately escaped to the kitchen, sothat I remained alone.
'I'm glad to see you out of doors again, Mr. Lockwood,' he said, in replyto my greeting; 'from selfish motives partly: I don't think I couldreadily supply your loss in this desolation. I've wondered more thanonce what brought you here.'
'An idle whim, I fear, sir,' was my answer; 'or else an idle whim isgoing to spirit me away. I shall set out for London next week; and Imust give you warning that I feel no disposition to retain ThrushcrossGrange beyond the twelve months I agreed to rent it. I believe I shallnot live there any more.'
'Oh, indeed; you're tired of being banished from the world, are you?' hesaid. 'But if you be coming to plead off paying for a place you won'toccupy, your journey is useless: I never relent in exacting my due fromany one.'
'I'm coming to plead off nothing about it,' I exclaimed, considerablyirritated. 'Should you wish it, I'll settle with you now,' and I drew mynote-book from my pocket.
'No, no,' he replied, coolly; 'you'll leave sufficient behind to coveryour debts, if you fail to return: I'm not in such a hurry. Sit down andtake your dinner with us; a guest that is safe from repeating his visitcan generally be made welcome. Catherine! bring the things in: where areyou?'
Catherine reappeared, bearing a tray of knives and forks.
'You may get your dinner with Joseph,' muttered Heathcliff, aside, 'andremain in the kitchen till he is gone.'
She obeyed his directions very punctually: perhaps she had no temptationto transgress. Living among clowns and misanthropists, she probablycannot appreciate a better class of people when she meets them.
With Mr. Heathcliff, grim and saturnine, on the one hand, and Hareton,absolutely dumb, on the other, I made a somewhat cheerless meal, and badeadieu early. I would have departed by the back way, to get a lastglimpse of Catherine and annoy old Joseph; but Hareton received orders tolead up my horse, and my host himself escorted me to the door, so I couldnot fulfil my wish.
'How dreary life gets over in that house!' I reflected, while riding downthe road. 'What a realisation of something more romantic than a fairytale it would have been for Mrs. Linton Heathcliff, had she and I struckup an attachment, as her good nurse desired, and migrated together intothe stirring atmosphere of the town!'